Chapter 6 Why Authoritarian Parties? The Regime Party as an ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

CHAPTER 6 the city-state’s economy through “government-linked companies”, as they are known, whose corporate boards fuse government, party, and business elites (Mauzy and Milne 2002, 28-35). Nonetheless, inmost dictatorships withdominant andhegemonic parties, thegovernment and the party may frequently be “perceived as a single structure in terms of the pursuit off regime goals” as Grindle (1977, 47) observed about Mexico under the PRI. After Suharto’s government in Indonesia decided to hold its first post-coup election in 1971, it put in force a policy of “monoloyalty” according to which a “civil servant was obliged to serve unstintingly the government that employed him, and to renounce other competing ties”(Ward 1974, 33). In practice, all civil servants were required to sever their ties with any other party and encouraged to join the government-sanctioned Golkar (Elson 2001, 186-191). Because dictatorships with dominant and hegemonic parties have multi-party elections, political control over the public sector serves the dual role of providing incentives for party service as well as ensuring electoral hegemony. Magaloni (2006, 8) shows how in the case of Mexico “a public image of invincibility” discouraged both defections from within the ruling party and helped maintain dominance at the polls. The present model highlights the importance of a large and politically administered public sector, which in combination with the expectation of a continued control of the government strengthens the incentives for service within the governing party. As an Egyptian member of parliament for the ruling National Democratic Party explains, ”The NDP is good. But I am not talking about ideology or anything like that. This is not important. I do not think any of us [NDP deputies] care about that. What I mean is that it provides access to the services needed by the people. This is because it is the President’s Party. I or anybody else in the NDP would join 30
CHAPTER 6 any party that is in the NDP’s position. This is because it would be able to provide the necessary services to the constituents.” (Kassem 1999, 81) The party’s control over a large public sector also facilitates continued electoral dominance by allowing it to condition the distribution of public funds on the manifestation of political loyalty at the polls. 20 When the ruling People’s Action Party in Singapore faced the risk of receiving less than 60% of the popular vote in 1997, prime minister Goh Chok Tong exploited the government’s widespread control over public housing – as of the year 2000, 86% of Singaporeans lived in public housing (Mauzy and Milne 2002, 90) – by threat- ening to turn into “a slum” any district that would not vote for the ruling party. The prime minister considered this strategy “the single most important” factor in preserving the PAP’s dominance at the polls. 21 The modified party service constraint (6.7) also suggests that the regime can strengthen incentives for party service in two different but related ways. First, it can provide more attractive terms of party membership. More specifically, the former alternative implies that better outside opportunities w must be matched by a larger promotion rate p. Consistently with this prediction, one observer of Cuba notes that admission standards for Cuba’s Com- munist Party membership rose and fell depending on the state of the economy: standards rose in the 1970s and 1990s, when the economy is doing poorly; standards declined in the 1980s, when the economy improved (Corbett 2002, 178). Similarly, Schnytzer and Sustersic (1998) report that membership in the League of Communists of Yugoslavia was positively 20See e.g. Blaydes (2010) on Egypt under the National Democratic Party and Magaloni (2006) on Mexico under the PRI. 21Eventually, the PAP won 65% the popular vote and 81 out of 83 legislative seats. See “Upgrading link swung vote in GE”, The Straits Times, 12 January 1998, and “Singapore’s Voters Get a Choice: Slums or the Ruling Party,“ The Wall Street Journal, 31 December, 1996. 31
Page 1 and 2: Chapter 6 Why Authoritarian Parties
Page 3 and 4: CHAPTER 6 and outside of authoritar
Page 5 and 6: CHAPTER 6 political coalitions and
Page 7 and 8: to counter opposition to the exerci
Page 9 and 10: CHAPTER 6 consists of parties under
Page 11 and 12: CHAPTER 6 borhoods, and public inst
Page 13 and 14: CHAPTER 6 have been administered by
Page 15 and 16: CHAPTER 6 Table 6.1: A comparison o
Page 17 and 18: CHAPTER 6 party service and benefit
Page 19 and 20: CHAPTER 6 generosity of the benefit
Page 21 and 22: elevance of the parameters b, w, an
Page 23 and 24: CHAPTER 6 that single-party regimes
Page 25 and 26: CHAPTER 6 or dismissal of thousands
Page 27 and 28: CHAPTER 6 service and benefits with
Page 29: u NS i CHAPTER 6 = b/(1−δ) is he
Page 33 and 34: CHAPTER 6 appointments enhances inc
Page 35 and 36: CHAPTER 6 ality, suppose thattheinc
Page 37 and 38: CHAPTER 6 While both approaches fin
Page 39 and 40: ehind the regime’s stability (Mag
Page 41 and 42: Frequency 0 50 100 150 200 0 20 40
Page 43 and 44: CHAPTER 6 Table 6.3: Restrictions o
Page 45 and 46: Density 0 .005 .01 .015 .02 .025 CH
Page 47 and 48: CHAPTER 6 parties that on average c
Page 49 and 50: CHAPTER 6 Table 6.6: The effect of
Page 51 and 52: CHAPTER 6 I attempted a stronger te
Page 53 and 54: CHAPTER 6 - take advantage of natur
Page 55 and 56: Bibliography Abrami, Regina, Edmund
Page 57 and 58: Press. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dickson, Bruce
Page 59 and 60: tution. BIBLIOGRAPHY Huntington, Sa
Page 61 and 62: BIBLIOGRAPHY Central Committee and
Page 63: World Bank. 2008. World Development

Chapter 6 Why Authoritarian Parties? The Regime Party as an ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?