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

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CHAPTER 6 will be lost should the regime fall. The three organizational features effectively exploit their members’ opportunism and career aspirations in order to create a stake in the perpetuation of the regime among the most productive and ideologically agreeable segments of the population. In turn, authoritarian regimes that coopt via a party with these organizational features survive under less favorable circumstances than dictatorships without a party, even if the latter spend the same resources on cooptation. In order to examine the political logic that links internal party organization, career aspirations among the population, and the survival of dictatorships, I build on existing research on parties and develop a series of simple formal models of authoritarian cooptation. The analysis in section 6.1 highlights that, jointly, thethree institutional features ofauthoritarian parties that I identify contribute to the survival of dictatorships via two distinct political mechanisms. The first of these may be called party-based cooptation. Cooptation via authoritarian parties differs from cooptation via transfers – which frequently takes the form of cash, price controls, subsidies, or redistribution – in a key political aspect: Cooptation via authoritarian parties breeds an enduring rather than momentary stake in the regime’s survival. When the regime assigns costly party service to lower levels of the party hierarchy – and hence early in party members’ career – and the benefits of party membership to higher levels of the party hierarchy – and hence later in the party members’ career – party members’ costly service becomes sunk investment by the time they reap the benefits of party seniority. Hence what makes cooptation via a party so effective is not the distribution of benefits by itself – those could be easily distributed without a party. Rather it is the conditioning of those benefits on prior costly service, which becomes sunk investment that cannot be transferred across 4
CHAPTER 6 political coalitions and will most likely be lost should the regime or leadership change. In turn, party members become political hostages of their own career success, with a vested interest in the perpetuation of the existing regime. The three institutional features of successful authoritarian parties identified here contribute to authoritarian resilience via another, conceptually separate mechanism, which we may call direct political control. This mechanism refers to those aspects of party activity that are aimed primarily at the general population, such as political communication, mobi- lization, intelligence gathering, and the maintenance of political discipline (see e.g. Friedrich and Brzezinski 1965; Huntington 1968). Smith (2005), for instance, identifies the ability authoritarian parties to mobilize their constituencies in times of crisis as a key aspect of party “strength”, Geddes (2008) argues that mass parties help dictators to counter threats form the military, and Magaloni (2008, 723) and Wintrobe (1998, 65) emphasize that long-lasting parties are essential for effective cooptation. The analysis here highlights how particular features of internal party organization – the party’s recruitment, promotion, and retirement policies – ensure that sufficient incentives exist for key segments of the population to join the party and, in turn, provide the political service that results in the party’s “lasting strength”. By examining how optimal recruitment, promotion, and retirement policies depend on the regimes’ resources, ideology, and non-partisan opportunities for career advancement, we gain a better understanding of the connection between organizational features of authoritarian parties and the potential and limits to their “lasting strength”. The results of this formal analysis both corroborate and qualify existing explanations of how authoritarian parties contribute to the survival of dictatorships. Brownlee (2007), Geddes (1999b; 2003), Gehlbach and Keefer (2008), and Magaloni (2006, 2008) argue that 5
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Bibliography Abrami, Regina, Edmund
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Press. BIBLIOGRAPHY Dickson, Bruce
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tution. BIBLIOGRAPHY Huntington, Sa
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BIBLIOGRAPHY Central Committee and
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World Bank. 2008. World Development
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