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

to counter opposition to the exercise of widespread political control.
CHAPTER 6
When I juxtapose cooptation via a regime-sanctioned political party and repression, I
find that dictatorships coopt most effectively when they aim at ideologically most proximate
segments of the population rather than actual opposition. Because the cost of cooptation
is more sensitive than the cost of repression to the ideological distance between a member
of the population and the regime, the regime spends scarce resources most effectively when
it recruits those who are ideologically closer to it. This finding is consistent with historical
and qualitative research on the selective nature of party recruitment and promotion policies
and suggests a qualification to the frequent claim that parties serve to coopt opposition. 3
The present analysis implies that the logic of party-based, selective cooptation is to enlist
those segments of the population that will best help marginalize actual opposition rather
than coopt it. 4
This chapter’s findings about the contribution of regime-sanctioned parties to authori-
tarian resilience also suggest an amendment to Bueno de Mesquita et al.’s (2003) influential
selectorate theory. At the heart of selectorate theory is the claim that potential defectors
fromanincumbent regime must weighthe certainbenefits that theycurrently receive against
the uncertain benefits that a challenger offers them. Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) assume
that such uncertainty results in an incumbency advantage that decreases with the size of
the incumbent’s coalition. The present arguments imply that dictatorships that coopt via a
regime party with the organizational features that I examine below survive under less favor-
able circumstances and in the face of stronger challengers than those without such parties,
3On party recruitment and promotion policies, see e.g. Domínguez (1978, Chapter 8), Grzyma̷la-Busse
(2002), Shambaugh (2009), and Staar (1988).
4C.f. Geddes (1999b, 135) and Gandhi and Przeworski (2007).
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