Why Parties?
A Theory of Opposition Party Formation in Authoritarian Settings∗
Jose Antonio Hernandez Company†
Lorenzo Ernesto Bernal Verdugo‡
Abstract
In authoritarian settings elections do not choose governments, legislatures havelimited influence on policy and opposition forces are prone to repression. Why, then,do opposition parties emerge and are maintained under authoritarian rule? We proposethat those groups excluded from the authoritarian winning coalition have an incentiveto create opposition parties in order to lower the probability of authoritarians enactingadverse policies located at the extremes of the ideological continuum. Oppositionparties achieve this outcome by decreasing the capacity of authoritarians to garner asupermajority of votes during election day, forcing them to either pay a higher costin electoral fraud and repression or to move towards the general -and more moderate-median voter policy preference. We explain the timing of opposition party formation,the type of activist more likely to join these parties and how these parties are ableto survive for long periods of time despite constantly losing elections. We test ourpredictions with a systematic and contextualized comparison of the formation andmaintenance of Mexico’s National Action Party and Taiwan’s Democratic ProgressiveParty in the 20th Century.
∗Paper prepared for presentation at the 23 World Congress of the International Political ScienceAssociation, July 2014. Please do not cite or circulate without the authors’ permission. The authors wish tothank Dan Slater, Alberto Simpser, John Brehm, Kenneth Greene, Adrienne LeBas, Monika Nalepa, NaomiIchino, Steven Levitsky, Frances Hagopian, and Brandon Van Dyk for comments and suggestions. Specialthanks go to Ken Greene because the arguments in the first section of this paper heavily rely on his ownideas about opposition parties in authoritarian settings. All errors are our own.†Department of Political Science, The University of Chicago. Corresponding author.‡Banco de Mexico, Mexico.
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You may have won the voting, but I wonthe counting.
Anastasio Somoza
Anastasio Somoza’s words provide the reader with an idea of the paradox that we want
to solve in this paper. Why would anyone oppose an authoritarian ruler through elections if
they are going to lose anyway? Somoza’s words also provide some clues to solve the puzzle
–e.g. stealing elections is costly–, but these clues are, of course, not enough to understand
the problem. In this paper we attempt to solve the paradox by providing a theory of
opposition party formation and endurance in authoritarian settings. Despite the recent
scholarly interest in hybrid or competitive authoritarian regimes, which are characterized
for allowing meaningful –but unfair– elections and opposition participation through political
parties (cf., for example, Levitsky and Way 2010; Schedler 2006), and the knowledge that has
been accumulated with regards to the factors that facilitate authoritarian regime duration
–such as the presence of strong dominant parties (cf. Brownlee 2007; Geddes 2006; Magaloni
2008) and the importance of elite cooperation (cf. Boix and Svolik 2007; Slater 2010)–, too
little is known about, specifically, opposition parties in authoritarianisms. This paper is,
therefore, one attempt to fill this academic void.
Scholars, of course, have not neglected the role of organized opposition in authoritarian
environments. However, they have overlooked the important question of party formation;
given this, they have provided different conclusions about similar actors in similar settings.
On the one hand, for example, there are authors like Mainwaring (2003, 6-12) who notes
that the assumption of parties as vote maximizers does not fully hold in hybrid regimes
and “unconsolidated” democracies. Rather, according to the author, in these situations
opposition parties play a “dual game”: they compete for votes while, at the same time, they
try to dislodge the existing political regime. On the other hand, there are authors like Lust-
Okar (2006, 468) who argue that parties in authoritarianisms are weak and personalistic,
and that opposition candidates prefer to run for office without party labels and without
challenging the authoritarian elite (who, at the end of the day, is the one that controls
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patronage and precious state resources): “[t]he result of such a situation is that parties are
neutered, voters become cynical, and demands for democratization as well as support for
the forces intending to push for it decline.” Why is the opposition assumed to behave so
differently in such similar situations? Our theory will provide insights to solve this and other
questions related to opposition party formation and these entities behavior in authoritarian
regimes.
The paper is organized in four sections. In the first section we describe in detail the
dilemma of opposition party formation in authoritarian regimes. We show that standard
neutral models of party entry are unable to explain why opposition parties emerge in these
environments. In this section we also review Kenneth Greene’s (Greene 2007) work on
dominant-party authoritarian regimes, which we consider to be the most important attempt
up to date to explain opposition party behavior in authoritarian settings. In the second
section we provide a description of the theory of opposition party formation and endurance in
authoritarianisms1. In this section we pay attention to two traits of competitive authoritarian
regimes: 1) elections matter, 2) authoritarian ruling coalitions –who make authoritative
decisions in a country– always exclude some members of society. In the third section we
provide a formal model of our theory. The formal model is intended to present our argument
with more rigor and precision. Finally, we assess how well our theory explains two important
cases: Mexico’s Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) and Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP).
1Our theory requires certain scope conditions –i.e. it is not meant to apply to every single type oforganized opposition in authoritarian regimes. The most important scope condition is the existence of acompetitive authoritarian regime. According to Levitsky and Way (2010, 7) these regimes “are distinguishedfrom full authoritarianism in that constitutional channels exist through which opposition groups competein a meaningful way for executive power. Elections are held regularly and opposition parties are not legallybarred from contesting them. Opposition activity is above ground: Opposition parties can open offices,recruit candidates and organize campaigns, and politicians are rarely exiled or imprisoned.” Thus, thetheory is suited to explain opposition parties in cases such as Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Singaporeand Taiwan; but not for cases such as Argentina, Burma, Chile, Spain and Vietnam.
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1 The paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings
In neutral models of party entry –i.e. models that assume that none of the organizations
competing for votes has a non-spatial advantage and all the players desiring to enter the
electoral fray will do so on a leveled playing field2– party emergence is the product of a
decision conditioned by three main elements: the probability of winning, the benefits of office,
and the costs of entry. In equilibrium, neutral models show that political entrepreneurs will
not form parties unless the chances of winning under the new party label combined with the
expected benefits of office are higher than the costs of participating in elections. If this holds,
Cox (1997, 155) has shown that the expected number of entrants, n, “is bounded above by
the benefit-cost ratio, b/c”, that is, n ≤ b/c. Although this inequality does not provide an
exact number of entrants, it hints towards the paradox of party formation in competitive
authoritarian regimes: as the costs of entry increase the number of parties should decline.
Neutral models of party entry, thus, cannot fully explain why opposition parties emerge
in competitive authoritarian contexts, where the costs of participation are high and the
electoral arena is strongly biased towards one of the players: the authoritarian party (cf.
Greene 2007). We identify four main instruments that reduce the intensity of electoral
competition and that provide authoritarians with a formidable advantage during Election
Day:
1. Endogenous electoral rules that determine the requisites for registering a party and the
ease of winning a seat. Authoritarians control, for example, the number of signatures
necessary to form a party, access to public funding or other state resources (i.e.
patronage), and the ballot format (which might incentivize voters to vote strategically
or not). In the case of Mexico, for example, Langston (2002) has shown that every time
after a split in the authoritarian coalition during the election years of 1940, 1952 and
2Following Cox (1997, 153 n. 3), we consider a model of entry to be neutral “if, whenever candidates A andB switch spatial positions (all other candidates’ positions held constant, if there are any other candidates),then they switch expected vote shares and probabilities of victory.”
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1988 –splits that prompted superb challengers to compete in these elections against
the hegemonic Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)–, Mexico’s authoritarians
reformed federal election laws to make it more difficult for opposition parties to gain
legal status. In the case of Brazil, after losing a couple of gubernatorial elections in
1965, the military regime decided to abolish all existing parties and reorganize them
into two officially recognized parties which were going to be the only ones considered
legal up until the end of the 1970s (cf. Skidmore 1973, 43-45).
2. Electoral fraud that can substantially decrease the probability of a challenger party
winning elections. Fraud can take multiple forms and can happen at different time
periods during an electoral process (e.g. the authoritarians can trim the names of
“undesired” citizens from the list of registered voters before Election Day or they
can tally ballots in a dishonest way after the polls close on Election Day). Perhaps
one of the best known cases of electoral fraud is the “snap” Philippine presidential
election of 1986 (for a detailed description of the months before and after the election
cf. McCoy 1999, ch. 7). Ferdinand Marcos put pressure on the Philippine Commission
on Elections (COMELEC) “not only to adjust the tally but to fabricate his victory”
(Case 2006, 105) and several techniques were used to increase Marcos’ final count such
as the flying voter –i.e. a single voter casting ballots in different precincts– and the
lanzadera –where voters receive a prepared ballot before coming to the electoral booth,
take a “clean” ballot after leaving the booth and offer it to the next voter (loc. cit.).
3. Repression that substantially increases the cost of voting for the opposition and
the costs of challenging the regime. Repression can take subtle forms –e.g. the
authoritarians, in control of state resources, can decide whether to withdraw or
not these resources from specific voters and opposition challengers (cf. Diaz-Cayeros,
Magaloni and Weingast 2003)– or it can be expressed with violence and coercion.
Blaydes (2011, 54) has shown that in pre-2011 Egypt, candidates that ran for an office
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and were elected into Parliament received enormous benefits such as “opportunities to
barter or sell appointments and jobs [...]. In addition to these [...] avenues of influence
and benefit, parliamentarians also use legal immunity granted to office holders for more
nefarious purposes.” Given that the benefits were granted they could also be taken
away by the authoritarian elite in control of the state apparatus. Authoritarians,
then, can “tame” opposers using these subtle forms of repression. Elections in the
state of Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1945, show the “ugly” face of repression. In this
case, the opposition party Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) and a strong local party
(the National Sinarquist Union), supported the candidacy of Carlos Obregon against
the authoritarians’ candidate Ignacio Quiroz. The elections “were followed [...] by
huge demonstrations. The army fired on the crowd, killing twenty-six protesters and
seriously wounding at least thirty others” (Lujambio 2001, 58-59). This was only a
local race so it is plausible that, in most authoritarian regimes, repression is harsher
against those competing in presidential or national legislature elections.
4. Uneven access to state resources that hinder the opposition’s capacity to attract high
quality candidates and/or buy time to promote itself in mass media. Greene (2007,
39-42; cf also Levitsky and Way 2010, 9-12) notices that authoritarians have access to
five types of resources: the budgets of state-owned enterprises, the public budget, the
bureaucracy –which allows incumbents to distribute jobs to supporters–, fiscal policy –
that incentivizes domestic businesses to cooperate with the authoritarians rather than
with the opposition– and, the administrative resources of the state –e.g. vehicles,
phones, etc. In Russia, for example, the control of Gazprom and other state-owned
companies has recently allowed Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party to control
an incredible amount of resources that they have used “in a number of politically
beneficial ways. Parliament, and United Russia, [have] shared in the general glow of
public good feeling. Putin’s own approval ratings [have risen] steadily” (Remington
2010, 49).
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As is obvious from the list above, the assumption of neutrality in authoritarian settings
is not plausible and, therefore, we will discard it from the analysis below. However, it is
important to ask if some form of “semi-neutrality” could be present at the inception of
an authoritarian regime that may incentivize the formation of challenger parties. In this
situation, voters still do not have an idea of the political organizations that are viable and
the ones that are not (cf. Cox 1997, ch. 8). Therefore, strategic voting (which tends to
have a reductive effect in the sense that voters do not want to waste their votes on those
parties/candidates that are expected to be among the J > M +1 trailing parties/candidates
–where M is district size–) is unlikely to be present during the first authoritarian electoral
rounds. That is, assuming that party A is the authoritarian machine and party B is in the
opposition, without previous information about whom is whom in the election, voters are
unlikely to vote strategically for the most viable party (i.e. party A). However, scholars (for a
review of the arguments cf. Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009) have shown that authoritarians are
only likely to hold elections when their grip in power is secure and that they spend incredible
amount of resources (human and monetary) to publicize their “viability” and their status as
the only game in town. Therefore, the “semi-neutrality” argument is also highly unlikely. All
of the opposition parties that we take into consideration for our theory of party formation and
endurance are those created after the authoritarian regime has demonstrated its capacity to
hold power. Thus, we have parties like Mexico’s PAN created more than a decade after the
inception of the authoritarian regime in the country; the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores
(PT) created fifteen years after the military coup of 1964; and the Taiwanese DPP created
in the mid-1980s, more than three decades after the launching of the KMT regime in the
country.
Why, then, will someone oppose an authoritarian regime via elections if the chances of
winning are extremely low due to the existence of repression, fraud, electoral institutions,
etc.? Opposition party formation in authoritarian settings is puzzling; especially if we
assume, like Downs (1957, 11), that politicians who compete in elections orient their behavior
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towards the maximization of votes. If a politician knows (given information from past
elections) that it is almost impossible to win office if she competes against the authoritarian
party, why not join this party instead? As Cox (1997, 165-166) has shown, when a party has
a very high probability of winning elections then all vote-maximizing office seekers should
join this party and not any other:
Consider [...] the case where [a party] is certain to win the general election [...]. In sucha district, there is no (current seat-maximizing) reason to run under any other thanthe dominant label. Would-be career politicians will either enter the dominant party’sendorsement process, or not at all. (Loc. cit.)
If Cox is right, we would have never seen the formation of opposition parties in authoritarian
regimes. However, this is not the case –opposition parties were created, and some of them
endured for many years. Therefore, we need a clear answer to the puzzle. Kenneth Greene
has, to our knowledge, provided the only solution to this paper’s main question. Next we
review his argument and indicate some shortcomings.
1.1 A solution to the paradox? Greene’s argument
To solve the paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings, Greene (2007,
ch. 2) starts by paying attention to the incredible resource advantages of the dominant
authoritarian party. He notices that these advantages will always make challengers to have
a much lower probability of winning –despite their best efforts and (spatial) strategies. He
concludes, thus, that opposition parties in authoritarian regimes cannot exist as pure-office
seeking organizations and that prospective party joiners must value “something else” other
than winning elections . This something else, according to the author, is an incentive to
fight for a policy that the opposition party activists deeply care about (ibid., 53).
It is important to notice that Greene does not fully attempt to explain party formation,
rather, his theory is better designed to understand why challenger parties in dominant party
authoritarian regimes locate at a particular spatial location. However, part of his argument
attempts to demonstrate that only politicians with extreme policy preferences –in the sense
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of being located far away from the median voter’s ideal preference– will end up creating an
opposition organization that would compete in elections against the authoritarians (ibid.,
66-70). Thus, we conclude from this that policy incentives and partisan expression are the
rationale for creating challenger parties. As we will comment below, the problem with this
argument is that it does not fully solve the paradox of opposition party formation: it cannot
explain why political entrepreneurs with acute preferences choose to create parties instead
of clubs, interest groups, etc. Why do these persons choose the electoral arena to express
their policy and partisan desires?
Perhaps, the most important part of the author’s argument is that, as the resource
advantages of the dominant party increase (and/or the probabilities of fraud and repression
increase), the extremism (in terms of policy preferences) of challenger parties will also
increase. Given these adverse conditions, Greene then asks who joins opposition parties
–assuming that a challenger party has already been created. His response to this question
is again based on the idea that policy expression matters and that opposition parties create
expressive benefits to incentivize people to join an organization that is most likely to lose
elections: “[s]uch a benefit comes whether or not the party wins the next election, but rather
from the sheer act of participation” (ibid., 123). To salvage his argument from critiques, the
author adds an important corollary:
But expressive benefits alone give no rationale for the existence of opposition partiesin place of social movements. Challenger parties are also clearly interested in winningelections just like their counterparts in fully competitive democracies. (Ibid., 124)
To add both expressive and vote-maximizing incentives to opposition parties competing
in authoritarian regimes, the author finalizes by creating two types of activists: office-
seekers and message-seekers. Alas, here we find one of the main problems of the argument:
the expected utility function that Greene develops for message-seekers does not require
participation in elections3 and, as he demonstrates, office-seekers ought not to join an
3Greene’s expected utility function for message-seekers is as follows: Eui(ak) = u(ek)[α+pk]−ck (Greene
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opposition party unless the probability of repression, fraud or the advantages of the dominant
authoritarian party are below some empirically undefined threshold; if this is not the case
only very extreme preference office-seekers will join the challenger party, but we assume
that this rationale –taken to the limit– completely depletes the set of possible office seeking
activists.
We now indicate the main shortcomings of Greene’s argument:
1. As we noticed above, the author does not fully solve the paradox of party formation.
To avoid many of the costs of forming challenger parties in authoritarian regimes, why
do opposition elites that deeply care about particular policies and have preferences far
away from the status quo not join an interest group, a social movement, etc.? Our
theory solves this by paying attention to the fact that the electoral arena is extremely
important for the maintenance of the authoritarian regime. Thus, groups excluded
from the authoritarian winning-coalition enter the electoral fray because only through
elections they can achieve their particular objectives.
2. Greene discards from his analysis an important type of opposition party in
authoritarian regimes. As Lust-Okar (2005, ch. 1) notices, scholars have tended
to ignore important differences among opponents to authoritarian rulers. For this
author, there are legal opponents whose inclusion in the formal political sphere tends
to demobilize them and constrain their demands, and there are also illegal opponents
that tend to be more radical and, very often, incentivized to topple the authoritarian
regime. Although we do not make the legal-illegal opposition distinction, we believe
that Lust-Okar is right in pointing out differences among types of challengers. Greene
excludes from his analysis those opposition parties that are moderate (perhaps even
2007, 130). The function states that the utility of individual i of taking action k is given by the utility ofexpressing the party’s message u(ek), the probability of victory pk, and the costs of participation ck. Wenotice that even if the probability of victory is equal to 0, a message-seeker will always get a positive utilityand, thus, will always join an opposition party. The question is, then, why do message-seekers not join aclub, an interest group or, as Greene himself notices, a social movement?
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“non-ideological”), that enjoy some sort of access to the patronage in the hands
of authoritarians and that, therefore, are not a source of significant threats to
autocrats. In his analysis of Mexico, for example, Greene completely dismissed
parties like the Partido Autentico de la Revolucion Mexicana (PARM) and the Partido
Popular Socialista (PPS) –known in Mexico’s vox populi as “Satellite Parties” of the
authoritarian PRI.
3. The author makes one strong assumption and derives one result about the behavior
of the dominant authoritarian party. First, he assumes that the dominant party
announces a policy position “to the voters on a single left to right dimension and that
[it] is constrained to implement these policies if [it] win[s]” (Greene 2007, 48. Emphasis
added). One important characteristic of autocrats is that they have ample margins to
change their policies, they are not accountable to wide sectors of the population and,
thus, they are not as restricted as democratic governments to change their decisions
from one set of policies to another between elections4. Second, Greene derives from his
model that the authoritarian party is ideologically centrist –i.e. palatable to the median
voter’s preferences (Greene 2007, 55, n. 15 and n. 16). Adams, Merrill and Grofman
(2005, ch. 11) have shown that candidates/parties with valence advantages (i.e. non-
spatial advantages) have motivations to move closer to their preferred policy position.
This result follows Wittman (1983), who has argued that advantaged candidates
are willing to trade-off part of their non-policy related advantages (in the case of
authoritarians, for example, their advantages are based on patronage and access to
state resources) in favor of the likelihood of being elected on a platform that closely
resembles their sincere policy preferences. In sum, if the authoritarian party has ample
advantages during Election Day, why would it choose to be centrist? We argue below
4Miller (2011, 35-36), for example, shows that authoritarians are “responsive” to the electorate only duringthe months close to an election but that policy concessions from the authoritarians “are gradually seizedback” (and fast) after the election. Thus, Miller’s evidence shows that authoritarians are not constrained toimplement their promises.
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that the centrism of the authoritarians is endogenous to the presence of a particular
type of opposition party.
4. Finally, Greene’s theory cannot explain the timing of party formation. Why was one of
his main cases, the PAN, created in 1939? Why was his other main case, the Partido de
la Revolucion Democratica (PRD), created until 1989? Our theory of party formation
in authoritarian settings, by dividing opposition parties into different categories, can
explain the timing of these organizations’ emergence.
Having reviewed the paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings and
Greene’s solution to the puzzle, in the next section we provide a novel theory which takes into
consideration two important aspects of competitive/hybrid authoritarian regimes: electoral
results matter and authoritarians are not reliable5.
2 A Theory of Opposition Party Formation in Authoritarian Settings
To develop a sound theory of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings we start
by describing two characteristics of authoritarian regimes that hold elections and allow some
meaningful –but unfair– competition.
In the last decade, the literature on authoritarian elections has shifted attention from
the idea that these increase the likelihood of democratization to the idea that elections
are endogenous institutions created by autocrats as a mean to hold on to power and avert
threats to their rules. Although scholars tend to differ on the type of threat that dictators
face –e.g. other elites (Boix and Svolik 2007), members of the authoritarian party (Magaloni
2006), society at large (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006), etc.–, the main rationale that has been
offered for the existence of elections (and other authoritarian institutions such as legislatures)
is that these are instruments that transmit two types of information: 1) from authoritarians
to challengers –overwhelming electoral victories by dominant parties signal the strength of
5We follow Downs (1957, 104-105. Emphasis added) and define a party as reliable “if its policy statementsat the beginning of an election period –including those in its preelection campaign– can be used to makeaccurate predictions of its behavior [...] during the period.”
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the regime, demonstrate the acquiescence of the citizenry towards its authoritarian rulers
and, thus, signal to challengers that their chances of gaining support are small and that the
time is not yet ripe to depose the autocrats–; and 2) from society to the autocratic elite
–electoral outcomes help the regime identify its strongholds and the regions where they have
a weak presence and there is more opposition support.
Elections, thus, are valuable for authoritarians. However, their value is conditioned on
them obtaining electoral supermajorities. As Magaloni (2006, 9) notices, authoritarians need
to win elections “by huge margins [to create] a public image of invincibility. This image would
serve to discourage coordination among potential challengers [...] and to diminish bandwagon
effects in favor of the opposition parties among the mass public.” Low turnout and moderate
votes for opposition parties are bad omens for the authoritarian elite because they indicate
that there is a great deal of potential mobilizable opposition that might incentivize elite
splits and, thus, weaken the regime in a short period of time. Langston (2006), for example,
has shown that elite splits from the Mexican PRI and the Taiwanese Kuomintang (KMT)
were more likely when minority factions of the countries’ respective ruling parties found out
–mainly via information from previous elections– that there was a growing willingness on the
part of the electorate to vote against the dominant parties. Elections are a risky business
for autocrats and they only help transmit an “image of invincibility” if authoritarians invest
scarce resources to win those elections by wide margins. To achieve this objective they may
buy votes, or punish defectors (e.g. incarcerate challenger activists or withdraw handouts
from those citizens that vote for the opposition), or they may commit fraud6. We notice
that these activities imply high (transaction) costs; for example: 1) buying votes requires an
army of brokers to monitor that citizens comply with their part of the deal. These brokers,
in turn, usually keep part of the resources that the authoritarian elite would had wished to
get to prospective voters; 2) repression requires a disciplined military or police force that
6Fraud, however, is not the best strategy for authoritarians because, as Geddes (2006, 19) notes, fraudmay fool voters “but it cannot be kept secret from [the dominant] party elites”, thus, these elites may stillknow when it is convenient to split from the dominant party.
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accepts the elite’s requests to punish the citizenry; 3) electoral fraud requires technological
sophistication and/or an army of electoral authorities willing to stuff the ballot box or to
tamper with voter registration lists; etc.
Although the authoritarian elite may have the capacity to engage in these diverse
activities to win electoral supermajorities (especially if the regime is at its apogee, see below),
as any other rational actor wishing to maximize its benefits and minimize its costs, they would
prefer not to incur in these expenses. These costs are likely to increase when the policies
enacted by the authoritarians diverge from the median voter’s preferences: the median voter
will receive less utility from policy so she has to be compensated via other means (e.g. forced
to vote for the hegemonic party with repression or with handouts). Ceteris paribus, the more
“policy divergence” occurs between the implemented policy and the ideal preference of the
median voter, the more expensive it will be to “convince” the median voter to choose the
authoritarian dominant party on Election Day7. Notice that if the authoritarian party wants
a supermajority to signal to prospective challengers that they will be unable to gain much
electoral support, it not only needs the vote of the median voter but also the vote of the
pivotal voter that will provide it with the supermajority of votes (who is always located on
the opposite side of the ideal point of the authoritarian winning coalition).
7To show the logic of the argument with a simple spatial model, assume that the set of all possiblepolicies is in the interval [0, 1], where 0 denotes an extreme leftist policy and 1 an extreme rightist policy.The authoritarian party invests an amount α in buying votes which gives it a non-spatial advantage. Theutility that a voter i, with ideal policy preference xi, derives from voting for an authoritarian party A, withspatial location zA, is Ui(A) = −(xi − zA)2 + α, and that derived from voting for an opposition party O–assuming it has been created–, with spatial location zO, is Ui(O) = −(xi − zO)2.
Assuming that zA < zO, let i∗ be the indifferent voter with policy preference satisfying:
x∗i = zA+zO2 − α
2(zA−zO)
To understand how this indifferent voter moves along the [0, 1] interval –and, thus, to show how A canlose votes–, we obtain the partial derivative of x∗i with respect to zA:
∂x∗i
∂zA= (zA−zO)2+α
2(zA−zO)2 > 0,
which means that, as A moves towards 0, the indifferent voter i∗ moves also towards 0, resulting in lessvoters for A and more for O. Unless the authoritarians are willing to increase α to compensate voters to theright of i∗ for disutility on policy, they will lose these voters the farther they move towards 0. But, we wantto emphasize, increasing α is costly.
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Once it has been established that electoral results matter for autocrats, we now pay
attention to the fact that authoritarians are unreliable, especially to groups outside of the
authoritarian winning coalition. Several theorists (cf., for example, Boix and Svolik 2007;
Gandhi and Przeworski 2006; Geddes 2004; Weingast 1997) have shown that authoritarian
elites only need the cooperation of some particular segments of society for survival and that
this “authoritarian coalition” is usually narrow –it is likely to exclude important sectors of
the population from the decision-taking process. For example, the KMT regime in Taiwan (at
least until the 1980s) excluded most native Taiwanese from the ruling coalition, the Chilean,
Argentinean and Brazilian military regimes excluded organized labor from the authoritarian
coalition (in fact, repression was the more likely response of these regimes vis-a-vis workers),
and the United Malays National Organisation regime in Malaysia most non-Malay ethnic
groups from power. Following Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), we will call the elites that
support the maintenance of the authoritarian regime the winning coalition8, and the groups
excluded from the winning coalition will be called the opposition –which may or may not
be organized into political parties. We assume that the winning coalition is composed of
like-minded elites (i.e. they share ideology, or ethnicity, or some other sort of bonds that
assure some level of loyalty) that pursue policies more affable to their particular tastes and
get rents/spoils. The winning coalition, then, will always try to enact policies that benefit
it in the short and long runs.
Adding members to an authoritarian winning coalition commits the existing members
of this coalition to share spoils and policy changes. Adding members to the coalition is,
however, highly unlikely because, with a fixed amount of goods to distribute, it increases
the division of rents (thus, existing members of the coalition are worse off because they get
a smaller amount of resources) and it creates social choice problems by the simple fact of
8 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003, 51-55) define the winning coalition as a subset of the selectorate ofsufficient size to maintain the authoritarian ruler in power and in control of the rest of society. The selectorate(ibid., 42) is the “set of people whose endowments include the qualities or characteristics institutionallyrequired to choose the government’s leadership and necessary for gaining access to private benefits doled outby the government’s leadership”.
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increasing the number of participants with decision making power (cf. Arrow 1970). We
argue that, if the wining coalition were going to increase its size, its existing members will
only accept like-minded persons given that they are less costly to “absorb” in policy terms
–i.e. they are less likely to create social choice problems for the authoritarians– even if they
diminish the per-capita amount of rents that they might get.
The authoritarian winning coalition, then, defines and adjudicates policies and it is
sufficiently strong to abrogate these policies for its own benefit. The coalition cannot
commit itself not to change these policies and/or to bring new sectors of the population
to the coalition9. The regime, then, can act arbitrarily and opportunistically against the
opposition –e.g. seizing its property, taxing away the income it produces, affecting, via fiscal
and monetary policy, wages and inflation– and there does not exist a commitment device that
may control this behavior. Does there exist a solution to control this unreliable behavior?
Can the authoritarian winning coalition commit itself to a particular policy course?
Scholars have provided diverse solutions to the commitment problem. Gandhi and
Przeworski (2007) have argued that, in order to avert rebellion and obtain cooperation,
dictators can offer legislatures with policy-making powers to opposition challengers. Of
course, this does not fully solve the commitment problem because if the dictator is able
to “concede” a legislature he can also take back this concession. Besides, these authors
acknowledge that real policy making is not in the hands of the legislature but “ready-made-
institutions capable of organizing rule” such as royal families in monarchies, the armed forces
in military regimes and dominant parties in civilian regimes, i.e. what we call the winning
coalition of the regime (ibid., 1284). These authors, therefore, do not solve the commitment
problem that we discussed in previous paragraphs. Weingast (1997) also provides a solution
to this problem. Paradoxically, his solution depends on a sovereign transgressing the rights of
9Gandhi and Przeworski (2006), for example, provide deductive reasoning to show that dictators requirethe cooperation of some sectors of society and that they obtain this cooperation by providing policyconcessions. However, according to their formal model, it is much more costly for autocrats to give policyconcessions to those societal groups with ideal points located far away from the dictator’s ideal policypreference. It is doubtful that dictators concede policies to these extremist groups.
16
citizens both in the opposition and in the winning coalition. According to the author, when
there is a transgression against both societal groups, these groups will coordinate to topple
the sovereign. However, the commitment problem is unsolvable if the sovereign transgresses
his/her powers against only one of the groups. With these arguments in mind, we propose
that the formation and endurance of a particular type of political party can help groups
excluded from the winning coalition of the regime to avert opportunism and commit the
authoritarians to enact moderate policies.
2.1 Forming and Maintaining Opposition Parties to Control Authoritarian
Behavior
We begin our theory with some loose statements about the conditions under which these
parties are created; these will allow us to create a typology of opposition parties –which will
be useful to understand the logic of party formation. First, we argue that the timing of
party formation affects the type of people willing to form and join an opposition party. For
different exogenous (e.g. economic crises that deplete the state of patronage resources) or
endogenous (e.g. elite fractures) reasons, the authoritarian regime has a life cycle that sets
the conditions by which the authoritarians can repress, commit electoral fraud, distribute
resources to clients, co-opt adversaries, control labor unions, appease peasant rebellions,
etc. To make the theory generalizable, we distinguish two broad time periods during which
authoritarians have different “despotic and infrastructural” capabilities10: authoritarian
pinnacle and authoritarian nadir11. During the pinnacle, authoritarians have few constraints
to impose binding decisions over society and enjoy resources and ample popularity in wide
10For a definition of despotic and infrastructural powers cf. Slater (2003, 81-82). By despotic power weunderstand “the range of actions that [a set of the elite in authoritarian regimes] is empowered to take withoutroutine, institutionalized negotiations with other regime members.” By infrastructural power we understandthe elite’s capacity to implement authoritative decisions and “its command over potential opposition in civilsociety and within the multiple layers of the state apparatus itself.”
11Although these words make reference to “static” points in time, we want to emphasize that the conceptsrefer to periods that may last, each, several years. For a full elaboration of the concepts of authoritarianpinnacle and authoritarian nadir (and how these concepts can be measured and why they are useful toexplain different outcomes which are the product of authoritarian legacies), cf. Hernandez Company (2013,34-40).
17
sectors of the population, factors which allow them to create a secure basis for domination.
During the nadir, the authoritarians face either internal divisions and/or external constraints
(e.g. economic crises) that weaken their capacity to keep potential challengers in society
under check and that might force a transition to democracy or other form of authoritarianism
in a short time span12.
Second, we acknowledge the fact that some prospective opposition party entrepreneurs
have the capacity to control patronage networks and the regime may have a disposition to
feed these networks with resources (or, at least, not to affect their functioning). We call
this factor a “brokerage role”. In the case of Brazil, for example, many Brazilian politicians
that participated in elections before the 1964 military coup were forced to join one of the
two newly created parties in 1966. Many of those who joined the new opposition party –the
Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (MDB)– were able to maintain a special relation with
their pre-coup constituencies. This helped them fulfill an important brokerage role in the
authoritarian regime. Kinzo (1988, 49) describes an MDB politician (Samir Achoa) as a
“traditional politician” who “received thousands of people every day asking for help to solve
a personal problem”. During an interview, this politician noted the following:
I do not depend on the government. But the government is obliged to respond positivelywhen the claim is just because the government knows that if he does not solve theproblem the political cost is for the government, not for me. Thus, when I makea claim for specific problems I manage to get a solution for at least some [of theseproblems]. But I never ask for a job in the public sector or any other favor which couldmake me dependent on the government. I consider myself completely independent tosay whatever I want [...]. But it is important for me to be in the MDB. I believe thatif I were from the government party, first I would not adapt there, second I think thatthe people believe in my opposition position (cited in Kinzo, 1988, loc. cit.).
It is obvious from this last statement that this type of opposition party politician is radically
different to the type of opposition party activists that Greene describes (remember that
12In this paper we pay particular attention to those opposition parties created during authoritarianpinnacles. These organizations are more challenging to understand because they emerge at a time whenthe authoritarians are so strong as to make opposition via political parties to seem irrational. Suffice itto say here that opposition parties created during authoritarian nadirs tend to be clientelistic machines orpersonalistic coteries. Examples of such parties are the Peruvian Izquierda Unida (IU), the Mexican Partidode la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) and the Brazilian Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB).
18
for this author only radical anti-status quo politicians create parties with the intention to
fight for a policy that they really care about). With regards to this point, in sum, we
just want to emphasize that authoritarians often need the help of those persons (caciques,
local strongmen, traditional elites, etc.) that control networks useful to mediate state-
society relations; this fact incentivizes authoritarians to transfer monetary resources to these
challengers.
Following Aldrich (2011, 5), we assume that political parties are endogenous institutions
that are created and reformed by political entrepreneurs “when doing so has furthered their
goals and ambitions”. These goals and ambitions are shaped by the historical circumstances
in existence during the juncture of party formation. In this sense, the timing of party
formation matters because the rationale for engaging in the –very– costly activity of creating
an opposition party varies depending on the contextual situation present at the time of party
formation. However, the juncture of party formation (which lasts at most a few years) is not
a period of complete contingency where opposition actors either decide to create a challenger
party or stay at home saving precious time and resources. Rather, there is antecedent
variation which conditions the future behavior of opposition parties –if they are formed.
These critical antecedents (Slater and Simmons 2010) are determined by the preexisting
control that prospective party founders have over patronage networks and the interests of
the authoritarian elite to use those networks to mediate state-society relations. Timing of
formation and critical antecedents create four types of opposition parties. We will focus
on the incentives to form type 1 parties and briefly comment on type 2 parties (we do not
analyze types 3 and 4 because their emergence is not as paradoxical as the emergence of
type 1 parties, see Table 113):
With the typology at hand, we now focus on the reasons for creating parties of type
13 Hernandez Company (2013, 45-52) thoroughly describes the incentives to form all four types of parties.An important difference between type 2 and type 4 parties is the type of patronage network that theirprospective party politicians control; Hernandez Company (ibid., 42, n. 31) divides these networks intoportable (likely to survive a regime transition) and non-transferable (unlikely to survive a regime transition).We do not delve into the details of this particular argument.
19
Table 1: A Typology of Opposition Parties in Authoritarian Settings
Timing of Party Formation
AUTHORITARIAN PINNACLE AUTHORITARIAN NADIR
NOType 1 Type 3
Brokerage Strong Programmatic Party Personalistic Coteries
RoleYES
Type 2 Type 4
Competitive Clientelistic Organization Clientelistic Machines
1 (i.e. Strong Programmatic Parties). As we discussed above, authoritarian regimes are
only responsive to groups within their respective winning coalitions. Even if the autocrats
promise some policy concessions at time t to groups excluded from the coalition, there is a
very high likelihood that at time t+1 they will relinquish their offer –especially if the groups
that had been benefited at time t have highly contrasting preferences to the authoritarian
coalition. The opposition –not yet organized either in parties or social movements– realizes,
then, that its prospects for the future are grim: they might face expropriation of lands, wage
reductions, inconvenient fiscal and monetary policies, etc. The opposition, however, divides
itself between those groups that control networks and may be benefited with the authoritarian
largesse to mediate state-society relations (for an excellent argumentation about this type of
oppositions in the case of Brazil cf. Hagopian 1994, this author demonstrates that “traditional
politicians” were able to administer at the local level, and use for their own purposes, fiscal
transfers from the central government which was in control of the military) and those that
are completely excluded from these monies. This latter group is the one that forecasts a
bleak future in an authoritarian regime. Their options are either to accept the status quo or
act to restrict the policy options of authoritarians.
We argue that these opposition groups realize that authoritarians care about electoral
results and that, therefore, the electoral arena is the best medium by which they can
control authoritarian behavior. In this situation, they choose to create political parties
rather than form social movements or some other form of pressure group. These groups are
not incentivized to form, however, unless there is a “push” from the authoritarian winning
20
coalition. Here we want to emphasize that it is only until the authoritarian regimes start
behaving erratically (in the sense of enacting extremist policies that many groups outside the
autocratic coalition dislike) that the opposition will decide to invest time and scarce resources
in the formation of the parties14. This is one of the main reasons why we see opposition
parties of this type being created only after some time has passed following the inception of
the regime (a couple of years, as in the case of Mexico, or even decades, as in the case of
Taiwan15). It is only then that the regime has a strong hold on power –and a stable winning
coalition– to enact the policies it most prefers (cf. Geddes 2004). Also, we hypothesize
that the type of cleavage or issue around which challengers will decide to compete against
authoritarians is endogenous to the type of radical policies the authoritarians enact and that
anger some specific sectors of society but not others (e.g. economic policies will favor the
formation of opposition parties around the state vs. free market divide, policies that favor
some ethnic groups much more than others will push for the formation of opposition parties
around ethnic divides, etc.).
Political parties of type 1 will allow opposers to “absorb” votes that the authoritarians
highly value. Authoritarians, of course, have multiple instruments to maintain a
supermajority of votes but some are costlier than others: with fixed budgets the capacity
that they have to buy votes is limited to a certain number of voters, they can also repress
or commit fraud –but if the prospects of facing an opposition party in future elections are
high, these two strategies are unlikely to work very well (a regime that relies on repression
14The reader may notice that we do not discuss problems of collective action during the juncture of partyformation. We acknowledge the fact that although many prospective partisans may share similar values andincentives, most of them will prefer to skip the penurious process of party formation and wait until someoneelse pays the costs of forming the challenger organization. Yet, we do not hypothesize general solutions tothe collective action problem because we believe it is more fruitful to empirically investigate how each groupsolves these problems (given the particular contextual circumstances the group faces). Providing a generaltheory of collective action may be troublesome because, in all likelihood, prospective party founders willcome about with different solutions to the collective action problem depending on the type of party thatthey attempt to create (e.g., following our typology, challenger entrepreneurs willing to form a personalisticcoterie will likely solve their collective action problems very differently than party founders attempting tocreate a strong programmatic party).
15Even though in the case of Taiwan meaningful partisan elections were not allowed until the end of martiallaw in the 1980s, individual opposers, coalesced around the Dangwai Movement, started participating inelections just until the end of the 1960s.
21
demonstrates that it does not have sufficient societal support; fraud can fool citizens one
or two times and, more important, it cannot fool factions within the winning coalition)–,
finally, and this is key for our argument, they can moderate their policies to appeal to the
preferences of the median voter. Winning the median allows them to secure 50% of the
votes while the remaining number of votes required to obtain a supermajority (however the
authoritarians define it) can be “acquired” using the tools described above, especially buying
votes16.
Opposition parties of type 1, however, cannot become a real threat to the authoritarian
winning coalition unless they can secure a share of the electorate. Given that these parties do
not have ample pecuniary resources to buy votes (and that they do not have networks that
may give them a brokerage role), they need some other strategy to appeal to the electorate.
We argue that the only technique available to attract votes is to create a sound program and
a brand name. Unless these parties invest in the creation of a program and engage in a
programmatic linkage strategy with the electorate, voters will continue to vote haphazardly
for these organizations and authoritarians will discard their presence in the electoral arena.
To create sound political programs, opposition parties of type 1 cannot locate at the median
voter location. If this were the case, they would attract ideologically dissimilar activists
which may decrease the informative value of the party program –or they might risk being
“infiltrated” by the authoritarians. The signaling of the party program will only be effective,
then, if the programmatic proposals of the party locate close to the extremes of the ideological
spectrum. This last strategy increases the costs of joining the party and therefore reduces
the ideological heterogeneity of its membership. Here we follow the ideas of Snyder and Ting
(2002, 91-92) who have argued –referring to American parties– that:
The message conveyed by a party label is determined by the set of candidates who rununder it. As a result, a party’s label is informative only if the types of candidates whorun under it are limited. [...]. To increase the value of their labels, parties will typicallywant to impose discipline on the candidates who run under their label. Alternatively,
16Footnote 7, above, describes the logic with a simple spatial model. In section 3 we provide a much moreelaborated formal model.
22
parties will want to screen candidates for ideological or policy correctness. [...] Eachparty stakes out an extreme position in order to reduce the ideological heterogeneity ofits membership and thereby make its label more meaningful to voters. [...]. If eitherstrategy is successful, the party’s platform will become useful informational conduitbetween candidates and voters. (Emphasis added. Cf. also Grynaviski 2010, passim.)
Thus, locating at the extremes of the ideological continuum assures an increment in the
informational value of the party program and allows some citizens to easily identify with
the opposition party and vote for it if they despise authoritarian policies. Finally, political
parties of type 1 will stay at the chosen programmatic ideological location for long periods
of time because this is the only way to ensure that authoritarians commit themselves to
moderate their policies.
Lastly, we argue that opposition parties of type 2 are much less of a threat to authoritarian
winning coalitions. Indeed, these parties depend on the authoritarians’ largesse to survive
for long periods of time and they are likely to disappear when the regime breaks down (for
examples of this type of opposition politicians/parties cf. Blaydes 2011). Indeed, following
the ideas and empirical evidence in Lust-Okar (2010), we have named parties of type 2
“competitive clientelistic” because these organizations are able to obtain votes thanks to
their privileged access to the authoritarian elite and to state resources. Thanks to this
access, they are able to distribute patronage or promise services to their constituencies.
Examples of this type of parties are the Mexican PARM and PPS and –perhaps not as close
to the ideal type– the Brazilian MDB. We expect, then, that the presence of this type of
parties is not likely to moderate authoritarians.
In sum, opposition political parties of type 1 are created with the objective not of winning
elections or to propose new policies that existing parties have ignored. These are the main
rationales for creating new parties in democratic systems according to Hug (2001) and
Rosenstone, Behr and Lazarus (1996) among others. Different from democratic systems,
where opposers are unlikely to face the haphazard behavior of current rulers, in authoritarian
settings opposition parties are created with the purpose of moderating the policy options of
the authoritarian winning coalition and, therefore, commit autocrats to specific governing
23
strategies in the long-run. Authoritarians, anxious to win over lost voters to opposition
parties, will seize strategies that both decrease their costs and assure supermajoritarian
electoral results. Next, we provide a formal model of most of these ideas.
3 A Model of Opposition Party Formation and Endurance
3.1 General Framework
In this section, we develop a model of opposition party formation and endurance, which
formalizes the ideas presented in our theory. Social interactions, in the form of random
meetings between voters in the electorate, play a key role in explaining the evolution of
different segments of the electorate sharing particular views regarding policy preferences.
Let us describe the electorate of voters by a continuum of agents of measure one (without
loss of generality, consider the [0, 1] interval in the real line). The electorate is divided into
three groups according to their policy preferences in the set Φ = {L,C,R}, which can be
identified with numerical values {−1, 0, 1}, respectively, so that we can have a notion of
“distance” between different policy stances, e.g. policy L is one step away from policy C,
and two steps away from policy R.
Let lt, ct, and rt represent the fractions of the electorate whose preferred policies at time
t are L,C, and R, respectively. That is, at each moment in time there are three types of
voters, indexed by i ∈ {l, c, r}, depending on their political views.
The government is run by an authoritarian party (A) that, at time t, enacts a policy
zAt ∈ {L,C,R} and has access to patronage goods and services α ≥ 0 that it distributes to
the electorate via lump-sum transfers in order to buy votes. In case there is an opposition
party at time t, it proposes an alternative policy zOt ∈ {L,C,R} but, unlike the authoritarian
party, it has no access to patronage goods.
Voter i’s preferences over voting either for the authoritarian party or the opposition party
(should there exist one) are described, respectively, by the utility functions:
ui(A) = −(xit − zAt
)2+ α, and
24
ui(O) = −(xit − zOt
)2,
where xit ∈ {L,C,R} is voter i’s preferred policy at time t. That is, agents derive a disutility
from policies that deviate from their preferred stances, and said disutility increases with the
square of distance between their preferred policy and the current stance.
Let us assume that on and before time period t = 0, the electorate is highly concentrated
in the group that has a strong preference for policy C, while the rest is split amongst those
having preferences for policies L and R (both with strictly positive mass):
c0 > r0 > 0 and c0 > l0 > 0.
Furthermore, let us also assume that, during all the past prior to time period t = 0, the
official policy stance set by the authoritarian party is zAt<0 = C. Even though such policy
stance is not the one preferred by segments of the electorate in l0 and r0, these groups are
willing to accept a one-step deviation from their preferred policy since the patronage goods
α offered by the authoritarian party compensate for such disutility. Therefore, this allows
the authoritarian party to win elections with a 100% of votes and face no opposition, which
is in fact deterred by the threat of losing said patronage. That is, a potential opponent
would incur in an opportunity cost equal to α should she opt for the alternative of forming
an opposition party, establishing a platform and running for elections, which we assume is
high enough to prevent such action.
At time t = 0, however, an exogenous and unanticipated event occurs, and the
authoritarian party changes its policy choice to zA0 = L (say, for instance, that for some
unmodeled reason it now wants to favor the minority group of voters of type l). This change
in the policy stance would clearly favor voters in l0, while voters in c0 would still be willing
to vote for the authoritarian in exchange for strictly positive patronage goods α > 0.
The segment of the electorate r0, in contrast, is now at a two-step deviation from their
preferred policy R, and the disutility arising from such deviation is now higher. Assuming
25
that the cost of increasing α is high enough so as to leave it unchanged, voters in r0 are thus
uncompensated for such utility loss, which prompts them to form an opposition party, with
a platform that proposes zO0 = R as its policy, and that runs for elections immediately.
These events trigger a series of social interactions in the electorate (in the form of random
pairwise meetings to be held each period), in which the two parties (A and O) try to gain
supporters for their respective policy offerings. That is, both parties engage in activities
aiming to proselytize voters into their views, and the different segments of the electorate
(i.e., lt, ct, and rt) evolve according to dynamics similar to those described by Bernoulli
(1766) and Kermack and McKendrick (1927) in the infectious diseases literature, or (more
recently) by Burnside, Eichenbaum and Rebelo (2011) in the housing prices literature.
The easiness or ability of a voter to gain supporters for her cause depends on a number
of factors, such as the conviction with which she expresses and defends her views during the
course of said social interactions (conversations, meetings, rallies, etc.), the quality of the
platform her party proposes, or the credibility that her party has in terms of the discipline
and screening processes imposed on her party’s candidates, amongst others. For simplicity,
we will refer to these attributes simply as “conviction”, and we explain below how we can
measure it.
Voters have prior probability distributions (pdf) f i (.) over n different policy stances
pj, j = 1, ..., n that, in a voter’s view, favor most a society. Associated to each voter priors,
there is the notion of entropy, which we denote by ei, i ∈ {l, c, r} and calculate as:
ei = −n∑
j=1
f i (pj) ln[f i (pj)
].
Intuitively, lower entropy values denote tighter voter priors. That is, the lower the entropy,
the more firmly a voter believes her preferred policy is the one that most favors the society.
Thus, both entropy and conviction are inversely related, a relationship that will be exploited
26
below.17
These entropies can be used to determine the rate (or probability) with which a given
voter can proselytize another voter into adopting her views. Specifically, these “contagion”
rates are calculated as:
γik = max
{1− ei
ek, 0
}.
In words, γik can be described as the probability with which a voter type i can convince
a voter type k to adopt her political views. It is important to note the following: first, voters
can proselytize only those other voters with a higher entropy value than their own (that is, a
given voter can only convert people with weaker convictions); and, second, these contagion
rates are decreasing on the ratio of the entropies between two voters.
Let us assume throughout that voters of type c have the highest entropy value (that is,
they are the least certain about the policy stance that better serves the society), so that
ec > el and ec > er,
which implies that they can only be proselytized into adopting either the views of type l
or the views of type r. In other words, voters of type c are not able to convince anyone to
adopt their views.
Conversely, voters of type l and r are both able to proselytize voters of type c. But,
what happens when voters of type l and r meet and interact? Who proselytizes whom?
Who adopts whose views? Regarding this particular interaction, we consider two alternative
cases, explained below. First, we consider the emergence of a type 1 opposition party (as
described in section 2.1) and assume that the entropy of voters of type r is lower than that
of voters type l, so that er < el < ec and type r voters are able to proselytize type l voters,
but not the other way around. On the other hand, we also consider the emergence of an
17For now, we abstract from the particular functional form of such probability distribution functions, andwe take the value of the corresponding entropies as given.We aim at endogenizing such entropy values.
27
opposition of type 2 (see section 2.1) and assume that type l voters have the lowest entropy,
so that el < er < ec and the opposite as in the previous case occurs.
3.2 Electorate Dynamics
Having outlined the general framework of our model, we now proceed to describe the
dynamics within the electorate regarding political views, starting at time t = 0, when active
campaigning is initialized following the unexpected change in the authoritarian party’s policy
choice. In order to do so, we consider the two cases mentioned above separately, under the
maintained assumption that type c voters have the highest entropy value (that is, they are
the least convinced and unable to proselytize anyone).
3.2.1 Type 1 Opposition Party
In this case, we assume that type r voters have the lowest entropy value, so that
er < el < ec.
This means that voters of type r can proselytize voters of both type c and l, voters of type
l can convince only voters of type c to adopt their views, and voters of type c are unable to
convince anyone to follow their lead (their views are so sparse that they are not convincing
at all).
Since, as mentioned above, social interactions in the model are in the form of pairwise
random meetings between voters at each period, we can state the following laws of motion
describing the dynamics of each segment of the electorate (that is, of each of the three
groups):
lt+1 = lt + γlcltct − γrlrtlt (1)
ct+1 = ct − γlcltct − γrcrtct (2)
rt+1 = rt + γrcrtct + γrlrtlt (3)
28
We can observe, from equation (1), that the mass of type l voters existing in the next
period (lt+1) is equal to the current mass (lt) plus the fraction of random pairwise meetings
between voters type l and c that results in new voters of type l (γlcltct),18 minus the fraction
of type l voters that meet with type r voters and are converted (γrlrtlt). Thus, under certain
initial conditions, the mass of type l voters might initially increase before ultimately falling
over time.
In equation (2), we see that the mass of type c voters in the next period (ct+1) is equal
to the current mass (ct), minus the fraction of type c voters that meet with type l voters
and are converted into their views (γlcltct), minus the fraction of those meeting type r voters
and whose policy preferences they adopt (γrcrtct). In contrast with the type l voters, type c
voters are always converted and their mass always decreases over time.
Lastly, equation (3) dictates that the mass of type r voters in the next period (rt+1) is
determined by the current mass (rt), plus the fraction of type c voters that they meet and
are able to proselytize (γrcrtct), plus the fraction that meets with voters of type l and convert
them into their views (γrlrtlt). That is, due to their low entropy (that is, high conviction),
the mass of type r voters monotonically increases over time, as they are able, with positive
probability, to proselytize any other voter they meet with.
Regarding the long run (that is, as the time dimension approaches infinity) implications
of the assumptions describing the emergence of this type of opposition party, it should be
noted that the fraction of type r voters in the electorate converges to exactly 1, while the
fractions of the electorate of types c and l both converge to zero. In the short run, however,
and depending on the initial parameterization, the fraction of type l voters initially increases
before starting to fall over the long run, while the fraction of type r voters increases steadily
over time. This pattern might be dubbed as something like the “rise and endurance” of
opposition parties, in which such a party gains supporters that allow it to eventually win
elections and rule thereafter.
18See, for instance, Duffie and Sun (2007) for details on a law of large numbers that applies to pairwiserandom meetings, as the ones described in this context.
29
3.2.2 Type 2 Opposition Party
In this type of opposition party, we have assumed that type l voters have the lowest entropy
value, so that
el < er < ec.
This means that voters of type l can proselytize voters of both types c and r, voters of
type r can convince only voters of type c to adopt their views, and voters of type c are still
unable to convince anyone to follow them.
Thus, in a similar fashion as we did before, we can state the following laws of motion
describing the dynamics of each segment of the electorate:
lt+1 = lt + γlcltct + γlrltrt (4)
ct+1 = ct − γlcltct − γrcrtct (5)
rt+1 = rt + γrcrtct − γlrltrt (6)
In words, what equation (4) states is that the mass of type l voters existing in the next
period (lt+1) is equal to the current mass (lt) plus the fraction of random pairwise meetings
between voters type l and c that results in new voters of type l (γlcltct), plus the fraction of
type r voters that meet with type l voters and are converted (γlrltrt). Thus, and in contrast
with the previous case, since type l voters have the highest convincing power (i.e. the lowest
entropy), their mass only increases over time.
In equation (5), we see that the mass of type c voters evolves exactly as it does in the
previous case: type c voters are always converted and their mass always decreases over time.
Lastly, equation (6) dictates that the mass of type r voters in the next period (rt+1) is
determined by the current mass (rt), plus the fraction of type c voters that they meet and
are able to proselytize (γrcrtct), minus the fraction that meets with voters of type l and are
converted into their views (γlrltrt). That is, on the one hand the mass of voters of type r
30
increases due to the meetings with type c voters, but, on the other hand, decreases due to
the meetings with type l voters, and this generates a non-monotonic pattern in the fraction
of the electorate that has a strong preference for policy R.
It should be noted that, in the long run, the fraction of type l voters in the electorate
converges to exactly 1, while the fractions of the electorate of types c and r both converge to
zero. In the short run, however, and depending on the initial parameterization, the fraction
of type r voters initially increases before starting to fall over the long run. This pattern
might be dubbed as something like the “rise and fall” of opposition parties, in which such
a party might (or might not) gain supporters that allow it to eventually win elections and
rule for a limited period of time. As we have argued before, this is similar to what we might
observe when a type 2 opposition party emerges.
3.3 Voting Strategies
In this subsection, we discuss the possible voting strategies that different segments of the
electorate might follow.
Before the authoritarian party deviates from the initial policy stance C (that is, before
time t = 0 when zAt<0 = C), all segments of the electorate are willing to vote for it. In the
first place are voters of type c, who have a strong preference for the stated policy and are
the most benefitted from it. As for the segments of the electorate who are of type l or r,
we assume that they are both willing to tolerate a one-step deviation from their preferred
policy and give their vote to the authoritarian party (since the disutility they derive from
not having their most preferred policy is still compensated by the patronage goods α, which
is in turn the opportunity cost of forming their own party).
Now, once the authoritarian party deviates from policy C and adopts policy L at time
t = 0 (that is, zA0 = L), we have seen that type r voters are no longer willing to tolerate such
a large (two-step) deviation from their preferred policy and decide to form a party whose
policy offering is R. Clearly, the segment of the electorate formed by type l voters would
vote for the authoritarian party, while all type r voters will vote for the newly emerged
31
opposition party. Since we have assumed that they are both minority groups, the outcome
of the elections (won by the 50% majority) will be decided by the actions taken by the type
c voters (i.e. who do they vote for?).
The segment of the electorate of type c has now to decide between two alternative policy
stances, namely, L and R. Type c voters are indifferent in the sense that both policies
are at a one-step deviation from their preferred policy C. As we argued before, they are
willing to tolerate the disutility derived from either deviation since the cost of forming a
new party with their views would be still higher (in the form of lost patronage α). As for
their voting behavior, let us assume two alternative strategies. First, consider the strategy
(“strategy a”) under which voters in this segment of the electorate are totally free to vote
for whoever they want (e.g. patronage is zero) which, given the symmetry in the opposing
policy stances, can be represented by a randomized strategy between the two, where voters
choose L with probability 1/2 and R with probability 1/2. In other words, half the electorate
of type c vote for L, while the other half votes for R. Alternatively, we consider the strategy
(“strategy b”) under which these voters opt for the status quo (e.g. they fear retaliation from
the authoritarian party, or want to keep patronage benefits α, etc.), that is, they vote for
the authoritarian party as long as the opposition party does not achieve an election-winning
majority (50%), in which case they switch their vote. That is, under strategy b, type c voters
do not “swing” elections, but help instead a given party to retain power.
3.4 Numerical Examples
Next, we provide alternative initial parameterizations in order to simulate the dynamics of
political views within the electorate, as well as election outcomes under the two alternative
voting strategies discussed above. In particular, we consider the emergence of type 1 and
type 2 opposition parties as two separate cases. However, in both cases we maintain the
following initial distribution of the prevailing political views amongst the electorate:
Table 2: Initial Electorate Distribution
l0= 0.12 c0= 0.80 r0= 0.08
32
As can be readily be seen in Table 2, the initial distribution of political preferences in
the electorate is greatly concentrated at c0. Amongst the minorities, l0 has a slightly higher
mass than r0, which can be a justification for the authoritarian party to move its policy
stance towards L and so favor this minority group.
3.4.1 Dynamics in the presence of a Type 1 Opposition Party
Next, we provide a numerical example for the particular case in which the emerging
opposition party is of type 1, which can be thought of as voters who prefer policy R having
a lower entropy, that is, a higher convincing power.
Table 3: Type 1 Opposition
el= 0.82 γlc= 0.0120
ec= 0.83 γrl= 0.0122
er= 0.81 γrc= 0.0241
Although the entropy values in Table 3 are somewhat similar, the condition that
er < el < ec is still satisfied, and the above predictions still hold. In particular, Figure
1 displays how the fraction of the electorate having a preference for policy R grows and
eventually outnumbers any other group, despite having started with a clear disadvantage in
terms of followers. This is, of course, a direct consequence of the low entropy of r voters,
relative to the other groups.
[FIGURE 1 AROUND HERE]
Figure 2, in turn, displays the voting outcomes for the case in which an opposition party
of type 1 emerges, when type c voters follow a voting strategy that randomizes between the
two alternatives (strategy a). In that figure, it can be seen how the opposition party achieves
an election winning majority in a relatively short period of time after its emergence, despite
having started its existence with a disadvantage.
[FIGURE 2 AROUND HERE]
33
Finally, Figure 3 shows the voting outcomes when there is a type 1 opposition, but voting
strategy b (favor the status quo) is followed by type c voters. Given the initial advantage of
the authoritarian party, it turns out that it manages to retain power for a somewhat longer
time even after a type 1 opposition has emerged. However, as the mass of the electorate
having a preference for policy R gradually increases until it achieves an election winning
majority, and the support of type c voters with it, the authoritarian party is eventually
driven out of office by this emerging opposition.
[FIGURE 3 AROUND HERE]
3.4.2 Dynamics in the presence of a Type 2 Opposition Party
Now, we provide a numerical example for the particular case in which the emerging opposition
party is of type 2, which can be thought of as voters who prefer policy L, who therefore
support the authoritarian party, having a lower entropy, that is, a higher convincing power.
Table 4: Type 2 Opposition
el= 0.814 γlc= 0.042
ec= 0.850 γlr= 0.001
er= 0.815 γrc= 0.041
Although the entropy values in Table 4 are also similar, the condition that el < er < ec is
still satisfied, and the predictions discussed above still hold. In particular, Figure 4 displays
how the fraction of the electorate having a preference for policy R initially grows over time
but never gets to outnumber voters in group l, and eventually starts declining. This is, of
course, a direct consequence of the low entropy of l voters, relative to the other groups.
[FIGURE 4 AROUND HERE]
Figure 5, in turn, displays the voting outcomes for the case in which an opposition party
of type 2 emerges, when type c voters follow a voting strategy that randomizes between the
two alternatives (strategy a). In that figure, it can be seen how the opposition party never
34
achieves an election winning majority, despite having started with a fairly high share of votes
in its favor.
[FIGURE 5 AROUND HERE]
Lastly, Figure 6 shows the voting outcomes when there is a type 2 opposition, but voting
strategy b (favor the status quo) is followed by type c voters. Given the initial advantage of
the authoritarian party, it turns out that it manages to retain power despite the emergence
of such opposition. Even though the mass of the electorate having a preference for policy R
gradually increases. its votes are never enough to achieve an election winning majority, as
the support of type c voters is never obtained and the authoritarian party is able to remain
in office.
[FIGURE 6 AROUND HERE]
4 Opposition Parties in authoritarian Mexico and authoritarian Taiwan
In this last section we provide some evidence for our theory from the dominant-party regimes
of Mexico and Taiwan. We will focus our attention on parties of type 1 (those created during
an authoritarian pinnacle with no access to authoritarian patronage networks): the Mexican
PAN and the Taiwanese DPP.
The Partido Accion Nacional was created in 1939, exactly ten years after the emergence of
a strong authoritarian coalition brought together under the Partido Nacional Revolucionario
(PNR, which will later change its name for PRI). The timing of the PAN emergence is
important because it elucidates that the formation of opposition parties in authoritarian
pinnacles is not a random event. To emphasize this point, and before delving in the particular
historical circumstances at the time of the formation of this opposition party, we want to focus
on the epistolary conversation between Jose Vasconcelos –an important Mexican intellectual
and public figure in the 1920s and 1930s– and Manuel Gomez Morın –the PAN’s founder.
In 1929 there was a call for general elections in which Vasconcelos decided to participate
35
to compete for the post of President. Vasconcelos was popular among the middle class and
some sectors worried about the anti-religious zeal of the most powerful man in the country at
the time –Plutarco Elıas Calles– so he thought he had a good chance of getting into office. In
October of 1928 Vasconcelos wrote Gomez Morın telling him his intention to run for president
and asking for support in putting together, in a brief period of time, a political party that
would help Vasconcelos’ campaign the next year. Gomez Morın’s response in November is
notable because he criticizes the idea of creating a party without a defined program and
fully dependent on the personality of Vasconcelos to obtain votes. According to him, the
rapid creation of a political organization was reckless and unlikely to be successful: “Your
[Vasconcelo’s] candidacy creates lots of enthusiasm [...] but it is inconvenient because it
is difficult to sustain and because it is easy to attack” (Gomez Morın 1928). Rather than
focusing on forming the type of organization that Vasconcelos had in mind, Gomez Morın
suggested the following:
It is essential, above all other things, to create political groups with clear orientationsand capable of enduring. [...] If these groups try, before acquiring clear positions in thepublic opinion, to enter into a fight with those elements that hold power today andthat are not likely to let it go, then they will also enter into a [stupid] fight in whichthey would like to get rid of those groups in power. But, because those that are [ingovernment today] have power and because the new groups, for many reasons, will notyet be organized nor will they have convinced the people that they represent somethingnew, [...], then it is probable that in this fight those in power will have a completevictory and the other groups will lose hope for many years to come. (Emphasis added.Loc. cit.)
From Gomez Morın’s words, then, we obtain two pieces of important information. First,
that only an organized group with the capacity to endure is able to control those in power
and, second, that the contextual situation in 1929 is not favorable for the creation of a real
opposition party.
The time for the formation of this party will come until the end of the 1930s. At
the time, president Lazaro Cardernas’ governing strategies took a radical shift to the left
and his populist policies constituted a meaningful abandonment of capitalist development
36
(for an analysis of the period cf. Gilly 2001). For example, his government advocated the
“socialization” of the means of production through workers control of those firms that were
reluctant to enter into fair collective bargains. He also legalized the Communist Party –which
had strong support and influence in the labor movement– and, more important, appointed
activists of this party to the Ministry of Education. His government started a project for
a “socialist education” and forced private schools to adopt academic programs with a left-
leaning character. Cardenas term in office also allowed for the most important redistribution
of land since the country’s independence in the 1820s and it nationalized the oil industry in
1938.
For most groups on the right, including businessmen and the Church, the Cardenas
period signified the clearest example of authoritarian unreliability, where the state showed
its muscle by implementing pernicious pro-labor and pro-peasant policies. This period, thus,
was the critical juncture that allowed for the formation of the PAN. In September 1939, both
economic liberals and social conservatives decided to support Gomez Morın’s project for the
creation of a challenger party that would attempt to control, via elections, the authoritarians.
According to Loaeza (1999, 151), the founders of the party believed that the party would
serve “first and foremost as an organism that will keep an eye and control the actions of
the State and its agents”. It is interesting to notice that the significant pressure from the
right led to an immediate policy response from Cardenas and the authoritarian coalition. By
the end of this term, for example, land reform diminished “from an average of 3.35 million
hectares per year to less than 882,000 hectares per year” (Greene 2007, 77). Most important,
Cardenas choose as his successor a moderate candidate, Manuel Avila Camacho, who, once
in power, made a strong effort to appease the right.
We want to make two important final points about the PAN. First, despite not having
ample resources, the party showed a constant increment in the percentage of votes obtained:
in 1943 it obtains only 1.09% of the votes for congressional elections19, by 1964 this percentage
19Notice that by 1943 the authoritarian government had already moderated its polices and that the PANhad just been created. Therefore, the low percentage obtained in this year was expected.
37
had increased to 11.5% and by 1973, just before a deep internal problem that led the party to
not participate in the 1976 presidential elections, it had already acquired 14.7% of the votes
(Loaeza 1999, 327). In contrast, parties like the PARM and the PPS, known as “satellite
parties” of the PRI –i.e. opposition parties of type 2 according to our typology (competitive
clientelistic parties)–, never obtained more than 2% of the votes since their creation up
until this last date. The evidence, then, supports the idea that opposition parties of type 1
“absorb” precious votes from the authoritarians. Second, it is outstanding that just when
the PAN had internal problems (beginning in 1973 and ending in 1978) and when it decided
not to participate in elections (1976), the PRI governments (led by the then presidents Luis
Echeverrıa and, later, Jose Lopez Portillo) started moving back to the left, increasing again
land reform, nationalizing several industries and amplifying the presence of the state in the
economy overall. For example, public sector expenditures “grew from 21.7% of GDP in 1970
to 48.8% by 1982 [the last year of Lopez Portillo’s term in office]” (Greene 2007, 85).
We now review the case of Taiwan. The DPP is a very particular organization because
it shows traits of both an opposition party of type 1 and an opposition party of type 2.
The main reason is that this party is the product of a conglomerate of different challenger
politicians: those who had some sort of access to authoritarian patronage networks before
joining the Dangwai Movement20 and, later, the party; and those that lacked this type of
access and were angered by the KMT’s foreign policy in the 1970s.
The KMT established its rule in Taiwan at the end of the 1940s. An important
characteristic of the Taiwanese regime is that it precluded the organization of challenger
parties. The justification for this and other limits to political participation was that the
“measures” were necessary due to the condition of civil war between the KMT and the
Chinese Communist Party. Thus, up until the mid-1980s Taiwan was under martial law
(chieh-yen). Despite this de jure state of siege, gradual steps were taken to implement some
20Dangwai means “outside the party”. The term was used to refer to independents that competed againstthe KMT for the Legislative Yuan and other offices since the end of the 1960s up until the formation of theDPP in September 1986.
38
sort of local self-rule. In 1950 a Provincial Assembly was established with politicians directly
elected for three-year terms and, in 1969, elections were held to elect delegates for the central
legislative bodies: the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly (for a description of the
period cf. Chou and Nathan 1987, 2-4).
The politicians that will later form the DPP in September 1986 can be divided into two
broad camps/factions. On the one hand, there were those challengers that at some point in
time had decided to join the KMT but, given the grim prospects for a successful political
career in the party, decided to abandon it and run for office as independents. In this category
we include people like Huang Hsin-chieh (he won local assembly elections during the 1960s).
Within this camp we also include those challengers that, despite not having any former
connection to the KMT, had access to state resources before joining the Dangwai Movement.
Politicians like Kang Ning-hsiang enter this category (he was elected in 1969 to the Taipei
City Council and, from there, he worked to build strong bases and networking capacity).
These politicians were moderate and did not challenge many of the policy positions of the
KMT. On the other hand, there were those activists that joined the Dangwai Movement in
the mid-1970s and who, according to Rigger (2001, 18), were “more intellectual and more
ideological than its forebears”. In this group we include challengers such as Lin Cheng-
chieh and the brothers Wu Nai-Jen and Wu Nai-teh. These politicians will strongly criticize
Kang Ning-hsiang for his weak stance towards the KMT and its policies. These more radical
challengers will later form the most ideological and radical faction within the DPP, the “New
Tide” faction (for a full review of the Dangwai Movement and the emergence of the DPP cf.
ibid., ch. 2).
We want to emphasize that the timing in which each of the future factions of the
DPP joined the Dangwai Movement matters because it proves an important part of our
theory of party formation: the more moderate faction was conformed by those politicians
with preexisting links to the authoritarians and their patronage networks, they will start
competing in elections as independents from the mid-1960s onwards; members of the “New
39
Tide” faction will join the party until the mid 1970s, just at a time when the country was
experiencing an overwhelming external pressure and the KMT did not make decisions to
avert the situation: Taiwan’s “isolation” in the international arena had increased since its
expulsion from the United Nations in 1971, “de-recognition” by Japan a year later, and
perhaps more important given the diplomatic and military support that the KMT regime
got from the USA, the decision of president Jimmy Carter to “normalize” relations with the
People’s Republic of China and cut ties with Taiwan. Mainlander Taiwanese, most of them
excluded from the political arena, saw this situation and the KMT position towards it –i.e.
the reluctance to declare Taiwan a sovereign country or, at least, as a separate entity from
mainland China– as worrisome. By 1989, three years after the DPP’s foundation, the “New
Tide” faction forced all other groups within the party to adopt the issue of a “sovereign and
independent Republic of Taiwan” as the main subject of the party’s program. With this,
the DPP got the status as the main challenger to the KMT’s foreign policies.
The DPP was successful in attracting an important number of voters. It is noteworthy
that those DPP candidates who publicly advocated the country’s independence and
sovereignty were the most successful ones: “in 1989, eight members of the New Tide Faction
joined together to form the pro-independence New National Alliance to contest seats in the
December legislative election. All eight were elected, a stunning accomplishment” (Rigger
2001, 124). The party was successful in “absorbing” votes from the dominant KMT: in 1991
the DPP obtained 23.9% of the votes for the National Assembly elections, and by 1996 this
percentage had increased to 29.8% (data from Taiwan-Communique 1996). Following the
logic of our theory we want to end this section noting that in the 1990s the KMT adopted
many of the policies advocated by the DPP:
By the mid-1990s, all of the concrete items on the DPP’s reform agenda had beenachieved, and the party was forced to find new issues to attract members and voters.[...]. [T]he KMT has tended to co-opt DPP issue positions that prove popular withvoters, including domestic policy proposals such as national health care and foreignpolicy initiatives such as the U[nited] N[ations] bid. (Rigger 2001, 151. Emphasisadded).
40
The cases of the PAN in Mexico and the DPP in Taiwan show that opposition parties of
type 1 emerge with the main objective of controlling authoritarian behavior. From the brief
data presented in this section, they seem to be very successful.
5 Concluding Remarks
In this paper we have provided a novel theory of opposition party formation in authoritarian
settings. Our main argument is simple: assuming there is a modicum of electoral
competition, groups excluded from an authoritarian winning coalition have incentives to
create opposition parties to control and moderate authoritarian behavior. We believe
that, besides Kenneth Greene’s book on the matter (who did not fully account for
party emergence), this is the first attempt to generalize an important phenomenon in
competitive/hybrid authoritarian regimes. However, we have also created a typology of
opposition parties in authoritarian regimes and we have argued that our theory is applicable
only to parties of type 1 (strong programmatic parties).
Understanding why challenger parties emerge and endure in these adverse settings has
several implications for how scholars understand the broader topic of opposition to autocrats.
Contrary to authors such as Mainwaring (2003, passim.), opposition parties do not necessarily
play a “dual game”, trying to topple the authoritarians while at the same time winning
elections. This is an assumption which is not always supported by empirical evidence. We
have argued, contrary to this author, that there are multiple types of opposition parties and
not all of them have as their main objective to play a dual game: some are so dependent on
state patronage that they are very unlikely to pose a great challenge to the authoritarian
winning coalition, others may have the desire to win elections but, at the same time, do
not have the organizational resources to topple the regime (e.g. personalistic coteries) and
others, the ones that are the main focus of this paper, want to control authoritarian behavior
without considering overthrowing a regime which is at its pinnacle and, therefore, unlikely
to disappear in the short run.
Our theory also has broader implications to understand how many of these opposition
41
parties behave once they face democratic elections (Hernandez Company 2013): how they
relate to the electorate, what type of politicians are more likely to join these organizations,
etc. A full appreciation of these organizations is, thus, not only important to understand the
behavior of authoritarian regimes but also the prospects for poor or high quality democracies.
42
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Figure 1: Electorate Dynamics, Type 1 Opposition
Figure 2: Voting Outcomes (Type 1 Opposition, Strategy a)
Figure 3: Voting Outcomes (Type 1 Opposition, Strategy b)
47
Figure 4: Electorate Dynamics, Type 2 Opposition
Figure 5: Voting Outcomes (Type 2 Opposition, Strategy a)
Figure 6: Voting Outcomes (Type 2 Opposition, Strategy b)
48