Competitive Authoritarian Legacies and Political Participation in New Democracies

How does experience with unfree elections impact the participatory patterns of newly democratized states? Nominally competitive electoral institutions have become standard features of authoritarian regimes but little is known about their post-transition impact on new democracies. This study investigates how experience with unfree elections before a transition to democracy affects the scope and magnitude of political participation following a democratic transition. The literature linking hybrid regimes and democratization has suggested that competitive authoritarianism might habituate citizens to electoral participation as well as mobilize politically relevant segments of society. If these arguments are correct then we might expect that new democracies with competitive authoritarian legacies should have broader, more competitive participation and higher overall levels of turnout than regimes with different authoritarian legacies. Alternatively, unfree elections may lead to widespread distrust of the basic institutions of democracy and, consequently, patterns of voter abstention and more direct political action, such as protest. To examine the potential impact of competitive authoritarian legacies on political participation, I look at how patterns of turnout and protest differ across regimes with different institutional legacies. The empirical analysis employs data on nearly 60 new democracies that emerged around the world between 1975 and 2003. I show that competitive authoritarian legacies are associated with lower levels of turnout in early elections but this effect dissipates relatively quickly. Additionally, new democracies with competitive legacies experience less anti-regime protest, perhaps because politically relevant groups were able to organize and become invested in the electoral process prior to democratization.