Intra and inter-party Competition and the Durability of Authoritarian Regimes

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26885096
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Research Activity Start-up
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Politics
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Toyoda Shin 早稲田大学, 政治経済学術院, 助手 (20636120)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-08-29 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: 独裁体制 / 民主化 / 政治体制変動 / 政党システム

Outline of Final Research Achievements

While during the Cold War period, the majority of non-democratic regimes adopted single-party systems, since the fall of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Russia, dictators in hitherto single party regimes transform itself to what scholars call "electoral authoritarian regimes", where regular, competitive but unfair elections between ex-ruling single parties with newly emerged opposition becomes norm. For all recent development about the effect of political institutions, such as legislatures, parties and elections, in the dictatorships, scholars failed to develop a theory to explain why such shifts occurred, mainly because, previous works did not have a theoretical distinction between single party regimes and electoral authoritarian regimes. More specifically, what kind of benefits (and risks) do dictators gain and incur by having multiparty competitive but unfair elections? My research answered this question.

Free Research Field

比較政治学