1) Elections are often used by authoritarian leaders to maintain power while appearing legitimate, through manipulating electoral institutions, vote choice, and voting. 2) Electoral systems like first-past-the-post that magnify the winner's power and allow boundary manipulation are particularly convenient for authoritarians. 3) True democratization requires not just free elections but leaders willing to compromise and accept losing power, though elections typically must get worse before reforms lead to improved quality and accountability.

1. Retaining power through
elections: when "democracy"
enables autocracy
Sarah Birch
University of Glasgow
13 July 2014

2. Democracy and elections
• Elections are crucial to democracy as generally understood in
today’s world
• But democracy is not crucial to elections
• Elections took place long before democracy existed
• Thus elections are not necessarily democratic

3. Authoritarianism and elections
• Authoritarian leaders often use elections to their advantage
• Elections serve to communicate the agenda and views of
authoritarian leaders
• Elections help distribute resources within an authoritarian
regime via patronage and co-optation
• Elections can help authoritarian leaders to monitor the
population (and the opposition)
• Elections provide a veneer of legitimacy, even when beset by
malpractice

4. Electoral malpractice
Electoral malpractice can be understood as taking three main
forms:
• the manipulation of electoral institutions
• the manipulation of vote choice
• and the manipulation of voting
Typically authoritarian leaders seek to use all three strategies,
though the first and the second are less risky than the third

5. Electoral systems and political power
• The manipulation of electoral institutions is a powerful way
of maintaining power while at the same time also retaining a
certain amount of democratic legitimacy
• There are many electoral institutions that can be
manipulated, in many cases with a view to facilitating other
forms of malpractice
• The electoral system in the narrow sense is a common object
of manipulation

6. Electoral systems
• First-past-the-post (single-member constituency plurality):
developed because geographic representation made sense
• Proportional representation: developed in the late 19th
century following the industrial revolution when party
representation made more sense
• Mixed systems: developed after the Second World War as a
means of retaining the benefits of both geographic
representation and proportional representation

7. Electoral systems and electoral malpractice I
• First-part-the-post electoral systems are particularly
convenient for authoritarian leaders as they are winner-take-
all systems that magnify power at the constituency level and
often also at the aggregate level
• First-past-the-post electoral systems also invite boundary
manipulation, which can enable a party to retain power for
long periods on the basis of the support of a minority of the
population
• Boundary manipulation can involve malapportionment,
gerrymandering, or manipulation of the eligible population

8. Electoral systems and electoral malpractice II
• Single-member electoral systems such as first-past-the-post
increase opportunities and incentives for manipulation of
the vote
• Candidates have an incentive to cultivate a personal support
base
• This can lead to bribery and patronage, or at the least to
pork-barrel politics
• In tight races, small numbers of votes need to be altered in
order to change the outcome

9. Elections and democratisation
• Free and fair elections are necessary for genuine
democratisation
• Typically this requires changes to the electoral system
• It also requires a change of attitude by leaders, who need to
be prepared to accept power sharing, compromise and
losing
• Democracy is about accountable rule, but it is also about
being prepared to play the role of holding others to account.

10. The electoral tango I
• Often elections have to get worse before they get better
• Today, ‘paper rights’ in the electoral sphere are typically
given
• Rights are violated through the implementation of elections
• This means that rights are episodically taken away,
generating episodic grievances
• This creates huge potential for popular mobilisation against
electoral malpractice

11. The electoral tango II
• Protest is most likely to occur when (a) elections have been
of poor quality for a while and (b) elections get worse at a
specific election
• In the contemporary world, significant electoral reform,
leading to a genuine improvement in election quality, tends
to come about following popular protests against electoral
malpractice
• This means that elections often have to get worse before
they get better - one step back then two steps forward