Durable authoritarianism in an age of democracy (Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Philippines)

During the past thirty years, an era commonly referred to as the “third wave of democratization,” nearly all authoritarian regimes have experimented with political liberalization and held multiparty elections. Yet while autocratic leaders changed the façades of their governments, fundamental patterns of domination and control remained. Many regimes have consistently manipulated elections. Others have faced surprise defeats at the ballot box, followed by regime change. What explains this variation in regime durability? This project addresses that question by considering the impact of elections on regime endurance and exploring how parties influence a regime's capacity to maintain ruling coalitions.; A statistical analysis of 135 regimes during the period 1975–2000 indicates that multiparty elections neither buttress nor threaten authoritarian regimes. Rather, what matters for the continuation of dictatorship is the institutional structure of the regime. Ruling parties strengthen authoritarian regimes by providing leaders an extended time horizon for the pursuit of individual ambitions and the resolution of intra-coalitional conflicts. Elections do not destabilize regimes. Regimes that fail to maintain institutions for managing elite interests destabilize elections.; Party decline triggers political instability by provoking insecure elites to exit the coalition and pursue their interests outside the regime, often in partnerships with excluded oppositionists. This realignment of forces weakens the regime's hold over elections, enabling opposition candidates and elite defectors to defeat remaining incumbents at the polls. The electorally successful challenger coalition then holds an opportunity for changing the regime. However, their strategy and success is not determined by the earlier institutional dynamic. Ruling parties are sufficient for regime persistence. The absence of such institutions is necessary but insufficient for the regime's transformation.; This explanation of authoritarian durability and its inverse, instability and the opportunity for regime change, is built in three stages (historical, institutional, voluntarist) across four cases: Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Egypt and Malaysia are robust ruling party regimes while Iran and the Philippines evince the instability that follows party decline. The dissertation traces elite conflict at regime formation through party institutions and electoral outcomes, closing with an analysis of post-electoral political confrontation and the potential for regime change.