The dictator's dilemma at the ballot box: Electoral manipulation, economic distribution, and political order in authoritarian regimes

This dissertation explores the causes and consequences of authoritarian elections. When holding an election, the authoritarian leader faces a dilemma: In order to maintain his rule, he needs to win big in elections. Yet, the manipulation of election results risks losing some of the informational benefits of authoritarian elections - credibly showing regime strength and knowing the distribution of political support from the citizenry. Under the constraint of the electoral dilemma, the authoritarian leader designs authoritarian elections. The manners in which elections are designed, then, have important implications on post-electoral political order in autocracies.;Specifically, this study asks the following three questions. (1) Under what conditions do authoritarian rulers refrain from using serious electoral fraud such as election violence, electoral cheating, and the manipulation of electoral law? (2) When do authoritarian leaders decide to change their electoral system from Single-Member Districts (SMD) systems to Proportional Representation (PR) systems? And, (3) when do authoritarian elections backfire on dictators in the form of protests and leadership turnover.;In this dissertation, I argue that the power distribution between the dictator and political elites determines to what extent the dictator manipulates authoritarian elections. "Strong" dictators, who can mobilize regime supporters by using their financial resources in efficient ways, do not have an incentive to manipulate elections by resorting to extensive electoral fraud and maintaining SMD systems that may bias election results in their favor. By refraining from serious manipulation of election results, dictators can take advantage of elections to overcome the shortages of information under authoritarian rule. On the other hand, "weak" dictators, who lack financial resources or face strong oppositions, need to rely more on electoral manipulation because revealing their de facto weakness through election results may lead the elections to exert destabilizing effects on the political order.;In order to test this theory, I conduct cross-national statistical analyses and comparative case studies of the two Central Asian republics, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. My empirical analyses demonstrate that autocrats with rich financial resources are more likely to refrain from extensive electoral fraud and shift electoral systems from SMD to PR. I also show that if the dictator fails to manipulate elections strategically when dealing with the electoral dilemma, then authoritarian elections may backfire on him. If the dictator employs excessive electoral fraud, then he is more likely to face popular protests because political elites are unable to make sense of de facto strength of the regime. On the contrary, if the autocrat fails to use sufficient levels of fraud, then election results may reveal the weakness of the dictator, leading to leadership turnover via a post-electoral coup or an opposition's victory at elections.