Elections, legitimacy, and compliance in authoritarian regimes: evidence from the Arab world

ABSTRACT

Elections have been theorized to bolster compliance with authoritarian regimes by strengthening their coercive capacity, their ability to co-opt, and their legitimacy. While a growing body of research supports the coercive and co-optive functions of these elections, there is little systematic empirical evidence regarding elections’ contributions to the legitimacy of autocrats. This article draws on survey data from eight authoritarian countries in the Arab world to show that respondents who perceive elections as freer and fairer are more likely to express acceptance of the regime's right to govern and less likely to participate in political protests, even when they disapprove of the regime's performance. In addition, a survey experiment implemented in Egypt and Morocco provides causal evidence that perceptions of electoral quality impact legitimacy beliefs and expressed willingness to protest. The findings indicate the importance of studying how authoritarian institutions influence popular beliefs about the legitimacy of autocratic rulers.

KEYWORDS:

• authoritarianism
• legitimacy
• elections
• protest
• Middle East

Acknowledgement

I thank Lisa Blaydes, Michael Robbins, David Laitin, Amaney Jamal, Mark Tessler, Jonathan Chu, Ala’ Alrababa’h, and Christiana Parreira for helpful comments on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Figure 1 in the SI.

2 Jordan Times, “Elections a qualitative step.”

3 Author interview with senior official from Independent Election Commission, February 2018.

4 Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation”; Svolik, Politics of Authoritarian Rule.

5 e.g. Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; Brownlee, “Executive Elections”; Hyde, “Catch Us If You Can”; Lust-Okar, “Elections under authoritarianism”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.

6 e.g. Donno, “Elections and Democratization”; Knutsen and Nygard, “Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism; Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation.”

7 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability.”

8 e.g. Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; Lust-Okar, “Democratization by Elections?”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Gandhi, Political Institutions Under Dictatorship; Rothstein, “Creating Political Legitimacy.”

9 For qualitative studies in authoritarian regimes, see: Debre and Morgenbesser, “Out of the shadows”; Morgenbesser, “The autocratic mandate.”

For quantitative studies focused primarily on democracies, see: Moehler, “Critical Citizens and Submissive Subjects”; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters.

10 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability”; Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism; Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Thyen and Gerschewski, “Legitimacy and protest.”

11 Lucardi, “Strength in Expectation”; Rozenas, “Office Insecurity and Electoral Manipulation.”

12 e.g. Beaulieu, Electoral Protest and Democracy; Daxecker, Di Salvatore, and Ruggeri, “Fraud is What People Make of It.”

13 Lucardi, “Strength in Expectations”; Knutsen and Nygard, “Institutional Characteristics and Regime Survival”; Tucker, “Enough!”.

14 Luhrmann and Lindberg, “A third wave of autocratization.”

15 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability”; Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism.

16 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability.”

17 Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship.

18 Gandhi and Lust-Okar, “Elections Under Authoritarianism”; Brancati, “Democratic Authoritarianism.”

19 Blaydes, Elections and Distribute Politics; Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship; Williamson and Magaloni, “Legislatures and Policy Making”; Wright, “Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?”

20 Magaloni, “Credible Power-Sharing”; Svolik, Politics of Authoritarian Rule.

21 Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Truex, Making Autocracy Work.

22 Brownlee, “Executive Elections”; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy.

23 e.g. Gerschewski, “Legitimacy in Autocracies”; Gilley, The Right to Rule; Levi, Sacks, and Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy”; Lipset, Political Man; Mazepus, “What makes political authorities legitimate?” Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy”; Weber, Economy and Society.

24 Dukalskis and Gerschewski, “What autocracies say”; Gerschewski, “Legitimacy in Autocracies”; Weber, Economy and Society.

25 Gerschewski, “Legitimacy in Autocracies”; Gilley, The Right to Rule.

26 Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy”; Weber, Economy and Society.

27 Levi, Sacks, and Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy”; Lipset, Political Man; Tyler, “Psychological Perspectives on Legitimacy.”

28 Dickson, Gordon, and Huber, “Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority.”

29 Lipset, Political Man.

30 Bendix, Kings or People.

31 e.g. Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism; Levi, Sacks, and Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy”; Selvik, “Autocratic legitimation in Iran”; Yilmaz et al., “How an Islamist party.”

32 Bendix, Kings or People; Lorch and Bunk, “Using civil society”; O'Donnell, “Perpetual Crises of Democracy”; Yukawa, Hidaka, an dKushima, “Coups and framing?”

33 Many studies document this support, such as: Bratton and Houessou, “Demand for Democracy”; Mazepus, “What makes political authorities legitimate?”; Norris, Critical Citizens; Jamal, Tessler, and Robbins, “New Findings.”

34 This data is shown in the SI.

35 Letsa and Wilfahrt, “Popular Support for Democracy”; Alexander and Welzel, “The Myth of Deconsolidation.”

36 Schaffer, Democracy in Translation.

37 Przeworski, Adam, “Minimalist Conceptions of Democracy.”

38 O'Donnell, “Perpetual Crises of Democracy.”

39 Buttorff and Dion, “Participation and boycott”; Riaz and Parvez, “Anatomy of a rigged election”; Schedler, “The Menu of Manipulation.”

40 Norris, “Why Electoral Integrity Matters”; Rothstein, “Creating Political Legitimacy.”

41 Levi et al., “Conceptualizing Legitimacy.”

42 e.g. Dukalskis and Gerschewski, “What autocracies say”; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.

43 e.g. Debre and Morgenbesser, “Out of the Shadows”; Morgenbesser, “The autocratic mandate.”

44 Norris, Why Electoral Integrity Matters; Moehler, “Critical Citizens and Submissive Subjects.”

45 Of the 18 countries used by Norris, three are anocracies and one is a closed autocracy according to Polity scores in the years the surveys were implemented. Moehler refers to three of the 12 countries as “liberalized autocracies” and three others as “ambiguous.”

46 Hyde and Marinov, “Information and Self-Enforcing Democracy.”

47 Daxecker, Di Salvatore, and Ruggeri, “Fraud is What People Make of It.”

48 Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds, The Arab Spring; Bellin, “Robustness of Authoritarianism”; Stepan and Robertson, “Democracy Gap.”

49 Edgell et al., “When and where do elections matter?”

50 Brownlee, “Executive Elections.”

51 Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics.

52 e.g. Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; Lust, “Democratization by Elections.”

53 Albrecht and Schlumberger, “Waiting for Godot.”

54 Bellin, “Robustness of Authoritarianism”; Hinnebusch, “Authoritarian persistence.”

55 Schlumberger, “Opening Old Bottles”; Pruzan-Jorgensen, “Analyzing Authoritarian Regime Legitimation”; Sedgwick, “Measuring Egyptian Regime Legitimacy.”

56 e.g. Ibn al Hussein, “Each Playing Our Part.”

57 Author Interview with Senior Official from Independent Election Commission, February 2018.

58 Textbooks were viewed at Jordan's National Textbook Museum in Salt, Jordan.

59 Brown, “Grading Egypt's Roadmap.”

60 E.g. Abdelsalam, “International Testimonials”; Egypt State Information Service, “Organizations to Monitor Referendum.”

61 e.g. Al-Masry Al-Youm, “Al-Bablawi.”

62 Hashem, “Sisi: Egypt has completed a democratic transition.”

63 e.g. Jamal, Tessler, and Robbins, “New Findings.”

64 In the Arab Barometer, the question refers to the most recent legislative elections.

65 The Arabic wording can be translated as must or should support.

66 Moehler, “Critical Citizens and Submissive Subjects.”

67 Results are consistent when analysing each question independently. See the SI.

68 Levi, Sacks, and Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy.”

69 Gerschewski, “Legitimacy in Autocracies.”

70 Dreier and Lake, “Institutional legitimacy”; Gerschewski, “Legitimacy in Autocracies.”

71 Tsai, “Constructive Noncompliance.”

72 Kuran, “Now Out of Never.”

73 Gerschewski, “Three Pillars of Stability”; Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism.

74 Rothstein and Teorell, “What is Quality of Government?”; Levi, Sacks, and Tyler, “Conceptualizing Legitimacy.”

75 Blaydes, Elections and Distributive Politics; Lust-Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism.”

76 Blair, Coppock, and Moor, “When to Worry.”

77 Shen and Truex, “In Search of Self-Censorship”; Stockmann, Esarey, and Zhang, “Who is Afraid.”

78 The exception is Saudi Arabia, where protests are particularly rare and where the country's only elections were municipal elections held many years before the survey was conducted.

79 Note that the relationships between perceived electoral quality and protest participation may be more pronounced in the Afro Barometer data because these surveys gave respondents the option to say that they would have protested if they had the opportunity.

80 These respondents rated their satisfaction between 1 and 5 on a 10-point scale for the government satisfaction variable in the Arab Barometer data. They disapproved or strongly disapproved of the government's performance on a 4-point scale for the Afro Barometer data.

81 Mullinix et al., “The generalizability of survey experiments.”

82 Nyhan and Zeitzoff, “Conspiracy and Misperception Belief.”

83 Beaulieu and Hyde, “In the Shadow”; Merloe, “Authoritarianism Goes Global.”

84 Haifeng, “Propaganda as Signaling.”

85 This analysis also helps to account for the fact that some individuals in both treatment conditions will already believe elections are, or are not, free and fair.

86 Letsa and Wilfahrt, “Popular Support for Democracy”; Alexander and Welzel, “The Myth of Deconsolidation.”

87 Daxecker, Di Salvatore, and Ruggeri, “Fraud is What People Make of It.”

88 Bush and Prather, “The Promise and Limits.”

89 Merloe, “Authoritarianism Goes Global.”

Additional information

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Scott Williamson

Scott Williamson is an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University. Previously, he was a postdoctoral associate at New York University Abu Dhabi. He earned his PhD in political science from Stanford University.