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ABSTRACT
Following the current debate on the existence of a third wave of autocratization, this article focuses on one of the most prominent features of democratic recession and deepening autocratization which is scrapping presidential terms. I argue that it is important to consider formal institutions while studying the decision to scrap term limits, and not only the outcome. Based on a 289 presidential/semi presidential sample, starting from the third wave till 2020, the findings, using logistic regression models, indicate that the higher the institutional constraints are, the less likely the president is to attempt scrapping term limits. Moreover, the president decides to extend more than to abolish or avoid term limits when there are higher institutional constraints. Furthermore, this article argues that regional partners/presidents who attempt to change term limits motivate other presidents to do the same. The results show that precedent regional and sub-regional attempts positively affect the president’s decision to attempt to change term limits. Moreover, security challenges in the region are used as a pretext for staying longer in office, for it is argued that if the president leaves his/her rule, the country will face a breakdown and the whole region will be affected.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my profound appreciation to Prof. Mohamed Safy El-Din Kharboush and Prof. Mazen Hassan for supervising this work as part of my Master’s thesis. I would also like to thank Prof. Abdel-Salam Nowair and Prof. Mahmoud Hamad for their valuable suggestions during the thesis defense. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers for their excellent comments.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Mainwaring and Bizzaro, The Fates of Third-Wave Democracies, 99 and 112.
2 Skaaning, Waves of Autocratization and Democratization; Tomini, Don’t Think of a Wave!;Boese et al., Waves of Autocratization and Democratization.
3 Luhrmann and Lindberg, A Third Wave of Autocratization.
4 Ibid., 5 and 6.
5 Maerz et al., State of the World 2019.
6 Hellmeier et al. State of the World 2020.
7 Sinkkonen, Dynamic Dictators.
8 Bermeo, On Democratic Backsliding, 11.
9 VonDoepp, Party Cohesion and Fractionalization; Dulani, “Personal Rule Presidential Term Limits”; Corrales and Penfold, Manipulating Term Limits; Corrales, Can Anyone Stop the President; Harkness, Military Loyalty; Corrales, Fixing Democracy; Kouba, Party Institutionalization; and Mckie, Presidential Term Limit Contravention; Cassani, Autocratisation by Term Limits.
10 Baker, Outstaying One’s Welcome, 287; Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office; Baturo, Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits; and Posner and Young, “Term Limits”; Cassani, Autocratisation by Term Limits.
11 Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office.
12 Posner and Young, “Term limits.”
13 Dulani, “Personal Rule Presidential Term Limits,” 279–81.
14 Elgie, Political Leadership.
15 Cassani, Autocratisation by Term Limits.
16 Tsebelis, Decision Making in Political Systems, 293; and Tsebelis, Veto Players, 36 and 37.
17 Tsebelis, Veto Players, 64.
18 Cassani, Autocratisation by Term Limits, 231 and 232.
19 Corrales, Can Anyone Stop the President, 6.
20 Kouba, Party Institutionalization, 452.
21 Corrales, Can Anyone Stop the President, 11.
22 Kouba, Party Institutionalization, 442.
23 Gelfeld, “Preventing Deviations from Presidential Term,” 93
24 Martínez Barahona, “Constitutional Courts and Constitutional Change.”
25 Gelfeld, “Preventing Deviations from Presidential Term,” 94.
26 Kouba, Party Institutionalization, 435; Corrales, “Can Anyone Stop the President?” 5.
27 Harkness, Military Loyalty, 5.
28 Pion-Berlin, Military Autonomy, 88.
29 Tófalvi, Military Disloyalty and Regime Change, 88.
30 Samuel Huntington, Democracy’s Third Wave, 18.
31 Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office, 644.
32 Ibid., 643 and 644.
33 Dulani, “Personal Rule Presidential Term Limits,” 55.
34 Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office, 642.
35 Corrales, Can Anyone Stop the President, 6.
36 Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office, 642.
37 Mckie, Presidential Term Limit Contravention, 16.
38 Posner-Young, “Term Limits,” 270 and 271.
39 Baturo, “Continuismo in Comparison.”
40 Ibid., 6–8.
41 Ibid., 8–10.
42 Ibid., 11 and 12.
43 Check the supplementary materials for more information on the estimated presidents in the analysis.
44 Coppedge et al., V-Dem; Pemstein et al., The V-Dem Measurement Model.
45 Cruz, Keefer, and Scartascini, Database of Political Institutions 2020.
46 Clark and Regan, Mass Mobilization Protest Data.
47 Data taken from SIPRI Military Expenditure Database 2020, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex.
48 Derbyshire and Derbyshire, Political Systems of the World; and Derbyshire and Derbyshire, Encyclopedia of World Political Systems.
49 Schnakenberg and Fariss, Dynamic Patterns of Human Rights Practices; and Fariss, Yes, Human Rights Practices are Improving.
50 Palmer et al., The MID4 Data Set; Pettersson and Öberg, Organized Violence 1989–2019; and Gleditsch et al., A New Dataset: Armed Conflict 1946–2001.
51 The degree of democracy is not controlled in Models 1–6 as it is highly correlated with the institutional variables.
52 Check this link: https://bit.ly/3gZAiKM.
53 Landau et al., “Term Limits and the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment,” 13.
54 Andrews and Honig, “Elite Defection and Grassroots Democracy under Competitive Authoritarianism,” 6.
55 Landau et al., “Term Limits and the Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendment,” 5.
56 Kiwuwa, “The Battle for Term Limits in Rwanda,” 47.
57 Mangala, “Constitutionalism and the Future of Presidential Term Limits in Africa,” 231.
58 Murray, Alston, and Wiebusch, Presidential Term Limits and the International Community, 10.
59 Ibid., 12.
60 Ibid., 16 and 17.
61 Ibid., 15.
62 Africa Center for Strategic Studies, ECOWAS Risks Its Hard-Won Reputation.
63 Mangala, “constitutionalism and the Future of Presidential Term Limits in Africa,” 230.
64 Burkina Faso: With or Without Compaoré, Times of Uncertainty Report, 13.
65 Check this link: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2021/04/29/the-death-of-chadian-president-idris-deby-itno-threatens-stability-in-the-region/.
66 Kiwuwa, “The Battle for Term Limits in Rwanda,” 41 and 47.
67 Baturo, The Stakes of Losing Office; and Dulani, “Personal Rule Presidential Term Limits.”
68 Postero, The Emergence of Indigenous Nationalism in Bolivia, 25.
69 Kuran, Private Truths, Public Lies.
70 Left, nationalist and center ruling parties were estimated too in the seven models and they got no significance.
71 Sáenz de Viteri and Bjørnskov, Populism and Constitutional Reform, 21.
72 Varela Martinez, Presidential Term Limits, 183.
73 Baturo, “The Stakes of Losing Office,” 642.
74 Democracy BMR, from V-Dem, measures the degree of contestation and participation. It is used because it differs from the other measures of democracy that include each of the institutional variables which I already measured separately. However, this measurement is highly correlated with some of the institutional variables. Thus it is only controlled in the last model where there is no collinearity.
75 Polity score is used in as it differentiates between different types of regimes: democratic (6 to 10), open anocratic (0 to 5), closed anocratic (−1 to −5) and autocratic (−6 to −10).
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Dina Osama Lotfy
Dina Osama Lotfy is an Assistant Lecturer in Political Science department, at Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University. Her research interests include democratization, authoritarianism, and Middle Eastern and African politics.