Who wins the most when everybody wins? Predicting candidate performance in an authoritarian election

ABSTRACT

What explains the variation in vote shares received by candidates in single-party authoritarian elections where everybody wins? The scholarly literature has often ignored institutional variations, treated all authoritarian elections as similar, and explained the variation of vote shares as a consequence of clientelism, coercion or electoral fraud. We employ a unique data set for Cuba’s 2013 National Assembly election to show an alternative answer: even in authoritarian regimes, institutional settings shape voters’ behaviour and candidates’ strategies. When the number of candidates on the ballot equals the number of parliamentary seats and yet voters can express some preference among multiple candidates, valence can become a predictor of candidate performance. Voters reward high-quality politicians, but not incumbents or Communist Party members, while candidates have no incentives to actively distinguish themselves and converge toward the general support of the single united slate.

KEYWORDS:

• Cuba
• elections
• electoral institutions
• authoritarian regimes
• political candidates

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Juan David Millán Quintero for his excellent research assistance. We also thank Hadas Aron, Lisa Blaydes, Shelby Grossman, Eddy (Edmund) Malesky, Jennifer Pan, Amanda Pinkston, Pablo Querubín, Margaret Roberts, Tesalia Rizzo, Paul Schuler, Vanessa Williamson, and participants at the Harvard University Comparative Politics Workshop and the Latin American Politics Workshop as well as participants at the Universidad Javeriana Department of Economics Seminar for their helpful comments. A previous version of this paper was co-authored by Jorge I. Domínguez. We thank him for his contribution. All errors are our sole responsibility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability

The data used in this article are available at: Domínguez, Jorge I.; Fonseca Galvis, Angela; Superti, Chiara, 2018, “Candidates and Votes in Cuba 2013,” https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EM8OTV, Harvard Dataverse, V2, UNF:6:BMncXhoRt7WC4ORqihM2QQ== [fileUNF]. Stata do-files and R scripts for replication of the analyses are available from the authors upon request.

Notes on the contributors

Ángela Fonseca Galvis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, Colombia. Her research focuses on elections in Latin America, media, corruption, and women in politics.

Chiara Superti is Lecturer in the Discipline in the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. She is the Director of the MA programme in Political Science. Her work focuses on protest, unconventional voting, and immigrants’ political behaviour.

ORCID

Ángela Fonseca Galvis http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8339-7474

Chiara Superti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1832-2396

Notes

1 Gandhi and Reuter, “The Incentives for Pre-Electoral Coalitions,” 137–59.

2 Ibid.

3 Pravda, “Elections in Communist Party States,” 27–54.

4 Blaydes, “Determinants of Voter Turnout”; Lust-Okar, “Elections Under Authoritarianism,” 456–71; Greene, Why Dominant Parties Lose; Pepinsky, “Autocracy, Elections, and Fiscal Policy,” 136–63; Lust-Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism,” 456–71.

5 Nichter, “Vote Buying or Turnout Buying?” 15–28; Stokes, “Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model … ,” 315–25.

6 Simpser, “Why Governments Manipulate Elections”; Wong, Chin, and Othman, “Malaysia,” 920–49.

7 Hafner-Burton, Hyde, and Jablonski, “When do Governments Resort … ,” 149–79.

8 Blaydes, “Determinants of Voter Turnout.”

9 Bahry and Silver, “Soviet Citizen Participation,” 821; Gilison, “Soviet Elections as a Measure of Dissent,” 814–26.

10 Shi, “Voting and Nonvoting in China,” 1115–39. Manion, . “‘Good types’ in Authoritarian Elections,” 362–94.

11 On the importance of electoral institutions within authoritarian regimes: Koehler, “Authoritarian Elections in Egypt,” 974–90.

12 Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 27–52.

13 A possible form of “loyal opposition” which would try to signal preferences to the government in Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 27–52.

14 This is a partial support to our theory since, by looking at the vote outcome, we can observe strategies only if they are successful in mobilizing votes but we cannot discard that other strategies have been tried and have failed to influence candidates’ vote shares.

15 Shugart, Valdini, and Suominen. “Looking for Locals, ” 437–49.

16 Gandhi and Lust-Okar, “Elections under Authoritarianism,” 403–22.

17 Carey and Shugart, “Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote,” 417–39; Blais and Carty, “The Psychological Impact of Electoral Laws,” 79–93; Taagepera, “How Electoral Systems Matter,” 68–91.

18 Lust-Okar and Jamal, “Rulers and Rules,” 456–71.

19 Pravda, “Elections in Communist Party States,” 27–54.

20 Other dimensions could be used to describe electoral systems but we believe that these are the most important in shaping behaviours and strategies.

21 Pravda, “Elections in Communist Party States,” 27–54. Distinguishes between two types of elections, plebiscitary elections and limited-choice elections based on this dimension, and provides a qualitative analysis of the scope of candidates’ programmatic offers. The author also presents an historical explanation of the different institutions and a case-study analysis of the consequences in terms of policy and political tenure of candidates.

22 Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 27–52.

23 Carey and Shugart, “Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote,” 417–39.

24 Shi, “Voting & Nonvoting in China,” 1115–39; Pastor and Tan, “China’s Village Elections,” 490–512.

25 Manion. “‘Good types’ in Authoritarian Elections,” 362–94.

26 Gilison, “The Missing One Percent,” 814–26.

27 Bouandel, “Reforming the Algerian Electoral System,” 393–415.

28 Malesky and Schuler, “Paint-by-Numbers Democracy,” 1–48; Malesky and Schuler, “The Single-Party Dictator’s Dilemma,” 491–530.

29 Artículos 92, 14 and 15, Ley Electoral 1992. “Ley Electoral”; See also August, “Cuba and its Neighbours,” 146–94; Rafuls Pineda, “El sistema electoral Cubano,” 64–71.

30 Cubans can also abstain as voting is not mandatory; our article focuses on active participation.

31 Artículo 110, Ley Electoral, 1992.

32 Artículo 124, Ley Electoral 1992.

33 Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 35.

34 López, “Un domingo distinto,” 52; Guanche, “Participación ciudadana en Cuba,” 78.

35 Guanche, “Participación ciudadana en Cuba,” 69–79; Valdés Paz, El espacio y el límite, 149–70.

36 About mobilization efforts for the united slate in the past: Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, , “Authoritarian Regimes,” 27–52.

37 August, “Democracy Still in Motion,” 89.

38 Artículo 30, Ley Electoral 1992.

39 Artículo 82, Ley Electoral 1992.

40 Self-nomination is prohibited. Candidacy commissions, whose members are drawn from the officially sponsored mass organizations, screen candidates to choose (Artículo 68, Ley Electoral 1992). Only municipal assemblies choose national candidates and they choose only one candidate for each post to be filled (Artículo 92, Ley Electoral 1992). Candidacy commissions may choose up to 50% of the national candidates from among municipal assembly members (Artículo 93, Ley Electoral 1992). Once elected, they serve simultaneously in both assemblies.

41 Artículo 120, Ley Electoral 1992.

42 García, “People’s Power,” 55–71; Guanche, “Citizen Participation in the Cuban State,” 72–9.

43 Rafuls Pineda, “Cuba’s Electoral System,” 98–9.

44 Roman, “Overview of Cuban Political Institutions,” 30–4.

45 Part of the data has been used in Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” at the aggregate level (municipal and provincial). In this paper, instead, we leverage the candidate-level information.

46 Available at http://www.one.cu/aedm2013.htm.

47 Manion. “‘Good types’ in Authoritarian Elections,” 362–94.

48 Wantchekon, “Clientelism and Voting Behavior,” 399–422.

49 LAPOP Barómetro de las Américas 2012. We used the same chart used by the 2012 LAPOP (Latin American Public Opinion Project) survey. It has a scale of 11 skin colours to classify survey respondents.

50 In all models, we cluster the errors at the district level. This is the most conservative way to deal with possible dependence at that level.

51 Since the variable for the number of seats per district (M) is measured at the district level and we are including district fixed effects, we are only left with the interaction term in the analysis.

52 We ran an alternative specification where instead of the M variable we include a dummy for each district size and interact it with delegado municipal. The results are the same.

53 Including the variable New to Politics potentially leads to multicollinearity, including this new category means there is almost no category of candidates that is excluded from the regressions.

54 We also included the variable New to Politics in specifications alternate to those shown in Table 3. The results are in table A.4 in the appendix. They are qualitatively similar to those shown in Table 3 and the coefficients for the New to Politics variable are not significant in any case. These results reaffirm the idea that voters reward municipal delegates because of their “good quality” and not because they mean to reward those politicians that have never won any office and are on the lowest rung of the political ladder.

55 Kitschelt and Wilkinson, Patrons, Clients and Policies.

56 Lehoucq, “Electoral Fraud,” 23–56.

57 Boland and Hutchinson, “Student Selection of Random Digits,” 49.

58 Domínguez, Fonseca Galvis, and Superti, “Authoritarian Regimes,” 27–52; Manion, “‘Good types’ in Authoritarian Elections,” 362–94.

59 Manion, “‘Good types’ in Authoritarian Elections,” 362–94.

60 Chen, Pan, and Xu, “Sources of Authoritarian Responsiveness,” 326–43; Wang and Yao, “Grassroots Democracy and Local Governance,” 1635–49; Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Malesky and Schuler, “The Single-Party Dictator’s Dilemma,” 491–530.

61 Reports in Granma say 267 of the 2018 candidates were current National Assembly delegates but based on the information available (2013 and 2018 biographies and lists of candidates from Granma) we have found 258 of these incumbents. This could be due to matching mistakes or to the fact that some candidates elected in 2013 were substituted during their tenure for multiple reasons (e.g. death) and their substitutes were then re-nominated. These discrepancies are not likely to be a problem for the simple relationship reported, as for it to be wrong all these discrepancies would have to be due to matching mistakes of candidates who were all in the bottom 5% and were all re-nominated.

62 Translation by the authors.