Political Institutions Under Dictatorship

Often dismissed as window-dressing, nominally democratic institutions, such as legislatures and political parties, play an important role in non-democratic regimes. In a comprehensive cross-national study of all non-democratic states from 1946 to 2002 that examines the political uses of these institutions by dictators, Gandhi finds that legislative and partisan institutions are an important component in the operation and survival of authoritarian regimes. She examines how and why these institutions are useful to dictatorships in maintaining power, analyzing the way dictators utilize institutions as a forum in which to organize political concessions to potential opposition in an effort to neutralize threats to their power and to solicit cooperation from groups outside of the ruling elite. The use of legislatures and parties to co-opt opposition results in significant institutional effects on policies and outcomes under dictatorship.

Examining constitutional rules and power-sharing in Africa reveals how some dictatorships become institutionalized, rule-based systems.

Explains how dictatorships rise, survive, and fall, along with why some but not all dictators wield vast powers.

In comparison to democratic political systems, we know very little about how dictatorships work. Who are the key political actors? Where does the locus of power rest? What determines leadership behavior--and survival? Erica Frantz and Natasha Ezrow argue that dictatorships are not regimes driven by the whims of a single individual. Frantz and Ezrow reveal how leader-elite relations are strongly influenced by the nature of the political institutions in a regime, and in turn how those relations profoundly affect both domestic and foreign policy. Combining cross-national quantitative analyses with a selection of case studies, they uniquely explore the internal architecture of authoritarian government.

This book develops a framework for analyzing the creation and consolidation of democracy. Different social groups prefer different political institutions because of the way they allocate political power and resources. Thus democracy is preferred by the majority of citizens, but opposed by elites. Dictatorship nevertheless is not stable when citizens can threaten social disorder and revolution. In response, when the costs of repression are sufficiently high and promises of concessions are not credible, elites may be forced to create democracy. By democratizing, elites credibly transfer political power to the citizens, ensuring social stability. Democracy consolidates when elites do not have strong incentive to overthrow it. These processes depend on (1) the strength of civil society, (2) the structure of political institutions, (3) the nature of political and economic crises, (4) the level of economic inequality, (5) the structure of the economy, and (6) the form and extent of globalization.

This book analyzes why some dictators find it in their self-interest to curb corruption.