In electoral autocracies, opposition coalition formation offers the best hope of getting to democracy. Yet forming electoral coalitions also entails convincing opposition voters to ignore compromises ...and engage in the cross-party voting necessary for opposition victory. To what extent are voters committed to defeating the autocratic incumbent even if it would result in dislikable outcomes? A survey experiment in Malaysia finds that opposition voters overwhelmingly express pretreatment support for the opposition coalition. But when exposed to a treatment vignette about which member party might lead the next government, many voters retract their support. Specifically, voters' support for the coalition declines when their least preferred member is expected to control the government and when they can vote for a closer ideological alternative outside of the coalition. Although voters are committed to opposition unity and democratic transition, that commitment is sensitive to the anticipated consequences of an opposition victory.
We use a cross-country dataset on terrorism and leadership survival from 1970 through 2015 to shed light on a leader’s fate after terrorists’ strike. We provide robust evidence that incumbents in ...electoral authoritarian regimes face an increased hazard of exit from political power. This is contrasted with the closed authoritarian dictators that remain intact. Moreover, we fail to find a robust effect of terrorism on a leader’s survival probability in democracies. We conceive this effect to be due to the collapse of the elite coalition in autocracies after an attack, suggesting that the dictator’s ‘loyal friends’ betray him in the aftermath of terrorism.
Why did Russia's relations with the West shift from cooperation a few decades ago to a new era of confrontation today? Some explanations focus narrowly on changes in the balance of power in the ...international system, or trace historic parallels and cultural continuities in Russian international behavior. For a complete understanding of Russian foreign policy today, individuals, ideas, and institutions—President Vladimir Putin, Putinism, and autocracy—must be added to the analysis. An examination of three cases of recent Russian intervention (in Ukraine in 2014, Syria in 2015, and the United States in 2016) illuminates the causal influence of these domestic determinants in the making of Russian foreign policy.
The global spread of electoral gender quotas has been characterized as one of the most significant institutional developments of the last 30 years. Many of the countries that have adopted these laws ...designed to increase women's political representation are electoral autocracies that have otherwise-stark gender inequalities. Some scholars argue that electoral authoritarian states have adopted quotas as a strategy for improving their international reputations for democracy. This article represents the first exploration of whether quotas really generate reputational boosts. Using large-scale survey experiments in Sweden and the United States concerning hypothetical developing countries, we find that they do. In particular, audiences perceived electoral autocracies as more democratic and were more likely to support giving them foreign aid when women's descriptive representation was greater. Beyond its contribution to our understanding of gender quotas and women's representation, this article contributes to broader debates about international reputation, human rights, and foreign aid attitudes.
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