Pros And Cons Of Authoritarianism

Since the 1970s, it became clear that regime transitions from authoritarianism could lead anywhere (Schedler 2002, 36; Sartori 1975). To Thomas Carothers (2002, 6), such diversity of political patterns within the gray zone was vastly overlooked by democracy promoters, who relied on ‘transition paradigm’, thus treating democratic transitions as ‘linear and incremental paths’ from authoritarianism to democracy (see Mohamedou and Sisk 2017). Scholars tend to differ in their conceptualizations of the countries stuck in transition. Many perceive these ambiguous regimes as “diminished subtypes” of democracy or “democracies with adjectives” (Collier and Levitsky 1997; see Diamond 1999; Dahl 1971; O’Donnell 1994; Zakaria 1997). Others avoid associating

These new forms of authoritarianism, as Larry Diamond (2002) and Andreas Schedler (2002) notice, are different from the old hybrids or multiparty, electoral nondemocratic regimes. Instead of simply banning their opponents, modern nondemocracies “corral them through different methods” (Brownlee 2009, 518). By the same token, comparativists have demonstrated how elections are not merely restricted to democracies but fulfill many functions in these new authoritarian regimes (Lindberg 2009, 6; Gandhi 2008; 2014; Brownlee 2007; 2009). Elections may increase legitimacy of a non-democratic regime putting up a façade of democracy; split the opposition into factions; strengthen party organization and patronage structures; bring the opposition into the open for identification and targeting and buying time for a later exit (ibid.). Levitsky and Way’s concept of “competitive

Similarly, Levitsky and Way (2010, 16) deem electoral authoritarianism and semi-authoritarianism as broad terms “[referring] to all authoritarian regimes with multiparty elections – both competitive and hegemonic.” By contrast, Matthijis Bogaards and Sebastian Elischer (2015, 10) differentiate between competitive and hegemonic authoritarianism based on the chances for success of the opposition: “Slim but not remote under competitive authoritarianism, negligible under hegemonic authoritarianism.” Relatedly, though, to Levitsky and Way (2010, 7) what marks the difference between competitive authoritarianism and full autocracies, is the existence in the former of constitutional channels through which opposition groups are able to compete for executive power in a meaningful way. Consequently, what matters is not a mere existence of parliamentary opposition that are able to somehow challenge the incumbent, but the mechanisms through which they act and are able to alter the outcome of elections in a meaningful way. Inversely, by delving into the dynamics of electoral