Jessen & Richter (Eds.) (33 page)

— (1992
). Wahlen
und Wählertraditionen
in
Deutschland: kulturelle Grundlagen deutscher
Parteien und Parteiensysteme im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert
. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.

Sternberger, Dolf and Bernhard Vogel (eds.). (1969).
Die Wahl der Parlamente und
anderer Staatsorgane. Ein Handbuch
. 3 vol. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

Stollberg-Rilinger, Barbara (ed.) (2005).
Was heißt Kulturgeschichte des Politischen?

Berlin: Duncker & Humblot.

Verfassung der DDR (1974). http://www.documentarchiv.de/ddr/verfddr.html.

Verfassung der DDR (1949). http://www.documentarchiv.de/ddr/verfddr1949.-

html.

M A S S O B E D I E N C E

125

Verfassung der Union der Sozialistischen Sowjetrepubliken (1936), http://mdzx.

bib-bvb.de/cocoon/1000dok/dok_0021_ver.html?object=-

translation&lang=de.

Vorländer, Hans (2006). Die Verfassung als symbolische Ordnung. Perspektiven

einer kulturwissenschaftlich-institutionalistischen Verfassungstheorie. In

Michael Becker and Ruth Zimmerling (eds.).
Recht und Politik,
229–249.

Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften,.

Weber, Max (1922/2002). Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft. Eine

soziologische Studie. In Max Weber.
Schriften 1894–1922
, 717–733. Stuttgart: Kröner.

Yurchak, Alexei (2006).
Everything Was Forever, Unit It Was No More. The Last Soviet
Generation.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Elections in Modern Dictatorships:

Some Analytical Considerations
1

Werner J. Patzelt

Research Problem

Of the some 150 states that have viable, functioning regime structures,

about 70 can be categorized as democratic according to the current mode

of measuring democracy. These states hold periodic elections which are the

constituent factor of a modern mass democracy. By contrast, around 80

states are dictatorships2 in which it is not really necessary to hold elections.

Nevertheless, only six states in total—Brunei, China, Eritrea, Qatar, Saudi

Arabia and the United Arab Emirates—have never held parliamentary or

presidential elections on a national level. Thus, there are currently 70 dic-

tatorial regimes that hold more or less regular elections at national or local

level. The latter have even been held in China despite the country never

having had elections at a national level. On balance, holding elections is

not only currently the case for the dictatorships in Asia and Africa, but was

also the practice in many of the states that, like many in Central and East-

ern Europe, claimed to practice “real socialism”, and also in Mexico under

the rule of PRI.

In dictatorships election results can of course be manipulated in many

different ways. If manipulation becomes known or even highly visible, this

leads to a loss of trust and support in the regime, even among its followers.

In the GDR, the obvious manipulation of the local elections of May 7,

1989, was one of the main causes of that loss of legitimacy, which became

increasingly pervasive until it culminated in the Peaceful Revolution in the

——————

1 This is the revised version of a paper that was given at the “Elections in Dictatorships”

conference held in Cologne in 2009. Thanks are due to both my research assistants and the editors for their various comments and suggestions.

2 In this article the term dictatorship will be used as a generic term for all non-liberal regimes, and will occasionally be supplemented by more specific terms such as “authoritarian regime” or “totalitarian regime”.

E L E C T I O N S I N M O D E R N D I C T A T O R S H I P S

127

autumn of 1989 (Kowalczuk 2009, 318–333). Such observations lead to the

question of why dictatorships hold elections at all. Furthermore, this

prompts the additional question as to how dictatorships that hold elections

adapt these to their overall institutional structure in such a way that they

can afford to stage potentially risky elections.

In the following, some elements of an analytical framework will be pre-

sented—a framework that will enable these questions to be addressed by

means of comparative empirical studies. This attempt will build on impor-

tant previous work in this area, including the following studies: Hermet et

al. (1978), which gives a general overview of the phenomenon of elections

in dictatorships; Smith (2006), which offers a very useful classification of

their various forms; Magaloni (2010), which provides insights into the logic

underpinning authoritarian electoral manipulation; Schedler (2002, 2002a,

2006), which not only describes the “menu of manipulation”, but also

makes its functional logic plausible; and Gandhi und Lust-Okar (2009),

which documents the current state of research. In this article, the systema-

tizing suggestions presented in those studies will be integrated, albeit

sometimes in altered form, into an over-arching theory that can serve as a

guide both for comparative empirical research and for the systematic con-

textualization of its results, preferably leading to
Gestalterkenntnis
.3 A comprehensive overview or even a synthesis of the relevant studies in

political science is, however, outside the scope of this paper.

The Phenomenon: How Elections are Organized

in Dictatorships

The Reference Model: Elections in Democracies

One often equates democracy with the existence of free elections. Thus, if

in a former dictatorship a parliament is freely elected, the transition to

democracy passes for being complete. However, the history of post-colo-

nial Africa shows that it is not as simple as this. Democracy has proven not

——————

3 “Gestalt” refers to a transposable structure—for example, that of a parliamentary system of government or a totalitarian dictatorship. “Gestalterkenntnis” is the provisional end point of the hermeneutic process in which the “Gestalt” is perceived and accepted as

“truly existing”.

128

W E R N E R J . P A T Z E L T

to be a state that is achieved once and for all, but rather a process that

needs to be continuously maintained. Although it is true that free elections

are indeed necessary for this process, they are in no way a sufficient condi-

tion. Rather, the democratic form of government also requires the rule of

law, the separation of powers, safeguards that ensure that those who hold

power are politically accountable to the parliament and the people, a largely

non-corrupt administration, a self-organizing civil society, and the free and

pluralist formation of public political opinion. Only when all of this exists

alongside
elections, can democracy be established and has a chance to continue (Patzelt 2007a, 245–253).

One-off elections, for a president or a parliament, certainly cannot turn

a polity into a democracy. Only the reliable scheduling of the
next
elections after not too long a term of office ensures that the actions of the political

class are tied to the approval of those who are being governed. This is the

institutional mechanism of “temporal separation of power” (ibid., 274–

275), which can be more precisely termed the “re-election mechanism”.

There are three necessary conditions for this institutional mechanism to

have a democratizing function. First of all, someone can hold an elective

office only for a limited period of time, and can
only accede to office by means of
a free and fair election
(Elklit 2000), voted in either by an electoral college or by the electorate. Second, the
possibility of re-election
4 needs to exist. Third, there need to be incentives for
wanting
to be elected again. If these three requirements are met, the re-election mechanism functions as follows:

whoever wishes to have his/her period of office extended must exercise

the powers of this office in such a way that he/she will once again gain the

necessary percentage of the vote in free elections. As a consequence,

he/she certainly can go against the current wishes of the prospective voters

during the period of office; but of course he/she cannot go too far, too

consistently, or for too long a period of time
against the wishes
of the electorate, because this would dramatically reduce the chances of being re-elected.

In this way, the temporal separation of powers in connection with free

elections and the attractive possibility of re-election connects the elected

holder of power with those whom he/she governs, and doing so re-dis-

tributes power from the office holder to those voters to whom he/she

owes his/her election to office. The key point of this institutional mecha-

——————

4 In the case of the Mexican members of parliament this is still lacking. Therefore, they are auxiliaries of political leaders rather than the representatives of the electorate, which in fact becomes irrelevant to them once they have been elected.