1

The Evolution of Electoral Integrity in New Democracies and Electoral Authoritarian

Regimes

Sarah Birch

University of Glasgow

Sarah.birch@glasgow.ac.uk

ABSTRACT: Popular protests following elections in electoral authoritarian states have become

more common in recent years, yet few studies have analyzed this phenomenon. This paper draws

on the literatures on contentious politics and electoral integrity to provide a novel account of

post-electoral protest. The main argument is that because in the wake of the third wave of democratization, the politics of electoral reform revolves mainly around the implementation of

democratic electoral principles rather than around the principles themselves, electoral

authoritarian leaders tend to employ forms of electoral abuse that entail giving unfair advantage

to pro-regime electoral competitors, rather than excluding either voters or competitors from the

electoral arena altogether. This means that citizens have electoral rights formally accorded to

them but episodically abused, a pattern which is conducive to generating grievance. When such

regimes ramp up forms of manipulation that favor pro-regime political forces, the resultant

deterioration in election quality can then serve as a focal point which serves to mobilize citizens

to mount mass protests. In as much as protest can, under the right circumstances, lead to reforms

which improve electoral integrity, one of the implications of this argument is that elections often

have to get worse before they get better.

Keywords: Post-electoral protest, electoral integrity, electoral misconduct, contentious politics,

electoral reform

THIS IS A VERY ROUGH PRELIMINARY DRAFT ONLY PLEASE DO NOT CITE

Paper prepared for presentation and the University of Sydney, 12 August 2014

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Anyone with a television will have noticed that mass protests following the announcement of

election results are increasingly occupying their screens. Though many have undoubtedly noted

this fact in passing, we have as yet little understanding of what accounts for the recent rise in

post-electoral protest. Several decades of research on contentious politics, starting with Mancur

Olsons The Logic of Collective Action (1965) and Ted Robert Gurrs Why Men Rebel (1970),

have provided us with considerable insight into the conditions under which popular mobilization

and protest activity emerge. At the same time, a burgeoning literature on electoral integrity and

manipulation sheds light on the dynamics of electoral misconduct and the impact of election-

related mass mobilization on regime behavior. Yet we have very limited understanding of the

circumstances in which election-related mass mobilization occurs. This paper seeks to fill this

gap by developing a novel account of post-electoral protest.

Previous scholarship has largely framed post-electoral protest as the result of electoral

fraud or other forms of electoral malpractice (e.g. Norris, 2012; Svolik and Chernyk, 2012;

Thompson and Kuntz, 2009; Tucker, 2007), but this fails argument to explain why most

fraudulent elections are not followed by major protests. This paper proposes an answer to this

puzzle that focuses on the specific characteristics of contemporary competitive authoritarian or

electoral authoritarian states in creating the preconditions for mass mobilization around

election-related grievances, together with the role of increases in electoral malpractice from one

election to the next in triggering protest. In a nutshell, the argument put forward here is that

because since the third wave of democratization the politics of electoral reform has revolved

mainly around the implementation of democratic electoral principles rather than around the

principles themselves, contemporary electoral authoritarian leaders tend to employ forms of

electoral abuse that entail giving unfair advantage to pro-regime competitors, rather than

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excluding either voters or competitors from the electoral arena altogether. This means that

citizens have electoral rights formally accorded to them but episodically abused, a pattern which

is conducive to generating grievance. When such regimes ramp up electoral misconduct, the

resultant deterioration in election quality serves as a focal point which mobilizes mass publics to

protest.

There are a number of reasons why leaders might increase their use of electoral

malpractice: they may be suffering from a decline in popularity due to poor policy delivery;

alternatively, traditional vote-winning strategies based on clientelism may falter in the wake of

socio-economic development or decreased state capacity to pay off target groups; or increased in

electoral malpractice may result from internal power-struggles within the regime and the desire

of a new leader to consolidate their grip on power (Birch, 2011; Donno, 2013b; van Ham, 2013).

But whatever the reason why manipulation of the electoral process has increased, the result can

be expected to be an increased propensity of citizens to mobilize against electoral abuse. Protest

can then under the right conditions be the catalyst for lasting reforms which lead to a long-term

improvement in electoral integrity.

This argument unfolds as follows: the first section of the paper surveys the historical

context that has led to the recent rise in the potential for post-electoral protests. The second

section develops hypotheses about the relationship between changes in electoral integrity and the

occurrence of electoral protest. The third section provides cross-national empirical evidence of

the circumstances under which post-electoral protest takes place. A final section concludes.

I Electoral Rights and Electoral Practice

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Election is an ancient institution that has only in modern times been harnessed to the ends of

representative democracy (Katz, 1997, chap. 2; Posada-Carb, 1996; Staveley, 1972). The

increasing importance of elected assemblies as tools of governance in the 18th and 19th centuries

was the first stage in this process. Since that time, representative democracy has evolved along

two principal fronts: elected representatives (assemblies and executives) have gradually eclipsed

non-elected institutions, and elections have come increasingly to embody values we associate

with freeness, fairness and credibility.

It is the second of these developments that is of relevance to the concerns of this paper.

Three key phases or waves, to use Samuel Huntingtons terminology (Huntington, 1991), can

be identified in the evolution of standards of electoral integrity. The first and second of these

phases revolved around the increasing inclusivity of elections, and can be understood in terms of

Dahls core democratic dimensions of participation and contestation (Dahl, 1973). In the first

wave of electoral reform, which began in Europe and the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries

and was largely complete by the mid-20th century, franchises were expanded, and the entire adult

citizenry was, with limited exceptions, gradually incorporated into electoral processes

(Przeworski, 2008; 2011). By 1945, virtually all developed states had accepted universal

suffrage, as had a number of non-democratic and less-developed states. There are of course

exceptions, such as Switzerland, which only granted women the vote in 1974, the United States

and Australia, which imposed effective restrictions on voting by blacks till the 1960s, and South

Africa, where genuine universal suffrage was established only in 1994. There also remain a

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handful of countries that do not currently hold direct national-level elections at all.1 However,

franchise inclusivity was largely achieved by the end of the Second World War.

The second major wave in the development of modern standards of electoral integrity

took place largely in the immediate post-Cold War period and is associated with inclusivity: the

opening of electoral systems to competition by virtually all parties and individuals who wish to

take part in the electoral process. This development was associated with a decline in the number

of single-party regimes and the increase in the number of competitive authoritarian or electoral

authoritarian regimes in the post-Cold War Era (Levitsky and Way, 2010; Schedler, 2013).

Whereas the first wave of electoral reforms effectively eliminated voter exclusion, the second

wave dramatically reduced the number of states that formally limited the range of parties and

candidates which were, in theory at least, allowed to compete in elections (Diamond, 2002;

Gandhi, 2008: 40; Schedler, 2013: 3).

For several decades commentators used the terminology of free and fair to describe

elections. Though this language has somewhat fallen into disuse in recent years, we can say that

the first two waves in the evolution of electoral integrity were largely about elections becoming

freer, in the sense that electoral institutions were reformed so as to bring about greater formal

inclusion. By contrast, the third wave of electoral reform has largely revolved around making

elections fairer by creating a level playing field for competition. Of course, the manipulation of

electoral procedures has for centuries been an aspect of electoral competition, and periodic

reforms to address problems such as undue influence and vote-buying have long been debated.

1 These include Brunei, the Peoples Republic of China, Eritrea, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia

and the Vatican City State.

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However, it has only been recently that the focus of efforts to improve elections has fallen

squarely in the implementation of electoral procedures, rather than on the establishment of basic

electoral rights.

This third wave of electoral reform, which is ongoing, began to gain momentum in the

wake of the third wave of democratization in the final years of the 20th century, when there was a

growing realization that many of the states that had recently opened up their electoral processes

to multiparty competition nevertheless carried out elections that were fundamentally flawed in

many ways (Bjornlund, 2004; Schedler, 2002a).

In the contemporary world, there are very few states that hold no elections to national-

level institutions, and there are also few that impose significant suffrage restrictions. There are a

number of what are often termed hegemonic authoritarian states (Diamond, 2002; Donno,

2013a; Levitsky and Way, 2010) that impose substantial effective restrictions on competition,

such that regime opponents are regularly denied ballot access. Yet in most states with problem

elections, formal electoral rights of inclusion are guaranteed, and the principal obstacles to

electoral integrity revolve around de facto rather than de jure inclusiveness (Birch, 2011;

Brownlee, 2009; Donno, 2013; Schedler, 2013). It follows that the main objects of dispute in

states that hold problematic elections tend in the contemporary period to be those pertaining to

electoral fairness, and when reforms are introduced, they tend to involve such measures as

guaranteeing independent electoral commissions, improving voter registers and ensuring that

there are impartial electoral dispute resolution mechanisms available to all electoral actors.

The result has been a gradual shift from exclusion to bias as a means of manipulating

elections, and the argument proposed here is that this shift has had important implications for

how mass publics react to electoral abuse. Whereas previously the terrain of contestation had

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been largely about specific rights the right to vote and the right to stand for election now the

grounds for grievance about elections are much more likely to revolve around how elections are

conducted on the ground. In other words, objections to electoral conduct are more likely to focus

on the implementation of the basic principles subtending elections than on the basic principles

themselves. Granted, electoral laws are common objects of complaint; indeed, a recent study has

found that the manipulation of electoral laws to be the most common form of manipulation in

three regions of the worlds between 1995 and 2007 (Birch, 2011). Nevertheless, in only a small

minority of these cases was the basic right to take part in an election either as a voter or as a

candidate is at issue. In temporal terms, there is now a greater focus on what goes on

immediately before, during and after elections. For example, elections in the Soviet Union were

fairly low-key affairs, as the script underlying them was well-known to all those involved;

nothing that happened during the electoral process was at all likely to affect the fundamental fact

that there was only ever one candidate on the ballot paper. In post-Soviet Russia, by contrast, the

right to competition is constitutionally guaranteed, and even if the results of recent electoral

contests have been foregone conclusions, there has been far greater focus both domestically and

internationally on how elections are carried out (McAllister and White, 2011).

II Electoral Integrity and Post-Electoral Protest

The behavioral implications of this shift from contestation over rights to contestation over

processes have resulted from the fact that actors are in contemporary electoral authoritarian

states typically included in the electoral process, but then cheated of fair treatment. In other

words, they are given a stake in electoral institutions, and then left to watch their stake eroded by

manipulative practices.

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We know from the social-psychological literature that humans are generally loss-

averse, in the sense that - contrary to traditional utilitarian expectations - the loss of existing

assets is viewed more unfavorably than failure to gain new assets (Kahneman and Tversky,

2000). The sense of having been cheated, of having something given and then stolen or taken

away, thus has greater potential to lead to widespread grievance than the absence of formal

electoral rights. Being formally included but effectively disenfranchised is also more likely to

generate episodic disquiet and thus mobilization; hence electoral processes are the ideal

background for contentious politics. Elections are predictably circumscribed in time, they follow

well-defined, highly ritualized patterns, and they involve virtually the entire adult population

(Bunce and Wolchik, 2011: 16). It is not surprising that repertoires of contentious activity should

develop in many contexts where elections are viewed as being unfair (e.g. Blaydes, 2011; Bunce

and Wolchik, 2010; 2011; Eisenstadt, 2004; Tarrow, 2011). As Joshua Tucker puts it, in a

manipulated election for once, the entire country is experiencing the same act of abuse

simultaneously (Tucker, 2007: 541).

Thus when electoral rights are formally granted but periodically abused during the

election contest, the circumstances are ideal for the staging of a mass protest. Moreover, this

combination of circumstances has become more common since the rapid spread of multiparty

elections during the third wave of democratization that kicked off in the mid-1970s and gained

steam in the 1980s. An indicator of post-electoral protest in Susan Hyde and Nikolai Marinovs

National Elections Across Democracies and Autocracies (NELDA) dataset allows us to chart the

rise in electoral protests over time.2 As Figure 1 show, the 1980s is precisely the period during

2 This is Variable 29 of the National Elections Across Democracies and Autocracies dataset (v3),

http://hyde.research.yale.edu/gfnelda/.

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which post-electoral protests began to increase, and they have become more common as

competitive authoritarianism or electoral authoritarianism has reached more countries.

- Figure 1 about here -

It is worth noting, however, that although most elections are beset with problems of some

kind, only a minority are followed by mass protests. A total of 417 protests in 2,974 of the

elections in the NELDA dataset were followed by protests (14.0 percent), so mass

demonstrations following elections are still by no means the norm. The question that arises from

this observation is: what are the circumstances under which post-electoral protests likely to

occur? This question has received limited attention from comparative political scientists. The

spate of studies that followed in the wake of the colored revolutions in Central and Eastern

Europe document how in case after case, worsening electoral irregularities led groups of citizens

to take to the streets in protest (Beachain and Polese, 2010; Beissinger, 2007; Bunce and

Wolchik, 2009; 2010; 2011; Kalandadze and Orenstein, 2009; White, 2010; Tucker, 2007).

These protests were less than successful in countries such as Azerbaijan and Belarus, but in

Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine, anti-fraud movements led to wholesale changes of power that

improved the quality of electoral conduct (at least temporarily). This literature has identified a

number of factors associated with the success of the colored revolutions, including incumbent

turnover at the time of the election, well-organized and resourceful opposition coalitions and

international assistance to grassroots organizations. But analyses of the determinants of post-

electoral protest have yet to be extended by many scholars to the large-N setting. An important

exception includes the work of Pippa Norris, who finds using survey data that lack of confidence

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in electoral integrity encourages political activism at the individual level (Norris, 2012; 2014).3

The question that concerns us here is how individual-level willingness to engage in activism

leads to large-scale protests, which require groups of citizens to coordinate and organize in order

to overcome the well-known collective action problems that beset attempts at popular

mobilization (Olson, 1965).

It thus makes sense to delve deeper into the literature on contentious politics in order to

specify further the circumstances under which post-electoral protests will occur. Ted Robert Gurr

recognized long ago that when repression is in steady state, people do not tend to rebel; it is

when circumstances change that protest occurs, as peoples expectations and sense of what they

are entitled to then deviate from their perception of what they will in fact experience

(capabilities in Gurrs terminology), leading to relative deprivation which fuels frustration and

the propensity toward aggression (Gurr, 1968; 1970). Gurr does not cite Kahneman and

Tverskys (contemporary) work on loss aversion, yet he does point to the same psychological

phenomenon as being at the root of politically rebellious action: Men [sic] are likely to be more

intensely aggrieved when they lose what they have than when they lose hope of attaining what

they do not yet have (Gurr, 1970: 50).

Though it has been hugely influential, Gurrs work has also been criticized on theoretical,

methodological and empirical grounds. It is the theoretical framework subtending his grievance-

based approach that is of relevance here. The most damning criticism of Gurrs approach is one

3 A formal model proposed by Milan Svolik and Svitlana Chernyk (Slovic and Chernyk, 2012)

suggests that the occurrence of protests will be conditioned by a range of political and

institutional factors, but these scholars do not provide empirical evidence to test their claims.

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that applies to any explanation whose locus is primarily the individual: protests and other forms

of contentious practice of not simply occur because large numbers of people have a propensity to

engage in such activity; they are organized events which take place as the result of complex

interactions between regime elites, opposition elites and ordinary citizens who are mobilized to

take part. Only in this way is it possible to overcome collective action problems.

Subsequent writing on contentious politics has sought to deal with this issue, while at the

same time building on Gurrs insights. This extensive body of research identifies two broad sets

of factors that enable collective action involving popular mobilization. The first category of

factors is resources, which include structural aspects of a state such as overall level of socio-

economic development and urbanization, as well as access to and developments in

communications technology, which is key to disseminating ideas, building value-based

communities and mobilizing potential supporters (e.g. Dalton, van Sickle and Weldon, 2010;

McCarthy and Zald, 1977; Olson, 1965).

The second suite of factors that is associated with successful contentious politics includes

aspects of the social and institutional framework that facilitate and constrain collective action.

The political opportunity structures stream in the literature on protest emphasizes the role of

state institutions in structuring and channeling opportunities for people with grievances to come

together to press leaders to address their concerns, as well as social and institutional obstacles to

collective action (e.g. Kitschelt, 1986; McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 2011).

Though our understanding of protest and contentious politics has improved immeasurably

since Gurrs seminal book, more recent scholars have by and large retained his central insight

that citizens rebel following a change in the relationship between what they expect and what they

experience. Writing from a political opportunities structure perspective, Sidney Tarrow also

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argues that popular mobilization tends to result from a change that alters the structure of

opportunities and constraints facing actors. Summarizing a large body of work on the topic, he

maintains that People engage in contentious politics when patterns of political opportunities and

constraints change [] Contentious politics is produced when threats are experienced and

opportunities are present (Tarrow, 2011; chap 1).

The argument proposed here is that in the context of manipulated elections, the relevant

change which generates both a threat and an opportunity is a deterioration in the quality of

elections, which provides the necessary coordinating device that steady-state electoral

manipulation often fails to deliver. This insight yields the hypothesis that electoral protest is

most likely to take place where there has been a recent increase in electoral malpractice.

At first glance this claim might seem counterintuitive. Electoral institutions are typically

relatively technical and remote from most peoples immediate concerns. In order to explain the

formation of coalitions for electoral reform, we thus need to explain not only how groups

manage successfully to form, but why the select electoral irregularities as their major demand (or

one of their major demands) rather than other grievances.

One aspect of the answer offered here is that electoral malpractice provides an incentive

for oppositions to come together around a common demand and to select electoral reforms as one

of their main aims. When electoral authoritarian regimes are already weakened as they often

are when they undertake enhanced electoral malpractice they are particularly vulnerable to

threats such as those posed by popular uprisings (Bunce and Wolchik, 2009; McFaul, 2005).

Moreover, mass mobilization behind protest movements can further weaken regimes internally,

as they may exacerbate divisions and encourage defections (Schedler, 2013: 354-5). This creates

opportunities for mobilization.

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The demand for fair electoral institutions is a demand that transcends ideological

positions; in this sense, it is a demand around which diverse groups can work together without

selling out or compromising their ideological principles. As several scholars have pointed out,

elections are frequently critical political junctures, electoral fraud can serve as a focal point,

providing a co-ordination mechanism to opposition elites (Bunce and Wolchik, 2009; Thompson

and Kuntz, 2006; 2009; Tucker, 2007). In Joshua Tuckers words When a regime commits

electoral fraud, an individuals calculus regarding whether to participate in a protest against the

regime can be changed significantly (Tucker, 2007: 353), and this helps to solve the collective

action problem normally faced by those with grievances against an electoral authoritarian

regime. Protest also serves to communicate information to both regime elites and members of

the public that the regime is weak and therefore vulnerable to downfall, which can further fuel

protests (Bunce and Wolchik, 2009; Howard and Roessler, 2006: 372; Schedler, 2013; Tucker,

2007).

These studies suggest that the presence of electoral abuse ought to trigger protest. Yet as

the data presented above suggest, protests are rare, even in counties with poor-quality elections.

High but stable levels of electoral malpractice can clearly persist for long periods without

bringing about significant protest movements. The key to unravelling this puzzle is that although

the above-cited accounts delineate how mobilizational opportunities are created by electoral

malpractice, they do not adequately explain why these opportunities should be exploited

following one manipulated election but not another. The answer proposed here is that in addition

to the opportunity represented by electoral malpractice itself, a threat to electoral rights serves to

galvanize groups into action by leading to a heightened sense of perceived political deprivation.

In other words, when there is an increase in abuse, citizens are more likely to be available for

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mobilization as they are more likely to perceive that they have lost their rights, and it is this

concurrently-shared grievance which provides the coordinating device which enables citizens to

overcome collective action challenges.4

III Empirical Evidence

The hypothesis set out above is tested on the protest indicator from the NELDA dataset together

with a summary indicator of electoral malpractice from the Index of Electoral Malpractice (IEM)

dataset (Birch, 2011), a dataset of 155 elections held in 61 states in four regions of the world

between 1995 and 2007: Central Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Latin America and Sub-

Saharan Africa.

The measure employed for a decline in election quality is a dummy variable representing

an increase of at least two points on the five-point IEM scale in the overall electoral quality

variable (Q15) in this dataset. (Given that higher scores on this variable are associated with

greater electoral malpractice, an increase represents a decline in electoral integrity.)

In addition to changes in electoral integrity, the above discussion suggests that a number

of other variables will be associated with the occurrence of post-electoral protests. Resource

variables include: level of scoio-economic development (per capita GDP), level of urbanization

4 Meirowitz and Tucker (2013) note, however, that having successfully turned an authoritarian

leader out of office via protests, mass public may be less willing to undertake large-scale protests

in the same context a second time, as their post-reform experience may, if negative, have altered

their understanding of the entire population of politicians in their state.

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and the number of telephones per 100,000 population.5 The opportunity variable designating

institutional openness is the extent to which civil rights are guaranteed. Ethnic fractionalization is

also included as a constraint (or negative opportunity), as it can be expected to divide groups

that might otherwise mobilize around common concerns. Finally, an additional factor relevant to

post-electoral protest is related to developments in the international arena which have

undoubtedly contributed to the trend observed: the end of the Cold War led to an increase in

pressure on states from the international community, which resulted in greater international

attention to elections and increased the legitimacy cost of manipulating electoral procedures

(Hyde, 2011; Kelly, 2012). Several measures of the international connectedness and dependence

of a state were included, including trade dependence, fuel exports, and Official Development

Assistance.6 It is expected that states which trade more and receive more aid should, all else

being equal, be more susceptible to international pressure in the wake of large-scale protest

against election fraud. This fact should provide an incentive for groups to mobilize protests, in

5 In theory it would have been desirable to include also internet access and newspaper readership,

but there was too much missing data on these variables for this to be viable. With regard to

internet access, it should also be noted that until the widespread ownership of smartphones,

internet usage was confined to a very small sector of the population of most of the countries

studied here.

6 The presence of international observers is another variable that is theoretically relevant in this

context. Unfortunately it was not possible to test this hypothesis on the data used here, as the

Index of Electoral Malpractice is based on the reports of international observers and thus

includes no variance on this variable.

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the hope of attracting international pressure that might cause their government to undertake

reforms. The exception can be anticipated to be states that export large amounts of fuel, as global

dependence on fossil fuel should dampen the willingness of democratic states to condemn

elections in those from which they import oil, gas and other fuels.

Data to construct control variables described here are taken from a variety of sources; see

the Appendix for details of variable construction and data sources.

Table 1 presents a logistic regression model of the probability of there being a protest

following an election. As can be seen from this model, a decline in electoral integrity is

associated with a higher probability of protest, even controlling for other factors.

Table 1 about here

In fact, few of the controls are significant, once the decline in election quality is included in the

model. Ethnic fractionalization is, as expected, associated with a low probability of protest,

whereas trade dependence increase the likelihood of protest, a relationship also predicted. The

positive coefficient on the variable designating fuel exports is unexpected; the reasons for this

are not entirely clear, but it seems that closer ties with the outside world make it more likely that

protests will occur.

As will be noted from the N figure at the base of Table 1, missing data has reduced the

number of cases included in this model considerably. The next stage in the development of this

paper is to construct a larger database of electoral integrity/malpractice, covering a wider range

of states and a longer time period, in order to gain superior analytic leverage and to provide a

more robust test of the hypotheses developed here.

IV Discussion and Conclusion

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A number of scholars have noted that protest activity has been the principal motor of electoral

reform in many states (Beissinger, 2007; Bunce and Wolchick, 2009; 2010; 2011; Norris, 2012;

Schedler, 2013; Thompson and Kuntz, 2004; 2006; Tucker, 2007). The way in which popular

protests against electoral fraud play out has also been the subject of several macro-level analyses

(Bunce and Wolchik, 2011; Case, 2006; Cox, 2009; Lehoucq, 1995; Magaloni, 2006; 2010;

Schedler, 2002b; 2013; Thompson and Kuntz, 2006).

Faced with large-scale protest movements, elites in weakened electoral authoritarian

regimes have the choice of either engaging in proactive reforms in the hopes of retaining power

democratically, or further intensifying fraud and repressive measures in the hopes of holding

onto power through force and repression. Their decision is conditioned by a variety of factors

including the strength and cohesiveness of the opposition (Howard and Roessler, 2006; 2009;

Magaloni, 2010; Schedler, 2013), the strength of state and party institutions (Levitsky and Way,

2010), and relations with democratic neighbours and influential international actors (Beaulieu

and Hyde, 2009; Donno, 2013a; Hyde, 2011; Kelley, 2012; Levitsky and Way, 2010).

Where formal institutions are weak and power is personalized, elections are more likely

to be a high-stakes affairs in which losers run a considerable risk to personal security, loss of

wealth and status and permanent exclusion from the political system. Under these conditions, it

leaders frequently seek to retain their positions by repressing opposition elites and continuing to

undertake electoral fraud and malpractice. In cases where large-scale electoral malpractice has

been the norm for a considerable time and elites are not particularly weak, they are often able to

repress calls for reform (as in Russia 2012 or Iran 2009). Under these circumstances they are

often able to remain in power, despite widespread unrest. At this point they once again have the

option of engaging in proactive reforms, as happened in Moldova in 2009 following the

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Communists successful repression of an attempted electoral revolution (Pop-Eleches and

Robertson, 2010), though they are generally unlikely to do so assuming the underlying strength

of their institutions has not changed. If, on the other hand, key elite actors such as the military

desert the elites, as happened in The Philippines in 1986, Serbia in 2000, Georgia 2003 or

Ukraine 2004, then the elite will be forced to cede to popular demands and to undertake reforms.

Following a mass protest, regime elites then have the choice of either engaging in

proactive reforms in the hopes of retaining power democratically, or further intensifying fraud

and repressive measures in the aim of maintaining power through force. Their decision, and the

ultimate outcome of the regime-opposition confrontation, is conditioned by a variety of factors

that have been examined elsewhere (Cox, 2009; Eisenstadt, 2004; Donno, 2013a; 2013b;

Lehoucq, 1995; Levitsky and Way, 2010; Magaloni, 2006; 2010; Howard and Roessler, 2006;

2009; Schedler, 2002b; 2013; Svolik and Chernyk, 2012; Thompson and Kuntz, 2006; 2009),

including incumbent turnover, opposition cohesion and organisational capacity, and state

institutional strength.

I would not of course claim that that this process outlined here is the sole route to

integrity-enhancing reforms, as other factors such as proximity to other democratizing or

democratic regimes (linkage in Levitsky and Ways formulation) can also account for

improvements in electoral quality even in the absence of protests sparked by fraud. Likewise,

there are cases, such as Ghana, where elections exhibit gradual improvements over time without

significant backsliding (Lindberg, 2009a: 14-15). However, the route outlined here appears to be

becoming increasingly common. This means that elections often have to get worse before they

get better.

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The argument sketched in this paper cuts across the recent debates as to whether elections

are functional or detrimental to electoral authoritarian regimes (Blaydes, 2011; Howard and

Roessler, 2006; 2009; Lindberg, 2006; 2009a; 2009b; Lust-Okar, 2009; Pop-Eleches and

Robertson, 2010; Schedler, 2013; Teorell and Hadenius, 2009). It could well be that elections

and electoral manipulation in particular are for a time functional in propping up authoritarian

regimes that would otherwise find it difficult to insulate themselves from the threats posed by

rival elites and discontented publics, but that ultimately worsening electoral manipulation

brought about by regime weakness sparks protest movements that undermine regime stability.

One of the implications of this argument is that the intensification of fraud may often be a

harbinger of impending improvement. If a deterioration in election quality is by no means a

sufficient condition for a popular uprising to bring about democratic change, it appears to be a

common condition. This finding is relevant for electoral assistance providers, in that it suggests

that in contexts where electoral integrity worsens over a series of elections, the focus of electoral

assistance may be most profitably targeted at the domestic proponents of electoral reform,

including domestic observer groups and opposition actors.

Further research could usefully examine in greater detail the dynamics of protest as well

as conditions under which protests against electoral malpractice lead to lasting improvements in

electoral quality. This is an area in which academic research can yield considerable insights that

are of practical relevance, and it is a field in which much work remains to be done.

20

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Appendix: Data Sources and Variable Construction

Civil Rights: Freedom House Political Rights and Civil Liberties scale; this is a seven-point scale

that is inverted here such that a higher score represents greater civil rights. Source:

www.freedomhouse. org.

Corruption: Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. This index ranges from 0

(most corrupt) to 10 (least corrupt). The data were inverted for use in the models such

that a higher score is associated with greater corruption. Where data were missing, the

nearest datapoint in time was used, as this is generally recognized to be a slow-changing

variable. Source: www.transparency.org.

Ethnic fractionalization: This measure of ethnic fractionalization varies from 0 to 1. Source:

Alesina et al, 2003.

Fuel exports as a proportion of merchandise exports. Following Ross (2001), fuel exports for

Singapore and Trinidad are adjusted to take into consideration that these states are

primarily transit states, not fuel producers. The fuel export values for these states are set

at 0.01. Where data were missing, the nearest datapoint in time was used, as this is

generally recognized to be a slow-changing variable. Source: World Bank Development

Indicators at http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.

International democracy assistance: Ofcial Development Assistance for the category of

Government and civil society general. Figures are in millions of US dollars. Source:

OECD Creditor Reporting System data at http://stats.oecd.org.

Socio-economic development: UNDP Human Development Index. Source: United Nations

Development Program, http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/human-development-index-hdi.

28

Trade dependence: The combined value of exports plus imports as a share of GDP. Where data

were missing, the nearest datapoint in time was used, as this is generally recognized to be

a slow-changing variable. Source: World Bank Development Indicators at

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.

Telephones per capita: This indicator is taken from Bankss Cross-National Time Series Dataset:

the measure used is phones6: all telephones including cellular per capita. Figures are per

100,000 population. Where data were missing, figures were taken from the nearest year,

provided that year was not more than two years before or after the year in question.

Source: Cross-National Time Series Data Archive,

http://www.databanksinternational.com/.

Urbanization: Percent urban population. Source: World Bank Development Indicators at

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator.

29

Table 1: Logistic Regression Model of Post-election Protest

Variable Coefficient (standard error)

Decline in election quality since previous

election

.2.641** (1.283)

Resources:

GDP per capita at ppp (logged) -.431 (934)

Urbanization .048 (.039)

Telephones per 100,000 .000 (.000)

Opportunities and constraints:

Freedom House Civil Liberties -.328 (.407)

Ethnic fractionalization -4.701* (2.613)

International dependence

Trade dependence .030** (.014)

Fuel exports (as a % of exports) .032* (.017)

Official Development Assistance .003 (.008)

Constant .274 (6.921)

Nagelkerke R2 .358

N 56

Note: * = p < .10; ** = p < .05; *** = p < .01; **** = p < .001

30

Figure 1: Global trend in post-electoral protests 1945-2011

Source: Calculated from Variable 29 of the National Elections Across Democracies and

Autocracies dataset (v3), http://hyde.research.yale.edu/gfnelda/.