Why Parties?

A Theory of Opposition Party Formation in Authoritarian Settings∗

Jose Antonio Hernandez Company†

jahernandez@uchicago.edu

Lorenzo Ernesto Bernal Verdugo‡

ebernal@banxico.org.mx

Abstract

In authoritarian settings elections do not choose governments, legislatures havelimited influence on policy and opposition forces are prone to repression. Why, then,do opposition parties emerge and are maintained under authoritarian rule? We proposethat those groups excluded from the authoritarian winning coalition have an incentiveto create opposition parties in order to lower the probability of authoritarians enactingadverse policies located at the extremes of the ideological continuum. Oppositionparties achieve this outcome by decreasing the capacity of authoritarians to garner asupermajority of votes during election day, forcing them to either pay a higher costin electoral fraud and repression or to move towards the general -and more moderate-median voter policy preference. We explain the timing of opposition party formation,the type of activist more likely to join these parties and how these parties are ableto survive for long periods of time despite constantly losing elections. We test ourpredictions with a systematic and contextualized comparison of the formation andmaintenance of Mexico’s National Action Party and Taiwan’s Democratic ProgressiveParty in the 20th Century.

∗Paper prepared for presentation at the 23 World Congress of the International Political ScienceAssociation, July 2014. Please do not cite or circulate without the authors’ permission. The authors wish tothank Dan Slater, Alberto Simpser, John Brehm, Kenneth Greene, Adrienne LeBas, Monika Nalepa, NaomiIchino, Steven Levitsky, Frances Hagopian, and Brandon Van Dyk for comments and suggestions. Specialthanks go to Ken Greene because the arguments in the first section of this paper heavily rely on his ownideas about opposition parties in authoritarian settings. All errors are our own.†Department of Political Science, The University of Chicago. Corresponding author.‡Banco de Mexico, Mexico.

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You may have won the voting, but I wonthe counting.

Anastasio Somoza

Anastasio Somoza’s words provide the reader with an idea of the paradox that we want

to solve in this paper. Why would anyone oppose an authoritarian ruler through elections if

they are going to lose anyway? Somoza’s words also provide some clues to solve the puzzle

–e.g. stealing elections is costly–, but these clues are, of course, not enough to understand

the problem. In this paper we attempt to solve the paradox by providing a theory of

opposition party formation and endurance in authoritarian settings. Despite the recent

scholarly interest in hybrid or competitive authoritarian regimes, which are characterized

for allowing meaningful –but unfair– elections and opposition participation through political

parties (cf., for example, Levitsky and Way 2010; Schedler 2006), and the knowledge that has

been accumulated with regards to the factors that facilitate authoritarian regime duration

–such as the presence of strong dominant parties (cf. Brownlee 2007; Geddes 2006; Magaloni

2008) and the importance of elite cooperation (cf. Boix and Svolik 2007; Slater 2010)–, too

little is known about, specifically, opposition parties in authoritarianisms. This paper is,

therefore, one attempt to fill this academic void.

Scholars, of course, have not neglected the role of organized opposition in authoritarian

environments. However, they have overlooked the important question of party formation;

given this, they have provided different conclusions about similar actors in similar settings.

On the one hand, for example, there are authors like Mainwaring (2003, 6-12) who notes

that the assumption of parties as vote maximizers does not fully hold in hybrid regimes

and “unconsolidated” democracies. Rather, according to the author, in these situations

opposition parties play a “dual game”: they compete for votes while, at the same time, they

try to dislodge the existing political regime. On the other hand, there are authors like Lust-

Okar (2006, 468) who argue that parties in authoritarianisms are weak and personalistic,

and that opposition candidates prefer to run for office without party labels and without

challenging the authoritarian elite (who, at the end of the day, is the one that controls

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patronage and precious state resources): “[t]he result of such a situation is that parties are

neutered, voters become cynical, and demands for democratization as well as support for

the forces intending to push for it decline.” Why is the opposition assumed to behave so

differently in such similar situations? Our theory will provide insights to solve this and other

questions related to opposition party formation and these entities behavior in authoritarian

regimes.

The paper is organized in four sections. In the first section we describe in detail the

dilemma of opposition party formation in authoritarian regimes. We show that standard

neutral models of party entry are unable to explain why opposition parties emerge in these

environments. In this section we also review Kenneth Greene’s (Greene 2007) work on

dominant-party authoritarian regimes, which we consider to be the most important attempt

up to date to explain opposition party behavior in authoritarian settings. In the second

section we provide a description of the theory of opposition party formation and endurance in

authoritarianisms1. In this section we pay attention to two traits of competitive authoritarian

regimes: 1) elections matter, 2) authoritarian ruling coalitions –who make authoritative

decisions in a country– always exclude some members of society. In the third section we

provide a formal model of our theory. The formal model is intended to present our argument

with more rigor and precision. Finally, we assess how well our theory explains two important

cases: Mexico’s Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) and Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party

(DPP).

1Our theory requires certain scope conditions –i.e. it is not meant to apply to every single type oforganized opposition in authoritarian regimes. The most important scope condition is the existence of acompetitive authoritarian regime. According to Levitsky and Way (2010, 7) these regimes “are distinguishedfrom full authoritarianism in that constitutional channels exist through which opposition groups competein a meaningful way for executive power. Elections are held regularly and opposition parties are not legallybarred from contesting them. Opposition activity is above ground: Opposition parties can open offices,recruit candidates and organize campaigns, and politicians are rarely exiled or imprisoned.” Thus, thetheory is suited to explain opposition parties in cases such as Brazil, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Singaporeand Taiwan; but not for cases such as Argentina, Burma, Chile, Spain and Vietnam.

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1 The paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings

In neutral models of party entry –i.e. models that assume that none of the organizations

competing for votes has a non-spatial advantage and all the players desiring to enter the

electoral fray will do so on a leveled playing field2– party emergence is the product of a

decision conditioned by three main elements: the probability of winning, the benefits of office,

and the costs of entry. In equilibrium, neutral models show that political entrepreneurs will

not form parties unless the chances of winning under the new party label combined with the

expected benefits of office are higher than the costs of participating in elections. If this holds,

Cox (1997, 155) has shown that the expected number of entrants, n, “is bounded above by

the benefit-cost ratio, b/c”, that is, n ≤ b/c. Although this inequality does not provide an

exact number of entrants, it hints towards the paradox of party formation in competitive

authoritarian regimes: as the costs of entry increase the number of parties should decline.

Neutral models of party entry, thus, cannot fully explain why opposition parties emerge

in competitive authoritarian contexts, where the costs of participation are high and the

electoral arena is strongly biased towards one of the players: the authoritarian party (cf.

Greene 2007). We identify four main instruments that reduce the intensity of electoral

competition and that provide authoritarians with a formidable advantage during Election

Day:

1. Endogenous electoral rules that determine the requisites for registering a party and the

ease of winning a seat. Authoritarians control, for example, the number of signatures

necessary to form a party, access to public funding or other state resources (i.e.

patronage), and the ballot format (which might incentivize voters to vote strategically

or not). In the case of Mexico, for example, Langston (2002) has shown that every time

after a split in the authoritarian coalition during the election years of 1940, 1952 and

2Following Cox (1997, 153 n. 3), we consider a model of entry to be neutral “if, whenever candidates A andB switch spatial positions (all other candidates’ positions held constant, if there are any other candidates),then they switch expected vote shares and probabilities of victory.”

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1988 –splits that prompted superb challengers to compete in these elections against

the hegemonic Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)–, Mexico’s authoritarians

reformed federal election laws to make it more difficult for opposition parties to gain

legal status. In the case of Brazil, after losing a couple of gubernatorial elections in

1965, the military regime decided to abolish all existing parties and reorganize them

into two officially recognized parties which were going to be the only ones considered

legal up until the end of the 1970s (cf. Skidmore 1973, 43-45).

2. Electoral fraud that can substantially decrease the probability of a challenger party

winning elections. Fraud can take multiple forms and can happen at different time

periods during an electoral process (e.g. the authoritarians can trim the names of

“undesired” citizens from the list of registered voters before Election Day or they

can tally ballots in a dishonest way after the polls close on Election Day). Perhaps

one of the best known cases of electoral fraud is the “snap” Philippine presidential

election of 1986 (for a detailed description of the months before and after the election

cf. McCoy 1999, ch. 7). Ferdinand Marcos put pressure on the Philippine Commission

on Elections (COMELEC) “not only to adjust the tally but to fabricate his victory”

(Case 2006, 105) and several techniques were used to increase Marcos’ final count such

as the flying voter –i.e. a single voter casting ballots in different precincts– and the

lanzadera –where voters receive a prepared ballot before coming to the electoral booth,

take a “clean” ballot after leaving the booth and offer it to the next voter (loc. cit.).

3. Repression that substantially increases the cost of voting for the opposition and

the costs of challenging the regime. Repression can take subtle forms –e.g. the

authoritarians, in control of state resources, can decide whether to withdraw or

not these resources from specific voters and opposition challengers (cf. Diaz-Cayeros,

Magaloni and Weingast 2003)– or it can be expressed with violence and coercion.

Blaydes (2011, 54) has shown that in pre-2011 Egypt, candidates that ran for an office

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and were elected into Parliament received enormous benefits such as “opportunities to

barter or sell appointments and jobs [...]. In addition to these [...] avenues of influence

and benefit, parliamentarians also use legal immunity granted to office holders for more

nefarious purposes.” Given that the benefits were granted they could also be taken

away by the authoritarian elite in control of the state apparatus. Authoritarians,

then, can “tame” opposers using these subtle forms of repression. Elections in the

state of Guanajuato, Mexico, in 1945, show the “ugly” face of repression. In this

case, the opposition party Partido Accion Nacional (PAN) and a strong local party

(the National Sinarquist Union), supported the candidacy of Carlos Obregon against

the authoritarians’ candidate Ignacio Quiroz. The elections “were followed [...] by

huge demonstrations. The army fired on the crowd, killing twenty-six protesters and

seriously wounding at least thirty others” (Lujambio 2001, 58-59). This was only a

local race so it is plausible that, in most authoritarian regimes, repression is harsher

against those competing in presidential or national legislature elections.

4. Uneven access to state resources that hinder the opposition’s capacity to attract high

quality candidates and/or buy time to promote itself in mass media. Greene (2007,

39-42; cf also Levitsky and Way 2010, 9-12) notices that authoritarians have access to

five types of resources: the budgets of state-owned enterprises, the public budget, the

bureaucracy –which allows incumbents to distribute jobs to supporters–, fiscal policy –

that incentivizes domestic businesses to cooperate with the authoritarians rather than

with the opposition– and, the administrative resources of the state –e.g. vehicles,

phones, etc. In Russia, for example, the control of Gazprom and other state-owned

companies has recently allowed Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party to control

an incredible amount of resources that they have used “in a number of politically

beneficial ways. Parliament, and United Russia, [have] shared in the general glow of

public good feeling. Putin’s own approval ratings [have risen] steadily” (Remington

2010, 49).

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As is obvious from the list above, the assumption of neutrality in authoritarian settings

is not plausible and, therefore, we will discard it from the analysis below. However, it is

important to ask if some form of “semi-neutrality” could be present at the inception of

an authoritarian regime that may incentivize the formation of challenger parties. In this

situation, voters still do not have an idea of the political organizations that are viable and

the ones that are not (cf. Cox 1997, ch. 8). Therefore, strategic voting (which tends to

have a reductive effect in the sense that voters do not want to waste their votes on those

parties/candidates that are expected to be among the J > M +1 trailing parties/candidates

–where M is district size–) is unlikely to be present during the first authoritarian electoral

rounds. That is, assuming that party A is the authoritarian machine and party B is in the

opposition, without previous information about whom is whom in the election, voters are

unlikely to vote strategically for the most viable party (i.e. party A). However, scholars (for a

review of the arguments cf. Gandhi and Lust-Okar 2009) have shown that authoritarians are

only likely to hold elections when their grip in power is secure and that they spend incredible

amount of resources (human and monetary) to publicize their “viability” and their status as

the only game in town. Therefore, the “semi-neutrality” argument is also highly unlikely. All

of the opposition parties that we take into consideration for our theory of party formation and

endurance are those created after the authoritarian regime has demonstrated its capacity to

hold power. Thus, we have parties like Mexico’s PAN created more than a decade after the

inception of the authoritarian regime in the country; the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores

(PT) created fifteen years after the military coup of 1964; and the Taiwanese DPP created

in the mid-1980s, more than three decades after the launching of the KMT regime in the

country.

Why, then, will someone oppose an authoritarian regime via elections if the chances of

winning are extremely low due to the existence of repression, fraud, electoral institutions,

etc.? Opposition party formation in authoritarian settings is puzzling; especially if we

assume, like Downs (1957, 11), that politicians who compete in elections orient their behavior

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towards the maximization of votes. If a politician knows (given information from past

elections) that it is almost impossible to win office if she competes against the authoritarian

party, why not join this party instead? As Cox (1997, 165-166) has shown, when a party has

a very high probability of winning elections then all vote-maximizing office seekers should

join this party and not any other:

Consider [...] the case where [a party] is certain to win the general election [...]. In sucha district, there is no (current seat-maximizing) reason to run under any other thanthe dominant label. Would-be career politicians will either enter the dominant party’sendorsement process, or not at all. (Loc. cit.)

If Cox is right, we would have never seen the formation of opposition parties in authoritarian

regimes. However, this is not the case –opposition parties were created, and some of them

endured for many years. Therefore, we need a clear answer to the puzzle. Kenneth Greene

has, to our knowledge, provided the only solution to this paper’s main question. Next we

review his argument and indicate some shortcomings.

1.1 A solution to the paradox? Greene’s argument

To solve the paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings, Greene (2007,

ch. 2) starts by paying attention to the incredible resource advantages of the dominant

authoritarian party. He notices that these advantages will always make challengers to have

a much lower probability of winning –despite their best efforts and (spatial) strategies. He

concludes, thus, that opposition parties in authoritarian regimes cannot exist as pure-office

seeking organizations and that prospective party joiners must value “something else” other

than winning elections . This something else, according to the author, is an incentive to

fight for a policy that the opposition party activists deeply care about (ibid., 53).

It is important to notice that Greene does not fully attempt to explain party formation,

rather, his theory is better designed to understand why challenger parties in dominant party

authoritarian regimes locate at a particular spatial location. However, part of his argument

attempts to demonstrate that only politicians with extreme policy preferences –in the sense

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of being located far away from the median voter’s ideal preference– will end up creating an

opposition organization that would compete in elections against the authoritarians (ibid.,

66-70). Thus, we conclude from this that policy incentives and partisan expression are the

rationale for creating challenger parties. As we will comment below, the problem with this

argument is that it does not fully solve the paradox of opposition party formation: it cannot

explain why political entrepreneurs with acute preferences choose to create parties instead

of clubs, interest groups, etc. Why do these persons choose the electoral arena to express

their policy and partisan desires?

Perhaps, the most important part of the author’s argument is that, as the resource

advantages of the dominant party increase (and/or the probabilities of fraud and repression

increase), the extremism (in terms of policy preferences) of challenger parties will also

increase. Given these adverse conditions, Greene then asks who joins opposition parties

–assuming that a challenger party has already been created. His response to this question

is again based on the idea that policy expression matters and that opposition parties create

expressive benefits to incentivize people to join an organization that is most likely to lose

elections: “[s]uch a benefit comes whether or not the party wins the next election, but rather

from the sheer act of participation” (ibid., 123). To salvage his argument from critiques, the

author adds an important corollary:

But expressive benefits alone give no rationale for the existence of opposition partiesin place of social movements. Challenger parties are also clearly interested in winningelections just like their counterparts in fully competitive democracies. (Ibid., 124)

To add both expressive and vote-maximizing incentives to opposition parties competing

in authoritarian regimes, the author finalizes by creating two types of activists: office-

seekers and message-seekers. Alas, here we find one of the main problems of the argument:

the expected utility function that Greene develops for message-seekers does not require

participation in elections3 and, as he demonstrates, office-seekers ought not to join an

3Greene’s expected utility function for message-seekers is as follows: Eui(ak) = u(ek)[α+pk]−ck (Greene

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opposition party unless the probability of repression, fraud or the advantages of the dominant

authoritarian party are below some empirically undefined threshold; if this is not the case

only very extreme preference office-seekers will join the challenger party, but we assume

that this rationale –taken to the limit– completely depletes the set of possible office seeking

activists.

We now indicate the main shortcomings of Greene’s argument:

1. As we noticed above, the author does not fully solve the paradox of party formation.

To avoid many of the costs of forming challenger parties in authoritarian regimes, why

do opposition elites that deeply care about particular policies and have preferences far

away from the status quo not join an interest group, a social movement, etc.? Our

theory solves this by paying attention to the fact that the electoral arena is extremely

important for the maintenance of the authoritarian regime. Thus, groups excluded

from the authoritarian winning-coalition enter the electoral fray because only through

elections they can achieve their particular objectives.

2. Greene discards from his analysis an important type of opposition party in

authoritarian regimes. As Lust-Okar (2005, ch. 1) notices, scholars have tended

to ignore important differences among opponents to authoritarian rulers. For this

author, there are legal opponents whose inclusion in the formal political sphere tends

to demobilize them and constrain their demands, and there are also illegal opponents

that tend to be more radical and, very often, incentivized to topple the authoritarian

regime. Although we do not make the legal-illegal opposition distinction, we believe

that Lust-Okar is right in pointing out differences among types of challengers. Greene

excludes from his analysis those opposition parties that are moderate (perhaps even

2007, 130). The function states that the utility of individual i of taking action k is given by the utility ofexpressing the party’s message u(ek), the probability of victory pk, and the costs of participation ck. Wenotice that even if the probability of victory is equal to 0, a message-seeker will always get a positive utilityand, thus, will always join an opposition party. The question is, then, why do message-seekers not join aclub, an interest group or, as Greene himself notices, a social movement?

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“non-ideological”), that enjoy some sort of access to the patronage in the hands

of authoritarians and that, therefore, are not a source of significant threats to

autocrats. In his analysis of Mexico, for example, Greene completely dismissed

parties like the Partido Autentico de la Revolucion Mexicana (PARM) and the Partido

Popular Socialista (PPS) –known in Mexico’s vox populi as “Satellite Parties” of the

authoritarian PRI.

3. The author makes one strong assumption and derives one result about the behavior

of the dominant authoritarian party. First, he assumes that the dominant party

announces a policy position “to the voters on a single left to right dimension and that

[it] is constrained to implement these policies if [it] win[s]” (Greene 2007, 48. Emphasis

added). One important characteristic of autocrats is that they have ample margins to

change their policies, they are not accountable to wide sectors of the population and,

thus, they are not as restricted as democratic governments to change their decisions

from one set of policies to another between elections4. Second, Greene derives from his

model that the authoritarian party is ideologically centrist –i.e. palatable to the median

voter’s preferences (Greene 2007, 55, n. 15 and n. 16). Adams, Merrill and Grofman

(2005, ch. 11) have shown that candidates/parties with valence advantages (i.e. non-

spatial advantages) have motivations to move closer to their preferred policy position.

This result follows Wittman (1983), who has argued that advantaged candidates

are willing to trade-off part of their non-policy related advantages (in the case of

authoritarians, for example, their advantages are based on patronage and access to

state resources) in favor of the likelihood of being elected on a platform that closely

resembles their sincere policy preferences. In sum, if the authoritarian party has ample

advantages during Election Day, why would it choose to be centrist? We argue below

4Miller (2011, 35-36), for example, shows that authoritarians are “responsive” to the electorate only duringthe months close to an election but that policy concessions from the authoritarians “are gradually seizedback” (and fast) after the election. Thus, Miller’s evidence shows that authoritarians are not constrained toimplement their promises.

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that the centrism of the authoritarians is endogenous to the presence of a particular

type of opposition party.

4. Finally, Greene’s theory cannot explain the timing of party formation. Why was one of

his main cases, the PAN, created in 1939? Why was his other main case, the Partido de

la Revolucion Democratica (PRD), created until 1989? Our theory of party formation

in authoritarian settings, by dividing opposition parties into different categories, can

explain the timing of these organizations’ emergence.

Having reviewed the paradox of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings and

Greene’s solution to the puzzle, in the next section we provide a novel theory which takes into

consideration two important aspects of competitive/hybrid authoritarian regimes: electoral

results matter and authoritarians are not reliable5.

2 A Theory of Opposition Party Formation in Authoritarian Settings

To develop a sound theory of opposition party formation in authoritarian settings we start

by describing two characteristics of authoritarian regimes that hold elections and allow some

meaningful –but unfair– competition.

In the last decade, the literature on authoritarian elections has shifted attention from

the idea that these increase the likelihood of democratization to the idea that elections

are endogenous institutions created by autocrats as a mean to hold on to power and avert

threats to their rules. Although scholars tend to differ on the type of threat that dictators

face –e.g. other elites (Boix and Svolik 2007), members of the authoritarian party (Magaloni

2006), society at large (Gandhi and Przeworski 2006), etc.–, the main rationale that has been

offered for the existence of elections (and other authoritarian institutions such as legislatures)

is that these are instruments that transmit two types of information: 1) from authoritarians

to challengers –overwhelming electoral victories by dominant parties signal the strength of

5We follow Downs (1957, 104-105. Emphasis added) and define a party as reliable “if its policy statementsat the beginning of an election period –including those in its preelection campaign– can be used to makeaccurate predictions of its behavior [...] during the period.”

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the regime, demonstrate the acquiescence of the citizenry towards its authoritarian rulers

and, thus, signal to challengers that their chances of gaining support are small and that the

time is not yet ripe to depose the autocrats–; and 2) from society to the autocratic elite

–electoral outcomes help the regime identify its strongholds and the regions where they have

a weak presence and there is more opposition support.

Elections, thus, are valuable for authoritarians. However, their value is conditioned on

them obtaining electoral supermajorities. As Magaloni (2006, 9) notices, authoritarians need

to win elections “by huge margins [to create] a public image of invincibility. This image would

serve to discourage coordination among potential challengers [...] and to diminish bandwagon

effects in favor of the opposition parties among the mass public.” Low turnout and moderate

votes for opposition parties are bad omens for the authoritarian elite because they indicate

that there is a great deal of potential mobilizable opposition that might incentivize elite

splits and, thus, weaken the regime in a short period of time. Langston (2006), for example,

has shown that elite splits from the Mexican PRI and the Taiwanese Kuomintang (KMT)

were more likely when minority factions of the countries’ respective ruling parties found out

–mainly via information from previous elections– that there was a growing willingness on the

part of the electorate to vote against the dominant parties. Elections are a risky business

for autocrats and they only help transmit an “image of invincibility” if authoritarians invest

scarce resources to win those elections by wide margins. To achieve this objective they may

buy votes, or punish defectors (e.g. incarcerate challenger activists or withdraw handouts

from those citizens that vote for the opposition), or they may commit fraud6. We notice

that these activities imply high (transaction) costs; for example: 1) buying votes requires an

army of brokers to monitor that citizens comply with their part of the deal. These brokers,

in turn, usually keep part of the resources that the authoritarian elite would had wished to

get to prospective voters; 2) repression requires a disciplined military or police force that

6Fraud, however, is not the best strategy for authoritarians because, as Geddes (2006, 19) notes, fraudmay fool voters “but it cannot be kept secret from [the dominant] party elites”, thus, these elites may stillknow when it is convenient to split from the dominant party.

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accepts the elite’s requests to punish the citizenry; 3) electoral fraud requires technological

sophistication and/or an army of electoral authorities willing to stuff the ballot box or to

tamper with voter registration lists; etc.

Although the authoritarian elite may have the capacity to engage in these diverse

activities to win electoral supermajorities (especially if the regime is at its apogee, see below),

as any other rational actor wishing to maximize its benefits and minimize its costs, they would

prefer not to incur in these expenses. These costs are likely to increase when the policies

enacted by the authoritarians diverge from the median voter’s preferences: the median voter

will receive less utility from policy so she has to be compensated via other means (e.g. forced

to vote for the hegemonic party with repression or with handouts). Ceteris paribus, the more

“policy divergence” occurs between the implemented policy and the ideal preference of the

median voter, the more expensive it will be to “convince” the median voter to choose the

authoritarian dominant party on Election Day7. Notice that if the authoritarian party wants

a supermajority to signal to prospective challengers that they will be unable to gain much

electoral support, it not only needs the vote of the median voter but also the vote of the

pivotal voter that will provide it with the supermajority of votes (who is always located on

the opposite side of the ideal point of the authoritarian winning coalition).

7To show the logic of the argument with a simple spatial model, assume that the set of all possiblepolicies is in the interval [0, 1], where 0 denotes an extreme leftist policy and 1 an extreme rightist policy.The authoritarian party invests an amount α in buying votes which gives it a non-spatial advantage. Theutility that a voter i, with ideal policy preference xi, derives from voting for an authoritarian party A, withspatial location zA, is Ui(A) = −(xi − zA)2 + α, and that derived from voting for an opposition party O–assuming it has been created–, with spatial location zO, is Ui(O) = −(xi − zO)2.

Assuming that zA < zO, let i∗ be the indifferent voter with policy preference satisfying:

x∗i = zA+zO2 − α

2(zA−zO)

To understand how this indifferent voter moves along the [0, 1] interval –and, thus, to show how A canlose votes–, we obtain the partial derivative of x∗i with respect to zA:

∂x∗i

∂zA= (zA−zO)2+α

2(zA−zO)2 > 0,

which means that, as A moves towards 0, the indifferent voter i∗ moves also towards 0, resulting in lessvoters for A and more for O. Unless the authoritarians are willing to increase α to compensate voters to theright of i∗ for disutility on policy, they will lose these voters the farther they move towards 0. But, we wantto emphasize, increasing α is costly.

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Once it has been established that electoral results matter for autocrats, we now pay

attention to the fact that authoritarians are unreliable, especially to groups outside of the

authoritarian winning coalition. Several theorists (cf., for example, Boix and Svolik 2007;

Gandhi and Przeworski 2006; Geddes 2004; Weingast 1997) have shown that authoritarian

elites only need the cooperation of some particular segments of society for survival and that

this “authoritarian coalition” is usually narrow –it is likely to exclude important sectors of

the population from the decision-taking process. For example, the KMT regime in Taiwan (at

least until the 1980s) excluded most native Taiwanese from the ruling coalition, the Chilean,

Argentinean and Brazilian military regimes excluded organized labor from the authoritarian

coalition (in fact, repression was the more likely response of these regimes vis-a-vis workers),

and the United Malays National Organisation regime in Malaysia most non-Malay ethnic

groups from power. Following Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), we will call the elites that

support the maintenance of the authoritarian regime the winning coalition8, and the groups

excluded from the winning coalition will be called the opposition –which may or may not

be organized into political parties. We assume that the winning coalition is composed of

like-minded elites (i.e. they share ideology, or ethnicity, or some other sort of bonds that

assure some level of loyalty) that pursue policies more affable to their particular tastes and

get rents/spoils. The winning coalition, then, will always try to enact policies that benefit

it in the short and long runs.

Adding members to an authoritarian winning coalition commits the existing members

of this coalition to share spoils and policy changes. Adding members to the coalition is,

however, highly unlikely because, with a fixed amount of goods to distribute, it increases

the division of rents (thus, existing members of the coalition are worse off because they get

a smaller amount of resources) and it creates social choice problems by the simple fact of

8 Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003, 51-55) define the winning coalition as a subset of the selectorate ofsufficient size to maintain the authoritarian ruler in power and in control of the rest of society. The selectorate(ibid., 42) is the “set of people whose endowments include the qualities or characteristics institutionallyrequired to choose the government’s leadership and necessary for gaining access to private benefits doled outby the government’s leadership”.

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increasing the number of participants with decision making power (cf. Arrow 1970). We

argue that, if the wining coalition were going to increase its size, its existing members will

only accept like-minded persons given that they are less costly to “absorb” in policy terms

–i.e. they are less likely to create social choice problems for the authoritarians– even if they

diminish the per-capita amount of rents that they might get.

The authoritarian winning coalition, then, defines and adjudicates policies and it is

sufficiently strong to abrogate these policies for its own benefit. The coalition cannot

commit itself not to change these policies and/or to bring new sectors of the population

to the coalition9. The regime, then, can act arbitrarily and opportunistically against the

opposition –e.g. seizing its property, taxing away the income it produces, affecting, via fiscal

and monetary policy, wages and inflation– and there does not exist a commitment device that

may control this behavior. Does there exist a solution to control this unreliable behavior?

Can the authoritarian winning coalition commit itself to a particular policy course?

Scholars have provided diverse solutions to the commitment problem. Gandhi and

Przeworski (2007) have argued that, in order to avert rebellion and obtain cooperation,

dictators can offer legislatures with policy-making powers to opposition challengers. Of

course, this does not fully solve the commitment problem because if the dictator is able

to “concede” a legislature he can also take back this concession. Besides, these authors

acknowledge that real policy making is not in the hands of the legislature but “ready-made-

institutions capable of organizing rule” such as royal families in monarchies, the armed forces

in military regimes and dominant parties in civilian regimes, i.e. what we call the winning

coalition of the regime (ibid., 1284). These authors, therefore, do not solve the commitment

problem that we discussed in previous paragraphs. Weingast (1997) also provides a solution

to this problem. Paradoxically, his solution depends on a sovereign transgressing the rights of

9Gandhi and Przeworski (2006), for example, provide deductive reasoning to show that dictators requirethe cooperation of some sectors of society and that they obtain this cooperation by providing policyconcessions. However, according to their formal model, it is much more costly for autocrats to give policyconcessions to those societal groups with ideal points located far away from the dictator’s ideal policypreference. It is doubtful that dictators concede policies to these extremist groups.

16

citizens both in the opposition and in the winning coalition. According to the author, when

there is a transgression against both societal groups, these groups will coordinate to topple

the sovereign. However, the commitment problem is unsolvable if the sovereign transgresses

his/her powers against only one of the groups. With these arguments in mind, we propose

that the formation and endurance of a particular type of political party can help groups

excluded from the winning coalition of the regime to avert opportunism and commit the

authoritarians to enact moderate policies.

2.1 Forming and Maintaining Opposition Parties to Control Authoritarian

Behavior

We begin our theory with some loose statements about the conditions under which these

parties are created; these will allow us to create a typology of opposition parties –which will

be useful to understand the logic of party formation. First, we argue that the timing of

party formation affects the type of people willing to form and join an opposition party. For

different exogenous (e.g. economic crises that deplete the state of patronage resources) or

endogenous (e.g. elite fractures) reasons, the authoritarian regime has a life cycle that sets

the conditions by which the authoritarians can repress, commit electoral fraud, distribute

resources to clients, co-opt adversaries, control labor unions, appease peasant rebellions,

etc. To make the theory generalizable, we distinguish two broad time periods during which

authoritarians have different “despotic and infrastructural” capabilities10: authoritarian

pinnacle and authoritarian nadir11. During the pinnacle, authoritarians have few constraints

to impose binding decisions over society and enjoy resources and ample popularity in wide

10For a definition of despotic and infrastructural powers cf. Slater (2003, 81-82). By despotic power weunderstand “the range of actions that [a set of the elite in authoritarian regimes] is empowered to take withoutroutine, institutionalized negotiations with other regime members.” By infrastructural power we understandthe elite’s capacity to implement authoritative decisions and “its command over potential opposition in civilsociety and within the multiple layers of the state apparatus itself.”

11Although these words make reference to “static” points in time, we want to emphasize that the conceptsrefer to periods that may last, each, several years. For a full elaboration of the concepts of authoritarianpinnacle and authoritarian nadir (and how these concepts can be measured and why they are useful toexplain different outcomes which are the product of authoritarian legacies), cf. Hernandez Company (2013,34-40).

17

sectors of the population, factors which allow them to create a secure basis for domination.

During the nadir, the authoritarians face either internal divisions and/or external constraints

(e.g. economic crises) that weaken their capacity to keep potential challengers in society

under check and that might force a transition to democracy or other form of authoritarianism

in a short time span12.

Second, we acknowledge the fact that some prospective opposition party entrepreneurs

have the capacity to control patronage networks and the regime may have a disposition to

feed these networks with resources (or, at least, not to affect their functioning). We call

this factor a “brokerage role”. In the case of Brazil, for example, many Brazilian politicians

that participated in elections before the 1964 military coup were forced to join one of the

two newly created parties in 1966. Many of those who joined the new opposition party –the

Movimento Democratico Brasileiro (MDB)– were able to maintain a special relation with

their pre-coup constituencies. This helped them fulfill an important brokerage role in the

authoritarian regime. Kinzo (1988, 49) describes an MDB politician (Samir Achoa) as a

“traditional politician” who “received thousands of people every day asking for help to solve

a personal problem”. During an interview, this politician noted the following:

I do not depend on the government. But the government is obliged to respond positivelywhen the claim is just because the government knows that if he does not solve theproblem the political cost is for the government, not for me. Thus, when I makea claim for specific problems I manage to get a solution for at least some [of theseproblems]. But I never ask for a job in the public sector or any other favor which couldmake me dependent on the government. I consider myself completely independent tosay whatever I want [...]. But it is important for me to be in the MDB. I believe thatif I were from the government party, first I would not adapt there, second I think thatthe people believe in my opposition position (cited in Kinzo, 1988, loc. cit.).

It is obvious from this last statement that this type of opposition party politician is radically

different to the type of opposition party activists that Greene describes (remember that

12In this paper we pay particular attention to those opposition parties created during authoritarianpinnacles. These organizations are more challenging to understand because they emerge at a time whenthe authoritarians are so strong as to make opposition via political parties to seem irrational. Suffice itto say here that opposition parties created during authoritarian nadirs tend to be clientelistic machines orpersonalistic coteries. Examples of such parties are the Peruvian Izquierda Unida (IU), the Mexican Partidode la Revolucion Democratica (PRD) and the Brazilian Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB).

18

for this author only radical anti-status quo politicians create parties with the intention to

fight for a policy that they really care about). With regards to this point, in sum, we

just want to emphasize that authoritarians often need the help of those persons (caciques,

local strongmen, traditional elites, etc.) that control networks useful to mediate state-

society relations; this fact incentivizes authoritarians to transfer monetary resources to these

challengers.

Following Aldrich (2011, 5), we assume that political parties are endogenous institutions

that are created and reformed by political entrepreneurs “when doing so has furthered their

goals and ambitions”. These goals and ambitions are shaped by the historical circumstances

in existence during the juncture of party formation. In this sense, the timing of party

formation matters because the rationale for engaging in the –very– costly activity of creating

an opposition party varies depending on the contextual situation present at the time of party

formation. However, the juncture of party formation (which lasts at most a few years) is not

a period of complete contingency where opposition actors either decide to create a challenger

party or stay at home saving precious time and resources. Rather, there is antecedent

variation which conditions the future behavior of opposition parties –if they are formed.

These critical antecedents (Slater and Simmons 2010) are determined by the preexisting

control that prospective party founders have over patronage networks and the interests of

the authoritarian elite to use those networks to mediate state-society relations. Timing of

formation and critical antecedents create four types of opposition parties. We will focus

on the incentives to form type 1 parties and briefly comment on type 2 parties (we do not

analyze types 3 and 4 because their emergence is not as paradoxical as the emergence of

type 1 parties, see Table 113):

With the typology at hand, we now focus on the reasons for creating parties of type

13 Hernandez Company (2013, 45-52) thoroughly describes the incentives to form all four types of parties.An important difference between type 2 and type 4 parties is the type of patronage network that theirprospective party politicians control; Hernandez Company (ibid., 42, n. 31) divides these networks intoportable (likely to survive a regime transition) and non-transferable (unlikely to survive a regime transition).We do not delve into the details of this particular argument.

19

Table 1: A Typology of Opposition Parties in Authoritarian Settings

Timing of Party Formation

AUTHORITARIAN PINNACLE AUTHORITARIAN NADIR

NOType 1 Type 3

Brokerage Strong Programmatic Party Personalistic Coteries

RoleYES

Type 2 Type 4

Competitive Clientelistic Organization Clientelistic Machines

1 (i.e. Strong Programmatic Parties). As we discussed above, authoritarian regimes are

only responsive to groups within their respective winning coalitions. Even if the autocrats

promise some policy concessions at time t to groups excluded from the coalition, there is a

very high likelihood that at time t+1 they will relinquish their offer –especially if the groups

that had been benefited at time t have highly contrasting preferences to the authoritarian

coalition. The opposition –not yet organized either in parties or social movements– realizes,

then, that its prospects for the future are grim: they might face expropriation of lands, wage

reductions, inconvenient fiscal and monetary policies, etc. The opposition, however, divides

itself between those groups that control networks and may be benefited with the authoritarian

largesse to mediate state-society relations (for an excellent argumentation about this type of

oppositions in the case of Brazil cf. Hagopian 1994, this author demonstrates that “traditional

politicians” were able to administer at the local level, and use for their own purposes, fiscal

transfers from the central government which was in control of the military) and those that

are completely excluded from these monies. This latter group is the one that forecasts a

bleak future in an authoritarian regime. Their options are either to accept the status quo or

act to restrict the policy options of authoritarians.

We argue that these opposition groups realize that authoritarians care about electoral

results and that, therefore, the electoral arena is the best medium by which they can

control authoritarian behavior. In this situation, they choose to create political parties

rather than form social movements or some other form of pressure group. These groups are

not incentivized to form, however, unless there is a “push” from the authoritarian winning

20

coalition. Here we want to emphasize that it is only until the authoritarian regimes start

behaving erratically (in the sense of enacting extremist policies that many groups outside the

autocratic coalition dislike) that the opposition will decide to invest time and scarce resources

in the formation of the parties14. This is one of the main reasons why we see opposition

parties of this type being created only after some time has passed following the inception of

the regime (a couple of years, as in the case of Mexico, or even decades, as in the case of

Taiwan15). It is only then that the regime has a strong hold on power –and a stable winning

coalition– to enact the policies it most prefers (cf. Geddes 2004). Also, we hypothesize

that the type of cleavage or issue around which challengers will decide to compete against

authoritarians is endogenous to the type of radical policies the authoritarians enact and that

anger some specific sectors of society but not others (e.g. economic policies will favor the

formation of opposition parties around the state vs. free market divide, policies that favor

some ethnic groups much more than others will push for the formation of opposition parties

around ethnic divides, etc.).

Political parties of type 1 will allow opposers to “absorb” votes that the authoritarians

highly value. Authoritarians, of course, have multiple instruments to maintain a

supermajority of votes but some are costlier than others: with fixed budgets the capacity

that they have to buy votes is limited to a certain number of voters, they can also repress

or commit fraud –but if the prospects of facing an opposition party in future elections are

high, these two strategies are unlikely to work very well (a regime that relies on repression

14The reader may notice that we do not discuss problems of collective action during the juncture of partyformation. We acknowledge the fact that although many prospective partisans may share similar values andincentives, most of them will prefer to skip the penurious process of party formation and wait until someoneelse pays the costs of forming the challenger organization. Yet, we do not hypothesize general solutions tothe collective action problem because we believe it is more fruitful to empirically investigate how each groupsolves these problems (given the particular contextual circumstances the group faces). Providing a generaltheory of collective action may be troublesome because, in all likelihood, prospective party founders willcome about with different solutions to the collective action problem depending on the type of party thatthey attempt to create (e.g., following our typology, challenger entrepreneurs willing to form a personalisticcoterie will likely solve their collective action problems very differently than party founders attempting tocreate a strong programmatic party).

15Even though in the case of Taiwan meaningful partisan elections were not allowed until the end of martiallaw in the 1980s, individual opposers, coalesced around the Dangwai Movement, started participating inelections just until the end of the 1960s.

21

demonstrates that it does not have sufficient societal support; fraud can fool citizens one

or two times and, more important, it cannot fool factions within the winning coalition)–,

finally, and this is key for our argument, they can moderate their policies to appeal to the

preferences of the median voter. Winning the median allows them to secure 50% of the

votes while the remaining number of votes required to obtain a supermajority (however the

authoritarians define it) can be “acquired” using the tools described above, especially buying

votes16.

Opposition parties of type 1, however, cannot become a real threat to the authoritarian

winning coalition unless they can secure a share of the electorate. Given that these parties do

not have ample pecuniary resources to buy votes (and that they do not have networks that

may give them a brokerage role), they need some other strategy to appeal to the electorate.

We argue that the only technique available to attract votes is to create a sound program and

a brand name. Unless these parties invest in the creation of a program and engage in a

programmatic linkage strategy with the electorate, voters will continue to vote haphazardly

for these organizations and authoritarians will discard their presence in the electoral arena.

To create sound political programs, opposition parties of type 1 cannot locate at the median

voter location. If this were the case, they would attract ideologically dissimilar activists

which may decrease the informative value of the party program –or they might risk being

“infiltrated” by the authoritarians. The signaling of the party program will only be effective,

then, if the programmatic proposals of the party locate close to the extremes of the ideological

spectrum. This last strategy increases the costs of joining the party and therefore reduces

the ideological heterogeneity of its membership. Here we follow the ideas of Snyder and Ting

(2002, 91-92) who have argued –referring to American parties– that:

The message conveyed by a party label is determined by the set of candidates who rununder it. As a result, a party’s label is informative only if the types of candidates whorun under it are limited. [...]. To increase the value of their labels, parties will typicallywant to impose discipline on the candidates who run under their label. Alternatively,

16Footnote 7, above, describes the logic with a simple spatial model. In section 3 we provide a much moreelaborated formal model.

22

parties will want to screen candidates for ideological or policy correctness. [...] Eachparty stakes out an extreme position in order to reduce the ideological heterogeneity ofits membership and thereby make its label more meaningful to voters. [...]. If eitherstrategy is successful, the party’s platform will become useful informational conduitbetween candidates and voters. (Emphasis added. Cf. also Grynaviski 2010, passim.)

Thus, locating at the extremes of the ideological continuum assures an increment in the

informational value of the party program and allows some citizens to easily identify with

the opposition party and vote for it if they despise authoritarian policies. Finally, political

parties of type 1 will stay at the chosen programmatic ideological location for long periods

of time because this is the only way to ensure that authoritarians commit themselves to

moderate their policies.

Lastly, we argue that opposition parties of type 2 are much less of a threat to authoritarian

winning coalitions. Indeed, these parties depend on the authoritarians’ largesse to survive

for long periods of time and they are likely to disappear when the regime breaks down (for

examples of this type of opposition politicians/parties cf. Blaydes 2011). Indeed, following

the ideas and empirical evidence in Lust-Okar (2010), we have named parties of type 2

“competitive clientelistic” because these organizations are able to obtain votes thanks to

their privileged access to the authoritarian elite and to state resources. Thanks to this

access, they are able to distribute patronage or promise services to their constituencies.

Examples of this type of parties are the Mexican PARM and PPS and –perhaps not as close

to the ideal type– the Brazilian MDB. We expect, then, that the presence of this type of

parties is not likely to moderate authoritarians.

In sum, opposition political parties of type 1 are created with the objective not of winning

elections or to propose new policies that existing parties have ignored. These are the main

rationales for creating new parties in democratic systems according to Hug (2001) and

Rosenstone, Behr and Lazarus (1996) among others. Different from democratic systems,

where opposers are unlikely to face the haphazard behavior of current rulers, in authoritarian

settings opposition parties are created with the purpose of moderating the policy options of

the authoritarian winning coalition and, therefore, commit autocrats to specific governing

23

strategies in the long-run. Authoritarians, anxious to win over lost voters to opposition

parties, will seize strategies that both decrease their costs and assure supermajoritarian

electoral results. Next, we provide a formal model of most of these ideas.

3 A Model of Opposition Party Formation and Endurance

3.1 General Framework

In this section, we develop a model of opposition party formation and endurance, which

formalizes the ideas presented in our theory. Social interactions, in the form of random

meetings between voters in the electorate, play a key role in explaining the evolution of

different segments of the electorate sharing particular views regarding policy preferences.

Let us describe the electorate of voters by a continuum of agents of measure one (without

loss of generality, consider the [0, 1] interval in the real line). The electorate is divided into

three groups according to their policy preferences in the set Φ = {L,C,R}, which can be

identified with numerical values {−1, 0, 1}, respectively, so that we can have a notion of

“distance” between different policy stances, e.g. policy L is one step away from policy C,

and two steps away from policy R.

Let lt, ct, and rt represent the fractions of the electorate whose preferred policies at time

t are L,C, and R, respectively. That is, at each moment in time there are three types of

voters, indexed by i ∈ {l, c, r}, depending on their political views.

The government is run by an authoritarian party (A) that, at time t, enacts a policy

zAt ∈ {L,C,R} and has access to patronage goods and services α ≥ 0 that it distributes to

the electorate via lump-sum transfers in order to buy votes. In case there is an opposition

party at time t, it proposes an alternative policy zOt ∈ {L,C,R} but, unlike the authoritarian

party, it has no access to patronage goods.

Voter i’s preferences over voting either for the authoritarian party or the opposition party

(should there exist one) are described, respectively, by the utility functions:

ui(A) = −(xit − zAt

)2+ α, and

24

ui(O) = −(xit − zOt

)2,

where xit ∈ {L,C,R} is voter i’s preferred policy at time t. That is, agents derive a disutility

from policies that deviate from their preferred stances, and said disutility increases with the

square of distance between their preferred policy and the current stance.

Let us assume that on and before time period t = 0, the electorate is highly concentrated

in the group that has a strong preference for policy C, while the rest is split amongst those

having preferences for policies L and R (both with strictly positive mass):

c0 > r0 > 0 and c0 > l0 > 0.

Furthermore, let us also assume that, during all the past prior to time period t = 0, the

official policy stance set by the authoritarian party is zAt<0 = C. Even though such policy

stance is not the one preferred by segments of the electorate in l0 and r0, these groups are

willing to accept a one-step deviation from their preferred policy since the patronage goods

α offered by the authoritarian party compensate for such disutility. Therefore, this allows

the authoritarian party to win elections with a 100% of votes and face no opposition, which

is in fact deterred by the threat of losing said patronage. That is, a potential opponent

would incur in an opportunity cost equal to α should she opt for the alternative of forming

an opposition party, establishing a platform and running for elections, which we assume is

high enough to prevent such action.

At time t = 0, however, an exogenous and unanticipated event occurs, and the

authoritarian party changes its policy choice to zA0 = L (say, for instance, that for some

unmodeled reason it now wants to favor the minority group of voters of type l). This change

in the policy stance would clearly favor voters in l0, while voters in c0 would still be willing

to vote for the authoritarian in exchange for strictly positive patronage goods α > 0.

The segment of the electorate r0, in contrast, is now at a two-step deviation from their

preferred policy R, and the disutility arising from such deviation is now higher. Assuming

25

that the cost of increasing α is high enough so as to leave it unchanged, voters in r0 are thus

uncompensated for such utility loss, which prompts them to form an opposition party, with

a platform that proposes zO0 = R as its policy, and that runs for elections immediately.

These events trigger a series of social interactions in the electorate (in the form of random

pairwise meetings to be held each period), in which the two parties (A and O) try to gain

supporters for their respective policy offerings. That is, both parties engage in activities

aiming to proselytize voters into their views, and the different segments of the electorate

(i.e., lt, ct, and rt) evolve according to dynamics similar to those described by Bernoulli

(1766) and Kermack and McKendrick (1927) in the infectious diseases literature, or (more

recently) by Burnside, Eichenbaum and Rebelo (2011) in the housing prices literature.

The easiness or ability of a voter to gain supporters for her cause depends on a number

of factors, such as the conviction with which she expresses and defends her views during the

course of said social interactions (conversations, meetings, rallies, etc.), the quality of the

platform her party proposes, or the credibility that her party has in terms of the discipline

and screening processes imposed on her party’s candidates, amongst others. For simplicity,

we will refer to these attributes simply as “conviction”, and we explain below how we can

measure it.

Voters have prior probability distributions (pdf) f i (.) over n different policy stances

pj, j = 1, ..., n that, in a voter’s view, favor most a society. Associated to each voter priors,

there is the notion of entropy, which we denote by ei, i ∈ {l, c, r} and calculate as:

ei = −n∑

j=1

f i (pj) ln[f i (pj)

].

Intuitively, lower entropy values denote tighter voter priors. That is, the lower the entropy,

the more firmly a voter believes her preferred policy is the one that most favors the society.

Thus, both entropy and conviction are inversely related, a relationship that will be exploited

26

below.17

These entropies can be used to determine the rate (or probability) with which a given

voter can proselytize another voter into adopting her views. Specifically, these “contagion”

rates are calculated as:

γik = max

{1− ei

ek, 0

}.

In words, γik can be described as the probability with which a voter type i can convince

a voter type k to adopt her political views. It is important to note the following: first, voters

can proselytize only those other voters with a higher entropy value than their own (that is, a

given voter can only convert people with weaker convictions); and, second, these contagion

rates are decreasing on the ratio of the entropies between two voters.

Let us assume throughout that voters of type c have the highest entropy value (that is,

they are the least certain about the policy stance that better serves the society), so that

ec > el and ec > er,

which implies that they can only be proselytized into adopting either the views of type l

or the views of type r. In other words, voters of type c are not able to convince anyone to

adopt their views.

Conversely, voters of type l and r are both able to proselytize voters of type c. But,

what happens when voters of type l and r meet and interact? Who proselytizes whom?

Who adopts whose views? Regarding this particular interaction, we consider two alternative

cases, explained below. First, we consider the emergence of a type 1 opposition party (as

described in section 2.1) and assume that the entropy of voters of type r is lower than that

of voters type l, so that er < el < ec and type r voters are able to proselytize type l voters,

but not the other way around. On the other hand, we also consider the emergence of an

17For now, we abstract from the particular functional form of such probability distribution functions, andwe take the value of the corresponding entropies as given.We aim at endogenizing such entropy values.

27

opposition of type 2 (see section 2.1) and assume that type l voters have the lowest entropy,

so that el < er < ec and the opposite as in the previous case occurs.

3.2 Electorate Dynamics

Having outlined the general framework of our model, we now proceed to describe the

dynamics within the electorate regarding political views, starting at time t = 0, when active

campaigning is initialized following the unexpected change in the authoritarian party’s policy

choice. In order to do so, we consider the two cases mentioned above separately, under the

maintained assumption that type c voters have the highest entropy value (that is, they are

the least convinced and unable to proselytize anyone).

3.2.1 Type 1 Opposition Party

In this case, we assume that type r voters have the lowest entropy value, so that

er < el < ec.

This means that voters of type r can proselytize voters of both type c and l, voters of type

l can convince only voters of type c to adopt their views, and voters of type c are unable to

convince anyone to follow their lead (their views are so sparse that they are not convincing

at all).

Since, as mentioned above, social interactions in the model are in the form of pairwise

random meetings between voters at each period, we can state the following laws of motion

describing the dynamics of each segment of the electorate (that is, of each of the three

groups):

lt+1 = lt + γlcltct − γrlrtlt (1)

ct+1 = ct − γlcltct − γrcrtct (2)

rt+1 = rt + γrcrtct + γrlrtlt (3)

28

We can observe, from equation (1), that the mass of type l voters existing in the next

period (lt+1) is equal to the current mass (lt) plus the fraction of random pairwise meetings

between voters type l and c that results in new voters of type l (γlcltct),18 minus the fraction

of type l voters that meet with type r voters and are converted (γrlrtlt). Thus, under certain

initial conditions, the mass of type l voters might initially increase before ultimately falling

over time.

In equation (2), we see that the mass of type c voters in the next period (ct+1) is equal

to the current mass (ct), minus the fraction of type c voters that meet with type l voters

and are converted into their views (γlcltct), minus the fraction of those meeting type r voters

and whose policy preferences they adopt (γrcrtct). In contrast with the type l voters, type c

voters are always converted and their mass always decreases over time.

Lastly, equation (3) dictates that the mass of type r voters in the next period (rt+1) is

determined by the current mass (rt), plus the fraction of type c voters that they meet and

are able to proselytize (γrcrtct), plus the fraction that meets with voters of type l and convert

them into their views (γrlrtlt). That is, due to their low entropy (that is, high conviction),

the mass of type r voters monotonically increases over time, as they are able, with positive

probability, to proselytize any other voter they meet with.

Regarding the long run (that is, as the time dimension approaches infinity) implications

of the assumptions describing the emergence of this type of opposition party, it should be

noted that the fraction of type r voters in the electorate converges to exactly 1, while the

fractions of the electorate of types c and l both converge to zero. In the short run, however,

and depending on the initial parameterization, the fraction of type l voters initially increases

before starting to fall over the long run, while the fraction of type r voters increases steadily

over time. This pattern might be dubbed as something like the “rise and endurance” of

opposition parties, in which such a party gains supporters that allow it to eventually win

elections and rule thereafter.

18See, for instance, Duffie and Sun (2007) for details on a law of large numbers that applies to pairwiserandom meetings, as the ones described in this context.

29

3.2.2 Type 2 Opposition Party

In this type of opposition party, we have assumed that type l voters have the lowest entropy

value, so that

el < er < ec.

This means that voters of type l can proselytize voters of both types c and r, voters of

type r can convince only voters of type c to adopt their views, and voters of type c are still

unable to convince anyone to follow them.

Thus, in a similar fashion as we did before, we can state the following laws of motion

describing the dynamics of each segment of the electorate:

lt+1 = lt + γlcltct + γlrltrt (4)

ct+1 = ct − γlcltct − γrcrtct (5)

rt+1 = rt + γrcrtct − γlrltrt (6)

In words, what equation (4) states is that the mass of type l voters existing in the next

period (lt+1) is equal to the current mass (lt) plus the fraction of random pairwise meetings

between voters type l and c that results in new voters of type l (γlcltct), plus the fraction of

type r voters that meet with type l voters and are converted (γlrltrt). Thus, and in contrast

with the previous case, since type l voters have the highest convincing power (i.e. the lowest

entropy), their mass only increases over time.

In equation (5), we see that the mass of type c voters evolves exactly as it does in the

previous case: type c voters are always converted and their mass always decreases over time.

Lastly, equation (6) dictates that the mass of type r voters in the next period (rt+1) is

determined by the current mass (rt), plus the fraction of type c voters that they meet and

are able to proselytize (γrcrtct), minus the fraction that meets with voters of type l and are

converted into their views (γlrltrt). That is, on the one hand the mass of voters of type r

30

increases due to the meetings with type c voters, but, on the other hand, decreases due to

the meetings with type l voters, and this generates a non-monotonic pattern in the fraction

of the electorate that has a strong preference for policy R.

It should be noted that, in the long run, the fraction of type l voters in the electorate

converges to exactly 1, while the fractions of the electorate of types c and r both converge to

zero. In the short run, however, and depending on the initial parameterization, the fraction

of type r voters initially increases before starting to fall over the long run. This pattern

might be dubbed as something like the “rise and fall” of opposition parties, in which such

a party might (or might not) gain supporters that allow it to eventually win elections and

rule for a limited period of time. As we have argued before, this is similar to what we might

observe when a type 2 opposition party emerges.

3.3 Voting Strategies

In this subsection, we discuss the possible voting strategies that different segments of the

electorate might follow.

Before the authoritarian party deviates from the initial policy stance C (that is, before

time t = 0 when zAt<0 = C), all segments of the electorate are willing to vote for it. In the

first place are voters of type c, who have a strong preference for the stated policy and are

the most benefitted from it. As for the segments of the electorate who are of type l or r,

we assume that they are both willing to tolerate a one-step deviation from their preferred

policy and give their vote to the authoritarian party (since the disutility they derive from

not having their most preferred policy is still compensated by the patronage goods α, which

is in turn the opportunity cost of forming their own party).

Now, once the authoritarian party deviates from policy C and adopts policy L at time

t = 0 (that is, zA0 = L), we have seen that type r voters are no longer willing to tolerate such

a large (two-step) deviation from their preferred policy and decide to form a party whose

policy offering is R. Clearly, the segment of the electorate formed by type l voters would

vote for the authoritarian party, while all type r voters will vote for the newly emerged

31

opposition party. Since we have assumed that they are both minority groups, the outcome

of the elections (won by the 50% majority) will be decided by the actions taken by the type

c voters (i.e. who do they vote for?).

The segment of the electorate of type c has now to decide between two alternative policy

stances, namely, L and R. Type c voters are indifferent in the sense that both policies

are at a one-step deviation from their preferred policy C. As we argued before, they are

willing to tolerate the disutility derived from either deviation since the cost of forming a

new party with their views would be still higher (in the form of lost patronage α). As for

their voting behavior, let us assume two alternative strategies. First, consider the strategy

(“strategy a”) under which voters in this segment of the electorate are totally free to vote

for whoever they want (e.g. patronage is zero) which, given the symmetry in the opposing

policy stances, can be represented by a randomized strategy between the two, where voters

choose L with probability 1/2 and R with probability 1/2. In other words, half the electorate

of type c vote for L, while the other half votes for R. Alternatively, we consider the strategy

(“strategy b”) under which these voters opt for the status quo (e.g. they fear retaliation from

the authoritarian party, or want to keep patronage benefits α, etc.), that is, they vote for

the authoritarian party as long as the opposition party does not achieve an election-winning

majority (50%), in which case they switch their vote. That is, under strategy b, type c voters

do not “swing” elections, but help instead a given party to retain power.

3.4 Numerical Examples

Next, we provide alternative initial parameterizations in order to simulate the dynamics of

political views within the electorate, as well as election outcomes under the two alternative

voting strategies discussed above. In particular, we consider the emergence of type 1 and

type 2 opposition parties as two separate cases. However, in both cases we maintain the

following initial distribution of the prevailing political views amongst the electorate:

Table 2: Initial Electorate Distribution

l0= 0.12 c0= 0.80 r0= 0.08

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As can be readily be seen in Table 2, the initial distribution of political preferences in

the electorate is greatly concentrated at c0. Amongst the minorities, l0 has a slightly higher

mass than r0, which can be a justification for the authoritarian party to move its policy

stance towards L and so favor this minority group.

3.4.1 Dynamics in the presence of a Type 1 Opposition Party

Next, we provide a numerical example for the particular case in which the emerging

opposition party is of type 1, which can be thought of as voters who prefer policy R having

a lower entropy, that is, a higher convincing power.

Table 3: Type 1 Opposition

el= 0.82 γlc= 0.0120

ec= 0.83 γrl= 0.0122

er= 0.81 γrc= 0.0241

Although the entropy values in Table 3 are somewhat similar, the condition that

er < el < ec is still satisfied, and the above predictions still hold. In particular, Figure

1 displays how the fraction of the electorate having a preference for policy R grows and

eventually outnumbers any other group, despite having started with a clear disadvantage in

terms of followers. This is, of course, a direct consequence of the low entropy of r voters,

relative to the other groups.

[FIGURE 1 AROUND HERE]

Figure 2, in turn, displays the voting outcomes for the case in which an opposition party

of type 1 emerges, when type c voters follow a voting strategy that randomizes between the

two alternatives (strategy a). In that figure, it can be seen how the opposition party achieves

an election winning majority in a relatively short period of time after its emergence, despite

having started its existence with a disadvantage.

[FIGURE 2 AROUND HERE]

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Finally, Figure 3 shows the voting outcomes when there is a type 1 opposition, but voting

strategy b (favor the status quo) is followed by type c voters. Given the initial advantage of

the authoritarian party, it turns out that it manages to retain power for a somewhat longer

time even after a type 1 opposition has emerged. However, as the mass of the electorate

having a preference for policy R gradually increases until it achieves an election winning

majority, and the support of type c voters with it, the authoritarian party is eventually

driven out of office by this emerging opposition.

[FIGURE 3 AROUND HERE]

3.4.2 Dynamics in the presence of a Type 2 Opposition Party

Now, we provide a numerical example for the particular case in which the emerging opposition

party is of type 2, which can be thought of as voters who prefer policy L, who therefore

support the authoritarian party, having a lower entropy, that is, a higher convincing power.

Table 4: Type 2 Opposition

el= 0.814 γlc= 0.042

ec= 0.850 γlr= 0.001

er= 0.815 γrc= 0.041

Although the entropy values in Table 4 are also similar, the condition that el < er < ec is

still satisfied, and the predictions discussed above still hold. In particular, Figure 4 displays

how the fraction of the electorate having a preference for policy R initially grows over time

but never gets to outnumber voters in group l, and eventually starts declining. This is, of

course, a direct consequence of the low entropy of l voters, relative to the other groups.

[FIGURE 4 AROUND HERE]

Figure 5, in turn, displays the voting outcomes for the case in which an opposition party

of type 2 emerges, when type c voters follow a voting strategy that randomizes between the

two alternatives (strategy a). In that figure, it can be seen how the opposition party never

34

achieves an election winning majority, despite having started with a fairly high share of votes

in its favor.

[FIGURE 5 AROUND HERE]

Lastly, Figure 6 shows the voting outcomes when there is a type 2 opposition, but voting

strategy b (favor the status quo) is followed by type c voters. Given the initial advantage of

the authoritarian party, it turns out that it manages to retain power despite the emergence

of such opposition. Even though the mass of the electorate having a preference for policy R

gradually increases. its votes are never enough to achieve an election winning majority, as

the support of type c voters is never obtained and the authoritarian party is able to remain

in office.

[FIGURE 6 AROUND HERE]

4 Opposition Parties in authoritarian Mexico and authoritarian Taiwan

In this last section we provide some evidence for our theory from the dominant-party regimes

of Mexico and Taiwan. We will focus our attention on parties of type 1 (those created during

an authoritarian pinnacle with no access to authoritarian patronage networks): the Mexican

PAN and the Taiwanese DPP.

The Partido Accion Nacional was created in 1939, exactly ten years after the emergence of

a strong authoritarian coalition brought together under the Partido Nacional Revolucionario

(PNR, which will later change its name for PRI). The timing of the PAN emergence is

important because it elucidates that the formation of opposition parties in authoritarian

pinnacles is not a random event. To emphasize this point, and before delving in the particular

historical circumstances at the time of the formation of this opposition party, we want to focus

on the epistolary conversation between Jose Vasconcelos –an important Mexican intellectual

and public figure in the 1920s and 1930s– and Manuel Gomez Morın –the PAN’s founder.

In 1929 there was a call for general elections in which Vasconcelos decided to participate

35

to compete for the post of President. Vasconcelos was popular among the middle class and

some sectors worried about the anti-religious zeal of the most powerful man in the country at

the time –Plutarco Elıas Calles– so he thought he had a good chance of getting into office. In

October of 1928 Vasconcelos wrote Gomez Morın telling him his intention to run for president

and asking for support in putting together, in a brief period of time, a political party that

would help Vasconcelos’ campaign the next year. Gomez Morın’s response in November is

notable because he criticizes the idea of creating a party without a defined program and

fully dependent on the personality of Vasconcelos to obtain votes. According to him, the

rapid creation of a political organization was reckless and unlikely to be successful: “Your

[Vasconcelo’s] candidacy creates lots of enthusiasm [...] but it is inconvenient because it

is difficult to sustain and because it is easy to attack” (Gomez Morın 1928). Rather than

focusing on forming the type of organization that Vasconcelos had in mind, Gomez Morın

suggested the following:

It is essential, above all other things, to create political groups with clear orientationsand capable of enduring. [...] If these groups try, before acquiring clear positions in thepublic opinion, to enter into a fight with those elements that hold power today andthat are not likely to let it go, then they will also enter into a [stupid] fight in whichthey would like to get rid of those groups in power. But, because those that are [ingovernment today] have power and because the new groups, for many reasons, will notyet be organized nor will they have convinced the people that they represent somethingnew, [...], then it is probable that in this fight those in power will have a completevictory and the other groups will lose hope for many years to come. (Emphasis added.Loc. cit.)

From Gomez Morın’s words, then, we obtain two pieces of important information. First,

that only an organized group with the capacity to endure is able to control those in power

and, second, that the contextual situation in 1929 is not favorable for the creation of a real

opposition party.

The time for the formation of this party will come until the end of the 1930s. At

the time, president Lazaro Cardernas’ governing strategies took a radical shift to the left

and his populist policies constituted a meaningful abandonment of capitalist development

36

(for an analysis of the period cf. Gilly 2001). For example, his government advocated the

“socialization” of the means of production through workers control of those firms that were

reluctant to enter into fair collective bargains. He also legalized the Communist Party –which

had strong support and influence in the labor movement– and, more important, appointed

activists of this party to the Ministry of Education. His government started a project for

a “socialist education” and forced private schools to adopt academic programs with a left-

leaning character. Cardenas term in office also allowed for the most important redistribution

of land since the country’s independence in the 1820s and it nationalized the oil industry in

1938.

For most groups on the right, including businessmen and the Church, the Cardenas

period signified the clearest example of authoritarian unreliability, where the state showed

its muscle by implementing pernicious pro-labor and pro-peasant policies. This period, thus,

was the critical juncture that allowed for the formation of the PAN. In September 1939, both

economic liberals and social conservatives decided to support Gomez Morın’s project for the

creation of a challenger party that would attempt to control, via elections, the authoritarians.

According to Loaeza (1999, 151), the founders of the party believed that the party would

serve “first and foremost as an organism that will keep an eye and control the actions of

the State and its agents”. It is interesting to notice that the significant pressure from the

right led to an immediate policy response from Cardenas and the authoritarian coalition. By

the end of this term, for example, land reform diminished “from an average of 3.35 million

hectares per year to less than 882,000 hectares per year” (Greene 2007, 77). Most important,

Cardenas choose as his successor a moderate candidate, Manuel Avila Camacho, who, once

in power, made a strong effort to appease the right.

We want to make two important final points about the PAN. First, despite not having

ample resources, the party showed a constant increment in the percentage of votes obtained:

in 1943 it obtains only 1.09% of the votes for congressional elections19, by 1964 this percentage

19Notice that by 1943 the authoritarian government had already moderated its polices and that the PANhad just been created. Therefore, the low percentage obtained in this year was expected.

37

had increased to 11.5% and by 1973, just before a deep internal problem that led the party to

not participate in the 1976 presidential elections, it had already acquired 14.7% of the votes

(Loaeza 1999, 327). In contrast, parties like the PARM and the PPS, known as “satellite

parties” of the PRI –i.e. opposition parties of type 2 according to our typology (competitive

clientelistic parties)–, never obtained more than 2% of the votes since their creation up

until this last date. The evidence, then, supports the idea that opposition parties of type 1

“absorb” precious votes from the authoritarians. Second, it is outstanding that just when

the PAN had internal problems (beginning in 1973 and ending in 1978) and when it decided

not to participate in elections (1976), the PRI governments (led by the then presidents Luis

Echeverrıa and, later, Jose Lopez Portillo) started moving back to the left, increasing again

land reform, nationalizing several industries and amplifying the presence of the state in the

economy overall. For example, public sector expenditures “grew from 21.7% of GDP in 1970

to 48.8% by 1982 [the last year of Lopez Portillo’s term in office]” (Greene 2007, 85).

We now review the case of Taiwan. The DPP is a very particular organization because

it shows traits of both an opposition party of type 1 and an opposition party of type 2.

The main reason is that this party is the product of a conglomerate of different challenger

politicians: those who had some sort of access to authoritarian patronage networks before

joining the Dangwai Movement20 and, later, the party; and those that lacked this type of

access and were angered by the KMT’s foreign policy in the 1970s.

The KMT established its rule in Taiwan at the end of the 1940s. An important

characteristic of the Taiwanese regime is that it precluded the organization of challenger

parties. The justification for this and other limits to political participation was that the

“measures” were necessary due to the condition of civil war between the KMT and the

Chinese Communist Party. Thus, up until the mid-1980s Taiwan was under martial law

(chieh-yen). Despite this de jure state of siege, gradual steps were taken to implement some

20Dangwai means “outside the party”. The term was used to refer to independents that competed againstthe KMT for the Legislative Yuan and other offices since the end of the 1960s up until the formation of theDPP in September 1986.

38

sort of local self-rule. In 1950 a Provincial Assembly was established with politicians directly

elected for three-year terms and, in 1969, elections were held to elect delegates for the central

legislative bodies: the Legislative Yuan and the National Assembly (for a description of the

period cf. Chou and Nathan 1987, 2-4).

The politicians that will later form the DPP in September 1986 can be divided into two

broad camps/factions. On the one hand, there were those challengers that at some point in

time had decided to join the KMT but, given the grim prospects for a successful political

career in the party, decided to abandon it and run for office as independents. In this category

we include people like Huang Hsin-chieh (he won local assembly elections during the 1960s).

Within this camp we also include those challengers that, despite not having any former

connection to the KMT, had access to state resources before joining the Dangwai Movement.

Politicians like Kang Ning-hsiang enter this category (he was elected in 1969 to the Taipei

City Council and, from there, he worked to build strong bases and networking capacity).

These politicians were moderate and did not challenge many of the policy positions of the

KMT. On the other hand, there were those activists that joined the Dangwai Movement in

the mid-1970s and who, according to Rigger (2001, 18), were “more intellectual and more

ideological than its forebears”. In this group we include challengers such as Lin Cheng-

chieh and the brothers Wu Nai-Jen and Wu Nai-teh. These politicians will strongly criticize

Kang Ning-hsiang for his weak stance towards the KMT and its policies. These more radical

challengers will later form the most ideological and radical faction within the DPP, the “New

Tide” faction (for a full review of the Dangwai Movement and the emergence of the DPP cf.

ibid., ch. 2).

We want to emphasize that the timing in which each of the future factions of the

DPP joined the Dangwai Movement matters because it proves an important part of our

theory of party formation: the more moderate faction was conformed by those politicians

with preexisting links to the authoritarians and their patronage networks, they will start

competing in elections as independents from the mid-1960s onwards; members of the “New

39

Tide” faction will join the party until the mid 1970s, just at a time when the country was

experiencing an overwhelming external pressure and the KMT did not make decisions to

avert the situation: Taiwan’s “isolation” in the international arena had increased since its

expulsion from the United Nations in 1971, “de-recognition” by Japan a year later, and

perhaps more important given the diplomatic and military support that the KMT regime

got from the USA, the decision of president Jimmy Carter to “normalize” relations with the

People’s Republic of China and cut ties with Taiwan. Mainlander Taiwanese, most of them

excluded from the political arena, saw this situation and the KMT position towards it –i.e.

the reluctance to declare Taiwan a sovereign country or, at least, as a separate entity from

mainland China– as worrisome. By 1989, three years after the DPP’s foundation, the “New

Tide” faction forced all other groups within the party to adopt the issue of a “sovereign and

independent Republic of Taiwan” as the main subject of the party’s program. With this,

the DPP got the status as the main challenger to the KMT’s foreign policies.

The DPP was successful in attracting an important number of voters. It is noteworthy

that those DPP candidates who publicly advocated the country’s independence and

sovereignty were the most successful ones: “in 1989, eight members of the New Tide Faction

joined together to form the pro-independence New National Alliance to contest seats in the

December legislative election. All eight were elected, a stunning accomplishment” (Rigger

2001, 124). The party was successful in “absorbing” votes from the dominant KMT: in 1991

the DPP obtained 23.9% of the votes for the National Assembly elections, and by 1996 this

percentage had increased to 29.8% (data from Taiwan-Communique 1996). Following the

logic of our theory we want to end this section noting that in the 1990s the KMT adopted

many of the policies advocated by the DPP:

By the mid-1990s, all of the concrete items on the DPP’s reform agenda had beenachieved, and the party was forced to find new issues to attract members and voters.[...]. [T]he KMT has tended to co-opt DPP issue positions that prove popular withvoters, including domestic policy proposals such as national health care and foreignpolicy initiatives such as the U[nited] N[ations] bid. (Rigger 2001, 151. Emphasisadded).

40

The cases of the PAN in Mexico and the DPP in Taiwan show that opposition parties of

type 1 emerge with the main objective of controlling authoritarian behavior. From the brief

data presented in this section, they seem to be very successful.

5 Concluding Remarks

In this paper we have provided a novel theory of opposition party formation in authoritarian

settings. Our main argument is simple: assuming there is a modicum of electoral

competition, groups excluded from an authoritarian winning coalition have incentives to

create opposition parties to control and moderate authoritarian behavior. We believe

that, besides Kenneth Greene’s book on the matter (who did not fully account for

party emergence), this is the first attempt to generalize an important phenomenon in

competitive/hybrid authoritarian regimes. However, we have also created a typology of

opposition parties in authoritarian regimes and we have argued that our theory is applicable

only to parties of type 1 (strong programmatic parties).

Understanding why challenger parties emerge and endure in these adverse settings has

several implications for how scholars understand the broader topic of opposition to autocrats.

Contrary to authors such as Mainwaring (2003, passim.), opposition parties do not necessarily

play a “dual game”, trying to topple the authoritarians while at the same time winning

elections. This is an assumption which is not always supported by empirical evidence. We

have argued, contrary to this author, that there are multiple types of opposition parties and

not all of them have as their main objective to play a dual game: some are so dependent on

state patronage that they are very unlikely to pose a great challenge to the authoritarian

winning coalition, others may have the desire to win elections but, at the same time, do

not have the organizational resources to topple the regime (e.g. personalistic coteries) and

others, the ones that are the main focus of this paper, want to control authoritarian behavior

without considering overthrowing a regime which is at its pinnacle and, therefore, unlikely

to disappear in the short run.

Our theory also has broader implications to understand how many of these opposition

41

parties behave once they face democratic elections (Hernandez Company 2013): how they

relate to the electorate, what type of politicians are more likely to join these organizations,

etc. A full appreciation of these organizations is, thus, not only important to understand the

behavior of authoritarian regimes but also the prospects for poor or high quality democracies.

42

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Figure 1: Electorate Dynamics, Type 1 Opposition

Figure 2: Voting Outcomes (Type 1 Opposition, Strategy a)

Figure 3: Voting Outcomes (Type 1 Opposition, Strategy b)

47

Figure 4: Electorate Dynamics, Type 2 Opposition

Figure 5: Voting Outcomes (Type 2 Opposition, Strategy a)

Figure 6: Voting Outcomes (Type 2 Opposition, Strategy b)

48