Electoral competitiveness in competitive authoritarianism in Latin America 1990-2014

Abstract

Elections in competitive authoritarian regimes have become a major focus of comparative research. However, existing research mostly focuses on large-N comparative studies with older cases and data. Therefore, the conclusions of these studies typically only have a fairly limited explanatory potential. A number of authors thus suggest turning our attention to studies with small and middle-N, which -thanks to closer interaction with data- can help improve the explanatory ability. The aim of this study is to react to this situation and offer an explanation of the varying degree of electoral competitiveness in competitive authoritarianism in Latin America. For that purpose, this study compares 41 cases of elections that were carried out between 1990 and 2014, using regression analysis and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). This study uses the data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-DEM) project and tries to either provide more accurate conclusions than some of the previous researches or to disprove these conclusions altogether. The results highlight the importance of economic growth, concurrent elections, opposition party ban, cohesion of the opposition and media censorship. These findings are in discrepancy with previous research which rather put structural factors in the back seat and considered actors' behaviour to be the key factors. What is even more interesting, though, is the fact that the two most influential structural explanations usually mentioned with respect to competitive authoritarianism, i.e. natural resources rent and economic statism, are proved as rather irrelevant in Latin America’s context.