Elections and Political Order under Autocracy, 1960-2000.

This paper explores when and how elections under dictatorships invite violent conflicts. In some autocracies, elections function as a useful tool for autocrats to stabilize their rule. On the other hand, however, holding of un-free elections can backfire on dictators because election time can be a "focal point" for an oppositional force to be united and launch a collective challenge against dictators. Collapse of dictatorial regimes or brutal repression by dictators are two likely results of such insurgencies. Why do elections under dictatorship have dramatically different effects on regime stability? After theorizing how dictators' effective use of patronage distribution will significantly change, we hypothesize that elections bring about political stability in the countries where relative value of patronage is high (e.g. less developed states), clientelism is strong (e.g. less urbanized states) and the size of patronage distribution is large. By using an original dataset of authoritarian elections and conflict (1960-2000), we find that parliamentary elections under dictatorships are more likely to prevent violence if they are held in less developed, more rural, and/or countries that have larger size of public sectors. We also find that as the number of parliament seats increases, violent conflicts are less likely to occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]