Schedler - The Menu of Manipulation - JoD.2002
Schedler - The Menu of Manipulation - JoD.2002
Schedler - The Menu of Manipulation - JoD.2002
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Elections Without Democracy
THE MENU
OF MANIPULATION
Andreas Schedler
tinued hold on power. Their dream is to reap the fruits of electoral legiti-
macy without running the risks of democratic uncertainty. Balancing
between electoral control and electoral credibility, they situate themselves
in a nebulous zone of structural ambivalence. Delimiting the blurry fron-
tiers of electoral authoritarianism cannot help but be a complex and
controversial task. Perhaps the best way to get a handle on the problem
is take a fresh look at the normative presuppositions that underlie the idea
of democratic elections.
But what does “democracy” mean in this context? How sharp is the
distinction between “democratic” and “authoritarian” regimes? Political
democracy, some argue, is not a matter of “either/or” but of more or less:
Democracy is not simply present or absent, but admits of degrees. Oth-
ers object that a qualitative difference separates democracy from
authoritarianism. Authoritarian regimes are not less democratic than
democracies, but plainly undemocratic. While debate over these issues
among scholars and practitioners has been polemical and inconclusive,
the idea of electoral authoritarianism combines insights from both per-
spectives. It introduces gradation while retaining the idea of thresholds.
the polls, competent and neutral election management must count their
votes honestly and weigh them equally. Without bureaucratic integrity
and professionalism, the democratic principle of “one person, one vote”
remains an empty aspiration.
7) Irreversibility. Like elections that begin without choice, elections
that end without consequences are not democratic. The winners must be
able to assume office, exercise power, and conclude their terms in accord-
ance with constitutional rules. Here, the circle closes. Elections must be
“decisive” ex ante as well as “irreversible” ex post.6 If they do not invest
winners with effective decision-making power, then they are only so
much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Elections may be considered democratic if and only if they fulfill each
item on this list. The mathematical analogy is multiplication by zero,
rather than addition. Partial compliance with democratic norms does not
add up to partial democracy. Gross violation of any one condition invali-
dates the fulfillment of all the others. If the chain of democratic choice
is broken anywhere, elections become not less democratic but undemo-
cratic. Situated at a middling level of abstraction and complexity, this way
of distinguishing between democratic and authoritarian elections offers
at least two distinct advantages.
First, it narrows the gap between continuous and dichotomous concep-
tions of democracy. While attentive to nuance and gradation, it also takes
into account “qualitative leaps” in the contested border regions that divide
democracy and authoritarianism. It encourages close attention to empiri-
cal detail while offering a conceptual scheme to order and weight the
innumerable checklist items that election observers use to assess electoral
processes. Though cognizant of the foggy zone of ambiguity that spans
democracy and authoritarianism, it still provides systematic justification for
the notion that democratic regimes form “bounded wholes”—coherent
configurations of essential attributes.7
Second, the idea of a coherent chain of democratic choice opens the
way to “contextualized comparisons” of electoral regimes.8 Authoritar-
ian incumbents may play the electoral-control game by attacking any link
in the chain. But whichever approach or approaches they choose, the idea
of basic norms linked together into a unified whole by the logic of demo-
cratic choice can help to reveal their maneuvers for what they are.
carve the democratic heart out of electoral contests. What follows should
be understood as only a preliminary list, corresponding to the seven links
enumerated in Table 1 on page 39.
1) Authoritarian rulers may preempt potential threats emanating from
popular elections by circumscribing the scope of elective office through
the use of reserved positions. Some authoritarian regimes allow voters to
fill subordinate positions of public authority, while keeping the “high
center” of power shut off from electoral pressures. Local elections in
Taiwan until the early 1990s, as well as legislative elections in contem-
porary Morocco and authoritarian Brazil (1964–85), exemplify such
strategies of electoral confinement. Authoritarians may also keep elected
officials from acquiring real power by establishing reserved domains to
cut these officials off from effective decision making.9 Official posts are
filled through elections, but crucial policy areas are removed from their
jurisdiction. Guatemala in the late 1980s, Chile after Pinochet, and con-
temporary Turkey all furnish examples of formal “fencing-off” strategies,
with the military walling off certain policy domains from democratic
interference.
2) At times, authoritarian incumbents can emerge victorious from
transitional elections thanks not to their own “cleverness but the inepti-
tude of [their] opponents.”10 With lamentable frequency, however, such
incumbents find ways to engineer the failure of opposition parties. Most
transitional regimes lack anything resembling a consolidated party sys-
tem. Alert authoritarian rulers can take advantage of this fluidity to split
or marginalize inexperienced opposition groups.
The means by which authoritarian incumbents can secure the exclu-
sion of competitors are manifold. The attempted or actual murder of
opponents, as in Togo in 1991 and in Armenia in 1994, is the most ex-
treme form of candidate screening. Much more common is the softer
technique of banning parties and disqualifying candidates. Expelling
parties and candidates from the electoral game is sometimes a simple act
of arbitrariness.
Often, however, ruling parties hand-tailor legal instruments that per-
mit them to exclude opponents from electoral competition. The electoral
laws of post-revolutionary Mexico kept regional and religious parties as
well as independent candidates out of the electoral arena. In Côte
d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Zambia incumbent presidents used custom-made
“nationality clauses” to prevent their most serious competitors from run-
ning. In the Gambia, coup-monger Yahya Jammeh pushed through a new
constitution that shut the country’s entire political elite out of the elec-
toral game. In much of the Arab world, radical Islamist movements are
either legally proscribed (as in Egypt, Tunisia, and Algeria) or admitted
but tightly curbed (as in Yemen and Jordan). In contemporary Iran, can-
didates’ revolutionary credentials are subject to tight evaluation by state
agencies and religious authorities.
Andreas Schedler 43
Since at least the time of the ancient Romans and their policy of divide
et impera, authoritarian rulers have been seeking to cause fragmentation
among their opponents. To outlaw opposition parties and allow only
unaffiliated individuals to contest elections, as in Taiwan until 1989, or
to ban parties in general, as in contem-
porary Iran and Uganda, represents the
Fareed Zakaria has most radical device for disorganizing
described regimes that electoral dissidence. But authoritarian
are “routinely ignoring incumbents have other, subtler ways of
keeping opposition from coalescing.
constitutional limits on
They may weaken opposition parties by
their power and informal practice, as Kenya’s President
depriving citizens of Daniel arap Moi did by “harassing or
basic rights and bribing the leaders of any new parties
freedoms” as “illiberal until splits occurred or key members
democracies.” Illiberal defected.”11 They may also design insti-
they surely are, but tutions to secure this end, as Peru’s
democratic? President Alberto Fujimori did by se-
curing passage of an election law that
mandated an extreme form of propor-
tional representation in races for Congress.
3) To prevent voters from acquiring fair knowledge about available
choices, incumbents may strive to prevent opposition forces from dis-
seminating their campaign messages. Dissenters may find themselves
shut out of the public space by denial of their rights to speak, peaceably
assemble, or move about freely; or be stripped of reasonable access to
media and campaign resources.
For elections to qualify as democratic, they must take place in an open
environment where civil and political liberties are not subject to repres-
sion. Nevertheless, numerous regimes exhibit a “strange combination of
remarkably competitive elections and harsh repression.” 12 Southeast
Asia’s electoral autocracies have practiced “the containment of liberal
participation” while tolerating electoral contestation, which has resulted
in “a desultory mix of freedoms and controls.”13 In many sub-Saharan
countries, electoral contests have gone hand in hand with pervasive state-
sponsored violence. Fareed Zakaria has described regimes that are
“routinely ignoring constitutional limits on their power and depriving
citizens of basic rights and freedoms” as “illiberal democracies.” 14 Illib-
eral they surely are, but democratic?
When authoritarian incumbents go out to face the voting public and get
its electoral seal of approval for their continuance in power, they often
confront emerging opposition parties under conditions of radical unfair-
ness. In case after case, this unfairness has to do with money and the
media. Usually, electoral authoritarians enjoy ample access to public
funds and favorable public exposure. The whole apparatus of the state—
44 Journal of Democracy
often including government-run media—is at their beck and call, and they
often can harass or intimidate privately owned media organs into ignor-
ing opposition candidates.
4) Ever since the invention of representative government, political
actors have been tempted to control electoral outcomes by controlling the
composition of the electorate, whether by formal or informal means. In
the contemporary world, formal disenfranchisement is a very tough “sell”
both domestically and abroad. Legal apartheid is not a viable model
anymore. Today, even the most hard-boiled electoral autocracies com-
monly grant universal suffrage to their citizens.
The real growth end of the business, therefore, lies in the realm of
informal disenfranchisement. “Ethnic cleansing,” the persecution, physi-
cal elimination, and forced displacement of certain groups of citizens, as
of non-Arabic-speaking blacks in Mauritania in the early 1990s, is the
most atrocious way of stripping citizens of their franchise (and much
more). Less uncivil authoritarians may resort to subtler techniques. They
may devise registration methods, identification requirements, and voting
procedures that are universal in form but systematically discriminatory
in practice. In addition, they may manipulate the voter rolls, illicitly
adding or deleting names, or bar voters from polling stations on trumped-
up legal or technical grounds.
5) Voters must be insulated from undue outside pressures if they are
to choose freely. If power and money determine electoral choices, con-
stitutional guarantees of democratic freedom and equality turn into dead
letters. Clearly, violence or the threat of it can keep voters from exercis-
ing a free choice. (Intimidation may take subtler forms as well.) When
authoritarian rulers resort to systematic violence against opposition can-
didates, civil society, and independent media outlets—as Zimbabwe’s
President Robert Mugabe did in 2000—they may or may not succeed, but
clearly they have stepped beyond the bounds of democratic politics.
Concerns about the “clientelist control” of poor voters tend to arise
whenever electoral competition unfolds in contexts of glaring socioeco-
nomic inequality. Accordingly, in many new democracies, such as the
Philippines and Mexico, reform-minded parties and civic associations
have been worrying about corrupt political entrepreneurs trying to buy
the votes of the poor.15
6) Even if pre-electoral conditions allow for free and fair competition,
authoritarian incumbents may still try to bend or break the will of the
people through “redistributive” practices (electoral fraud) or rules of
representation (institutional bias).
Electoral fraud involves the introduction of bias into the administra-
tion of elections. It can take place at any stage of the electoral process,
from voter registration to the final tally of the ballots. It covers such
activities as forging voter ID cards, burning ballot boxes, or padding the
vote totals of favored parties and candidates. Invariably, though, it vio-
Andreas Schedler 45
M
|
ABSOLUTE FIGURES
Eastern Europe 11 3 5 0 19
Central Asia & Caucasus 0 0 7 1 8
Latin America & Carib. 17 11 4 1 33
N. Africa & Middle East 1 0 10 8 19
Sub-Saharan Africa 5 10 26 7 48
South, SE & East Asia 2 8 6 8 24
World 36 32 58 25 151
WITHIN REGIONS (%)
Eastern Europe 57.9 15.8 26.3 100
Central Asia & Caucasus 87.5 12.5 100
Latin America & Carib. 51.5 33.3 12.1 3 100
N. Africa & Middle East 5.3 52.6 42.1 100
Sub-Saharan Africa 10.4 20.8 54.2 14.6 100
South, SE & East Asia 8.3 33.3 25 33.3 100
World 23.8 21.2 38.4 16.5 100
ACROSS REGIONS (%)
Eastern Europe 30.5 9.4 8.6
Central Asia & Caucasus 12.1 4
Latin America & Carib. 47.2 34.4 6.9 4
N. Africa & Middle East 2.8 17.2 32
Sub-Saharan Africa 13.9 31.2 44.8 28
South, SE & East Asia 5.5 25 10.3 32
World 100 100 100 100
Source: Author’s calculations based on Larry Diamond’s Table 2 on pages 30–31 of this issue (with
small adjustments).
NOTES
The article has benefited from incisive observations by Jason M. Brownlee, Michael
Coppedge, Steven Levitsky, Diego Reynoso, and Richard Snyder. Further comments are
highly welcome and may be sent to [email protected].
1. For similar recent diagnoses, see Thomas Carothers, “The End of the Transition
Paradigm,” Journal of Democracy 13 (January 2002): 5–21; Juan J. Linz, Totalitarian
and Authoritarian Regimes (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000), 33–34; and Andreas
Schedler, “The Nested Game of Democratization by Elections,” International Political
Science Review 23 (January 2002): 103–22. On “diminished subtypes” of democracy, see
David Collier and Steven Levitsky, “Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation
in Comparative Research,” World Politics 49 (April 1997): 430–51.
5. Guy Hermet, Alain Rouquié, and Juan J. Linz, Elections Without Choice (New
York: John Wiley, 1978).
7. On electoral observers’ checklists, see Jørgen Elklit, “Free and Fair Elections,” in
Richard Rose, ed., International Encyclopedia of Elections (Washington, D.C.: Congres-
sional Quarterly Press, 2000), 130–35. On the idea of democratic regimes as “bounded
wholes,” see David Collier and Robert Adcock, “Democracy and Dichotomies: A Prag-
matic Approach to Choices About Concepts,” Annual Review of Political Science 2
(1999): 557–60 and 562.
10. Michael McFaul, “Russia Under Putin: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back,”
Journal of Democracy 11 (July 2000): 23.
11. Joel D. Barkan and Njuguna Ng’ethe, “Kenya Tries Again,” Journal of Democ-
racy 9 (April 1998): 33.
12. Larry Diamond and Marc F. Plattner, “Is Iran Democratizing?” Journal of Democ-
racy 11 (October 2000): 107.
13. William F. Case, “Can the ‘Halfway House’ Stand? Semidemocracy and Elite
Theory in Three Southeast Asian Countries,” Comparative Politics 28 (1996): 459 and
453.
15. See Frederic C. Schaffer, “Clean Elections and the ‘Great Unwashed’: Electoral
Reform and Class Divide in the Philippines,” paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meet-
ing of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August–2
September 2001.
16. See Robert A. Pastor, “The Role of Electoral Administration in Democratic Tran-
sitions: Implications for Policy and Research,” Democratization 6 (Winter 1999):
Appendix.
18. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms
in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
10.