Postauthoritarian Elections

Abstract

The past two decades have seen a resurgence of democracy in formerly autocratic countries. The behavior of the electorate in each first election following a period of authoritarian rule is closely watched for clues to the future success of democracy. Yet the scarcity of empirical studies of similar elections has left us with little more than commonsense expectations to guide our analysis. This article empirically tests several of these expectations, using data from earlier postauthoritarian parliamentary elections. Expectations of unusually high turnout could not be supported, but future levels of turnout are affected by the timing of subsequent elections. The large number of newly formed parties competing in a postauthoritarian election seldom persist, and prediscontinuity power relationships among surviving parties are generally preserved. Expectations that postauthoritarian elections are followed by a period of volatile electoral behavior could not be supported. Parties that finish first in postauthoritarian elections also finish first in the next election. The article concludes that these elections are not sufficiently different from other elections to warrant their exclusion from comparative research.