Competitive Authoritarian Institutions and Political Change: Theory and Evidence from the Third Wave of Democratization

This thesis sheds light on the question of how democratic concessions influence the stability of nondemocratic regimes. The conventional prediction in the formal literature is that institutions promoting the participation and representation of opposition sectors in authoritarian regimes make political change less likely. This prediction is based on the conception that democratic institutions allow for policy and economic concessions that limit the opposition to the regime. Yet while policy concessions and redistribution are tools generally used by nondemocratic regimes, the theorized effect of political liberalization is at odds with the empirical evidence. Legislatures and party competition do not seem to affect the tenure of dictators, and sonic forms of limited elections are actually associated with democratization. This thesis develops a theoretical model that reconciles the role of seemingly democratic institutions in nondemocratic regimes and the empirical evidence suggesting that different types of dictatorships have different propensities for political change. The theory emphasizes the role of authoritarian elites and party organizations developed during authoritarian rule in new democracies. In addition to reconciling the theoretical and empirical debates, the theoretical model developed offers important insights about policy determination, state repression, political liberalization, and regime change in nondemocratic states. These predictions are investigated empirically using cross-national data from the "Third Wave" of democratization and sub-national data from Mexico's transition to democracy.