It is not obvious why elites, given their initial concentration of political power, should ever give it away or open it to more democratic control. Power, over agencies of government or means of production, gives access to economic resources that can be used to defend its concentration. Democratizing political power invites the populace to seize economic power, stripping elites of their outside income and wealth – thereby also gaining the margin above subsistence that allows them to defy elite political authority, if not the purchasing power to buy it. ‘Democratization has rarely occurred, and still occurs rarely, because under most political regimes in most social environments major political actors have strong incentives and means to block the very processes that promote democratization’ (Tilly 2000: 2).

The transition from elite rule to full presidential or parliamentary democracy is rendered more puzzling by intermediate arrangements’ availability. ‘Managed’ democracy, in which parties compete and people vote while the same ruling group controls political strategy and major enterprise management, has been associated with sustained economic advance in emerging economic heavyweights such as China, Turkey, Vietnam, Ethiopia and Kazakhstan. Electoral management can often sustain elite rule by making it look credibly imperilled, and does not always need the blunt instruments of stuffed ballots, intimidated voters, jailed or exiled opposition leaders, and censored media. To stop electors tiring of a one- party system, managed democracies have learnt to tolerate a range of opposition parties, some winning sizeable representation. These dissuade protest voters from moving their battle into the streets, and mobilize new ideas which rulers can co- opt, blaming opponents if they fail. Far from depending on recent advances in behavioural psychology and propaganda, techniques for perpetual re- election were well understood by (among many others) Mexico's Institutional Revolution Party from 1929 and Malaysia's Barisan Nasional (National Front) from 1973. Recently arrived social media may make news- and voter- management harder. Yet even in more malleable times many countries’ elites had moved straight from authoritarianism to genuine contestation, without serious attempts at a quasi- pluralist halfway house.