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Opposition Coalitions and Democratization by Election1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2012

Michael Wahman
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Abstract

This article critically assesses the argument that oppositional coordination creates democratization by elections. It argues that the previously acknowledged democratizing effect of pre-electoral coalitions is better described as an alternation effect, by which coordinated oppositional parties are more likely to win elections. The positive effect of oppositional coalitions is, however, short lived and intimately connected with cases where the election is won by the opposition. Evidence of potential endogeneity is presented, which shows that coalitions are more likely when there is a realistic chance of oppositional victories. These results were derived by utilizing an original dataset of 251 authoritarian elections in 86 countries from 1973 to 2004.

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Government and Opposition , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , January 2013 , pp. 3 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 2012

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Footnotes

*

Michael Wahman is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for European Studies, University of Texas at Austin. Contact email: michael.wahman@utexas.edu.

1

Previous versions of this article have been presented at the University of Connecticut Conference on Democracy and Democratization, February 2009, and the ECPR General Conference, September 2009, at Potsdam University. The author is grateful to Axel Hadenius and Jan Teorell for their generous contribution of data and valuable comments. The author is also indebted to Merete Bech Seeberg, Inken von Borzyskowski, Marc Morjé Howard, Tony Ingesson, Peter Kingstone, Staffan I. Lindberg, Johannes Lindvall, Michael K. Miller, Mia Olsson, Anders Sannerstedt, Lisa Strömbom and two anonymous reviewers for excellent comments on previous drafts. Data and documentation are available upon request.

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