Elections and Popular Uprisings Under Authoritarianism: Short-term Promotion and Long-term Prevention

Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been an increase in authoritarian regime to conduct competitive elections. Many scholar has analyzed the effects of elections on the survival of authoritarian regimes empirically. However, it is still unclear how elections affect political phenomena and lead regime changes.

In this paper, we focus on popular uprising, which is an important mechanism that leads to regime changes, and examine how elections under authoritarian regimes influence on onsets of uprisings. Our result shows, while popular uprisings is promoted in election years, the more experienced elections with high free and fair, the more uprisings are restrained. This result is consistent with the previous study that examined that elections destabilize authoritarian regimes in the short term, but stabilizes them in the long run. This paper contributes to further findings about the function of elections under authoritarian regimes by focusing on the threat from external actors such as mass uprisings.