Abstract
This paper explores the conditions under which authoritarian leaders change electoral systems by focusing on three cases of electoral authoritarianism in Central Asia - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. In electoral authoritarian regimes where opposition are very weak, single member district (SMD) systems bring seat bias favorable to ruling parties while empowering local ruling elites vis-à-vis the autocrat, which may lead to damaging stable authoritarian rule. Under this dilemma of electoral system choice, autocrats with high mobilization power prefer proportional representation (PR) systems, which demand autocrats to gather a larger number of votes to win elections overwhelmingly but also enable autocrats to effectively contain the emergence of powerful local ruling elites. Case studies of the three Central Asian republics suggest that autocrats shift to PR systems when they are able to mobilize a large number of votes. When they are weak in garnering votes, then they rely more on SMD systems.
