How Surviving Authoritarian Parties Shape Party Development and Election Quality

❓ What This Paper Asks

This study examines how authoritarian legacies shape democratic party development through two channels: authoritarian successor parties and the degree of party institutionalization of both ruling and opposition parties from the autocratic era. The research asks how (1) the survival or reconfiguration of authoritarian actors into new parties and (2) the institutional strength of parties under autocracy affect party institutionalization after democratization.

🔎 How Party Histories Are Traced

• Analysis relies on a unique dataset of party institutionalization that links measures of party organization before and after regime transitions.
• Statistical tests relate pre-transition party institutionalization and the presence of authoritarian successor parties to outcomes in the democratic era, with a complementary analysis of post-transition election quality to assess mechanisms.

📌 Key Findings

• Post-transition party institutionalization is positively related to the degree of party institutionalization under autocracy: stronger parties before democratization tend to produce stronger parties after it.
• When highly institutionalized ruling parties survive democratization, they use their organizational advantage to stymie the development of other parties.
• Alternatively, when authoritarian elites form well-organized parties in proximity to democratization, institutionalization during the democratic era increases across parties.
• Evidence from the election-quality analysis indicates that ruling parties which survive democratization can leverage power to undermine clean elections, supporting the proposed mechanism of organizational advantage.
• Overall, democratic party institutionalization increases where autocratic-era party institutionalization was high and where reactive authoritarian successor parties survive the transition.

⚖️ Why It Matters

These findings reveal a dual legacy of authoritarianism: party structures inherited from autocracy can either entrench dominant actors and limit party competition or, when elites reorganize near transitions, elevate organizational standards across the party system. The results have implications for theories of democratic consolidation, the design of international support for party development, and monitoring strategies for electoral integrity.