The Democratizing Power of Elections in Africa and Asia Matthijs Bogaards Central European University Budapest, Hungary

The Questions Are multi-party elections a new mode of transition? Are they in Africa? Are they in Asia?

Staffan Lindberg’s thesis In Africa, repeated multi-party elections result in: Improved civil liberties; Improved political rights; Higher democratic qualities; Elections that are more free and fair. Moreover: At least two-thirds of the countries conform to the theory; The number of elections is the only statistically significant explanatory factor of the level of democracy.

The picture elsewhere Attempts to replicate these findings in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Latin America, and Northern African and the Middle East have failed. Comparative global analyses suggest that the democratizing force of multi-party elections takes a very long time and is limited to a particular type of electoral authoritarianism (competitive authoritarianism).

An African re-examination (Bogaards 2013, 2014) A replication of Lindberg’s work with three differences: An updated data set from independence to 2011 with 324 multi-party elections; Regime type as the dependent variable (liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy); Type of electoral authoritarianism as an intervening variable (competitive vs. hegemonic authoritarianism).

A picture of diversity Three cases of successful democratization through elections (Ghana, Senegal, Tanzania); Ten countries remained democratic after founding elections; Twelve countries remained authoritarian despite at least two election cycles; Countries that start out as electoral democracies have a tendency towards regression and break down;

The Asian evidence All nineteen countries in Asia and the Pacific that are not settler-colonies, were not part of the Soviet Union, that have more than 500,000 inhabitants, and have organized at least two consecutive multi-party elections for the legislative and/or executive.

Today’s test Do Freedom House scores improve with the number of elections held? Is there evidence that repeating multi-party elections leads to a democratic transition?

Patterns in Asia Democratic stability: India, Japan, Papua New Guinea Authoritarian stability: Afghanistan, Cambodia, Singapore Fluctuation: Bangladesh, Fiji, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand Regression: Malaysia, Nepal False positive: East Timor, Mongolia Possible candidates: Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan

Conclusion Democratization through elections is very much the exception in Africa and Asia. There is no evidence that the mere repetition of elections helps electoral democracy to deepen or authoritarian regimes to democratize. Message to democracy promoters: supplement election support with demands for institutional reform and insist on free and fair elections.