Internal Opposition Dynamics and Restraints on Authoritarian Control

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 883-900 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grant T. Buckles
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
The Government ◽  
Opposition Parties

Autocrats rely on co-optation to limit opposition mobilization and remain in power. Yet not all opposition parties that pose a threat to their regime are successfully co-opted. This article provides a formal model to show that reliance on activists influences whether an opposition leader receives and accepts co-optation offers from an autocrat. Activists strengthen a party’s mobilization efforts, yet become disaffected when their leader acquiesces to the regime. This dynamic undermines the co-optation of parties with a strong activist base, particularly those with unitary leadership. Activists have less influence over elite negotiations in parties with divided leadership, which can promote collusion with the regime. The results ultimately suggest that party activism can erode authoritarian control, but may encourage wasteful conflicts with the government.

Unsuccessful Success? Failed No-Confidence Motions, Competence Signals, and Electoral Support

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (11) ◽  
pp. 1474-1499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laron K. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Original Data ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
The Government ◽  
Opposition Parties

If no-confidence motions are primarily motivated by bringing down governments, why do only approximately 5% of no-confidence motions in advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 result in the termination of government? In this project the author addresses this puzzle by developing a formal model of the electoral benefits of no-confidence motions and tests these hypotheses with the use of an original data set. No-confidence motions represent highly visible opportunities for opposition parties to highlight their strength or ability compared to the government in the hopes of improving their vote shares. The author finds support for the signal-based theory on a sample of 20 advanced parliamentary democracies from 1960 to 2008. Although no-confidence motions result in decreases for the government parties, the opposition parties that propose the motion experience boosts in vote share. This relationship is even stronger when the proposing party is an alternative governing possibility—illustrated by the conditioning impacts of the number of parliamentary parties and the opposition party’s ideological extremism. This provides an explanation as to why opposition parties would continue to challenge the government even though the motions are likely to fail.

What is opposition good for?

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 260-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betul Demirkaya
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Misleading Information ◽  
Policy Alternative ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Policy Alternatives ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Government ◽  
Opposition Parties

Governments in representative democracies may have incentives to pursue policies that do not align with voters’ preferences. When voters lack information about the policy bias of the government and the consequences of policy alternatives, they will have difficulty holding the government accountable. I propose a formal model that explores whether an opposition party can help solve this problem by providing information about policy alternatives. The model acknowledges that opposition parties may have incentives to mislead voters because of their own policy biases or election concerns. Despite this challenge, the model shows that the presence of an opposition party may induce a biased government to adjust its policies. For this disciplining equilibrium to work, the reputations of the opposition and the government should be close to each other, or the voter should believe that one policy alternative is much more likely to be good for her than another alternative. In addition, the government should be sufficiently concerned about winning the elections, and the opposition should be sufficiently concerned about policy. Under the same conditions, however, misleading information on the opposition may cause an unbiased government to implement policies that are detrimental to voter welfare.

Opposition Parties and the Timing of Successful No-Confidence Motions

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laron K. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Formal Model ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Democratic Accountability ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
The Government ◽  
Policy Direction ◽  
Parliamentary Politics ◽  
Opposition Parties

The power to remove the government via no-confidence motion is a powerful tool afforded to the opposition. By triggering the government’s downfall, opposition parties can substantially influence policy direction in parliamentary democracies. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how government and opposition parties interact to determine the occurrence of no-confidence motions and their chance of success. In this project, I develop a simple formal model that identifies the factors influencing when opposition parties propose no-confidence motions and their outcomes. I find support for these expectations by estimating an empirical model that is explicitly derived from the underlying theoretical model. Unlike previous empirical studies of government stability, this project honors the strategic interactions that occur between government and opposition parties. In addition to the possibility of the motion passing, opposition parties are motivated by electoral considerations, which induce different behaviors at various stages of the electoral cycle. This project offers a number of implications for the study of parliamentary politics, including theories of opposition behavior, democratic accountability, and government duration and termination.

Maximizing Utility vis-à-vis Developing Countries

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Blodgett Bermeo
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Developing Country ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The Government ◽  
Development Outcomes

This chapter develops a formal model of targeted development. It starts from the assumption that governments in industrialized states seek to maximize their own utility in interactions with developing countries. Development concerns compete with other policy goals for scarce government resources. The level of development resources an industrialized country government targets to a particular developing country depends on the weight the government places on development in that country as well as the efficiency of the country in turning resources into development outcomes that the industrialized state values. One of the key insights of the model is that, as governments work to maximize the utility gained per dollar (or euro, yen, etc.) spent, development motives will influence policy in multiple issue areas. The chapter also draws out implications of the theory for each of the issue areas examined in the empirical chapters.

Uganda’s opposition will gain ground despite poll loss

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Youth Unemployment ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
The Government ◽  
Opposition Parties

Significance The opposition has rejected the results and is preparing legal challenges to Museveni’s victory. Impacts NRM internal cohesion will fray as Museveni becomes a more polarising figure in national politics. The NRM will increasingly try to co-opt opponents to neutralise the growing momentum and collaboration among opposition parties. The government will likely launch developmental efforts to tackle youth unemployment and thus avert unrest.

scholarly journals Opposition and Legislative Minorities: Constitutional Roles, Rights and Recognition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliot Bulmer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Service ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Independent Judiciary ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Government ◽  
Constitutional Protections ◽  
Opposition Parties

This Primer examines the recognition, roles and rights of the opposition and the legislative minority in democratic constitutions. Opposition parties operating in democracies rely upon a wide range of constitutional protections, such as the freedoms of association, assembly and expression, backed by an independent judiciary and an impartial civil service. These protections ensure that opponents of the government continue to enjoy equal rights and are not criminalized, harassed or disadvantaged. However, many constitutions go further, formally recognizing the role, powers and responsibilities of the opposition or legislative minority in democratic politics.

scholarly journals Bureaucratic Corruption, Democracy and Judicial Independence

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Gang Wang
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Judicial Independence ◽  
Bureaucratic Corruption ◽  
Institutional Constraint ◽  
Determinants Of Corruption ◽  
The Government ◽  
Different Levels

<p>The theoretical literature in economics and political science has made numerous efforts in understanding the determinants of corruption and stressed the importance of political institutions in shaping the patterns of government corruption. Nevertheless, very few researches focus on the role of judicial system. Employing a formal model with empirical analyses, I incorporate economic factors with political constraints to investigate the different roles of democracy and judicial independence in determining the level of bureaucrats’ corruption across countries. Empirically, the instrumental variable (IV) approach is applied to resolve the endogeneity problems. The evidence indicates that different levels of corruption across countries are significantly influenced by the degrees of judicial independence. To fight corruption successfully, I contend that the judiciary, as a hard institutional constraint to resist bureaucratic corruption, has to be independent from the government. </p>

Rethinking the Conflict “Resource Curse”: How Oil Wealth Prevents Center-Seeking Civil Wars

2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 727-761 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Paine
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Revenue Sources ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
The Government ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
Oil Revenues ◽  
Civil War Onset

AbstractA broad literature on how oil wealth affects civil war onset argues that oil production engenders violent contests to capture a valuable prize from vulnerable governments. By contrast, research linking oil wealth to durable authoritarian regimes argues that oil-rich governments deter societal challenges by strategically allocating enormous revenues to enhance military capacity and to provide patronage. This article presents a unified formal model that evaluates how these competing mechanisms affect overall incentives for center-seeking civil wars. The model yields two key implications. First, large oil-generated revenues strengthen the government and exert an overall effect that decreases center-seeking civil war propensity. Second, oil revenues are less effective at preventing center-seeking civil war relative to other revenue sources, which distinguishes overall and relative effects. Revised statistical results test overall rather than relative effects by omitting the conventional but posttreatment covariate of income per capita, and demonstrate a consistent negative association between oil wealth and center-seeking civil war onset.

De samenvoeging van de gemeenten : Studie van het besluitvormingsproces

Res Publica ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-244
Author(s):  
Rudolf Maes
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Local Government ◽  
The Other ◽  
Socialist Party ◽  
The Government ◽  
Linguistic Groups ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way ◽  
Opposition Parties

In the years 1975-1976 the Belgian government has given high priority to the restructuring of local government, resp. by the means of mergers of communes : the number of communes has decreased by that way from 2,359 to 596.In the decision-making emphasized were the initiatives taken by the Minister of the Interior as wel! on the domain of the elaboration of the proposals to delimitate the territory of the new communes as on the domain of the defining of the terms of execution with regard to the personnel, the finances, the transition of goods, etc.  About the proposals on the delimitation of the territory the local governmentscould only give advice ; they have been sanctioned by the legislative assemblees at the end of 1975 after rather difficult and heated debates.During this period an important resistance developed : on the one side from the communal milieu itself and on the other side from the opposition parties, esp. the Belgian Socialist Party not participating in the government that had made the drawing of the new map of communes according to a broad plan to its aim.Nevertheless, the decision-making also has to be seen from the fact that the opposition parties agreed with the principle of the mergers : they mainly contested the way in which the mergers were executed.The abolition of the federations of communes around the Brussels agglomeration, decided in the same context, has to be seen in the light of the typical Belgian problem of the coexistence of different linguistic groups.

Minderheitsregierung im Bund? Lehren zum Oppositionsverhalten aus Schweden

2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-158
Author(s):  
Melanie Müller ◽  
Marcus Höreth
Keyword(s):  
Party System ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
Adequate Understanding ◽  
Alternative Function ◽  
The Government ◽  
German Bundestag ◽  
Western Democracies ◽  
Opposition Parties

Government stability in the German Bundestag is traditionally tied to a parliamentary majority and an opposition minority . Nonetheless, minority governments in other Western democracies show that, despite the lack of a parliamentary majority, they govern stable and effectively together with the opposition . In this article, on the Swedish case, we examine how opposition parties in parliament are involved in the legislative process in a minority government and what patterns they follow in order to maintain governmental stability without neglecting their alternative function . The paper combines theoretical and concep­tual considerations on the adequate understanding of the opposition in the Federal Repub­lic of Germany with empirical findings on cooperation and conflicts between opposition party groups and minority governments . The results show that opposition parties strategi­cally switch between confrontational (Westminster-style) and consensual patterns of behav­ior (republican) . Through this flexible majority finding, opposition parties in parliament can alternately present themselves as policymakers or as an alternative counterpart to the government . This opposition behavior is functionally adequate under the conditions of a pluralized and fragmented party system and the resulting difficulties in forming a stable government majority .

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document