Electoral Responsiveness in Closed Autocracies: Evidence from Petitions in the former German Democratic Republic

Contested elections are usually seen as precondition for constituent responsiveness. By contrast, I show that even uncontested elections can create incentives for autocratic regimes to address citizen demands. I propose that closed autocracies engage in cycles of responsiveness before uncontested elections to assure citizens of their competence and raise popular support. They do so to mitigate the short-term destabilizing effects of elections. Analyzing a unique dataset of petitions to the government of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), I calculate that response times to petitions were up to 31% shorter before the GDR’s uncontested elections. Moreover, I introduce the concept of “substantive responsiveness,” which focuses on the material consequences of responsiveness for petitioners, and show that petitions were 64% more likely to be successful. The paper advances our understanding of electoral mobilization in closed regimes and contributes to an emerging research agenda on responsiveness and accountability in autocracies.

Party Organisation of PiS in Poland: Between Electoral Rhetoric and Absolutist Practice

The article analyses the organisation of the Law and Justice party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość [PiS]) in Poland. The case of PiS does not only allow us to explore the organisational features of a strongly institutionalized, incumbent party which uses populist radical right (PRR) politics. PiS, we argue, is also an ideal case to contrast what such parties might rhetorically declare and substantively do about their organisational features. Using party documents, press reports, quantitative data, and insights from the secondary literature based on interviews with activists, we evaluate the extent to which PiS has developed a mass-party-related organisation, and centralized its intra-party decision-making procedures. We find that while PiS made overtures to some aspects of mass-party-like organisation for electoral mobilization, the party remained reluctant to actively expand its membership numbers and put little effort into fostering the integration and social rootedness of its members through everyday intra-party activities. Furthermore, despite attempts to enact organisational reinvigoration, in practice PiS continued to revolve around strongly centralized structures and, in particular, the absolutist leadership style of the party’s long-time Chair Jarosław Kaczyński. The analysis contributes to assessing the variety and functions of organisational features and appeals within the comparative study of PRR parties. Most particularly, it invites further research into the still relatively under-researched interactions between PRR party organisation and active party communication.

The Emergence of the PRI in Mexico

This chapter explores the role of erosion of traditional agrarian structures on party organization in Mexico. Land privatization was extensive but not uniform in the country by the time the Partido Revolucioonario Institucional (PRI) began forming. Through agrarian census materials and archival evidence of electoral mobilization and peasant union construction, this chapter shows how the regions in the country with relatively higher levels of land privatization and where kinship-based communal councils were weak were the areas where the PRI emerged as a mass party. In areas where land privatization was weak and communal councils were strong, the party was able to establish only tenuous temporary alliances with peasants. It shows how these regional differences correspond to differences in peasants’ organizational availability, types of interests and demands, and emergence of professional politicians autonomous from their communities of origin. These differences facilitated the emergence of the PRI.

The Failure of Party Formation in Bolivia

This chapter explores the role of persistent traditional agrarian structures on party organization. Land privatization was considerably less extensive in Bolivia when compared to Mexico. Through agrarian census materials and archival evidence of attempted electoral mobilization and peasant union construction, the chapter show how the regions in the country with relatively higher levels of communal land tenure and strong traditional authority structures were places where it was essentially impossible for the MNR to establish sustainable links to a mass base. In regions with less communal property holding, the MNR developed close links to existing and emerging peasant unions. Ultimately, these regions were not large enough as in the Mexican case to sustain stable party formation.

Patronage at Work

In countries around the world, politicians distribute patronage jobs to supporters in exchange for a wide range of political services – such as helping with campaigns and electoral mobilization. Patronage employees (clients) engage in these political activities that support politicians (patrons) because their fates are tied to the political fate of their patrons. Although conventional wisdom holds that control of patronage significantly increases an incumbent's chance of staying in power, we actually know very little about how patronage works. Drawing on in-depth interviews, survey data, and survey experiments in Argentina, Virginia Oliveros details the specific mechanisms that explain the effect of patronage on political competition. This fascinating study is the first to provide a systematic analysis of the political activities of mid and low-level public employees in Latin America. It provides a novel explanation of the enforcement of patronage contracts that has wider implications for understanding the functioning of clientelist exchanges.

Policy Feedback and the Polarization of Interest Groups

We use the case of education interest groups to examine how and when policy changes lead interest groups to polarize in their support for political parties. Using over 145,000 campaign contributions from all 50 states from 2000 to 2017, we test whether the passage of private school choice, charter laws, and labor retrenchment policies led to the polarization of education interest groups over time. In 2000, teachers unions were the dominant group and mostly aligned with Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans lacked support from any education groups. This pattern was consistent across states. Over time, coalitions in some states became polarized, meaning unions grew even more aligned with Democrats and reform groups with Republicans, while other states did not experience such polarization. We show that private school choice programs, but not labor retrenchment or charter laws, contributed to this changing partisan alignment. Our findings demonstrate that policy feedback can shape both the electoral mobilization and party alignments of interest groups.

Protests, Pandemics, and Political Participation: Voter Turnout in Georgia in the 2020 Elections

We consider how pandemic-related shifts in election administration and racial justice protest activity impacted participation in 2020 primary and general elections in Georgia. Using a comprehensive statewide voter file, including data on the self-reported race and validated turnout of over 7 million registered Georgians, we analyze the combined effect of these events on racial differences in voter turnout rates, methods, and timing. We find that despite a shift to mail balloting, Black voters were significantly more likely to vote in person during the pandemic than White Democrats. These voters were later less likely to vote by mail (or vote at all) in November. We also demonstrate that Black turnout was significantly higher in the period following racial justice protests in Georgia than it was for other groups. The results of this study indicate how election reforms and non-electoral mobilization can shape turnout disparities even among highly engaged voters.

Do Social Media Matter?

Political experiences on social media—such as being targeted by electoral mobilization, seeing politically supportive messages, and accidentally encountering news—contribute to citizens’ repertoires of political participation. These associations are, on average, stronger for electoral mobilization than for accidental exposure, while exposure to supportive political content lies in between. Political experiences on social media do not disproportionally encourage participation in relatively easier, less resource-intensive activities, nor in activities primarily occurring in digital spaces, but foster hybrid participatory repertoires that combine higher-threshold and lower-threshold endeavors occurring both online and face to face. When placed amid the many different factors that affect participation, political experiences on social media play a distinctive and important role. However, their impact may be weaker than that of long-standing differences in resources and motivations among different groups of citizens.

Introduction

To understand the relationship between social media and political participation, the book focuses on politically relevant outcomes of citizens’ use of social media rather than on the technical affordances of digital platforms or the sheer frequency with which people use them. Encountering political content one agrees with, being accidentally exposed to political news, and being targeted by electoral mobilization can all lead citizens to participate more in politics. This is especially the case among citizens who are less interested in politics and less attentive to a general election campaign. Differences in the kinds of voters who may be mobilized by social media may also affect electoral competition. Political institutions can also shape the relationships between political experiences on social media and participation.