Syndromes of Democratic Destabilisation – State Structures and Non-Democratic Actions

At the heart of theories of democratic survival is the idea that democracies survive and thrive when electoral losers consider the democratic system legitimate and beneficial to them in the long run. They therefore abstain from engaging in actions that threaten democracy and instead opt to solve conflicts via democratic channels. The extent to which electoral losers fully honor electoral outcomes and work within democratic channels varies considerably from one political system to another, however. In this paper, we examine one specific aspect of the state theorized to have implications for the channels and strategies losers choose, thus influencing democratic stability. We argue that a key attribute distinguishing comparatively stable democracies from democracies that experience frequent violent protests relates to the extent to which politicians have control over the public administration. A highly politicized state bureaucracy is more likely to be subsumed into clientelistic networks, making it more difficult for electoral losers to gain access to public goods than electoral winners, who may then be more inclined to resort to disruptive political actions. The electoral winners may use the bureaucracy to extend their power and uphold clientelistic ties with their supporters. Electoral losers, however, do not have this possibility. Such a system may therefore induce electoral losers to resort to anti-systemic protests to express grievances, and if extensive, may lead to the destabilization of democracy. Moreover, we hypothesize that having a clientelistic state in combination with a strong civil society may further exacerbate these effects because the potential for mobilization is greater. The analyses explore these contentions in the Latin American context using survey data on the individual level, in combination with country level data on institutional factors. Preliminary analyses find the degree of politicization of the bureaucracy to be a strong predictor of the propensity for disruptive actions.