Fractious Versus Monopolized Oppositions: Retracing the Essential Role of Parties in Democratization

Opposition parties are essential drivers of democratization, but the agency of oppositions, and the necessity that they exercise it, is often evaded in the literature. This is in part because it is difficult to generate comparative data on parties in undemocratic regimes and new democracies, and difficult to link them to democratization when it is generated. But dismissing organized and politically engaged oppositions because of the institutional constraints of undemocratic regimes in favour of structural factors (un)conducive to democracy is problematic. Oppositions form and fail to form under myriad conditions, that they do is necessary, but not guaranteed under any conditions. Utilizing a novel approach to measuring opposition strength, this paper tests the hypothesis that organizations which monopolize a significant proportion of the opposition arena are correlated with democratic returns. The implication is that analyzing opposition parties qua agents is both possible and fundamental to understanding democratization.