The Causes of Electoral Continuation of Incumbent Party in Semi-democratic Regimes in Latin America 1990-2015

In the contemporary world we have many regimes that are neither fully democratic nor classic authoritarian. These regimes feature regular and competitive elections but the competition is unequal or markedly unfair because incumbent abuse skews the playing field against opponents. This paper seeks to explain causes of continuation of incumbent party in semi-democratic regimes in Latin America. For this purpose I systematically compare the 31 cases of presidential elections – twenty when incumbent party candidate won and eleven that led to victory of the opposition candidate- is carried out in the years between 1990 and 2015. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), I concentrate on seven central conditions (explanatory factors) derived from previous research about ruling parties in hybrid regimes. To the best of my knowledge, an fsQCA has to date not been used to analysis elections in semi-democratic regimes in the Latin America.