Dynamics of Shrinking Spaces During Elections – Still Able to Act?!

In recent years, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Opposition Parties are increasingly under pressure worldwide. This phenomenon is best known as shrinking civic spaces and debated in the context of democratic backsliding. The proposed paper will focus on the dynamics of shrinking spaces in the context of contentious elections. During elections, governments are in particular vulnerable as the current power structures are at disposition. At the same time, the political elite might use elections as a means to maintain their power. Driven by the fear of losing power, further repressive legislation often combined with extra-legal forms of state coercion target political opponents resulting in increasing diminishing of civic space. The degree to which elections can be considered as free and fair also decreases. The complexity of the domestic interplay increases through the controversial role and influence of the international donor community such as international election observation missions. Despite electoral manipulations and a shrinking enabling electoral environment, scholars and practitioners have observed rising resistance to restrictions in forms of successful campaigns against new repressive legislation, protests, and other innovative forms. This paper brings in the concept of electoral resilience – the ability to withstand, to recover from, and to adapt to repressions before and after elections – as an analytical framework for analysis. It will analyze two country cases with increasing CSO restrictions, one in which electoral resilience is still relatively high, and another, where it is low.