Election Management, Manipulation Techniques, and Autocratic Survival

By unpacking how autocrats design elections, recent research on autocracies start investigating when dictators rig elections by using what electioneering strategies as well as what implications those electoral strategies may have on regime stability. However, we know little about how election management bodies (EMBs) – one of the most important institutions affecting the electoral battlefield – influence the dictator’s tool box to manipulate election results and impact authoritarian durability. EMBs have two important aspects which affect dictators’ electioneering strategies; capacity and autonomy. EMB capacity refers to the ability of administering national elections by mobilizing staff, financial and organizational resources to reduce glitches distorting electoral integrity; EMB autonomy means EMB’s political independence from the government to apply election laws and administrative rules impartially in national elections. When EMB capacity is high, autocrats can effectively orchestrate covert forms of electoral manipulation and thus hold elections with stable pro-regime results. Such strong organizational capabilities for election management make autocrats less incentivized to employ overt forms of electoral manipulation such as vote buying and blatant electoral fraud. By contrast, when EMB autonomy is high, dictators cannot preemptively bias election results in favor of themselves. Under such conditions, autocrats are more tempted to resort to the overt forms of fraud to secure overwhelming election victories. In addition to techniques of electoral manipulation, EMBs also have significant implications on regime survival. Since high levels of EMB capacity enable dictators to manipulate election results implicitly and overwhelming election victories lead to credibly demonstrate their power at elections, they are more likely to make the regimes resilient. By contrast, EMB autonomy ties autocrats’ hands, which make it difficult for them to extensively manipulate elections. Furthermore, the overt means of electoral manipulation often induce backlashes from the opposition and masses, paving the way for autocratic breakdown. Put differently, our theory expects that the EMB capacity is positively associated with autocratic survival whereas the EMB autonomy is negatively correlated with autocratic survival. We test these hypotheses on a cross-national data set. We first find EMB capacity is positively associated with ex ante forms of electoral manipulation such as the reduction of electoral pluralism and negatively associated with over forms of manipulation techniques such as vote-buying and ballot-stuffing. In contrast, EMB autonomy is positively associated with electoral pluralism as well as these overt electoral fraud. We also find that EMB capacity tends to prevent autocratic breakdown, while EMB autonomy tends to negatively impact autocratic durability. Our theory and empirical analysis suggest that EMBs are a pertinent institution which significantly impacts the electoral field and regime resilience also under the authoritarian context.