Contesting Polarization and Democratic Erosion: Electoral Cooperation by Political Opposition in Turkey and Hungary

Cooperation through electoral alliances is a common strategy employed by opposition parties against incumbents in electoral authoritarian regimes. However, this approach also involves considerable risks and challenges, especially since opposition parties are often divided by deep-rooted social and political rifts, exacerbated by incumbents' polarizing tactics. These divisions make it difficult to consolidate a unified opposition bloc. Existing literature on opposition cooperation in established, stable electoral autocracies identifies factors such as regime vulnerability, perceived interdependence among opposition parties, and the degree of autocratic repression as key explanatory variables (van de Walle 2006; Gandhi & Reuter 2008, 2013; Ong 2022; Jimenez 2023). Yet, most studies focus on long-standing electoral autocracies. In cases like Turkey and Hungary—where democratic erosion has gradually transformed the political landscape into electoral authoritarianism—these factors alone do not fully account for the strategies and behaviors of opposition actors. Democratic erosion, or backsliding, is a complex and uncertain process (Somer & Tekinırk 2024) in which incumbents use polarization as a political tool, further complicating coordinated action among opposition parties. A longitudinal examination of opposition strategies in Turkey and Hungary suggests that political opposition actors achieve electoral cooperation only under specific conditions. This calls for additional variables, such as incentives from electoral institutions, evolving intra-opposition dynamics, and feedback from past electoral experiences. This paper seeks to reveal how opposition parties adapt their cooperative strategies in response to autocratization, focusing on the conditions under which they succeed in forming effective alliances.