Should Democrats Participate in Autocratic Elections?

Free and fair elections are central institutions of democracy, and they are widely considered by political theorists to be a necessary condition of normative legitimacy. Democratic elections both symbolically express and give some practical effect to the basic equal political status of all citizens: they are essential constituents of an arrangement that realizes social equality. But somewhat competitive elections are not unique to democracy. Although systematically unfair and at best partly free, competitive multiparty elections also play a central role in the politics of political regimes referred to by political scientists as electoral autocracy. Empirical evidence suggests that autocratic elections may simultaneously serve the purposes of autocrats by providing them with perceived legitimacy, or as a tool of coopting elites and monitoring rivals, and at the same time provide pro-democracy opposition actors a genuine if elusive opportunity for democratic transformation. Descriptively, autocratic elections can both stabilize and destabilize electoral autocracies. Normatively, they are fundamentally inegalitarian and at most partly free; they constitute a central element of an arrangement that subordinates some citizens to others by diluting their voting power, by propaganda, misrepresentation, surveillance and often harassment by the authorities. This arrangement presents pro-democracy actors – politicians, activists, and ordinary voters – with a powerful dilemma. On one horn of the dilemma, if they decide to engage in autocratic elections, they may play into the autocrat’s hand by contributing to the false facade of democratic legitimacy for the small chance of democratic change through elections. On the other horn, if they decide not to engage and boycott the elections, they give up one of the few opportunities to inflict political damage to autocracy. This paper explores this dilemma through engaging with the view that it is wrong to contribute to the false perception of democratic legitimacy, and therefore that democrats have a duty or at least pressing moral reasons to abstain from or boycott autocratic elections. The objection may come in two (mutually compatible) forms: it may hold that it is in itself wrong to engage in autocratic elections given their unfair and subordinating structure, and/or it may hold that electoral engagement has such harmful effects that normally outweigh whatever democratic benefits may be expected from engagement. I will argue that it is not always wrong in itself to participate in autocratic elections, but only if done to promote goals other than democratic transformation. Further, I will argue that when understood according to a suitably specified baseline, the harms of electoral engagement are unlikely to be decisive. The most likely bad outcome of electoral engagement is autocratic continuity, which corresponds to the status quo ante. Therefore, its wrongs cannot be attributed to (failed) electoral challenges, unless they crowd out an alternative strategy with clearly superior prospects of success. However, there is no obviously superior alternative. Furthermore, electoral challenge offers a unique opportunity for large-scale coordination, thus mitigating the central difficulty of opposition action against autocratic rule. Elections provide such clear coordination points for collective opposition action that nonelectoral strategies typically lack.