Opposition Parties and Elite Co-optation in Electoral Autocracies

Abstract

Autocratic incumbents often attempt to co-opt select opposition party leaders to minimize threats to their rule. While the literature identifies co-optation of opposition party leaders as an important survival strategy of autocrats in electoral autocracies, we lack a systematic examination of why some opposition party leaders are co-opted but not others. This article argues that opposition party co-optation is shaped by both inter-and intra-party dynamics. Using a novel data set on opposition party organizations in electoral autocracies between 1970 and 2019, I show that opposition parties with high mobilizational capacity and those that devolve internal decision-making authority from the party leadership to lower cadres are less likely to be co-opted, especially when they are ideological distant from autocratic incumbents. I contend that opposition parties’ organizational characteristics and their ideological positioning in an autocratic party system significantly alter the strategic calculus of the incumbent regime and opposition party elites in deciding whether or not to cooperate with one another. Hence, autocratic incumbents’ ability to control opposition parties through co-optation is shaped not only by the commonly highlighted factors such as resource availability, institutional manipulation or repression, but also as a result of the relatively less well-understood factors such as opposition party organizational features and party positions.