The Emergence of Competitive Authoritarian Regimes: Turkey and Hungary Compared

Today many countries around the world suffer from democratic backsliding. Defined as the erosion of political institutions that sustain democratic governance at the hands of state, backsliding has turned into a common phenomenon in the 21st century. As such, the number of “electoral authoritarian” or “competitive authoritarian” regimes have expanded unprecedentedly to the extent that these “pseudo-democracies” have become the most widespread form of non-democratic regimes on earth. Needless to say, this development has led to a burgeoning scholarly interest in the study of “competitive authoritarianism”. What differentiates competitive authoritarian regimes is that though they conduct competitive multiparty elections regularly for the national executive and national legislative assembly, the liberal democratic principles of freedom and fairness are violated and the ruling party tips the playing field in favor of the incumbent by using the state resources. Hitherto, the major focus of literature on competitive authoritarianism has been related to the question of regime longevity. As such, the origins of authoritarian rule or transition from a liberal or electoral democracy towards competitive authoritarianism have received less scholarly attention. Thus, there is no comprehensive theory of the rise of competitive authoritarian regimes. Moreover, as acknowledged by Schedler, we still know very little about the micro level of authoritarian political competition. Providing a theory of the emergence of competitive authoritarian regimes and accounting for the dynamics of authoritarian political competition, this paper addresses the gap in the literature. It does so by using the cases of Turkey and Hungary to illustrate its claims. This paper, first, provides a comprehensive theory of the conditions that foster the rise of competitive authoritarianism by accounting for how party-state and party-society relationships transform in the process of backsliding so as to maximize the dominance of single parties over the political system. Secondly, it addresses the questions regarding the interaction between the incumbent party, opposition forces and the veto-players of political system, showing how certain strategic moves have turned the tide in favor of the incumbent. Finally, it explains how and why the nature of government and political opposition has changed over time during the process of democratic backsliding, demonstrating the ways in which the opposition parties have lost their credibility and effectiveness while the incumbent has increased its control over state and turned into a monopoly in determining the terms of political competition. Overall, I provide a theory of the rise of competitive authoritarianism based on a study of party system related conditions that foster democratic backsliding.