Ballots for the Boss: Multiparty Elections and Personalization of Power in Autocratic Regimes

This article investigates how multiparty elections shape dictators’ accumulation of personal power in autocratic regimes. It argues that elections restructure intra-regime dynamics in ways that facilitate authoritarian consolidation. By weakening elite coordination and limiting exit and defection options, elections deepen elite dependence on the ruler and enable greater centralization of authority. While opposition actors and international pressures also influence the process, the key mechanisms operate within the ruling coalition. Using global data on autocratic regimes from 1946 to 2010 and a latent index of personalism, the analysis finds that multiparty elections are positively associated with dictators’ personalism and with several items of the latent index. It also finds that dictators who entered power by winning multiparty elections are correlated with higher levels of regime personalization and that, after the Cold War, personalism increased especially among regimes that held multiparty elections.