Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Elections, Electoral Fraud and Political Conflicts in Authoritarian Regimes

政治学博士论文研究：威权政权中的选举、选举舞弊和政治冲突

• 批准号: 1323671
• 负责人: Eric Chang
• 金额: $ 1.76万
• 依托单位: Michigan State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-02-01 至 2015-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1323671&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

This award satisfies Division B, Title V, Sec. 543 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2013 (P.L. 113-6, enacted on March 26, 2013).The project explores the determinants of electoral manipulation and post-electoral political conflict in dictatorships, focusing on countries in Central Asia, an area of the world that has been critical for US national security interests. Most modern autocracies hold elections even though political competition is severely limited. While recent research on authoritarian politics begins to illuminate various functions of authoritarian elections, it is unclear how dictators decide the degree of electoral fraud to perpetrate and circumstances producing post-electoral protests and leadership change. The intellectual merit of the project is associated with its development of theoretical and analytical approaches to authoritarian elections and their aftermaths. Modeling both benefits and costs of holding relatively free and fair elections in dictatorships, the project constructs a theory of authoritarian elections and derives testable hypotheses to explain variation in electoral fraud and political conflict in authoritarian regimes. To rigorously test the theoretical propositions, the project uses a mixed methods approach, including statistical investigations of cross-national datasets and analyses of interviews and original quantitative data obtained in the course of fieldwork in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.This study will contribute to studies of authoritarian politics by focusing on the importance of a dilemma that dictators face at elections: The more fair and free elections are, the more credible election results become to convey regime strength. More fair and free elections, however, make it more difficult for dictators to achieve a landslide victory, which may result in revealing the weakness of dictators and hence contribute to post-electoral conflict, such as coups and popular uprisings. Previous studies have not taken into account this tradeoff between the certainty of winning big and the credibility of election results, despite the fact that fraud and conflict are thought to be heavily affected by how strategically dictators deal with this electoral dilemma. Shedding light on the balance of power between the dictator and elites in authoritarian rule, this project explores the way in which dictators cope with this dilemma and consequently when dictators can use authoritarian elections to achieve regime stability. The theory establishes a paradoxical hypothesis that stronger dictators rely less on election fraud. The theory also predicts that when dictators fail to match the level of election fraud with their de facto power balance with elites, elections trigger political turnover and popular protests.The broader impacts are especially connected to the project's contributions to policy-makers, democratization, and development. Given the increasing phenomenon of electoral autocracies and prevailing international norms of election monitoring practices, policymakers might be tempted to conclude that forcing dictators to introduce free and fair elections via sanctions is an effective strategy to promote democratization. The project, however, suggests that realities might be more nuanced. If international policymakers are ignorant of the balance of power in dictatorship, imposed competitive elections might either become a source of conflict after elections or legitimate strong, dictatorial leaders through such "liberalized" elections. The theoretical and empirical contributions of the project will improve our understanding of authoritarian politics, thereby helping the United States as well as international organizations develop more effective strategies to democratize authoritarian countries without suffering serious violent conflict. More specifically, making sense of the electoral dilemma and the strategic nature of authoritarian leaders, we would be able to know the conditions under which international assistance and sanctions will be more likely to lead to democratic, peaceful society in developing countries. Knowing such conditions would be obviously important to the US, which national security and economic interests in the world are both significantly influenced by the pervasiveness of democracy and political stability in other countries.

该奖项满足司B，标题五，第。2013年综合和进一步持续拨款法案（P.L.）该项目探讨了选举操纵和选举后政治冲突的决定因素，重点是中亚国家，这是一个对美国国家安全利益至关重要的地区。大多数现代独裁国家都举行选举，即使政治竞争受到严格限制。虽然最近对威权政治的研究开始阐明威权选举的各种功能，但尚不清楚独裁者如何决定选举舞弊的程度以及选举后抗议和领导层更迭的情况。该项目的学术价值与其对专制选举及其后果的理论和分析方法的发展有关。该项目对在自治区举行相对自由和公正的选举的收益和成本进行了建模，构建了一个专制选举理论，并得出了可检验的假设，以解释专制政权中选举欺诈和政治冲突的变化。为了严格检验理论命题，该项目采用了混合方法，包括跨国数据集的统计调查，以及对哈萨克斯坦和吉尔吉斯斯坦实地考察过程中获得的访谈和原始定量数据的分析。本研究将通过关注独裁者在选举中面临的困境的重要性，为威权政治的研究做出贡献：选举越是公平和自由，选举结果就越能体现政权的实力。然而，更公平和自由的选举使独裁者更难取得压倒性胜利，这可能导致暴露独裁者的弱点，从而助长选举后的冲突，如政变和人民起义。以前的研究没有考虑到赢得大的确定性和选举结果的可信度之间的权衡，尽管事实上，欺诈和冲突被认为是独裁者如何战略性地处理这种选举困境的严重影响。该项目旨在揭示独裁者与威权统治中的精英之间的权力平衡，探讨独裁者如何科普这一困境，以及独裁者何时可以利用威权选举来实现政权稳定。该理论建立了一个自相矛盾的假设，即更强大的独裁者更少依赖选举舞弊。该理论还预测，当独裁者未能将选举舞弊的程度与他们与精英的实际权力平衡相匹配时，选举就会引发政治更替和民众抗议，更广泛的影响尤其与该项目对政策制定者、民主化和发展的贡献有关。鉴于选举独裁现象日益严重，以及选举监督做法的普遍国际规范，决策者可能会得出结论认为，通过制裁迫使独裁者进行自由和公正的选举是促进民主化的有效战略。然而，该项目表明，现实可能更加微妙。如果国际政策制定者不了解独裁政权的权力平衡，那么强制推行的竞争性选举可能会成为选举后冲突的根源，或者通过这种“自由化”选举使强大的独裁领导人合法化。该项目的理论和经验贡献将提高我们对威权政治的理解，从而帮助美国和国际组织制定更有效的战略，使威权国家民主化，而不会遭受严重的暴力冲突。更具体地说，了解选举困境和独裁领导人的战略性质，我们将能够知道国际援助和制裁在何种条件下更有可能导致发展中国家建立民主、和平的社会。了解这些情况对美国来说显然很重要，因为美国在世界上的国家安全和经济利益都受到其他国家民主普及和政治稳定的重大影响。