Opposition (politics)

Abstract: How can autocrats be restrained from rigging elections when they hold a huge military advantage over their opponents? This article suggests that even when opposition parties have no military capacity to win a revolt, opposition unity and a consequent threat of massive civil disobedience can compel autocrats to hold clean elections and leave office by triggering splits within the state apparatus and the defection of the armed forces. Opposition unity can be elite-driven, when parties unite prior to elections to endorse a common presidential candidate, or voter-driven, when elites stand divided at the polls and voters spontaneously rebel against fraud. Moreover, the article identifies some conditions under which autocrats will tie their hands willingly not to commit fraud by delegating power to an independent electoral commission. The article develops these ideas through a formal game and the discussion of various case studies. M ost autocracies today hold multiparty elections. What accounts for ruling parties’ decision to commit fraud or respect the election results, and why would rulers ever tie their hands by delegating the organization of elections to independent electoral bodies? What explains that opponents protest against fraud or tacitly acquiesce to electoral tyranny? Why and when is the opposition expected to challenge clean elections? This article answers these fundamental questions by presenting a theory of the dynamics of electoral fraud and postelection opposition protest against it. The article simultaneously seeks to contribute to the study of democratization and to shed light on the politics of what some scholars call “electoral authoritarian�

Abstract: neous nations in the world, linguistically it is one of the most homogeneous (Thernstrom 1980). Nevertheless, in recent years language policy has sparked political conflict in many states and localities as demands for bilingual government services have provoked concern about the continued primacy of English. This article explores elite and mass reactions to the ongoing confrontation between "language rights" and "official English" and reveals a significant gulf between the positions of opinion leaders and ordinary voters. As in the case of the tax revolt, the initiative process is the device that has allowed populist sentiment in favor of "official English" to prevail over elite opposition. Our main purposes are to identify the social and political conditions that have stimulated linguistic conflict and to determine the motivational bases for the mass appeal of "official English." We argue that for most members of the majority language group in the United States the tangible personal costs and benefits of bilingual government services or "official English" are neither clear nor substantial. On the other hand, challenges to the status of one's language typically engage deep-seated feelings about national identity and group worth (Horowitz 1985; Edwards 1985). With this in mind, we employ the familiar conceptual distinctions between "economic" and "status" politics (Gusfield 1963) and self-interest and symbolic politics (Sears, Tyler, Lau, and Allen 1980; Sears and Citrin 1985) to explore the sources of public opinion on language issues.

Abstract: Social and political bots have a small but strategic role in Venezuelan political conversations. These automated scripts generate content through social media platforms and then interact with people. In this preliminary study on the use of political bots in Venezuela, we analyze the tweeting, following and retweeting patterns for the accounts of prominent Venezuelan politicians and prominent Venezuelan bots. We find that bots generate a very small proportion of all the traffic about political life in Venezuela. Bots are used to retweet content from Venezuelan politicians but the effect is subtle in that less than 10 percent of all retweets come from bot-related platforms. Nonetheless, we find that the most active bots are those used by Venezuela’s radical opposition. Bots are pretending to be political leaders, government agencies and political parties more than citizens. Finally, bots are promoting innocuous political events more than attacking opponents or spreading misinformation.

Abstract: Our theory studies why and when political parties choose to hold competitive primary elections. Party leaders can decide the nomination by granting resources and endorsements to a chosen candidate. Alternatively, they can delegate the candidate selection to the party’s rank and file by holding a primary election among multiple candidates. The benefit of a primary is to increase the expected valence of the nominee. Its cost is the ideology that primary voters might induce on the party’s policy platform. We find that primary elections are more likely to be used when the potential primary voters are not too moderate and not too extremist. We also find that opposition parties and weak parties benefit from primaries more than incumbent parties and strong parties do. Intriguingly, extremist parties are more likely to adopt primaries than centrist parties are. Contradicting previous research, we find that primaries are more attractive when candidates’ skills are less salient for voters than candidates’ policies.