Life after Dictatorship: Authoritarian Successor Parties Worldwide

Description

Life after Dictatorship launches a new research agenda on authoritarian successor parties worldwide. Authoritarian successor parties are parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes, but that operate after a transition to democracy. They are one of the most common but overlooked features of the global democratic landscape. They are major actors in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, and they have been voted back into office in over one-half of all third-wave democracies. This book presents a new set of terms, definitions, and research questions designed to travel across regions, and presents new data on these parties' prevalence and frequent return to power. With chapters from leading Africanists, Asianists, Europeanists, and Latin Americanists, it asks: why are authoritarian successor parties so common? Why are some more successful than others? And in what ways can they harm - or help - democracy?

James Loxton is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His research interests include authoritarian regimes, democratization, and political parties. He is the co-editor (with Steven Levitsky, Brandon Van Dyck, and Jorge I. Dominguez) of Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America (Cambridge, 2016). He is currently writing a book on conservative party-building in Latin America. He holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard University. Scott Mainwaring is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor for Brazil Studies at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research interests include political parties and party systems, democratic and authoritarian regimes, and political institutions in Latin America. Among his many books is the award-winning Democracies and Dictatorships in Latin America: Emergence, Survival, and Fall (with Anibal Perez-Linan, Cambridge, 2014). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010. His edited book, Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse (Cambridge) was published in 2018. From 1983 until 2016, he taught at the University of Notre Dame.

'This is an agenda-setting volume that will shape scholarly debates about parties and democracy for many years to come. New democratic regimes often inherit parties founded by previous authoritarian rulers, yet the impact of such parties on the quality and stability of democracy is poorly understood. This volume makes an original empirical contribution by documenting the prevalence of authoritarian successor parties in new democracies, as well as the frequency by which they return to power by electoral means. It also breaks new ground theoretically by exploring how the institutional legacies of authoritarian rule shape subsequent patterns of democratic governance. Loxton and Mainwaring have brought together many of the leading experts in the study of parties and democracy in different world regions, and together they have produced a first-rate book that is a must-read for scholars who seek to understand how party systems emerge in new democracies.' Kenneth M. Roberts, Cornell University, New York 'This volume represents an important contribution to the study of democratic transition and consolidation. We typically assume that successful democracies make sharp breaks from their authoritarian pasts. But James Loxton and Scott Mainwaring demonstrate conclusively that this is not the case. In fact, parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes - authoritarian successor parties - have been prominent in three quarters of third-wave democracies. Such parties have been voted back into office in over half of new democracies. While a lot has been written about individual cases in particular regions, this is the first volume to analyze this phenomenon globally. The chapters in this volume - written by the top political scientists in the world today - are path-breaking but also accessible to a broad audience inside and outside academia.' Lucan Way, University of Toronto