Election management institutions as catalysts for autocratic transformation

This study elaborates on the relationship between election management institutions and autocratic breakdown. Two different aspects of election management bodies (EMBs) – capacity and autonomy – are theoretically distinct and empirically distinguishable concepts in authoritarian regimes. These two features also have important ramifications for regime breakdown. High EMB capacity enables leaders to produce stable, peaceful election results, which supports effectively projecting their power through elections and consolidating autocratic rule. By contrast, high EMB autonomy makes it difficult for leaders to preemptively bias election results, which increases the risk of autocratic breakdown. We test our theoretical expectations on a cross-national data set covering 168 countries between 1900 and 2021 that includes a range of secondary data sources. Accounting for confounders between EMB and autocratic stability, we find that high EMB capacity helps increase autocratic stability, whereas high EMB autonomy is positively related with autocratic breakdown.