The forthcoming article “Perversity, futility, complicity: Should democrats participate in autocratic elections?” by Zoltan Miklosi is summarized by the author below.
Multiparty, competitive elections are a hallmark of democracy. However, such elections are not unique to democracies. A growing number of countries around the world are described by political scientists as electoral autocracies. They are autocratic because they significantly curtail media freedom, they weaken the independence of the judiciary, and they apply the law unequally: government critics and opposition politicians are often prosecuted on frivolous grounds while allies of the ruling party engage in large-scale corruption with impunity. But they are electoral autocracies, because genuine opposition parties are allowed to compete in elections and sometimes even win. However, autocratic elections are partially unfree and massively unfair: opposition candidates and activists often face physical and legal harassment and intimidation, while the ruling party freely uses the financial and administrative resources of the government. Such regimes confront democrats with a dilemma. On the one hand, if they participate in autocratic elections as voters or candidates, they contribute to the false appearance of democracy and help autocrats claim democratic legitimacy. On the other hand, elections are often though not always the most effective tool to foster democratic regime change, as I hope to show in the paper. Even if rarely, autocrats sometimes lose elections, as happened in Mexico in 2000, Malaysia in 2018, or Poland in 2023, for instance. Therefore, if democrats decide to boycott elections, they give up what is often their best chance to defeat autocracy. Here, I argue that usually, democrats should participate because often that is the least bad option. At the same time, I also argue that while in democracies elections are the only legitimate means of achieving a change of government, this is not so in autocracies. Here, democrats are morally permitted to choose other strategies of challenging autocracy such as boycott or resistance, and the alternatives ought to be assessed case by case in light of facts on the ground.
About the author: Zoltan Miklosi is an Associate Professor at Central European University Their research “Perversity, futility, complicity: Should democrats participate in autocratic elections?” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.
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