There are a number of conclusions that I can make from the analysis presented above. First, is that former ruling parties do not necessarily die easily or quickly. At the most basic level, some form of party organization or successor party continues to at least contest or aspire to contest elections more often than not. What does vary widely is the degree to which some of these parties slip away into obscurity while others remain a relevant factor on the political scene. Having analyzed the electoral survival of these parties for a length of time ranging as long as three decades, there are some major conclusions that can be reached.
Table 4.11: Survival Model: Presidential Vote Thresholds - Primary Successors
Variable Nominate Win 5% Win 10%
Haz. Ratio p >|z| Haz. Ratio p >|z| Haz. Ratio p >|z|
Party Dominant Regime 0.223 0.055 0.784 0.588 0.753 0.508 Party Shared Regime † † 0.702 0.556 0.382 0.140 Violent Opening 0.865 0.854 2.171 0.153 2.898 0.042 Banned after Opening 7.943 0.014 2.527 0.071 2.217 0.083 Defeated in Opening 1.927 0.362 1.563 0.311 1.056 0.896 GDP Growth 1.007 0.830 0.985 0.290 0.995 0.745 Out of Power in Non-Dem 3.238 0.110 3.018 0.012 5.455 0.000
Subjects 86 86 86
Failures 12 31 34
Elections 359 325 316
Years At-Risk 1441 1280 1235
†- No failures in variable, unable to compute values.
Overall, the general conclusions of all these models imply that the inheritance of resources from the prior regime do matter for survival. In most models there is a significant influence of both regime types in which the party plays a major role when compared to the minor types. Generally it is also noted that parties that share governing with other institutions are not detrimentally impacted by this relationship, but in many cases actually show greater durability than those that dominate their regimes. This is particularly influential in parlia- mentary elections when primary successors are concerned. Additionally, the fact that those parties that were the primary inheritor of regime resources fare better than their minor counterparts all around support this claim.
The main negative impacts against party survival in fact are those conditions during the process of opening or the post-opening environment that can potentially strip a party of part or all of these resources. When the conditions surrounding the opening and the post-opening period are benign, party survival is much more likely. Parties that played a major role in the non-competitive regime (whether they shared that role with another actor or not) are much more robust when faced with these difficulties than are their counterparts that only played a minor role. Parties in with a minor role in the prior regime appear to be dependent on having favorable conditions for survival in the opening and post-opening periods.
There are a few explanations for why there is such a difference in presidential and par- liamentary survival. The graphic representation of failure rates at the 5% threshold in figure 4.4 sheds some light on this, as the hazard rates for presidential elections appear diverge after about five years before converging after about twenty years after the opening election. The fundamental force likely behind these observations is likely not a failure of resources to translate effectively into presidential elections, but instead a combination of two factors. First, the unpredictability of personalist actors as mentioned earlier appears to come into play more in presidential elections than assembly elections. The ability of personalist leaders with presidential ambitions to remain involved in presidential politics by either retaining power in the opening election, or continuing to run with their party after defeat means that even in regimes where the party played a minor supporting role for the president, they are more able to continue competing in elections if that leader remains involved in the process. The second factor at play is that presidential elections may be seen as an inefficient use of limited resources by political parties. Due to the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections, a basic reading of Duverger (1954) points out that parties unlikely to finish in the top two (or three in two-round systems) will not waste resources on presidential elections (except perhaps for egotistical reasons mentioned above). In these cases, parties do not run their own candidate, but instead endorse independent candidates or those of friendly party coalitions instead, or simply ignore presidential politics and focus on winning assembly seats where even in defeat, a party can still receive a few seats.
Finally, it is important to point out that, while the inherited resources of a party do play a major role in survival, they do not determine everything. My theory and findings on party survival are probabilistic, the party’s past and opening conditions can predict likelihoods but not perfectly. Parties that did play a major role in the regime do fail, and those that played a minor role do survive. What is seen is that it takes more to bring down those parties with a stronger role in the past. In some cases, relatively rare or unique circumstances may impact a party’s survival. I go into some greater detail on some of these non-conforming cases in the concluding chapter.
Chapter 5
Determinants of Party Success