Selecting cases for analysis involved finding all of the potential cases in which relevant non- competitive regimes could face the potential of an electoral opening. This meant finding all the regimes that have utilized some form of political party to support their rule. This
explicitly excludes military, monarchical, and personalist regimes that did not form a political party or adopt an existing party before the end of their rule. The first step was to narrow down the relevant cases from all other non-competitive regimes. The first decision I made was to bound the time period of observation. Regimes needed to have existed during the broad period Huntington (1991) describes as the Third Wave of democratization starting with the Portuguese Carnation Revolution in 1974. As there is no clearly defined end to the Third Wave as Huntington was writing during the middle of this time period I have placed the end date for regime existence to be the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992. This decision is made because the legitimacy of non-competitive rule and single party systems is greatly diminished after the fall of the Soviet Union, and those regimes that exist or form after this period will not have a similar environment to build a particular institutional legacy. Finally, I choose to end my period of analysis of regime openings in 2000 before the start of the “Colored Revolutions” which mark secondary transitions from post-Communist governments. This makes the end of Suharto’s New Order in 1998 the last electoral opening observed. In addition, utilizing this time period is useful as it allows for a sufficient time period to observe party survival and success over multiple electoral cycles following the opening.
A regime is considered relevant if it has the following traits. The key source for regime selection is Hadenius and Teorell’s (2007) typology of authoritarian regimes. I select a broad set of regimes that are relevant as my key variable is how the regime utilized parties in the non-competitive period. Using the following criteria, I find 105 qualifying regimes as defined above (this includes the Soviet Union as one and not all of its successor states). The first set of selection criteria are unconditionally selected into my data. These include all the regime types that are explicitly one party regimes (military, civilian, monarchies) and dominant multiparty regimes. Their categories of limited multiparty, military multiparty, other, and military no-party regimes all held some relevant cases but needed additional conditions to justify inclusion. In the cases of limited and military multiparty regimes, the key condition is that despite having multiple political parties, there must not be open competition between
these parties. This is accounted for by only including those cases in which the Polity IV subscore for the competitiveness of participation (PARCOMP) indicates either repressed or suppressed participation. Selection for military no-party regimes revolved around the problem of “movements” such as the General Peoples’ Congress in North Yemen and the National Resistance Movement in Uganda. These cases are conditionally selected in the instance that they are included if they are also coded by Cheibub and Gandhi (2004) as civilian or military dictatorships. The regime type for “other” requires additional qualifiers that the regime is also coded as a civilian dictatorship by Cheibub and Ghandi.
The second criterion for selection is whether there was some form of electoral opening. Electoral openings are simply defined as events in which the degree of competition with real (non-loyal) opposition political parties for the top institutions of the state is significantly increased. Openings can occur either by electoral reform by the non-competitive regime, or by cases in which the regime is removed (resigned, deposed, etc.) and multiparty elections are held afterward. I find that out of the 105 regimes that qualified, 10 have faced no opening at all, 60 have faced openings by elections, 24 by coups, and 11 by military defeats. Of the 35 events that were not regime-initiated electoral reform, and 18 had held multiparty elections within 5 years. The remaining cases typically had multiparty elections between 10 and 20 years later, usually including at least one other non-competitive regime in the intervening period.1
The final selection criterion is to determine what constitutes a successor party. In many places, successor parties are very clear, with the only differences from before and after the electoral opening being a more competitive environment and perhaps minor name and per- sonnel changes. Some others are much more complicated. Romania presents a good illus- tration of a complex successor situation in which the Communist Party disbands with the execution of Ceausescu, but essentially is reunited within the National Salvation Front. This group then splits by the second elections as various former Communist officials seek to win
1In a number of cases, political parties have formed successors after extensive periods of time either banned or in exile. A few notable examples include MDR-PARMEHUTU in Rwanda and the PPN-RDA in Niger.
power. This leads to a need to decide which parties are successors. To do so, I build on Pop-Eleches (2008) and his typology of successor parties. Successor parties contain three (often interlinked) dimensions of continuity from the ruling party. Pop-Eleches (2008) lists these as Institutional Continuity, Leadership and Personnel Continuity, and finally Ideolog- ical Continuity. Institutional continuity refers to the party’s organizational structures (and sometimes state offices held by party members). Leadership and Personnel continuity refer to the party’s leadership and membership with or without the organization of the party itself (often the case if a party is banned). The third dimension involves the continuation of the ruling party’s ideology after a transition. I modify these by adding two changes that are important to measuring party transformation. First, I add the party name as an additional trait of successor parties. Second, I break leadership and personnel into two separate cat- egories, distinguishing from top regime and party leaders (Presidents, Politburo members, etc.) and partisans (MPs, apparatchiks, members, etc.).
These dimensions allow a way to both qualify successor regimes and to classify them into a few general types (a more detailed treatment of the subject is contained in the next section). Some successors may be ideal types, carrying through only one dimension, while others may carry multiple dimensions of continuity. The simplest qualifying successor type are those parties that retain all dimensions like the PRI in Mexico. Many of the East/Central European Communist parties follow a pattern of retaining both the personnel and organiza- tional aspects while dropping the name, ideology and top leadership of their parent parties. Others may form almost purely around former leaders, as is the case in Soviet Central Asia, where Republic level party chairmen formed the new parties with little to no other continuity. Many of these leader-centric successors also may have had little ideology (African military presidents) or independent party institutions (former Soviets) to draw from as well. In many cases, particularly in the former Communist systems, there are second-tier successors. These secondary parties typically are purely nominal or ideological successors, often picking up the scraps of the party legacy left behind by the partisans and core institutions of the party either after the party was banned from competition in early elections, or these parties form
as splinter groups opposed to the reforms taken by the primary successor party during the opening.