How does the government of the country you have been studying intervene in elections to ensure that the incumbents always win?
Country is Myanmar
Please answer the question using the NELDA data and measures that we will look at in class. You may choose to focus on how the state manipulates voters, voting, a hegemonic party, candidate entry, messaging, or any other aspect of electoral competition. Using the NELDA data and concepts of electoral manipulation, identify the nature of electoral manipulation in the country that you are studying – focus on the last election. You might hone in on these points: Repression and its change over time, the role of formal institutional change to gain advantages, informal attacks on candidate, voter, or party rights, or the consequences of electoral fraud – does the incumbent prevail? You can also narrow your focus by exploring different stages of elections:, the candidate nomination process, election campaigns, vote counts, or any other period. Or you may do a “survey” of the ways in which the state intervenes looking at several factors.
source
Linz, Juan and Alfred Stepan. “Modern
Non-Democratic Regimes,” chapter 3 in
Problems of Democratic Transition and
Consolidation. Baltimore, MD: Johns
Hopkins University Press, pp. 38-54.
Additional Resources:
Paul Brooker, Chapter 2: Establishing
Monarchial and Personal Rule
Paul Brooker, Chapter 3: Establishing
Military Rule
***Paul Brooker, Chapter 4: Establishing One
Party Rule
Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way, “The Rise
of Competitive Authoritarianism” Journal of
Democracy Vol.13, No. 2 (April 2002):
51-64.
Ghobadzadeh, N., & Rahim, L. Z. (2016).
Electoral theocracy and hybrid sovereignty in
Iran. Contemporary Politics, 22(4), 450-468
Schepple, K. 2022. How Victor Orban
Wins, Journal of Democracy, July: 45-61
Julia Ioffe, “Russian Elections: Faking It,”
The New Yorker Magazine, December 5,
2011.
Krekó, Péter & Enyedi, Zsolt. “Orbán’s
Laboratory of Illiberalism.” Journal of
Democracy, vol. 29 no. 3, 2018, pp. 39-
51. Project
MUSE, doi:10.1353/jod.2018.0043
OR
Menkhaus, K. (2017). Elections in the
Hardest Places: The Case of
Somalia. Journal of Democracy 28(4),
132-146
