Life of the party: The origins of regime breakdown and persistence under single-party rule

World Politics

Volumn 57, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 421-451

  Smith, Benjamin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

PARTY POLITICS; POLITICAL SYSTEM; THEORETICAL STUDY;

AFRICA; ASIA; EAST AFRICA; EURASIA; GUINEA-BISSAU; INDONESIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; TANZANIA; WEST AFRICA;

EID: 33645127872     PISSN: 00438871     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/wp.2006.0004     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. Barbara Geddes, "Authoritarian Breakdown: Empirical Test of a Game Theoretic Argument" (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 2-5, 1999).
2. To gauge relative longevity rates within the single-party "family," I estimated the same basic logit models discussed below but included only variants of single-party rule. None of the variants proved significantly more or less durable than others, so it is appropriate to include all of the variants in a sample. The regimes data used here are the original work and property of Barbara Geddes.
3. Indeed, Marcos's Philippines between 1978 and 1986 - more than half, and the last eight, of the regime's fourteen years - ranks as a single-party regime on seven of thirteen measures to my mind, using Geddes' coding criteria. In her language, it settled into single-party hybrid status during these years. Coding for the Marcos regime is available from the author.
4. Although these are cross-sectional time-series data, Geddes conducted the analysis for her 1999 article using standard logit models. I tested for temporal sensitivity using Stata 7.0's xtlogit command and found no significant change in the results. Thus, I have retained her use of standard logistic regression and otherwise have used the same models and methods. One minor difference is that I coded the Middle East and North Africa as a single region.
5. The monarchy data are the original work and property of Jason Brownlee.
6. Because of the lack of a regime failure in Mexico between 1950 and 1992, including a dummy for the regime produced a perfect prediction of lack of failure and Stata 7.0's logit and xtlogit commands dropped all of Mexico's observations. And, because FWT data are missing for the USSR in 1991, the regime's collapse in that year does not appear in the models, so the USSR's observations are dropped as well.
7. Guillermo O'Donnell, Bureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966-1973, in Comparative Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 11.
8. Samuel Huntington, "Social and Institutional Dynamics of One-Party Systems," in Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore, Authoritarian Politics in Modern Society: The Dynamics of Established One-Party Systems (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 14.
9. Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press: 1966).
10. Geddes (fn. 1), 11.
11. Eva Bellin, "The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective," Comparative Politics 36 (January 2005).
12. Indonesia and the Philippines rank identically on both autocracy and democracy scores, with Indonesia ranking 6/1 (autocracy/democracy) in 1974 and 1977 and the Philippines ranking 6/1 during the last three years of martial law rule. Guinea-Bissau and Tanzania rank, during their respective crisis years of 1979-80 and 1980-83, 7/0 and 7/1. Polity's "autocracy" score is a composite measure of several different kinds of repressive or coercive government action.
13. The figures that follow in this paragraph are drawn from Monty G. Marshall, Major Episodes of Political Violence, 1946-2004, http:// members.aol.com/CSPmgm/warlist.htm (accessed February 22, 2005).
14. Huntington (fn. 8).
15. Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952).
16. Martin Shefter, Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 32-33.
17. Ibid., 13.
18. Ibid., 27.
19. "Jason Brownlee, "Durable Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization" (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 2004).
20. Shefter (fn. 16), 30, emphasis added.
21. Peter Gourevitch, Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press), 9.
22. Indonesia's Golongan Karya (Functional Groups), or GOLKAR, became the public face of the "New Order," and the Philippines' "Kilusan Bagong Lipunan" (KBL) the political vehicle of Marcos's "New Society Movement."
23. Mochtar Mas'oed, "The Indonesian Economy and Political Structure during the Early New Order, 1966-1971" (Ph.D. diss., Ohio State University, Columbus, 1983), 66-67.
24. The regional location of these attacks was especially alarming for the new regime: central and eastern Java is the cultural heartland of lndonesia's dominant Javanese majority, and Suharto and many of his closest advisers were born and raised there.
25. "Mas'oed (fn. 23), 101-5.
26. Harsja Bachtiar, "Indonesia," in D. K. Emmerson, ed., Students and Politics in Developing Nations (New York: Praeger, 1968), 190-91;
27. and John Bresnan, Managing Indonesia: The Modern Political Economy (New York: Columbia University Press,), 36-37.
28. KAMI stands for Kesatuan Aksi Mahasiswa Indonesia (Indonesian Student Action Union); kami is also the inclusive word for "we" in Indonesian. KAMI was created in late October 1965 at the home of General (and Minister of Higher Education) Sjarif Thajeb during a meeting of students and anticommunist military leaders.
29. Leo Suryadinata, Military Ascendancy and Political Culture: A Study of Indonesia's GOLKAR (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1999), 10-13.
30. Julian M. Boileau, GOLKAR: Functional Group Politics in Indonesia (Jakarta: CSIS, 1983);
31. David Reeve, GOLKAR of Indonesia: An Alternative to the Party System (Singapore and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985);
32. and Suryadinata (fn. 28).
33. Ichlasul Amal, Regional and Central Government in Indonesian Politics (Yogyakarta: Gadjah Mada University Press, 1992.
34. Suara Muhammadiyah, February 1974.
35. See also Bresnan (fn. 26), 136.
36. Bresnan (fn. 26), 137.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., 142.
39. Ibid., 163.
40. Suryadinata (fn. 28), 76.
41. The Indonesian government had engineered a domestic timber boom in the late 1960s so that timber sales grew dramatically. However, only in 1970, with the enactment of a series of laws aimed at centralizing the industry and tying it closely to the regime, did the government accomplish what it had hoped to politically: turning the timber industry into a well-controlled source of political rents. See Michael Ross, Timber Booms and Institutional Breakdown in Southeast Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 167-76;
42. and David Brown, "Why Governments Fail to Capture Economic Rent: The Unofficial Appropriation of Rain Forest Rent by Rulers in Insular Southeast Asia between 1970-1999" (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2001), 124-29.
43. Hero Cahyono, Peranan Ulama Dalam GOLKAR 1971-1980: Dari Pemilu Sampai Malari (The role of the Islamic scholars in GOLKAR 1971-1980: From the general election to the January 15 disaster) (Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1992);
44. Hariyadhie, Perspektif Gerakan Mahasiswa 1978 Dalam Percaturan Politik Nasional (Perspectives on the student movement of 1978 in the political arena) (Jakarta: PT Golden Terayon Press, 1997).
45. G. Ruhumbika, Towards Ujamaa: Twenty Years of TANU Leadership (Kampala, Nairobi, and Dar Es Salaam: East African Literature Bureau, 1974), 5-10.
46. Shefter (fn. 16).
47. Ruhumbika (fn. 39), 13-18.
48. William Tordoff, "Regional Administration in Tanzania," Journal of Modern African Studies 3 (May 1965), 66.
49. Ibid., 64, emphasis added.
50. Norman N. Miller, "The Rural African Party: Political Participation in Tanzania," American Political Science Review 64 (June 1970), 550.
51. Thanks to Goran Hyden for his suggestions on this topic.
52. Frank Holmquist, "Class Structure, Peasant Participation, and Rural Self-Help," in J. D. Barkan, ed., Politics and Public Policy in Kenya and Tanzania (New York: Praeger, 1984), 191-92;
53. and Aili Marie Tripp, "Local Organizations, Participation, and the State in Urban Tanzania," in Goran Hyden and Michael Bratton, eds., Governance and Politics in Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1991), 234-36.
54. Goran Hyden, Beyond Ujamaa in Tanzania: Underdevelopment and an Uncaptured Peasantry (London: Heinemann, 1980), 36-37.
55. Patrick Chabal, "Party, State, and Socialism in Guinea-Bissau," Canadian Journal of African Studies 17, no. 2 (1983), 194.
56. Joshua Forrest, Guinea-Bissau: Power, Conflict, and Renewal in a West African Nation (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992), 30-31.
57. Chabal (fn. 48), 191.
58. Ibid., 197.
59. Joshua Forrest, "Guinea-Bissau since Independence: A Decade of Domestic Power Struggles," Journal of Modern African Studies 25 (March 1987), 99-100.
60. Ibid., 97.
61. Ibid., 102.
62. Ibid., 104.
63. However, both Marcos and his opponents among the traditional Filipino political elite inflated the strength of the opposition. Marcos did so to rationalize the declaration of martial law; his opposition did so through exaggerated reporting of regional rebellions in newspapers they owned, and did so to try and paint a picture in Manila of a president on the ropes. As Thompson details, neither side's account during this period was very accurate, and both were heavily colored by political motives. See Mark R. Thompson, The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Transition in the Philippines (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), esp. 37-41, 54-61.
64. The MNLF grew in strength, however, during the first few years of martial law, and by 1975 had forced the regime to the negotiating table, the result of which was a cease-fire granting autonomy to Muslim areas in the southern Philippines and large-scale co-optation of MNLF leaders into the regime's patronage circles. See Thompson (fn. 56), 61-63.
65. David Wurfel, "Martial Law in the Philippines: The Methods of Regime Survival," Pacific Affairs 50 (Spring 1977), 6.
66. Thanks to Dan Slater for his discussion of anti-Marcos political activity during this period.
67. Ross (fn. 37), 71-73.
68. Ibid., 76, emphasis added.
69. Mark R. Thompson, "The Marcos Regime in the Philippines," in H.E. Chehabi and Juan J. Linz, Sultanistic Regimes (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998), 218-21.
70. See also Thompson (fn.56), 52-54.
71. Thompson (fn. 56), 49-63.
72. See fn. 60.
73. Renato S. Velasco, "Philippine Democracy: Promise and Performance," in A. Laothamatas, ed., Democratization in Southeast and East Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1997), 86-87.
74. Richard Nations and Guy Sacerdoti, "Marcos Gives Ground on Some Points, but the Future Is Still Uncertain: The Aquino Legacy," Far Eastern Economic Review 125 (August 30, 1984), 22.
75. Peter Dauvergne, Shadows in the Forest: Japan and the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), 140.
76. Nations and Sacerdoti (fn. 66).
77. Brownlee (fn. 19).
78. Steven Heydemann, Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 157-61.
79. Ibid., 162.
80. Ellen Lust-Okar, "Institutions, Historical Legacies and the Failure of Liberalization in the Middle East and North Africa" (Manuscript, Yale University, 2004);
81. Benjamin Smith, "Hard Times in the Land of Plenty: Oil, Opposition and Late Development" (forthcoming).
82. See, for example, Evan Lieberman, "Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research," American Political Science Review 99 (August 2005), 435-52.
83. David Waldner, "From Intra-Type Variation to the Origins of Types: Recovering the Macro-Analytics of State Building" (Paper presented at the conference, "Asian Political Economy in an Era of Globalization," Dartmouth College, May 10-11, 2002).