The Politics of Uncertainty Sustaining and Subverting Electoral Authoritarianism

Dictatorship is not what it was once. Military and single-party regimes have been withering away. Today, most dictators organize multiparty elections. The Politics of Uncertainty presents an analytical framework and empirical data that allow us to understand the distinctive political dynamics of these new electoral authoritarian regimes. It argues that all autocracies suffer from institutional uncertainties: their hold on power is never secure. They also suffer from informational uncertainties: they can never know for sure how secure they are. The author identifies these uncertainties as the central axes of regimes conflicts under dictatorship. The "politics of uncertainty" comprises the struggle between rulers and dissidents over these twin uncertainties. In electoral autocracies, it unfolds primarily as competition over electoral uncertainty. The study of electoral authoritarianism is a vibrant growth industry in political science and this book is required reading for all students of elections, authoritarianism, and democratization. Oxford Studies in Democratization is a series for scholars and students of comparative politics and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on the comparative study of the democratization process that accompanied the decline and termination of the cold war. The geographical focus of the series is primarily Latin America, the Caribbean, Southern and Eastern Europe, and relevant experiences in Africa and Asia. The series editor is Laurence Whitehead, Senior Research Fellow, Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

1 - The politics of uncertainty
2 - Shaping the authoritarian arena
3 - Shaping the electoral arena
4 - Two levels of struggle
5 - The power of elections
6 - Comparative cases and data
7 - The struggle over electoral uncertainty
8 - The calculus of electoral manipulation
9 - The calculus of electoral protest
10 - The struggle over regime change

Andreas Schedler is Professor of Political Science at the Center for Economic Teaching and Research (CIDE) in Mexico City. He earned his PhD from the University of Vienna. He has conducted research on issues such as anti-political-establishment parties, accountability, democratic consolidation and transition, elections, and authoritarianism. In the field of methodology, he has worked on concept analysis and cross-national measurement. Between 2000 and 2012, he refounded and reconsolidated the Committee on Concepts and Methods (C&M) of the International Political Science Association (IPSA), first as its chair then as vice-chair. His articles have appeared in scholarly journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, the Journal of Democracy, the European Journal of Political Research, Party Politics, the Journal of Political Philosophy, and Political Research Quarterly.