Interests, Inequality, and Illusion in the Choice for Fair Elections

• Author: Nancy Bermeo
• DOI: 10.1177/0010414010370438
• Published date: 01 August 2010
• Date: 01 August 2010

Comparative Political Studies

43(8/9) 1119 –1147

© The Author(s) 2010

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DOI: 10.1177/0010414010370438

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Interests, Inequality,

and Illusion in the

Choice for Fair

Elections

Nancy Bermeo1

Abstract

Why do actors in transitional governments choose to hold fair elections

when so many other options are available? The answer to this question is key

to understanding an essential element of democracy’s institutional collage.

This essay explores the choice of fair elections through the comparison of

two episodes in Portuguese history: the elections held at the founding of the

First Republic (which were unfair) and the elections held after the fall of the

Salazar–Caetano dictatorship (which were fair instead). The findings challenge

arguments strictly based on the socioeconomic and class-based determinants

of democratization: Although collective actors pursued outcomes on the

basis of the expected distributional consequences of their choices, the author

shows that cross-class political actors were more important than class actors

and that the distribution of institutional power was more important than the

distribution of wealth. The author also shows that illusions and misperceptions

were highly consequential for important institutional choices. If scholars seek

to explain democratization on the basis of structural realities alone, they risk

overrating the power of wealth and underrating the power of the imagined.

Keywords

democratization, Portugal, fair elections, episode of democratization, critical

junctures, political parties, military

1University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Corresponding Author:

Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, New Road,

OX1 1NF Oxford, United Kingdom

Email: nancy.bermeo@nuffield.ox.ac.uk

1120 Comparative Political Studies 43(8/9)

A new democracy is more like a collage than a canvas. It will not emerge all

of a piece but rather bit by bit, with each component part shaped at different

times, by different hands. Democracies are inevitably a set of interconnected

institutions—each with a history and texture of its own. When our research

questions require us to draw neat distinctions between democracies and non-

democracies or to associate the emergence of democracy with a particular

date, these realities become obscured. The “historical turn” highlights them

instead. Recognizing that democracies are made “one institution at a time”

(Ziblatt, 2006), we see that an accurate rendering of democratization anywhere

requires a separate historical analysis of each of democracy’s constituent parts.

The institutional multiplicity of democracy has been highlighted by work

on “democracy with adjectives” (Collier & Levitsky, 1997) and, more recently,

by work on “hybrid regimes” (Levitsky & Way, in press). In pointing out the

serious shortcomings of the different regimes that we categorize as democracies,

these literatures force us to recognize the dramatic variation in the time it takes

for the many institutional components of democracy to develop. These litera-

tures also teach us a great deal about institutional deficiencies. But what factors

explain why and when a particular institutional component of democracy

takes a more laudable form? We should ask this question of a whole range of

democratic institutions. Here, I pose the question of electoral institutions or,

more precisely, elections.

Fair elections are a defining dimension of the democratic regime type. Yet

we know little about why actors in transitional governments choose to hold

fair elections when so many other options are available. History has shown

us that elections can be fixed, restricted, delayed, or cancelled altogether.

Why power holders choose to risk devolving power to the winners of fair,

and therefore unpredictable, competitions is far from obvious.

The Cases and the Argument

This essay explores the choice of fair elections through the comparison of

two electoral episodes in Portuguese history. The first occurs in 1911 at the

beginning of the First Republic and represents a choice for unfair elections.

The second occurs in 1975, after the fall of the Salazar–Caetano dictatorship,

and exemplifies a choice for fair elections instead.

Given the many decades of history and economic development that separate

these two cases, we might logically suspect that these different outcomes can

be explained with a strictly economic argument. Following the carefully

crafted leads offered by Boix (2003) and Acemoglu and Robinson (2006), we