Subnational Elections and Media Freedom in Autocracies: Diffusion of Local Reputation and Regime Survival

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129211066895
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2022, Vol. 75(4) 1321–1334

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129211066895

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Subnational Elections and Media Freedom

in Autocracies: Diffusion of Local

Reputation and Regime Survival

JunHyeok Jang

1



Abstract

What is the effect of subnational elections on autocratic regime survival? The existing literature suggests that holding

subnational elections help foster autocratic regime stability. I argue that the benef‌it of subnational elections for regime

survival is conditional on a lack of media freedom: As the level of media freedom increases, the positive inf‌luence of

holding subnational elections on regime survival decreases. This is because subnational elections provide local politicians

with opportunities to build good reputations, and when good reputations formed at the local level spread to other

jurisdictions via relatively free media, citizens can use them as a focal point to coordinate against the regime. Using the

quantitative analysis of Time-Series Cross-Sectional data, I f‌ind empirical support for my theory.

Keywords

authoritarian regime survival, authoritarian institutions, subnational elections, media freedom

Introduction

What is the effect of subnational elections on autocratic

regime survival? The extant literature on authoritarian

elections has argued that elections serve to stabilize the

regime (Gandhi, 2008;Magaloni, 2006;Geddes, 2005).

Holding elections not only provides an autocrat with

domestic and international legitimacy (Levitsky and Way,

2010;Schedler, 2002), but also signals the strength of the

regime to opposition elites (Little, 2012;Magaloni, 2006;

Rozenas, 2016;Simpser, 2013), thereby deterring chal-

lenges to the regime. More importantly, the recent liter-

ature has paid close attention to how elections enable an

autocrat to co-opt oppositions (Gandhi, 2008;Gandhi and

Lust-Okar, 2009;Magaloni, 2006) as well as how they

provide information about the popularity of the regime, its

off‌icials, and its opponents (Brownlee, 2007;Miller,

2015). Despite the difference in foci, the literature has

largely argued that autocratic elections can enhance re-

gime survival.

As a part of the autocratic election literature, recent

scholarship has begun to study subnational elections in

autocracies. It has been argued that subnational elections

serve to co-opt competent opposition local elites by al-

lowing them to take the local off‌ice and have some extent

of discretion (Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009). Moreover,

subnational elections allow citizens to select their own

local leaders who are familiar with local affairs (Buckley

et al., 2014), and send a signal of discontent about in-

cumbent leaders (Gandhi and Lust-Okar, 2009;Geddes,

2005). By enabling autocrats to gather information about

the competence of local elites, replace incompetent

subordinates, and/or co-opt competent oppositions, sub-

national elections are believed to stabilize authoritarian

regimes.

But are subnational elections always conducive to

regime survival? Take the recent case of Turkey. In 2019,

Turkey held a mayoral election, and many opposition

local leaders, including Ekrem

˙

Imamo˘

glu, of Istanbul,

won control of local governments. If the election had been

a part of government efforts to co-opt competent local

leaders, as the extant literature has commonly posited,

President Recep Tayyip Erdo˘

gan should have let

˙

Imamo˘

glu take off‌ice. Instead, he attempted to dismiss the

result of the election in Istanbul by demanding a new

election. Why did Erdo˘

gan oppose

˙

Imamo˘

glu’s taking

1

University of California Merced, Merced, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

JunHyeok Jang, Political Science, University of California Merced, 5200

North Lake Rd, Merced, CA 95343, USA.

Email: jjang23@ucmerced.edu