Authoritarian Party Systems: Party Politics In Autocratic Regimes, 1945-2019

After the gradual slowing down of the ''third wave of democratization,'' electoral authoritarianism is rapidly emerging as a dominant form of contemporary autocracy. Political parties play a key role within the political and institutional structures of electoral autocracies. Pro-regime parties provide the dictatorial executive with electoral and legislative tools of sustaining power. At the same time, permitted opposition parties, while normally incapable of challenging the regime, are important for regime sustainability because they perform such vital functions as co-opting actual or potential opposition groups, facilitating power-sharing, and mobilizing electoral participation. The interactions among the dominant parties and the permitted opposition parties, if displaying sustainable cross-temporal patterns, constitute authoritarian party systems.Authoritarian Party Systems provides a theoretical discussion of electoral authoritarianism with special reference to authoritarian party s