No dia 13 de Fevereiro, Anna Callis (Lafayette College) será a oradora de um seminário do Grupo de Investigação RIGoP com o tema Disrupting the Dominant Party: The Personalization of Autocratic Rule (co-authored paper with Christopher Carter). A partir das 12h, exclusivamente online.

Abstract:

In competitive authoritarian regimes, the dominant party exercises tight control over the selection of members of the authoritarian legislature, who are often more loyal to the party than to the authoritarian executive. We argue that the leader can increase his influence by expanding the opposition’s role in administering legislative elections. Greater opposition involvement in election administration facilitates the selection of legislators from outside the dominant party, placing the executive in a stronger bargaining position vis-`a-vis these new lawmakers. Using archival data from Peru, we demonstrate that including the opposition in electoral administration strengthened President Augusto Leguía (1908–1912) against his Civil Party. In areas with opposition electoral administrators, legislators were more likely to join Leguía’s coalition; vote for Leguía-backed policies opposed by the Civil Party; and support him in an election against the Civil Party. Our findings illustrate how authoritarian executives can weaken dominant parties and personalize their rule.

Bio:

Anna Callis is Assistant Professor in the Department of Government and Law, Lafayette College. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow at The Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University. She received her PhD in Political Science from the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, and completed a Master's in Political Science from FLACSO, Ecuador. Her work focuses on the politics of authoritarianism and how divisions among powerful authoritarian stakeholders can shape the prospects of democratization as well as the stability of new democracies