What Do Elections Accomplish for Governments and Oppositions?

Ellen Lust-Okar discussed why authoritarian regimes hold elections, noting that elections can help regimes to consolidate their control. She observed that elected parliaments can help autocratic rulers by acting as a channel for distributing state resources to citizens. Parliamentarians thus become dependent on the regime for the resources their constituents need, and citizens seek out personal relationships with their members of parliament to gain access to goods and services, diverting discontent and demands away from the state apparatus. As long as a regime possesses sufficient resources to distribute, its citizens will vote for the candidates or parties with sufficiently close relations with the regime to allow them to deliver. Indeed, citizens are likely to will prefer such well-connected candidates and parties to those candidate or parties with whom they may actually agree in terms of the issues and their political beliefs. Members of parliament who cause trouble for the government, such as by discussing government excesses, pressing demands for reform, and so on, are unlikely to be re-elected, as they will be unable to provide their constituents with access to state wealth. Elections can therefore assist the regimes by serving as low-cost means of managing patronage and containing dissent.

As a result of the role that autocrats create for parliaments, Lust-Okar argued, they cannot serve as useful political platforms for opposition parties. Instead, she noted, elections can actually harm political opposition groups because the regime uses their failure to win votes to paint them as weak, ineffective, and unrepresentative of popular views. Compounding this problem, elections that take place under authoritarian regimes provide a veneer of democracy, while undermining both local and external demands for political reform and greater political freedoms.

Jarrett Blanc examined the challenges for democracy-building of holding elections either under conditions of conflict, or in societies emerging from conflict. Using the examples of Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories, he said that pre-eminence of the conflict as a political issue means that the elections' success can only be measured by how far they facilitate a termination of the conflict. Under the best circumstances, elections can force warring parties to reassess the effectiveness of military force as a tool for political domination. If connected to a peace accord, elections can also accelerate the shift to non-violent conflict resolution.

Blanc emphasized that U.S. policymakers often have little discretion regarding the timing of elections in conflict-ridden areas, making debates over sequencing moot. Much more important, he argued, is determining whether or not free and fair elections can be held. For example, although Hamas participated in, and ultimately won, the most recent Palestinian Legislative Council elections, there was little evidence to suggest that it used its weaponry to affect the electoral outcome. In such a case, a fair political contest was possible despite the environment of conflict and the participation of armed groups in the political process.

Nathan Brown spoke about the role Islamist movements in many Arab states play in the electoral process. Many Islamist groups participate in elections because the process provides a relatively open area within which they can publicize their platforms. Also, those Islamists that win election to the legislature find themselves in a relatively protected political space, where they can raise and debate issues that might otherwise be too dangerous for them to discuss publicly without the cover of parliamentary membership.

At the same time, Brown noted, elections can be dangerous for Islamist movements because those constituents who elect Islamist candidates expect them to deliver on their promises to extract benefits and concessions from governments over which they in practice have very little influence. Islamists who serve in parliament thus tend to focus on pragmatic, achievable goals. At the same time, Islamist leaders outside of formal politics continue to focus on broader issues and can take a more oppositional stance. These different incentives can cause Islamist movements to fracture, thereby weakening the anti-regime opposition. A final danger for Islamists is that participating in elections and entering parliament risks legitimating the regime and its form of governance. In conclusion, Brown argued, these mixed incentives for Islamist movements mean that different Islamists groups can make end up making different choices over time, which belies the notion that their ideology dictates a consistent pattern of behavior.

Pro-Democracy Advocates and Elections: What Is To Be Done?

Sherif Mansour focused on the ways in which opposition elements in Egypt attempted, but failed, to use the elections to expand on their demands for democracy. The Mubarak regime never intended for the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2005 to empower opposition parties, Mansour noted. Instead, the electoral changes were a superficial concession to the Egyptian people in the face of growing demands for reform. Mubarak attempted to use the elections to preserve the political status quo.

Once the pro-democracy movement demonstrated its ability to attract popular support, Mansour argued, the regime fought back to close the Pandora's box that it had opened. Not only did the regime actively interfere with the parliamentary elections, but it launched a containment plan to reverse what few gains were achieved by opposition parties. The Egyptian regime's backlash against democratic demands was enabled by a more permissive international environment. Chastened by Islamist successes in the Palestinian territories and Iraq, the Western nations that had formerly been so aggressive in their calls for liberalization began again to embrace the stability of Mubarak's Egypt. Mansour concluded that the outspoken support of Western states for Egyptian democracy is crucial to the resuscitation of the internal reformers' cause.

Les Campbell spoke of the dangers inherent in Arab elections, but warned against abandoning support for elections in an effort to prevent radical change. Elections, he argued, empower moderate political opposition groups and serve to moderate Islamist parties by drawing them into the electoral process. Seen in this light, every election held in the Arab world during the last ten years has been positive for the long-term growth of democracy. Even when elections have brought Islamists to power, he argued, this step served to bring Islamist movements closer to the norms of competitive politics.

Still, Campbell argued, too much emphasis on elections can be as problematic as rejecting their importance. There must also be an emphasis on the "framework issues," those rules that govern the political context within which elections occur. Campbell concluded by encouraging Western aid groups not to abandon liberal parties or to let up the pressure on Arab regimes to reform.

Almut Wieland-Karimi argued that, while elections are an important step on the road to democracy, they receive too much emphasis in the media and from policymakers. There are many Arab countries in which elections have been held to appease external pressure, despite the fact that internal conditions hardly favored an open, or even moderately open, political contest. In countries that do not enjoy the rule of law, and that do not have laws that regulate the political parties of the establishment let alone the opposition, she said, it is bad policy to ask people to go to the polls.

Wieland-Karimi argued that western audiences and policymakers tend to focus too much on the "free and fair," procedural aspect of Arab elections: whether or not people are allowed to cast their ballots free from interference and intimidation. An equally important component is the degree of political pluralism in the electoral process, whether real opposition parties exist and are allowed a genuine chance to compete. She argued in conclusion that a commitment to cultivating greater pluralism in Arab politics is a useful focus for Western democracy assistance.

Conclusion

Although regimes have proven adept at manipulating elections to their advantage, opposition movements and pro-democracy activists can still gain from participating in the electoral process. Local pro-democracy activists must struggle to encourage wider public engagement with electoral politics and with democratic movements. The United States and other Western states can help by continuing to pressure regimes in the region to allow greater participation by the citizenry in elections as voters, candidates, and as grassroots activists. No single election will shift a state from autocracy to democracy, but elections are now a regular part of the Middle Eastern political fabric. They should not be discounted or ignored. Instead, they should be treated as opportunities for incremental change. Cooperation between internal and external democracy advocates can make each new election more meaningful than the last.