SAFEGUARDING DEMOCRACY? A Quantitative Study Exploring the Role of Mainstream Parties in Preventing Autocratization

Abstract

Much academic interest has been devoted to understanding and explaining autocratization – the process of moving away from democracy – in particular the structural and institutional factors. However, little is known about the role mainstream parties play in preventing autocratization. Furthermore, despite the widespread use of the mainstream party concept in the literature on political parties, there is no consensus on its meaning and no existing global measure thereof which accounts for parties as changing organizations and mainstreamness as a continuous party characteristic. This thesis defines mainstream parties and offers a novel measure of the concept: the Mainstream Party Index (MPI). By employing bias reduction maximum likelihood estimation, I find that higher levels of mainstreamness in parties is associated with decreased likelihoods of onsets of autocratization. However, increasing levels of mainstreamness among parties with low to medium levels of mainstreamness reduce the negative relationship between political parties’ democratic commitment and autocratization onsets. A potential explanation to these findings is that highly mainstream parties, as integral parts of the political establishment, may enhance the continuity of a political system. However, parties that increase in mainstream levels may represent a new and rising type of political establishment, representing a threat to the existing political system, which may lead to a regime change. However, further research is required to explore this proposition. Altogether, the findings suggest that mainstreamness is a previously overlooked factor in terms of understanding autocratization and its prevention. Furthermore, they indicate that mainstream parties do play a role in preventing autocratization.