Working Papers

Abstract: When opposition parties and alliances win against autocratic incumbents, what do they do to reverse autocracy and to what extent are they successful in preventing autocratic comebacks? We argue that long-neglected endogenous weaknesses in opposition coalitions strongly undermine their own efforts to reverse autocracy, and open the door for autocratic comebacks. First, partisanship in opposition coalitions result in fractured and ineffective governance. Second, effusive enthusiasm in reversing autocracy deepens mass polarization and encourages counter-mobilization against the new government. We demonstrate this argument through most different case comparison between the recent autocratic reversal experiences of Poland and Malaysia. We show in both cases that while ideologically diverse opposition coalitions opportunistically cooperate to achieve short-term electoral victory, their ideological and distributional differences undermine governance after victory. In addition, because dismantling and reversing autocracy can be framed as partisan revenge, counter-mobilization by the ex-autocratic incumbents are highly successful in further undermining public support for the new government. These findings contribute to the growing literature on resisting democratic backsliding and authoritarian-lead democratization.

Abstract: Consolidating democracy requires democratic reforms to expand civil liberties, enhance transparency, and improve accountability. Political elites complicate the reform process by influencing public opinion. To understand how the framing of democratic reforms affects public opinion, we conducted a survey experiment in Malaysia, a new democracy since 2018. We also provide observational evidence of attitudes toward compromise solutions that balance competing group interests. We report three key findings. First, messages that emphasize improvements to the country’s democracy do not increase support for reforms. Second, appeals that frame reforms as threatening the entrenched status of a legacy privileged group decreases support on average, and also amongst its group members. Third, proposed compromise solutions can generate consensus support for polarized democratic reforms, but also generate polarized opinions for democratic reforms with consensus support. Our results underscore the deep challenges of democratic consolidation in new democracies, and suggest how the nuanced framing of reforms can potentially overcome these obstacles.

Abstract: When Lee Hsien Loong became Prime Minister in August 2004, Singapore’s opposition parties were in the doldrums. They had only 2 elected Members of Parliament amongst a total of 84, on the back of almost two-thirds of the seats uncontested in the prior general elections. Their fortunes would be completely reversed in the next two decades with 10 elected Members of Parliament amongst a total of 93, and all seats contested in the prior general elections. Why was there such a remarkable turnaround? This chapter argues that the Singapore government’s neoliberal economic policies, particularly its loose immigration policies, fermented mass grievances, and drove growing mass support for the opposition. As new opposition parties formed to tap onto this growing support, existing opposition actors capitalized on their small gains in between electoral cycles to grow their organizations via reruiting prominent new members and candidates, institutionalizing internal party discipline, and shifting their electoral communication strategies. The result was two decades of unprecedented opposition growth.

Abstract: How do political parties in an electoral autocracy persuade voters to vote for them in the modern era? We use large-language-models to analyze 133 podcast episodes across 18 podcast platforms covering over 100 hours for 90 political candidates in the 6 months leading up to the Singapore’s May 2025 General Elections. We assess rhetorical variation across political parties in terms of topics discussed, pro-PAP sentiments expressed, emotional language use, propaganda usage, semantic similarities, and left-right ideological positioning. We find distinct differences between electorally successful and unsuccessful opposition parties. Electorally successful opposition parties are as pro-PAP as PAP politicians themselves, and are most semantically similar to PAP politicians. These findings reinforce the endogenous model of political party competition in dominant party electoral autocracies – dominant parties like the PAP reshape citizen preferences in their image, while the most successful opposition parties communicate to persuade voters within the confines of those reshaped preferences.

Abstract: Since Barisan Nasional’s defeat in 2018, there has been growing contention amongst Malaysians about the exact form of democracy that will emerge in the country. Some civil society organizations (CSOs) and political parties continue to tirelessly advocate for an ideal type of liberal democracy – limited government powers, equal rights for all citizens regardless of ethnicity, and free and fair electoral rules. Equally vocal are CSOs and political parties who advocate for the exact opposite – expansive government powers, continued limited rights for ethnic minorities, and lopsided electoral rules that privilege the ethnic majority. This paper argues that increasing rhetorical appeals to an imaginary “social contract,” born from constrained narratives of Malaysia’s independence story and its immediate political aftermath, will severely limit liberal democracy’s development. Unless rigorously challenged, this imagined “social contract” pushes Malaysia towards a contorted form of half-baked democracy where government power remains fragmented, civil liberties are selectively applied, and electoral rules evolve based on political calculation. Such a scenario is not unlike other East Asian democracies, where founding myths continue to restrict the contours and development of liberalism and liberal democracy.

Abstract: Recent analyses of authoritarian-lead democratization have overwhelmingly focused on how autocratic incumbents shape democratization’s trajectory. The role that opposition parties play, particularly after securing electoral victories against dominant incumbents, is frequently neglected. This article argues that compromises reached in opposition pre-electoral alliances also affect democratization after incumbent defeat in unexpected ways. Specifically, opposition alliance pre-electoral bargains in terms of the distribution of political offices and policy compromises constrain the governance flexibility of a newly victorious government post-elections. They restrict political elites from negotiating alternative solutions when new information or new political realities arise. Both types of public pre-electoral bargains result in a disenchanted public when new governments attempt to deviate from these pre-electoral commitments. The collapse in public support opens multiple doors for the ex-dominant autocratic incumbent to return to executive power. In contrast, when opposition alliances forge bargains behind closed doors and win based on vague notions of democratic change, they are free to write an open narrative of victory and to impose their own agenda after autocratic defeat. Public support remains high despite governance controversies and inadequacies. The ex-dominant autocratic incumbent is marginalized, and authoritarian comeback is delayed at least until the next election cycle or when a desperate autocrat mounts a coup. This paper illustrates the arguments empirically by comparing how opposition victories in similarly unprecedented electoral turnovers in 2018 Malaysia and 1986 Philippines lead to divergent outcomes in political stability and authoritarian comebacks.