Peer-Reviewed Papers (Under Review)

"Why Do Opposition Parties Boycott Elections?"

Abstract:

Election boycotts are puzzling in that they seem to only confirm government victory. Although election boycotts are a common strategy for opposition parties in electoral authoritarian regimes, few studies have examined the reasons for the phenomenon. To understand the incentives behind and conditions enabling such seemingly self-defeating behaviour, this article develops a formal model of government-opposition interaction under electoral authoritarianism. I find that the opposition party boycotts an election to prevent an autocratic government from cancelling the next election, as conserving resources through election boycotts improves the opposition party’s ability to threaten the government in the event of such cancellation. This article enhances the democratisation by elections literature as it helps clarify the factors that promote autocratic governments’ continued implementation of elections. The model reveals two other mechanisms that may underlie election boycotts.

Work in Progress 

The Monitoring Dilemma in Founding Elections: Building or Blunting Self-Enforcing Democracy (with Taku Yukawa)

Short-Term Pain, Long-Term Gain? A Rationale behind Election Boycotts (with Hisashi Kadoya)

Defeating Executive Aggrandizers: Political Polarization and Incumbent Removal in Latin America and Asia (with Maris Kellam and Aya Watanabe)

Fearon-Kalyvas Model: Toward a Unified Model of Battles and Violence in Civil War (with Kyosuke Kikuta and Wakako Maekawa)