My research interests focus on political contestation, democratization and democratic consolidation in the developing world. I use a variety of methods and evidence-gathering techniques to explore these topics, including in-depth interviewing, archival research, statistical analysis, and process tracing.
Dissertation project
Dilemmas of Opposition: Building Parties and Coalitions in Authoritarian Regimes
Approximately one third of the world’s states are competitive authoritarian regimes, where opposition parties compete against powerful incumbents that skew political and electoral institutions to their advantage. A key challenge for opposition parties in such regimes is to expand their electoral support and work with other opposition actors to win greater power. Under what conditions are they successful in building broad-based and coordinated challenges to authoritarian rulers?
This dissertation argues that opposition success hinges on their strategic choices in elections and in office – and how they navigate key tradeoffs and dilemmas of expansion. Individual opposition parties face diverging incentives and costs to expand based on the identities and issues around which they initially build support. At the collective level, opposition parties often seek to coordinate their electoral challenges against the incumbent to build broader power. But when opposition parties work together, they face strong pressure to stick with their existing niche identities, since pursuing strategies of party broadening – changes to party image to appeal to new constituencies – risks encroaching on the electoral terrain and core constituencies of their coalition partners. As a result, parties frequently struggle to navigate conflicting incentives of individual and collective electoral strategies to win power.
The dissertation tests the theory empirically using evidence from Malaysia, until 2018 the world’s longest-running dominant party authoritarian government. It analyzes the strategies and variable success of the country’s opposition parties in pursuing their core electoral and policy goals and coordinating their efforts in this environment – and why they were ultimately successful in securing substantial electoral support. Additional case studies illustrate how individual and collective dilemmas of expansion inform opposition behavior in other competitive authoritarian regimes. The study offers new insights into why opposition parties have difficulty in unseating even weak authoritarian incumbents, and the conditions under which they successfully scale up their power.
Selected works in progress (see CV for list of publications)
Growth without Moderation? Building Opposition Parties and Coalitions in Authoritarian Regimes (Job Market Paper)
Opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes face a key electoral challenge: making persuasive appeals to the broader electorate, often across ethnic, religious, and territorial lines. How do these parties strategize to win over support among new audiences, and what are the tradeoffs that parties face in doing so? In this paper, I focus on two strategies: party broadening, where parties try to change party brand and organization to become more broadly appealing, and coalition building, when opposition parties collectively build an anti-regime identity to harness voter discontent with the regime. When regime support wanes, parties built around demographically limited core audiences are more likely to pursue party broadening to expand their base of support. However, weak regimes also encourage formation of anti-regime coalitions to appeal to a broad audience of discontented regime supporters. Coalition building reduces incentives for party broadening, since coalitions encourage parties to appeal to new voters on the basis of a collective opposition identity while sticking to existing party brands. This helps explain why opposition parties often fail to transform into broad-based parties even in the face of crumbling incumbent support. I use the theory to explain divergent party behavior in Malaysia, until recently the world’s longest-running dominant party authoritarian regime. I compare the country’s three main opposition parties, which have vacillated between strategies aimed at shoring up core support and attempts to transform party brands and construct coalitions. The findings provide insight into processes of party building and political contestation in competitive authoritarian regimes.
Governing from the Margins: Subnational Office and Opposition Control in Authoritarian Regimes
In competitive authoritarian regimes, opposition parties frequently contest and win subnational offices even while failing to gain national office. Yet governing at the local level introduces dilemmas for opposition parties in using limited fiscal and policymaking power in service of their broader goals. How do opposition parties use local office to advance party goals? When does gaining subnational power strengthen or undermine the national ambitions of opposition parties? To answer these questions, this paper focuses on two sources of variation: the resources and responsibilities that authoritarian regimes allocate to local governments and their strategic response to opposition wins, and the identities and cleavages which opposition parties use to mobilize support. Since regimes must devolve at least some authority to local offices, opposition parties benefit from even limited control over resources to strengthen organizations and ties with voters. Subnational office can be problematic for parties, however, in reconciling local and national political competition. Parties with national ambitions face difficulties in implementing their platform at the local level; alternately, parties may satisfy core voters at the local level but end up limiting their broader appeal by implementing divisive policy in office. To show that opposition party characteristics are important to explaining variation in success across party, I compare three distinct opposition parties in office in Malaysia’s long-running dominant party authoritarian system. All three parties have used state-level governments to build up party organizations and material ties with voters, but provoked conflict within and between parties over core policy objectives. This paper contributes new perspectives and findings on the undertheorized phenomenon of subnational control by opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes.
Dissertation project
Dilemmas of Opposition: Building Parties and Coalitions in Authoritarian Regimes
Approximately one third of the world’s states are competitive authoritarian regimes, where opposition parties compete against powerful incumbents that skew political and electoral institutions to their advantage. A key challenge for opposition parties in such regimes is to expand their electoral support and work with other opposition actors to win greater power. Under what conditions are they successful in building broad-based and coordinated challenges to authoritarian rulers?
This dissertation argues that opposition success hinges on their strategic choices in elections and in office – and how they navigate key tradeoffs and dilemmas of expansion. Individual opposition parties face diverging incentives and costs to expand based on the identities and issues around which they initially build support. At the collective level, opposition parties often seek to coordinate their electoral challenges against the incumbent to build broader power. But when opposition parties work together, they face strong pressure to stick with their existing niche identities, since pursuing strategies of party broadening – changes to party image to appeal to new constituencies – risks encroaching on the electoral terrain and core constituencies of their coalition partners. As a result, parties frequently struggle to navigate conflicting incentives of individual and collective electoral strategies to win power.
The dissertation tests the theory empirically using evidence from Malaysia, until 2018 the world’s longest-running dominant party authoritarian government. It analyzes the strategies and variable success of the country’s opposition parties in pursuing their core electoral and policy goals and coordinating their efforts in this environment – and why they were ultimately successful in securing substantial electoral support. Additional case studies illustrate how individual and collective dilemmas of expansion inform opposition behavior in other competitive authoritarian regimes. The study offers new insights into why opposition parties have difficulty in unseating even weak authoritarian incumbents, and the conditions under which they successfully scale up their power.
Selected works in progress (see CV for list of publications)
Growth without Moderation? Building Opposition Parties and Coalitions in Authoritarian Regimes (Job Market Paper)
Opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes face a key electoral challenge: making persuasive appeals to the broader electorate, often across ethnic, religious, and territorial lines. How do these parties strategize to win over support among new audiences, and what are the tradeoffs that parties face in doing so? In this paper, I focus on two strategies: party broadening, where parties try to change party brand and organization to become more broadly appealing, and coalition building, when opposition parties collectively build an anti-regime identity to harness voter discontent with the regime. When regime support wanes, parties built around demographically limited core audiences are more likely to pursue party broadening to expand their base of support. However, weak regimes also encourage formation of anti-regime coalitions to appeal to a broad audience of discontented regime supporters. Coalition building reduces incentives for party broadening, since coalitions encourage parties to appeal to new voters on the basis of a collective opposition identity while sticking to existing party brands. This helps explain why opposition parties often fail to transform into broad-based parties even in the face of crumbling incumbent support. I use the theory to explain divergent party behavior in Malaysia, until recently the world’s longest-running dominant party authoritarian regime. I compare the country’s three main opposition parties, which have vacillated between strategies aimed at shoring up core support and attempts to transform party brands and construct coalitions. The findings provide insight into processes of party building and political contestation in competitive authoritarian regimes.
Governing from the Margins: Subnational Office and Opposition Control in Authoritarian Regimes
In competitive authoritarian regimes, opposition parties frequently contest and win subnational offices even while failing to gain national office. Yet governing at the local level introduces dilemmas for opposition parties in using limited fiscal and policymaking power in service of their broader goals. How do opposition parties use local office to advance party goals? When does gaining subnational power strengthen or undermine the national ambitions of opposition parties? To answer these questions, this paper focuses on two sources of variation: the resources and responsibilities that authoritarian regimes allocate to local governments and their strategic response to opposition wins, and the identities and cleavages which opposition parties use to mobilize support. Since regimes must devolve at least some authority to local offices, opposition parties benefit from even limited control over resources to strengthen organizations and ties with voters. Subnational office can be problematic for parties, however, in reconciling local and national political competition. Parties with national ambitions face difficulties in implementing their platform at the local level; alternately, parties may satisfy core voters at the local level but end up limiting their broader appeal by implementing divisive policy in office. To show that opposition party characteristics are important to explaining variation in success across party, I compare three distinct opposition parties in office in Malaysia’s long-running dominant party authoritarian system. All three parties have used state-level governments to build up party organizations and material ties with voters, but provoked conflict within and between parties over core policy objectives. This paper contributes new perspectives and findings on the undertheorized phenomenon of subnational control by opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes.