9
Semi-Dictatorships and
Semidemocracies
Some dictatorships have been so elaborately disguised as democracies
that they can be difficult to distinguish from the partial
or limited democracies, which became quite common during
the 1980s-90s with the many transitions from dictatorship . The
previous chapter mentioned two different forms of transitional
limited democracy:
1 . the limited democratisation that may occur in the initial stages
of transition from dictatorship ; and
2 . the limitations on democracy that are to be found in a situation
of protodemocracy, in which it is not clear whether a country
will push on to full democracy or will relapse into dictatorship .
In addition to these transitional forms there are more stable
or consolidated forms of limited democracy (including
immobilised protodemocracies) that have lasted for decades .
Distinguishing between democratically disguised dictatorships
and these various forms of `dictatorial' democracy can be difficult,
but it is an important practical as well as academic issueA
systematic analysis of this issue was provided by Diamond,
Linz and Lipset (1989) as editors of a massive study of Third
World democracies (see Figure 9 .1) . In their preface to this
study they pointed out that the `boundary between democratic
and non-democratic is sometimes a blurred and imperfect one
but they identified a graduated range of `less-than-democra
tic
systems' within this border area (ibid.: xvii) .
226
Semi-Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 227
Figure 9.1
'Less-than-democratic' regimes (Diamond, Linz and Lipset, 1989)
•
	
At the clearly non-democratic end of the range they identified
a type of authoritarian regime that they labelled
`pseudodemocracy', in which `the existence of formally democratic
political institutions, such as multiparty electoral
competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality
of authoritarian domination' (ibid. : xviii) .
•
	
However, the editors acknowledged that pseudodemocracy
in certain respects overlaps what they termed the `hegemonic
party system', which is not an authoritarian regime but also
falls far short of being a democracy because its frequent use
of state coercion and its `pervasive electoral malpractices' deny
opposition parties `any real chance to compete for power'
(ibid. : xvii) . A hegemonic party system differs from a pseudodemocracy,
though, in being more institutionalised and tending
to be less personalised and coercive .
•
	
Finally, at the near-democratic end of the range, the editors
identified what they termed `semidemocratic' regimes in which
there are competitive elections but :
1 . the outcome of these elections deviates significantly from
the people's preferences because of
- limits on the power of elected public officials,
- restrictions on competition between political parties,
- lack of freedom and fairness in the conduct of elections,
and/or
2. there are limits on political and civil liberties which prevent
some political orientations/interests from organising
and expressing themselves (ibid. : xvii) .
Non-democratic --- --- ---->	3	 >----~ Near-democratic
1 . Pseudodemocracy 2. Hegemonic party 3. Semidemocratic
land other types system system - electoral
of authoritarian outcomes deviate
regime) significantly from
popular preferences
i
a
1
228 Non Democratic Regimes
However, this analytical framework needs to be expanded in
some areas and can be simplified in others. On the one hand,
the conception of semidemocracy needs to be expanded to
explicitly incorporate such transitional forms of limited democracy
as protodemocracy and (patted) limited democratisation - which
can be viewed as transitional types distinct from the consolidated
type of semidemocratic regime (see Figure 9 .2) • On the other
hand, there is no need to adopt the conceptions of
pseudodemocracy and hegemonie party system as two distinct
but also overlapping conceptions of disguised dictatorship . Both
are clearly undemocratic regimes, as even the hegemonie party
system uses undemocratic means to deny opposition parties a
chance to compete for power . That it is a less personalist and
coercive system than pseudodemocracy may mean that it has a
more convincing democratic disguise . But the key to any credible
democratic disguise is the use of semi-competitive elections (see
Chapter 5), and these appear to be present in pseudodemocracy
as well as the hegemonie party system .
Therefore it is simpler to focus on the presence of semicompetitive
elections as the distinctive and defining characteristic
of the disguised dictatorships (see Figure 9 .2) . These semicompetitive
(elections) dictatorships can be more concisely labelled
'semi- (competitive) dictatorships' or simply semi-dictatorships
. They
are not limited or partial forms of dictatorship ; they are `semi'
dictatorships only in the sense of using semi-competitive elections
to provide themselves with a more elaborate and convincing
democratic disguise than if they had either refused to hold
any form of election or allowed only non-competitive elections.
The semi-dictatorship can therefore be distinguished typologically
from the 'auto-dictatorship' and the 'mono-dictatorship' (see
Figure 9.2) . The auto-dictatorship refuses to hold any elections
and seeks self-legitimation (`auto'-legitimation) by claiming to
embody the popular will or to be preparing the country to
attain or return to democracy. The mono-dictatorship allows
only non-competitive elections, with only one candidate, party
or list of candidates. In contrast, the semi-dictatorship goes so
far in its search for democratic credibility and electoral legitimacy
as to permit multiparty semi-competitive elections .
A semi-competitive election is much more credible and convincing
than non-competitive elections, even if they are given
a multiparty gloss by the use of regime-controlled, puppet
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230 Non-Democratic Regimes
opposition parties (see Chapter 5) . In semi-competitive elections
the regime's official party actually competes for votes (to some
degree) with other parties that are (to some degree) autonomous,
not puppet, parties. The elections are only semi-competitive
in the sense that the opposition parties are denied any chance
of victory by the special advantages bestowed on the official
party and/or by the various ways in which the other parties
are hampered . The special advantages range from vote-rigging
and other forms of electoral fraud, to vote-buying and other
forms of electoral 'patron-client' relationship, such as the use
of state-funded public works to secure electoral support . The
hampering of the other parties ranges from the arrest of their
leaders to restricting their access to the mass media .
The semi-dictatorship may further secure its position against
undesired electoral results by ensuring that key public offices
cannot even formally or constitutionally be acquired through
victory at the polls . For example, some members of the legislature
might be appointed rather than elected, and/or the
executive President might be elected only indirectly, whether
by the legislature or some other form of electoral college.
However, preferring indirect election and/or appointment to
public offices can wreck the regime's democratic disguise as
effectively as allowing too little competitiveness in elections .
The Classic Example: Mexico
The party dictatorship in Mexico provides the most sophisticated
as well as oldest example of semi-dictatorship . Although
usually classified as an authoritarian regime, it has been described
as `more complex than practically any of the authoritarian
regimes that have ruled over other Latin American, African,
and Asian nations in recent decades' (Cornelius, 1987 : 18) .
The complexity of the Mexican regime arises partly from its
being a sophisticated semi-dictatorship, but also partly from its
revolutionary heritage. The post-1946 PRI party-state regime is
the most recent manifestation of a revolutionary regime that
originated in the 1910-17 Mexican Revolution - a continuity
that is symbolised by continuing allegiance to the Revolution's
1917 Constitution. In fact Mexico's is the oldest regime to have
originated in a social revolution, as its only rival for revolutionary
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 231
longevity disappeared from the scene with the demise of the
Soviet Union.
The nature and goals of the Mexican Revolution ensured
that any Mexican regime claiming a revolutionary heritage would
be democratic, semidemocratic or a semi-dictatorship. The revolutionary
programme expressed in the Revolution's 1917
Constitution included a commitment to liberal democracy as
well as to various social goals. Moreover, the Constitution's
prohibiting of presidential reelection expressed the revolutionaries'
commitment (also expressed in the promise of `effective
suffrage ; no reelection') to preventing Mexico from relapsing
into a democratically disguised personal dictatorship like the
1876-1911 reign of President Diaz (Middlebrook, 1986 : 129) .
Therefore, even if the post-1917 regimes' legitimacy depended
primarily on commitment to the Revolution's principles rather
than on winning competitive elections (Whitehead, 1994 : 328),
these principles required that outward, formal respect be shown
to democracy and that dictatorship be convincingly disguised .
The military and party dictatorships that have been established
during the long history of post-Revolution Mexico have formally
adhered to the democratic provisions of the Constitution,
including the ban on reelection . Furthermore, political opponents
have been allowed to operate within a semi-competitive
multiparty system that is summed up by the formula `you can
be a party; but not a government', and in which the traditional
role of the opposition parties has been `to put up enough of a
fight to make the ruling party's victory look credible' (Whitehead,
1994: 337; Cornelius, 1987 : 32) .
The regime's democratic disguise was less credible in the
1920s and 1930s when the military wing of the revolutionary
movement had taken charge, but in the 1940s power was
transferred to civilians and to the official party of the revolution,
the Institutionalised Revolutionary Party (PRI) . Founded
by the military in 1928 as the National Revolutionary Party
and known in 1938-46 as the Party of the Mexican Revolution,
the party had already for many years enjoyed the special
advantages of the official party within a semi-dictatorship . In
addition to patronage opportunities, it had been able to rely
on the electoral fraud perpetrated by Ministry of Government
officials charged with administering the electoral system (Brooker,
1995: 222-3) .
232 Non-Democratic Regimes
Civilianisation into a party-state regime did not bring an end
to the use of electoral fraud and of extensive patronage
opportunities, which were exploited by not only the PRI but
also the party's huge labour and peasant organisations
(Middlebrook, 1986: 129; Cornelius, 1987: 34) . There was even
the use of restrictive legislation to prevent such radical parties
as the Mexican Communist Party from participating in elections
and to hinder the forming of regional and local parties . Consequently,
after more than 60 years of regular (semi-competitive)
elections, Mexico still showed almost as much evidence of party
monopoly as was to be found in the Soviet Union on the eve
of its Gorbachev-led liberalisation. For in 1985 the PRI held
the federal presidency, all the seats in the Senate, three-quarters
of the seats in the Chamber of Deputies, all the state
governorships, and control of 96 per cent of municipal governments
(Cornelius, 1987: 15) .
The PRI's overwhelming electoral dominance had in fact
become politically counterproductive in the 1970s, forcing the
regime to launch a series of political and electoral reforms aimed
at creating a more credible opposition (Cornelius, 1987;
Middlebrook, 1986) . The opposition parties had become too
disillusioned and weak to perform their traditional role of giving
some democratic credibility to the official party's electoral
victories. In 1976 the main opposition party, the conservative
PAN, even failed to put up a presidential candidate, leaving a
very embarrassed regime to conduct an uncontested presidential
election . The public's disillusionment was evident in the
steadily declining levels of voter participation, in middle-class
discontent (symbolised and strengthened by the student demonstrators
martyred in the 1968 massacre), and eventually in
the emergence of leftist underground parties and short-lived
urban and rural guerrilla movements . Therefore the reforming
of the electoral system can also be seen as providing a safety
valve for discontent and opposition (Tagle, 1993 ; Whitehead,
1994) . The PRI had long employed a conciliatory strategy of
safety valves and diversions, cooption and incorporation, to
reduce its need to resort to crude repression .
The series of reforms in 1972, 1973 and 1977 assisted the
opposition in quite the reverse fashion to the manner in which
opposition parties are usually disadvantaged and hampered in
a semi-dictatorship (Middlebrook, 1986; Cornelius, 1987; Tagle,
i
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 233
1993) . Already, in 1963, a small element of proportional
representation had been introduced into the electoral system
to allow even the smaller of the opposition parties to be represented
in the Chamber of Deputies, but now the threshold for
representation was reduced from 2.5 per cent to only 1 .5 per
cent of the national vote, and the Chamber was expanded by a
third to include 100 of these (non-PRI) proportional-representation
`party deputies' . Old and new leftist parties were now allowed
to participate in elections, and a Federal Electoral Commission
was established to oversee the electoral system and process .
Furthermore, political parties were recognised as public-interest
organisations, public funding was provided for their election
campaigns, and they were guaranteed regular access to radio
and television.
However, there were crucial limits on how far the electoral
system would be reformed . Electoral fraud had certainly been
reduced but in many rural areas `the PRI conducted the elections
much as it always had' and still engaged `in various forms
of electoral fraud' (Middlebrook, 1986: 136, 142) . In fact the
PRI's greatest electoral advantage was its control of the rural
vote, which constituted as much as a third of the total vote
and was overrepresented electorally thanks to the regime's
unwillingness to adjust outdated constituency boundaries (Fox,
1994) . Not only was fraud widespread in rural areas, but also
they received little attention from opposition parties, leaving
the vote to be mobilised by local political bosses exploiting
their patronage opportunities - including the large-scale
opportunities provided by road-building, school-building and
other public works (Fox, 1994; Harvey, 1993) .
Nevertheless, the 1970s reforms proved quite sufficient for
the purpose of creating a more credible opposition and
election contest . In the 1982 elections there was a wider
range of parties, significant increase in voter participation, and
a marked rise in the opposition's vote as well as congressional
representation (Middlebrook, 1986) . Thereafter, changes in
the electoral rules no longer necessarily strengthened the
opposition parties (Tagle, 1993) . For example, although the
1986 revamping of electoral laws increased the number of
proportional-representation seats in the Chamber of Deputies
to 200 (out of 500), now the PRI .as well as the opposition
parties would be entitled to a share of these seats . Other electoral
234 Non-Democratic Regimes
`reforms' made at this time and in 1989-90 tended, on balance,
to strengthen the PRI's ability to exert control over electoral
results and to actually reverse the trend towards democratising
electoral procedures.
For by the later 1980s Mexican politics had become too competitive
for the semi-dictatorship's comfort . In the 1988 elections
the PRI lost its two-thirds majority in the Chamber of Deputies,
and without its new proportional-representation seats would
have failed to secure an absolute majority - which in turn was
needed to ratify the party's marginal and controversial presidential
victory (Tagle, 1993) . The electoral debacle was partly
due to a split within the PRI, as a leftist faction opposed to
their party's neo-liberal economic restructuring had broken away
to support the presidential candidacy of their standard-bearer,
Cardenas (Dresser, 1994) . He became the joint candidate of a
coalition of several leftist parties and groups that was later
reformed into a new party, the PRD . The election result saw
the PRI's presidential candidate, Salinas, officially win less than
50.4 per cent of the vote, and in such suspicious circumstances
that the opposition candidates and large public demonstrations
accused the government of electoral fraud . Salinas clearly
depended upon the PRI-controlled rural vote for his victory,
and most of the suspicious vote counts came from rural areas
(Fox, 1994; Harvey, 1993) .
In the following state and municipal elections the PRI remained
true to its tradition of using fraud in rural areas, where
`official recognition of opposition victories was rarely won without
protests and direct action' (Harvey, 1993 : 213) . But the regime
also adopted more positive vote-winning strategies, such as the
rapid development of an urban and rural National Solidarity
Programme (PRONASOL) of poverty-alleviating public works
projects . In theory they were proposed and administered by
local communities but in practice the Solidarity projects established
new patronage networks that were used for party-political
purposes, if only to undercut support for leftists (Bruhn, 1996) .
The 1991 congressional elections saw something of a PRI
revival (Bruhn, 1996; Dresser, 1994) . The party won over 60
per cent of the vote - and collapsed the leftist vote - without
having to resort to massive fraud. Although the PRI revival
seemed to have been based on weak foundations, the Mexican
semi-dictatorship had at least avoided the disasters experienced
Semi-Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 235
in 1991 by the other long-lived revolutionary regime, the Soviet
Union . By the late 1990s the Mexican regime finally seemed to
be committed to real democratisation, as the PRI had accepted
the loss of its majority in the Chamber of Deputies, the
governorships of the six most modern states and the mayoralty
of Mexico City (Klesner, 1998) . But in the light of Mexico's
long history of democratically disguised dictatorships, more than
usual evidence of democracy would be required before sceptics
accepted that this was much more than typical PRI conciliatory,
safety-valve diversionary tactics .
The Historical Stronghold: Latin America
Mexico is only one of a number of countries in Latin America
that have experienced semi-dictatorship. Both the other party
regimes, the MNR's in 1950s-60s Bolivia and the Sandinistas'
in 1970s-80s Nicaragua, were also semi-dictatorships, as were
many of the longer-term military regimes . Their preference for
disguised dictatorship has been particularly evident in Central
America (Gilbert, 1988 : 4; Rouquié, 1986 : 117-9; Dunkerley,
1985) . The Somoza family's 40-year rule over Nicaragua even
saw political pacts being made with some opposition groups in
order to secure more credible semi-competitive (fraudulent)
elections . Semi-dictatorship was also employed in Panama from
the late 1970s onwards to disguise the indirect personalist rule
of a military leader - Torrijos until his death in 1981, and
then Noriega until his removal by US invasion in 1989 . And it
was not only personalist regimes that favoured the semidictatorship
approach ; the military's rule in Guatemala and El
Salvador was for decades disguised by semi-competitive elections,
with El Salvador's official party having actually been modelled
on the PRI in Mexico.
Semi-dictatorship has not been as common among military
regimes in South America. However, General Stroessner's longlived
personalist regime in Paraguay developed a semi-competitive
electoral system in the 1960s that was similar to the Somozas'
arrangements with opponents . Two moderate opposition parties
were encouraged to take part in the Stroessner regime's fraudulent
elections and were legally guaranteed a third of the seats in
parliament (Nickson, 1988 : 241) .
236 Non Democratic Regimes
A far more famous case of semi-dictatorship emerged in
Argentina from the conversion of General Juan Perón's democratic
rule into a personalist semi-dictatorship . Having built up
a large civilian following during his time as Minister of Labour
and Welfare in the military government of 1943-45, Perón and
his supporters had won the democratic presidential and congressional
elections held in 1946. But President Perón and his
party were not prepared to entrust their political fortunes to
the unpredictable processes of uncontrolled democracy, and
within a few years Argentina's democracy had been converted
into semi-dictatorship. A wide range of often subtle undemocratic
measures was used to hamper the opposition and assist
the Peronist party (Brooker 1995 : 175) . Nevertheless, the Peronist
claim to electoral legitimacy remained credible and, together
with the popular following established by Perón and his wife
Evita, this compensated for his weak hold on the military . Not
until 1955 did the military finally overthrow a now widely
unpopular Perón, who had never recovered politically from
Evita's death three years earlier .
The Unusual Brazilian Case
Although less famous than Perón's regime, the Brazilian military's
semi-dictatorship of the 1960s-80s was in certain respects
no less significant or unusual . Unlike Perón's regime, it originated
from a military coup, the 1964 `revolution', and did
not develop into a personalist regime . The Brazilian military
produced a succession of six one-term (or less) military presidents
during the next two decades - finally approving the installation
of a civilian president in 1985 . However, the Brazilian military
regime was similar to Perón's in having to respond to what has
been termed the `electoral imperative', which arose from the
liberal, anti-authoritarian component of Brazil's `ideological and
institutional legacy' (Lamounier, 1989: 70) .
This liberal, anti-authoritarian component was reflected in
the military's justifications for abandoning its traditional `restraint'
(see Chapters 2 and 3) and resorting in 1964 to direct military
rule. The 1964 coup against President Goulart's populism was
depicted as a military-led revolution motivated by democratic
ideals, and the regime committed itself to the long-term goal
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 237
of establishing the economic and social preconditions for a
`true democracy' - for the evolution of stable and democratic
institutions (Martins, 1986: 77) . But Brazil's liberal legacy
required more than just protestations of democratic intent;
it also produced an electoral imperative that forced the
military to combine this typical auto-dictatorship approach with
a semi-dictatorship's use of semi-competitive elections (see Figure
9.2) . In order to substantiate its claim to favour democracy,
and to acquire some degree of electoral legitimacy, the military
was forced to allow at least semi-competitive congressional
elections.
Semi-dictatorship was institutionalised by the military in 1965.
The president was from now on to be elected by Congress rather
than by the people, and congressional politics, in turn, was to
be reshaped by the indirect imposition of a two-party system .
The new party system arose from the military's dissolving all
existing parties and prohibiting any new party from being formed
unless it was sponsored by at least 20 senators and 120 deputies
(Schneider, 1991 : 245-7) . These measures not only opened
the way for a new official party, the National Renovating Alliance
(ARENA), to win the support of the defunct conservative
party and a majority of the defunct centrist party, but also gave
the various opposition elements little option except to form
themselves into a single party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement
(MDB) - which was confidently expected by the military
to be a divided and incoherent opposition party (ibid. : 247-8) .
However, in the 1970s the two-party semi-competitive electoral
system developed an anti-regime momentum that posed
an awkward problem for the Brazilian military . The opposition
MDB's vote dramatically increased as many people who had
cast invalid votes in 1966 and 1970 to protest against military
rule now instead expressed their opposition by voting for the
MDB (Lamounier, 1989 : 58-9) . Moreover, in 1974 a new president's
move to soften the regime's highly repressive approach
led to liberalising measures, such as relaxing press censorship
and allowing the MDB unrestricted access to radio and television,
that contributed to the dramatic increase in the MDB
share of the vote - from 21 to 38 per cent - in that year's
elections (Martins, 1986: 83) . Therefore the military was now
faced by the problem that the electoral process had become
} I
I
i
1
Uil
238 Non Democratic Regimes
too credible and competitive ; the opposition was likely to win
an election victory that would force the military to reassess the
whole structure and even purpose of its rule .
In response, the regime adopted a `two steps forward; one
step backwards' approach. While avoiding a return to the
repressive approach of earlier years, it reduced both the competitiveness
of elections and the constitutional implications of a
possible electoral defeat . Controls were tightened before the
1976 municipal elections, and in the lead up to the 1978 congressional
elections (a) the Senate was restructured to enable
a third of its members to be indirectly elected, and (b) some
state and municipal representation was introduced into the
electoral college that chose the country's president (Martins,
1986: 83; Schneider, 1991 : 279) . Even the regime's later decision
to abolish its two-party system in favour of a less restricted
multipartyism has been seen as part of a strategy to encourage
the creation of another, more moderate and `reliable' opposition
party (Martins, 1986 : 85) . However, these measures could not
prevent the opposition winning a majority in the 1982
congressional elections and an opposition-backed civilian
becoming president in 1985 .
An Asian Example: Suharto's Indonesia
Semi-dictatorship has also occurred in other parts of the world
than Latin America, as in the prominent Asian case of Suharto's
Indonesia. The military regime established there in the late
1960s by General Suharto - who retained the Presidency
until 1998 - became the longest-lived Asian example of semi-
dictatorship.
The Indonesian regime was characterised by its unusually extensive
and visible military presence, including having a hundred
seats in parliament reserved for unelected military men (see
Chapter 5) . Moreover, the constitution inherited and preserved
by the military specifies that the president be indirectly elected,
by a People's Consultative Assembly comprising the members
of parliament (including the swathe of appointed military
members) and an equal number of appointees and delegates
representing the regions and various political and social organizations
(Brooker, 1995 : 192) . However, the military sought to
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 239
win electoral legitimacy and to substantiate its claim of favouring
(Pancasila) democracy by holding regular semi-competitive
parliamentary elections during the 1970s-90s, in which the official
party Golkar has won from 62 to 73 per cent of the vote .
But the Indonesian semi-dictatorship comes close to the borderline
with mono-dictatorship in its refusal to allow opposition
parties much more autonomy than a typical puppet party (ibid. :
185, 187) . From the outset the military regime showed an inclination
to exert control over the parties competing for votes
with its own party, Golkar, and in the 1971 elections it not
only prohibited any criticism of government policies but also
interfered in opposition parties' internal affairs and disqualified
hundreds of their candidates. After Golkar's election victory
the regime forced all nine other parties to merge into two new
parties, one Muslim (PPP) and the other nationalist (PDI), and
the 1975 Political Parties Bill allowed only Golkar, the PDI and
PPP to participate in elections. Unlike the indirect means used
by the Brazilian regime to introduce a two-party system, this
was a quite blatant restructuring of the party system to meet
the military's requirements . The Indonesian regime justified
its imposition of a three-party system by arguing that these three
parties together provided sufficient facilities for channelling
society's opinions and ideas . The parties themselves were warned
not to be antagonistic to one another and behaved more like
a three-party coalition than a bevy of political opponents .
The regime also placed various restrictions on the parties'
activities. For example, the politically restrictive concept of the
`floating mass' was embodied in a legal prohibition on parties'
establishing village-level branches in this still largely rural society
(Rogers, 1988 : 258) . (Exponents of the floating-mass concept
argued that the mass of villagers should be left to float free of
political agitation and party contact between the country's brief
election campaigns .) Restrictions on party activities were tightened
in the 1980s and went so far as prohibiting the Muslim
PPP from appealing to voters on the basis of religion
(Suryadinata, 1989 : 129-30) .
Moreover, the regime strengthened Golkar's competitive
advantage by exploiting its status as the regime's official party
(Brooker, 1995 : 187) . The civil service was mobilised to support
Golkar and it became formally obligatory for civil servants
to campaign as well as vote for the party . Officials' influence
240 Non Democratic Regimes
over rural society was particularly important, with the Department
of Internal Affairs being used to create a rural vote-winning
patronage machine for Golkar . In addition to the various opportunities
for using small-scale state patronage, public works
projects, such as bringing electricity and clean water to the
villages, provided opportunities for large-scale patronage
(Suryadinata, 1989: 131) . Furthermore, in the early 1980s village
headmen were classified as civil servants, ensuring that these powerful
grassroots figures would be Golkar activists . For example, in
1990 a village headman told the visiting Minister of Home Affairs
that he would punish the small minority of his village that had
not (yet) agreed to vote for Golkar (Vatikiotis, 1993 : 103) .
By the time of the 1987 elections the regime was actually
becoming concerned about the weakness of the other two parties .
If the PDI became so weak as to disappear, there would no
longer be a `buffer' between Golkar and the PPP, and if Golkar
was to win every seat up for election, the regime's image would
suffer both internationally and domestically (Suryadinata, 1989:
131) . It was important to maintain a multiparty, democratic
image not only in order `to legitimize military power', but also to
encourage the opposition from resorting to 'extra-parliamentary
activities' (ibid. : 133-4) . However, although Golkar did go on
to win a record 73 per cent of the vote, the other parties performed
their role sufficiently creditably to preempt any need
for opposition-assisting reforms like those introduced in the
1970s in Mexico.
Distinguishing between Semi-Dictatorship and Semidemocracy
From this examination of a wide range of semi-dictatorships,
from the classic Mexican case to an Indonesian case that borders
on mono-dictatorship, it may appear that there is little
difficulty in distinguishing between semi-dictatorship and
semidemocracy . As was seen at the beginning of the chapter,
the standard conception of semidemocracy points to a situation
in which electoral outcomes `deviate significantly' from
popular preferences - as distinct from the more dictatorial situation
in which opposition parties are denied `any real chance
of competing for power' . However, in practice distinguishing a
deviation from a denial is not always as straightforward as it
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 241
appears. And in a few cases distinguishing between these two
situations also raises the awkward issue of whether a dictatorship
can take the form of a misappropriation of power by more
than one party.
It is at least conceivable that two or more leading parties
might collude in jointly misappropriating power. This would
take the form of (a) denying other parties any real chance of
competing for power, and (b) sharing that power between themselves
through coalitions or alternating periods in office . In a
sense this is what occurred in the old-fashioned, nineteenthcentury
form of oligarchical democracy or semidemocracy, in
which property qualifications or other restrictions denying the
poor the right to vote also denied left-wing or populist parties
any chance of electoral success . A modernised, more formally
democratic version of this type of regime would see two or
more parties using less obviously undemocratic measures to deny
other parties any real chance of competing for power . As such
a regime would involve semi-competitive elections in which there
are two or more official parties, it could be termed a jointmultiparty
semi-dictatorship .
Colombia has provided a modern example of two-party collusion
and alternation in power which may be a specimen of
joint semi-dictatorship, or may instead be one of the few examples
of consolidated semidemocracy to have survived into recent times
(Hartlyn, 1989) . The regime has been categorised by some
analysts as a form of democracy and by others as a form of
authoritarian regime, but even those who prefer the democratic
category have used such adjectives as `controlled', `oligarchical',
`restricted', `limited' and `semi' democracy (Hartlyn, 1989:
292-4) . The regime arose in 1957 from the removal of the
country's military dictator, General Rojas . The country's two
major parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals, had joined
together in an anti-Rojas National Front and agreed in a series
of pacts to maintain their alliance during the early decades of
the new democracy . There was to be coalition rule, with political
parity between the two parties, and they would nominate a
joint National Front candidate for president until at least 1974
(with the candidate being chosen alternately from each party) .
This power-sharing arrangement between the two parties
proved remarkably durable . Although the National Front was
partially dismantled after 1968, the two parties continued to
242 Non Democratic Regimes
put forward a joint presidential candidate until 1974 and the
coalitional approach actually continued on until 1986 when the
Conservatives went into opposition. More importantly, for most
of this time the coalition ruled the country under `state of
siege' emergency powers which restricted civil liberties and which
were invoked against student protests and labour demonstrations
as well as guerrilla movements . In fact, even the regime's
milder critics have had to admit that `the regime at times
employed or condoned the use of undemocratic practices' and
that `many feel fraud' was used by the regime in 1970 to deny
election victory to the ANAPO populist movement (Hartlyn,
1989 : 310, 316) . If such serious undemocratic practices as electoral
fraud did occur, the Colombian case would have to be
categorised not as a semidemocracy, but as a joint-multiparty
form of semi-dictatorship.
A joint semi-dictatorship may be as rare among dictatorships
as the dominant-party system is among democracies . What have
been described as one-party dominant `uncommon democracies'
have arisen for a time in Japan, Sweden, Italy and Israel:
In these countries, despite free electoral competition, relatively
open information systems, respect for civil liberties, and
the right of free political association, a single party has managed
to govern alone or as the primary and ongoing partner
in coalitions, without interruption for substantial periods of
time, often for three to five decades . (Pempel, 1990: 1)
The `uncommon dictatorships', the joint semi-dictatorships, would
require a similar careful definition once a few likely specimens
have been reliably identified . However, the identification of such
specimens is bound to be controversial. In addition to the
problems involved in researching and `proving' charges of
undemocratic practices, there is also room for argument in
assessing the effect and even the intent of these practices.
Furthermore, difficult conceptual and even ethical issues arise
when considering whether to categorise the racist regime that
ruled South Africa until 1994 as having been a case of jointmultiparty
dictatorship . Dating back to the founding 1910
Constitution, the Union of South Africa's bizarre racist system
combined:
(a) multiparty democracy for the Dutch/British-origin settler
communities ; with
(b) the exclusion of the non-white races, nearly four-fifths of
the population, from the right to vote .
Within the multiparty democracy reserved exclusively for whites,
there was much more party competition than occurred between
Colombia's colluding Liberals and Conservatives . After the racially
segregationist (apartheid) Nationalist Party was first elected to
government in 1948, it did not share power or alternate in
power with any other white parties; it continued to compete
against and defeat them in the racist elections that continued
to be regularly held until the regime's demise nearly half a
century later .
However, although these elections lacked the collusion found
in a typical joint dictatorship, they were even less like the racist
elections found in a typical ethnic/racial semidemocracy, in
which one or more ethnic/racial groups are excluded in some
fashion from otherwise competitive elections . For an ethnic or
racial semidemocracy involves a social minority, not the great
majority of the population, being prevented from expressing
its preferences in election outcomes . The notion of a small
racial minority enjoying democratic rights and powers that are
denied to the rest of the population is quite different ethically
as well as conceptually, and it also seems ethically and conceptually
banal to blame only the political parties for such a racist
regime. The regime is better described not as some form of
joint-multiparty dictatorship, but as a dictatorship of the white
minority over the other racial groups - a misappropriation of
power by a racial minority. Although this conception of the
South African case is stretching the notions of dictatorship and
misappropriation of power, it is only a further step in the direction
taken in categorising the Iranian regime as the clergy's
semi-dictatorship (see Exhibit 9 .1) .
The racial or ethnic issue also arises when dealing with the
seemingly more straightforward problem of distinguishing between
(a) the semidemocracy that excludes or reduces the electoral
effect of an ethnic minority's preferences, and (b) the semidictatorship
in which a party exploits ethnic divisions to secure
its misappropriation of power . This distinction is particularly
Ij
244 Non Democratic Regimes
Exhibit 9.1 The Clergy's Semi-Dictatorship in Iran
The Iranian case of semi-dictatorship suggests that a modern form
of non-democratic regime can be established by organisations other
than parties or militaries, and in fact by groups that are hardly
organisations at all . For in Iran a semi-dictatorship was established
by a Shiite Muslim clergy that was only partially organised
(Brooker, 1997). The fewer than 200 000 clergy (in the widest sense
of the term) had a hierarchy of religious titles and spiritual authority,
culminating in the few Grand Ayatollahs, and had a network
of mosques, seminaries and other religious institutions, but they
could not be described as an 'organisation' comparable to a party
or the military . The lack of organisational coherence was displayed
in the open political divisions that emerged within the clergy as
the more politicised members and their secular allies took charge
of government, parliament and party politics after the 1978-79
Islamic revolution .
The clergy-led Islamic revolution produced a semi-democratic
Islamic Republic that incorporated several constitutional safeguards
against democracy's overriding the Islamic nature of the Republic.
For example, a clergy-dominated Council of Guardians vetted
electoral candidates' Islamic qualifications . Within a few years of
the Revolution it appeared that the Islamic Republican Party had
established a party semi-dictatorship, but the IRP was only a partypolitical
vehicle for the clergy and was dissolved in 1987, having
outlived its usefulness now that all other competing parties had
been removed from the scene . The regime continued to be dominated
by the personalist rule of (Grand) Ayatollah Khomeini, who
was not only spiritual leader of the 1978-79 revolution, but also
holder of the powerful constitutional office of Rahbar (leader) and
Supreme Fagih (religious judge) of the Islamic Republic .
After Khomeini's death in 1989 a clergy-dominated collective
leadership took over, and despite continuing factional divisions,
carried the regime through the 1990s. Although the clergy's presence
in parliament and government had declined, the key posts
of Rahbar-Fagih and President continued to be held by clerics .
And while there was no longer an official party, the competitiveness
of presidential and parliamentary elections was restricted by the
clergy's control over candidature and issues . The clerics and their
political allies were still divided into various factions - conservative,
populist, pragmatic and even liberal - but their parliamentary and
electoral rivalries were not allowed to undermine the clergy's hold
on power.
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 245
relevant when categorising the Malaysian regime, perhaps the
best-known example of an `ambiguous' authoritarian /democratic
regime . Like the similarly ambiguous Singapore regime, it is
also a leading example of what some East Asian thinkers and
leaders referred to in the early 1990s as an `Asian' form of
democracy as distinct from the more individualist Western-style
democracy (Jones, 1995: 41-2) .
Two Ambiguous Cases: Malaysia and Singapore
Malaysia
Ever since independence from British colonial rule in 1957,
the constitutional monarchy of Malaysia has been ruled by a
coalition of parties, known as the Alliance and then (from 1974)
as the Barisan Nasional . It has regularly won more than twothirds
of the seats in the parliamentary elections that have been
regularly held every five or four years since independence . The
coalition presents a combined slate or ticket of candidates at
the country's parliamentary elections and has been multiethnic
since its inception as an Alliance that combined the United
Malays National Organisation (UMNO) with a party representing
the large Chinese minority and another representing the
small Indian minority (Means, 1991: 1-2) . When refounded in
1974 as the Barisan Nasional (National Front), the coalition
organisation contained no fewer than eight parties but was now
even more dominated by UMNO - which held well over half
of the BN's seats in parliament - and was `in effect a facade
for UMNO rule' (ibid.: 30-32; Crouch, 1996: 34) .
Therefore, unlike in the Colombian case of coalition, one
party within the coalition has always dominated the government
and in fact UMNO leader Mahathir has been the country's
continual and dominating Prime Minister ever since becoming
the party's leader in 1981 . If Malaysia is a semi-dictatorship
rather than a semidemocracy, it is not so much a joint-multiparty
dictatorship as an UMNO semi-dictatorship .
It is widely acknowledged that the Malaysian regime does
not follow standard democratic procedures, and even the regime
itself depicts Malaysian politics as differing from the
`Western' model of democracy . While constantly asserting that
246 Non Democratic Regimes
Malaysia is democratic, official spokesmen - notably Prime
Minister Mahathir - have also emphasised that Malaysia had a
different definition of democracy than Western countries (MunroKua,
1996: 151, 123) . Mahathir has argued that Western-style
democracy and its preoccupation with individual rights is inappropriate
for Malaysian circumstances, and that Third World
or Asian conceptions of democracy are no less valid than Western
conceptions (Means, 1991 : 140; Jones, 1995: 42) .
However, although analysts of semidemocracy have categorised
Malaysia as semidemocratic (Diamond, Linz and Lipset,
1989; Case, 1996), it has also been described as a case of authoritarian
populism (Munro-Kua, 1996) . Furthermore, the Malaysian
regime has been labelled as `ambiguous' not only because it
combines democratic and authoritarian elements, but also
because it can be categorised either as semidemocratic or as a
more authoritarian type of regime, as a hegemonic party system
(Crouch, 1996: 6) . In fact the regime would seem to have gone
well beyond the semidemocracy's level of electoral deviation if
it has employed a `wide range of authoritarian controls' which
`make it very difficult to envisage the defeat of the ruling party
at the polls', and has `actually routinely manipulated the electoral
process to ensure its own victories' (ibid. : 5, 240) .
If the Malaysian regime is a semidemocracy rather than a
semi-dictatorship, it is a case of (Malay) ethnic semidemocracy.
Incorporating Chinese and Indian parties in the UMNO-dominated
governing coalition shrewdly disguised an electoral bias
against these ethnic minorities which significantly reduced the
electoral impact of their political preferences . The regime's
ethnic bias is evident in the targeting of the regime's authoritarian
controls as well as in the ethnic nature of its electoral
gerrymandering. The `sensitive issues' which were banned (by
constitutional amendments) from public and even parliamentary
discussion included Malays' special rights and privileges, as well
as the status of Malay as the sole national language, and thě
status of Islam (the religion of most Malays) as the official religion
(Means, 1991 : 14-15) .
But it was the gerrymandering of the electoral constituencies
which was crucial in reducing the electoral effect of the
minorities . For by this means the Malays' (barely) absolute
majority of the electorate was transformed into potentially a
more than two-thirds majority of the seats in parliament. The
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 247
gerrymander used the simple method of ensuring that the rural
constituencies, which are disproportionately populated by Malays,
were increasingly overrepresented in parliament - so that by
1984 Malays were in the absolute majority in nearly three-quarters
of the country's constituencies (Crouch, 1996: 57-9 ; Means,
1991 : 135) . Thanks to this ethnic gerrymandering, the governing
coalition has been able to achieve its target of a two-thirds
majority in parliament despite the fact that substantial numbers
of Malays as well as Chinese vote for parties that oppose the
BN coalition. Such a large parliamentary majority has enabled
the government to make its many constitutional amendments
and also provides useful insurance for UMNO against a parliamentary
revolt by the coalition's non-Malay parties .
Ins, addition to the electoral bias, there is striking circumstantial
evidence of ethnic semidemocracy, namely the ethnically
biased New Economic Policy that has been implemented since
1971. Although under colonial rule and in Malaysia's Constitution
Malays had enjoyed some `special rights', the NEP expanded
these rights, job quotas and educational opportunities and also
included an ambitious programme to raise Malays to full
partnership in the nation's Chinese-dominated economic life
- specifically by achieving the goal of `30 per cent Malay ownership
and participation in all industrial and commercial activities
by 1990' (Means, 1991 : 24) . This was a very ambitious goal
considering that Malays then owned less than 2 per cent of
the country's share capital, but two decades of energetic pursuit
of the NEP's goals produced a `veritable revolution' in the
reallocation of wealth and jobs (ibid.: 27, 265) . In light of this
huge policy bias in favour of the Malays, the regime does seem
a clear-cut case of reducing the minorities' electoral influence
in order to safeguard the benefits flowing to the ethnic majority
through its control of the government .
However, the Malaysian regime can also be viewed as a party
semi-dictatorship based upon ethnic factors rather than as an
ethnic semidemocracy . From this perspective the UMNO party
has been able to misappropriate power by exploiting the country's
ethnic divisions and, in particular, by presenting itself as
the political standard-bearer and benefactor of the Malay majority .
It can claim to have brought Malays the benefits of the NEP
and to be the political means of protecting Malays' privileged
position. As Prime Minister Mahathir argued in 1989, Malays
248 Non-Democratic Regimes
had not yet achieved the NEP's goals and still had to protect
their position through political success and specifically through
UMNO's success (ibid. : 270) .
There is much evidence of a specifically UMNO party (rather
than simply Malay ethnic) bias in the regime's operations, particularly
in its use of authoritarian controls and in its electoral
practices . The regime's armoury of authoritarian controls, which
included legal powers to deregister organisations, ban publications
and impose preventive detention, `were sometimes used
mainly to strengthen the government against the opposition
or even one government faction against another', as in the
1987 arrest and detention of more than a hundred people
(Crouch, 1996: 112, 109-113) . The controls over the mass media
were particularly advantageous to the UMNO government . In
conjunction with state or BN ownership of television and radio,
the deterrent effect of these controls ensured that the mass
media would present UMNO leaders and policies to the public
in a solely and overly positive light (Means, 1991 : 137-9, 292;
Munro-Kua, 1996 : 123-5) .
Furthermore, as in Indonesia, there was a range of restrictions
on party activities, such as a ban on public rallies, that
hampered the opposition parties more than the government
party (Means, 1991 : 88; Munro-Kua, 1996 : 122) . Another similarity
with the Indonesian regime was the massive use of state
patronage opportunities to improve electoral performance . In
addition to promises of local development projects, there was
a village-level use of material benefits to secure political loyalty
- in fact the village head was quite often the chairman of the
local branch of UMNO (Crouch, 1996 : 61, 40-1) .
With these electoral and other competitive advantages, UMNO
has been able to dominate the Malay vote and to prevent Malay
opposition parties from capitalising on their ethnic electoral
advantages. Even when faced in the 1990 elections with an
UMNO breakaway party and an electoral pact among the opposition
parties, UMNO was able to lead the BN coalition to another
sweeping electoral victory (ibid.: 125-7) . The coalition retained
a two-thirds majority in parliament despite a fall in the overall
BN vote to 53 per cent, and in the next election its vote rebounded
to a record 65 per cent . But UMNO's electoral
resilience begs comparison with the PRI's in Mexico, just as
UMNO's competitive advantages beg comparison with Golkar's
SemiDictatorships and Semidemocracies 249
in Indonesia. And the regime as a whole seems no less comparable
to semi-dictatorship than to semidemocracy .
Singapore
The Singapore regime, like the Malaysian, has emphasised that
it has developed a form of democracy that suits its country's
circumstances, and has argued that it is important to retain
this `dominantparty system' (Rodan, 1993a: 78) . However, among
Western analysts Singapore is usually seen as less than democratic,
and the issue is whether this ambiguous regime should be
categorised as a semidemocracy or as effectively a one-party
state (Case, 1996 ; Rodan, 1993a : 78, 86, 103) .
The People's Action Party (PAP) regime in Singapore developed
in quite different fashion from its Malaysian counterpart,
UMNO . The PAP came to power in 1959, in a British
decolonising election, by mobilising mass support from the
Chinese ethnic majority, but it was a socialist rather than a
communal or ethnic party and sought support from the Malay
and Indian ethnic minorities as well as from the Chinese majority .
Moreover, in 1961 the party's communist-sympathising (and massmobilising)
faction broke away from the PAP and formed the
Barisan Sosialis (BS) party . The BS was `seriously crippled',
though, in 1963 when more than a hundred leading leftists
fell victim to anti-communist preventive detention measures
(Chan, 1976 : 198), and later in the year a now rebuilt PAP
handed the BS a heavy electoral defeat. Within a decade the
BS had declined into obscurity, leaving the PAP with an
unchallenged electoral dominance . Although in the 1970s-80s
elections there were always five or more opposition parties
contesting elections with the PAP, it won every parliamentary
seat in the 1970s and thereafter retained all but a few seats,
despite its share of the vote falling to 61-63 per cent .
In fact the development of the PAP regime shows some resemblances
with that of African one-party states (see Chapter 4) .
Like them, the PAP exploited the unique organisational and
electoral opportunity presented by decolonising elections . As
Singapore's first mass party the PAP was the first party to establish
a link with the bulk of ethnic-majority Chinese voters,
and therefore once the challenge from the breakaway BS had
been defeated the party had an impregnable electoral advantage
250 Non Democratic Regimes
over `fledgling' competing parties (Chan, 1976 : 229, 218) .
Another similarity with the African pattern was the use of
cooption and coercion to consolidate the party's monopoly,
but the PAP'S commitment to a formally multiparty system meant
that the cooption/coercion was aimed at parties' potential leaders
and activists rather than the parties themselves. Influential or
potential local leaders were appointed to the Citizens Consultative
Committees - where they were at least `quarantined' from the
opposition parties - while fears of retribution deterred careerconscious
individuals from becoming election candidates, or
even visible supporters, of opposition parties (Chan, 1976 : 144,
219; Milne and Mauzy, 1990: 93) .
A further similarity with the African one-party states was the
manner in which the `founding' head of government elected
during the decolonising transition went on to establish a powerful
personal position within the postindependence regime. Although
he shared power with a small team of other senior ministers/
party-leaders, Singapore's founding Prime Minister (and founding
PAP Secretary-General) Lee Kuan Yew dominated party and
state until his retirement in 1990, and thereafter retained a
`crucial' personal role as privileged Senior Minister and wielder
of `considerable influence through less formal means' (Milne
and Mauzy, 1990: 103-4; Tillman, 1989: 54-7 ; Cotton, 1993: 9,
14, 11) .
However, Singapore also shows some similarities with neighbouring
Malaysia in its form of authoritarian controls and in
its resort to gerrymandering parliamentary constituencies . Singapore's
own Internal Security Act has allowed preventive
detention for prejudicing the country's security and public order,
there have been government-favouring restrictions on party
activities such as the ban on election campaigning outside the
official campaign period, and there has been firm control over
the mass media, to the extent of moving against such international
publications as Time magazine when they offended the
government (Tremewan, 1994 : 201, 169; Chan, 1976: 205-6;
Rodan, 1993a: 91) .
Gerrymandering has taken two different forms . The older,
ethnic form saw the government use the re-delineation of constituency
boundaries, rehousing programmes and other measures
to break up (and prevent the reforming) of Malay-majority
constituencies, in which PAP dominance had been threatened
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 251
by communal voting for Malay parties (Chan, 1976 : 210;
Tremewan, 1994 : 65) . The newer form arose from the 1988
creation of some large three-member winner-take-all parliamentary
constituencies that could absorb and shore up endangered
PAP single-member seats by combining them with neighbouring
safer seats (Tremewan, 1994 : 167) .
Nevertheless, there are difficulties in classifying Singapore as
a semi-dictatorship rather than a semidemocracy . The PAP can
point to an impressive record of economic performance and
administrative competence to support its claim that the party's
electoral triumphs have been based on voters' recognition of,
and gratitude for, its unparalleled record of `good government'.
More importantly, the opposition parties lack of any real chance
since the 1960s to compete for power appears to be due more
to such historical factors as the PAP's decolonising organisational/electoral
advantage and Lee's founding-father prestige
than to undemocratic measures aimed at guaranteeing victory
for the official party . The PAP itself has long been concerned
that what it terms a `freak' election result will remove it from
power, and in 1991 the party moved to protect itself against
some of the effects of a possible future election defeat by transforming
the formerly ceremonial presidency into an elected
and more powerful office whose holder can be reliably expected
to be a PAP sympathiser and protector thanks to the stringent
legal restrictions on who can be a presidential candidate
(Tremewan, 1994: 173-5 ; Rodan, 1993a: 100) .
Finally, it is worth noting that although Singapore, Malaysia
and even Indonesia were sometimes depicted in the early 1990s
as examples of a distinctive `Asian' form of democracy (Jones,
1995 : 42), these three regimes differ quite markedly from one
another in terms of the semi-dictatorship/semidemocracy issue .
The Indonesian regime was a military semi-dictatorship close
to the borderline with mono-dictatorship ; the Malaysian regime
was a party semi-dictatorship or an ethnic semidemocracy; and
the Singaporean regime was probably more of a semidemocracy
than a party semi-dictatorship .
It is true that in addition to presiding over what are at least
semi-competitive elections, the three regimes have shown
a common tendency towards long-lasting personalist rule
and ideological legitimation . In addition to experiencing the
252 Non Democratic Regimes
personalism of respectively Suharto, Mahathir and Lee, the three
regimes have shown a concern for ideological legitimation, as
expressed :
1. in the Indonesian Pancasila (Five Principles) ideology ;
2. in Malaysia's Pancasila-like Rukunegara ideology and the
Malay-nationalist NEP doctrines that were reinforced by
ideologue Mahathir when he eventually became UMNO
leader; and
3. in Singapore's ideology of `survivalism' (emphasising the
threats posed by communism, inter-ethnic friction and lack
of economic resources) and its later attempt to develop a
Pancasila-like national ideology based on Asian rather than
Western values (Means, 1991 : 12-13, 23-5, 83-4 ; Munro-Kua,
1996: 113-16; Jones, 1995 : 72-3; Brown, 1995: 147; Rodan,
1993a: 90) .
But these personalist and ideological as well as electoral similarities
should not obscure the important differences between
these sophisticated examples of semi-dictatorship and
semidemocracy.
Protodemocracy in Russia and Central Asia
As was noted earlier, the standard conception of semidemocracy
can incorporate several different categories of regime, transitional
as well as consolidated . These transitional forms, too,
are sometimes difficult to distinguish from semi-dictatorship,
and often this distinction is of great practical importance . Serious
consequences may arise from mistaking a shift from auto- to
semi-dictatorship as being a shift to the limited democratisation
that occurs during the initial stages of some transitions
from dictatorship . There may also be serious consequences if
an emerging semi-dictatorship is mistaken for a transitional
protodemocracy. A protodemocracy has gone beyond the stage
of removing the former dictatorship but has a successor regime
or situation that is not fully democratic and may relapse
into dictatorship (or even be consolidated as a semidemocracy)
rather than evolve into a democracy . Although the term
protodemocratic implies that democracy is the most likely outSemi
Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 253
come of this transitional situation, a semi-dictatorship may emerge
and consolidate itself while using the notion of protodemocracy
to excuse its `excesses' and `failings' .
For example, it seemed for a time in 1993 that President
Yeltsin might establish a personalist semi-dictatorship in Russia
under the guise of dealing with protodemocratic `growing pains' .
During that year the struggle for power between parliament
and President had developed into a constitutional crisis . In March
parliament sought to strip Yeltsin of the powers that it had
temporarily delegated to him in 1991, but his resistance and
democratic credibility were buoyed by an April referendum in
which a clear majority of voters expressed confidence in him
and his policies.
The 1993 crisis came to a head in September-October when
Yeltsin suspended the Constitution, dissolved parliament, and
decreed that parliamentary elections would be held in December.
On 3-4 October a strongly anti-Yeltsin group of
parliamentarians and their supporters resorted to direct action
and Yeltsin was forced to rely on the military, whom he ordered
to storm the parliament building . Although Yeltsin in a
sense had more democratic or popular legitimacy than his
parliamentary opponents, his suspension of the Constitution
and dissolution of parliament - let alone the military's storming
of the parliament building - indicated a likely relapse into
some form of dictatorship, probably a military-supported personalist
semi-dictatorship .
Yet although some parties and movements were now suspended
or banned from taking part in elections, Yeltsin did not establish
a widely or permanently repressive regime . A December
referendum approved a new, more presidential Constitution
that provided him with a constitutional basis for his powerful
presidency. But the new Constitution did not strip parliament
(renamed the Federal Assembly) of all its powers . The lower
house, the State Duma, remained the country's legislature and
could refuse to endorse Yeltsin's choice of prime minister on
three successive occasions (before being automatically dissolved
for new elections) .
Yeltsin's lack of control over Russian politics was evident in
the unfavourable result of the December elections for the State
Duma. The two parties explicitly supporting Yeltsin's appointed
government won less than a quarter of the vote while the
254 Non Democratic Regimes
explicitly opposition parties won well over 40 per cent. Furthermore,
although the new parliament did not adopt an antagonistic
or even consistently oppositional stance, neither did it become
a tame organ of presidential rule . Yeltsin s lack of dictatorial
control was evident again in the 1995 Duma elections. The
explicitly opposition parties, particularly the communists, fared
much better than the NDR `government party' of Yeltsin's Prime
Minister, Chernomyrdin. Then, in the 1996 presidential elections,
Yeltsin failed to win an absolute majority and therefore
had to enter a run-off election (which he won comfortably)
with the communist leader, Zyuganov.
On the other hand, even after these well-contested presidential
elections, it was still argued by an authority on Russian
politics that democracy had not yet been consolidated and that
Yeltsin was still displaying `his own type of authoritarianism' in
an `authoritarian democracy', whose degeneration `into some
uglier form of dictatorship could not be excluded' (Sakwa, 1996 :
171) . This notion of authoritarian democracy referred to a
protodemocratic situation of `incomplete democratisation', in
which the `response to governmental inadequacy and the weakness
of the social base of democracy' was one of intensified or
renewed authoritarianism, `not acting directly against democracy
but as its accompaniment' (ibid.: 46) . The authoritarian
democrats' rationalisation for the lack of democracy was apparently
that the shift from communism to democracy required
an intervening authoritarian stage in which a strong state established
the liberal economy and society appropriate for a full
democracy, and meanwhile protected the emerging democracy
from less democratic forms of authoritarianism (ibid. : 47) . But
this begs the question of how long the protodemocratic stage
can be expected to last - at what point must it be deemed to
have instead evolved into stable semidemocracy?
The authoritarian-democratic approach was apparently also
to be found in other parts of the former Soviet Union, such as
the newly independent states of Central Asia (ibid.: 47) . As in
Russia, in these five states the presidency was the focus of political
events and usually continued to be held by the 1991
incumbent. In fact three of the five new states show enough
similarities for a Central Asian `model' of presidential rule to
be discernable (Hiro, 1995 ; Atkin, 1997 ; Gleason, 1997; Huskey,
Semi Dictatorships and Semidemocracies 255
1997; Olcott, 1997; Nissman, 1997) . The Central Asian model
was for the incumbent President
1 . to have once been the territory's Communist Party boss ;
2 . to have established a more repressive personalist rule than
Yeltsin's;
3. to have installed the former Communist Party (in a new,
nationalist and supposedly democratic guise) as effectively
the official party ; and
4. to have had his tenure in the presidency extended to the
year 2000 or beyond by an overwhelmingly supportive referendum
held in the mid-1990s .
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are the prime examples and
Kazakhstan differed from the model only in having a president
who had cut his ties with the former Communist Party . The
two other Central Asian states had quite different protodemocratic
experiences. Tajikistan suffered a bloody civil war that led to
the victors overseeing a dubious presidential election in 1994 .
Kyrgyzstan (renamed the Kyrgyz Republic) differed from the
other four states in having a relatively liberal president, who
had not been a Communist Party boss, did not favour the former
Communist Party, and did not prolong his tenure by referendum
(but had entered into a potentially dangerous alliance
with regional administrators and political bosses) .
Only the last of these five Central Asian cases seemed to be
likely to evolve into even consolidated semidemocracy, let alone
actual democracy . In the other Central Asian cases there was a
danger that the notion of protodemocracy would conceal the
emergence and consolidation of new semi-dictatorships . The
problem here was how soon could the period of protodemocracy
be said to be over, and for it to be acknowledged that these
transitions had ended in a relapse into dictatorship .