Why the Leaders of Turkey and Thailand Have an Interest in Elections

And conversely, rejecting the election results can undermine public support for the regime. Milan Svolik, a Yale political scientist who studies authoritarianism and democratic backsliding, points to the example of the 2019 Istanbul mayoral election, which is seen as an important test of the popularity of Erdogan’s AKP party.

When the contest was originally held, the opposition candidate won by a narrow margin, but the race was invalidated by the courts, leading to public anger at the inability to respect the result. When it was rerun a few months later, the opposition candidate won in a landslide – showing that for a large minority of voters, failing to honor the early results was enough to make them leave Erdogan’s party.

“He decided, ‘I’m changing my voice,'” Svolik said. “This shows the high cost of being considered not to abide by the election results.” And while natural experiments are rare, Svolik has found similar results when conducting experiments in other countries using hypothetical scenarios of candidates engaging in the same behavior.

That brings me to Thailand. Today, its leadership lacks legitimacy from public support – a 2014 coup overthrew a democratically elected government by force after a long period of political unrest.

“Thailand is a very divided country that has a conservative establishment that keeps trying to find a way to write a constitution that allows them to win, but they can’t because they’re unpopular,” said Tom Pepinsky, a Cornell political scientist. which studies authoritarianism and democratization with a focus on Southeast Asia.

The current government has tried to thwart the results of last weekend’s election by giving Thailand’s military-appointed Senate one-third of the vote to elect the prime minister, effectively saving veto power against governments that do not win a majority. However, as Svolik’s research shows, overriding the results of the general election risks backlash.

Why are elections held?

It is impossible to be certain about the true motivations of the junta members – that personal decision is, in the end, unknowable. It is possible that members of the junta see the risk of losing power in an election as less than what might happen if they hold power without one.