Authoritarian Legacies

Abstract The transition to democracy rarely means a clean slate. Legacies of the old regime almost always survive. This chapter examines four common authoritarian legacies: holdover constitutions, subnational authoritarian enclaves, self-amnesties, and authoritarian successor parties. While the first three can be understood as “birth defects” resulting from authoritarian officials’ influence over the transition process, authoritarian successor parties depend on the active collaboration of voters and thus require a different explanation. The prevalence of these parties can be explained by “authoritarian inheritance”: they inherit valuable resources from the old regime, such as a party brand, territorial organization, and source of finance. This inheritance has allowed authoritarian successor parties to become prominent actors in nearly three-quarters of all new democracies since the third wave of democratization, and to be voted back into office in over one-half of third-wave democracies. The chapter concludes by outlining several potential directions for future research on authoritarian legacies.