Opposing Power

Opposing Power examines why opposition parties in electoral autocracies sometimes form alliances and sometimes do not. Its central claim is that opposition elites build alliances according to how vulnerable they believe the regime to be and how much they depend on one another.

When an authoritarian incumbent has been dominant for a long time, opposition parties avoid full alliances. At most, they agree to field a single candidate against the incumbent in each subnational electoral district so that the opposition vote is not split. But if several events that damage the regime strike in quick succession, the incumbent is pushed to the brink of losing power. Opposition elites then expect to win, and they accept costly compromises in order to form alliances and take power.

The book tests this argument through comparative case studies from East and Southeast Asia. It compares the Philippines and South Korea in the late 1980s, and Malaysia and Singapore from 1965 to 2020.