BREAKING DOWN DEMOCRACY: Goals, Strategies, and Methods of Modern Authoritarians Chapter 1 Validating Autocracy through the Ballot A major difference between modern authoritarian 7 systems and traditional dictatorships lies in the role of Were not perfect. But we do have elections for parliament and head of state. democracy." Twentieth-century dictatorships often dispensed with Hugo Chavez elections entirely or conducted them under blatantly fraudulent conditions. In the Soviet bloc, elections Yes, we falsified the last election... were a pointless ritual in which citizens were pres- In fact, 93.5 percent [of ballots were] sured to go toa polling place and cast ballots forthe for President Lukashenka. People Communist Party candidate, the only one permitted to _ - eae ; say this is not a European result, so compete. Military and postcolonial dictatorships often , , canceled elections on spurious “national emergency" Wwe changed it to 86 percent. grounds, or rigged the outcome through crude bal- —Alyaksandr Lukashenka lot-stuffing and open intimidation. At tai int in the 1980s, h the st = a cer al Pal eae . * ween 2 arene net and the expectations of a better-informed public. In men, juntas, and revolutionary councils of the era an ; : . the most sophisticated authoritarian states, profes- realized that reasonably fair elections could no longer . i . . . . . . sional political operatives—in Russia they are called be avoided. Sometimes a ruling group understood noes on . . : 3 “8 P political technologists'"—work just as hard as their that this would likely lead to an opposition victory. But . . . . . counterparts in the United States. Their goal, however, usually, the incumbent leaders—and often foreign . . : . Le . : , F is not to defeat opposition candidates in a competitive journalists and diplomats—presumed that voters in . . . . a . setting, but rather to organize a system that creates the repressive settings preferred stability to uncertainty ‘lusi f titi hil chi