Elections, Type of Regime and Risks of Revolutionary Destabilization

What is it about?

We show that elections increase the likelihood of unarmed uprisings. We also demonstrate that the significance of elections as a factor of unarmed revolutionary destabilization tended to grow with time. The election year only became a significant factor of nonviolent revolutionary destabilization after the end of the Cold War, and the impact of elections on the probability of revolutionary destabilization has become particularly strong in this century (when the presence of elections in the given year increases the probability of an unarmed uprising more than three times). Unarmed revolutionary events are more likely in an election year in all types of regime, except for full consolidated democracies. At the same time, holding elections primarily increases the risks of revolutionary destabilization in intermediate regimes (anocracies). But even among anocracies, open anocracies/partial democracies stand out, where the probability of revolutionary events in an election year increase significantly more than in closed anocracies/partial autocracies.

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