Between Regimes: Institutional Design in Transitional Groups By Katherine Eleanor Michel A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Michael S. Fish, Co-Chair Professor Jason Wittenberg, Co-Chair Professor Leonardo R. Arriola Professor Sarah F. Anzia Spring 2016 Abstract Between Regimes: Institutional Design in Transitional Groups by Katherine Eleanor Michel Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor M. Steven Fish, Co-Chair Professor Jason Wittenberg, Co-Chair This dissertation proposes a new framework from which to study political regime transitions, arguing from a basis in counterfactual reasoning that it is necessary to shift the focus from ex-post coding based on transition outcomes to ex-ante coding of cases with the potential for regime transition. Straddling the literatures on transitions, democratization, authoritarianism, founding elections, and power-sharing, I investigate the inner workings of a rarely studied transitional period, assessing the types of institutions that countries form during the foundational, yet often chaotic, moments of a regime transition. I systematically characterize a number of paths that countries embark on in the period between regimes and, in so doing, identify a new unit of analysis that I term “transitional groups”: unelected, interim groups formed during potential regime transitions with the stated intent of holding elections and transferring power to a popularly legitimate government. I assemble a novel dataset that describes the existence of transitional groups over the period 1989 to 2010. I then conduct statistical analysis on this data to analyze how transitional groups affect the extent and direction of regime change. I argue that, while the introduction of transitional groups can often accelerate the pace of democratization, in some circumstances—particularly, when power is either too consolidated in a few actors or too dispersed among many—the introduction of transitional groups can actually make democratization harder. My dissertation provides insights into transitional or foundational events and highlights how formalized transitional groups vary tremendously across space and time. 1 Table of Contents Chapter One. Paths between Regimes: Fostering Stability from Chaos? ……………………........1 Chapter Two. Rethinking Regime Transitions: Analyzing the Potential for Change through Transitional Groups ...………………………………………………………..…...23 Chapter Three. Transitional Groups, Democratization, and Founding Elections…...……………55 Chapter Four. All for One and One for All? How “Inclusive” Transitional Groups May Hinder Democratization Prospects ...……………………………………....….....81 Chapter Five. Conclusion: Between Regimes …….……………………………………………108 References ...……………………………………………………………………………………116 Appendices Appendix 1A. Additional Figures and Tables ......………………………….……………135 Appendix 2A. Transitional Event Dates ......………………………………..…………...139 Appendix 2B. Additional Regional Maps ...……………………………………………..145 Appendix 2C. Interaction of Prior Regime Type and Mode of Transition ……….……...147 Appendix 3A. Additional Figures and Tables ……………...............................................148 Appendix 3B. Transitional Group Attributes—Data Issues ….….....................................158 Appendix 4A. Transitional Group Composition …………………………………….......160 Appendix 4B. Shifts in Transitional Groups ………………………………………….....165 Appendix 4C. Transitional Group Composition—Data Issues ……………………….....167 Coding Appendix A. Potential Regime Transition Case Descriptions ....……………......169 Coding Appendix B. Case-Specific References for Coding Appendix A .................…....278 i List of Figures and Tables Figures Figure 1-1. The big picture: transitional paths between political regimes ………………...……….2 Figure 1-2. Map of the commonly-specified understanding of democratization……………..……5 Figure 1-3. Expanded map of the democratization process...…….……………………………......7 Figure 1-4. Map of the regime transition process...…….………………………………………….8 Figure 1-5. Number of news articles over time in the ten most frequently occurring countries…..12 Figure 1-6. Proportion of news articles over time and across regions...…….…………………….13 Figure 1-7. Counterfactual reasoning in political regime transitions……………..………………17 Figure 1-8. Connecting transitional arrangements to the extent of regime change.........................20 Figure 2-1. Overall conceptual schema describing the transitional period….................................26 Figure 2-2. World map of the frequency of potential regime transitions (PRTs), 1989-2010….....35 Figure 2-3. Comparison of transitional group (TG) coding variations……………………………45 Figure 2-4. Revised overall conceptual schema, with additional paths highlighted in grey………46 Figure 2-5. Transitional groups (TGs) in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1989-2010.………………………47 Figure 2-6. Transitional groups (TGs) in the post-communist region, 1989-2010.…………….....48 Figure 3-1. Overview of the conceptual schema describing potential regime transition cases…...56 Figure 3-2. Spectrum of interim arrangements during the transitional period…….……………...57 Figure 3-3. Change in the average level of political rights across potential regime transition cases with and without transitional groups, five and ten years after the transitional event……..60 Figure 3-4. Shortest duration from a transitional event to a national election, across potential regime transition cases with and without transitional groups………………………...68 Figure 3-5. Marginal effect of transitional group on election quality, moderated by the duration to the first national (presidential or parliamentary) election………………………….74 Figure 3-6. Relationship between the duration (in days) from the transitional event to the first national election and election quality.…….…………..……………………………………….75 Figure 3-7. Paths of potential regime transitions: delayed transitional groups…………………...76 Figure 3-8. Delay (in days) in the initial onset of a transitional group after a transitional event……...…….…………..………………………………………………………………….76 Figure 4-1. “Inclusion” as the intersection of participation and power-sharing…….………….....85 Figure 4-2. Coordination problems within transitional groups…….…………..…………………87 Figure 4-3. Typology of transitional groups (TGs), based on levels of inclusiveness…….………89 Figure 4-4. Conceptual schema mapping variations with potential regime transition cases with transitional groups (TGs)…….…………………………………………………………...90 Figure 4-5. Histogram of transitional group size across the 70 cases in the dataset........................92 Figure 4-6. Distribution of transitional groups, by type…………………………………………..94 Figure 4-7. Five-year regime change across transitional group types ………………………........96 Figure 4-8. Shortest duration from a transitional group’s (TG’s) formation to a national election, across types of TGs ………………………………………………………………...101 Figure 4-9. Paths of potential regime transitions: sequential transitional groups.…….…………103 Figure 5-1. Transitional paths between political regimes…….…………..……………………..108 ii Tables Table 1-1. Ten countries with the highest frequency of news articles, 1985-2014.…………….....11 Table 1-2. Total number of articles across regions, 1985-2014.…………….................................13 Table 1-3. Unique subject terms across regions, 1985-2014..…………….....................................15 Table 2-1. Overview of transitional events……………………………..…………………….......32 Table 2-2. Frequency of potential regime transitions (PRTs) by country, 1989-2010………….....35 Table 2-3. Transitional groups (TGs) by region, 1989-2010………………………………….......47 Table 2-4. Timeline of national conference opening dates.…………………………………….....49 Table 2-5. Transitional groups (TGs) by prior regime type, 1989-2010…………………………..50 Table 2-6. Average difference in Freedom House’s political rights score across potential regime transition (PRT) cases with and without transitional groups….………………………..51 Table 2-7. Transitional groups (TGs) by transitional event type, 1989-2010..……………………52 Table 3-1. Summary of transitional group (TG) coding classifications for cases of potential regime transition ………………………………………………………………………………57 Table 3-2. Change in the average level of democracy across potential regime transition cases with and without transitional groups (TGs), five and ten years after the transitional event…….59 Table 3-3. Coefficient for transitional groups ( RTG) in OLS regressions for the dependent variables of five- and ten-year change in Freedom House’s (FH) political rights measure, with robust standard errors in parentheses.………………………………̂ ………………….....61 Table 3-4. Potential regime transition cases (PRTs) with and without transitional groups (TGs) that culminate in elections, in percentages..……………………………………………..63 Table 3-5. LPM results for the dependent variable of the occurrence of a constitutional referendum, with robust standard errors in parentheses and all time-variant covariates lagged by one year prior to the transitional event...……………………………….....................66 Table 3-6. Average duration (in days) from the date of a transitional event to election event types, across potential regime transition cases with and without transitional groups..................68 Table 3-7. Zero-truncated Negative Binomial model results for the dependent variable of duration (in days) from the transitional