Tyler Rongxuan Chen (University of Michigan), “Crisis from Within: Elite Defection, Intraparty Competition, and the Breakdown of Dominant Party Systems”
July 23 @ 8:00 pm - 9:00 pm EDT
US ET: July 23 (Thursday), 8 – 9 PM
JST: July 24 (Friday), 9 – 10 AM
Zoom Registration: Link
Paper TBA
Author and Presenter: Tyler Rongxuan Chen (University of Michigan)
Abstract:
When and how do dominant party systems break? I argue that the cracks from which they do not recover come from within, after years of electoral dominance, led by the party’s most successful politicians rather than its marginal ones. Across 4,638 candidate-elections in UMNO in Peninsular Malaysia (1959–2018), the LDP in Japan (1958-1993), and the KMT in Taiwan (1986-2001), I show that dominant parties’ monopoly over office forces losing elites to choose between marginalization and exit. This choice produces two distinct patterns: bloc exits, when cohesive factions leave together after losing leadership struggles, and marginal exits, when weakened candidates depart alone. Whether a split actually ends the party’s dominance is a downstream question: breakaway parties endure only when they attach to a social cleavage the dominant party cannot absorb. Dominant-party system breakdown is an elite phenomenon in its onset and a cleavage phenomenon in its consequences.
Discussants: Ko Maeda (University of North Texas), Ora John Reuter (University of Wisconsin, Milwakee)
Chair: Daniel Smith (University of Pennsylvania)