Political party opposition to noncompetitive regimes: A cross-national analysis

Many competitive parties have witnessed the overthrow of competitive regimes, but the activities of political parties under noncompetitive regimes have received very little scholarly attention. Several authors suggest that parties, constrained in their conventional activities, will take part in protest or political violence (referred to here as contentious political action). I first examine the activities of 51 political parties in 24 noncompetitive regimes and establish that a majority of these parties (over 62 percent) did take part in contentious political action. Second, I attempt to explain the great variance in the incidence of party-led dissent using the theoretical framework of the political process-opportunities approach. A multivariate analysis suggests that parties will take part in greater levels of contention when the country's government has been criticized for human rights abuses, when repression of party organizations is low, and when repression of party leaders is at an intermediate level.