Why Dominant Parties Lose Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective [Paperback]

Why Dominant Parties Lose develops a theory of single-party dominance, its durability, and its breakdown into a fully competitive democracy.Why Dominant Parties Lose explains why dominant parties win for long periods and then ultimately lose. Greene argues that dominant parties benefit from dramatic advantages over the opposition, primarily because they are able to transform public funds into partisan resources. By making elections unfair, dominant parties win elections without heavy-handed repression or electoral fraud. But when the privatization of public enterprises diminishes the size of the state, dominant parties run out of money to buy voter support.Why Dominant Parties Lose explains why dominant parties win for long periods and then ultimately lose. Greene argues that dominant parties benefit from dramatic advantages over the opposition, primarily because they are able to transform public funds into partisan resources. By making elections unfair, dominant parties win elections without heavy-handed repression or electoral fraud. But when the privatization of public enterprises diminishes the size of the state, dominant parties run out of money to buy voter support.Why have dominant parties persisted in power for decades in countries spread across the globe? Why did most eventually lose? Why Dominant Parties Lose develops a theory of single-party dominance, its durability, and its breakdown into fully competitive democracy. Greene shows that dominant parties turn public resources into patronage goods to bias electoral competition in their favor and virtually win elections before election day without resorting to electoral fraud or bone-crushing repression. Opposition parties fail not because of limited voter demand or institutional constraints but because their resource disadvantages force them to form as niche parties with appeals that are out of step with the average voter. When the political economy of dominance-- a large state and a politically quiescent plS0