ABSTRACT
Democracy is about institutionalized contestation, producing winners and losers. Democracies require the winners to submit to norms and practices, which prevent tyranny or vengeance against losers. Losers are expected to remain faithful to the rules of the game; they will not defect from democratic practices when they are out of power. Losers of today can become, or at least hope to become, the winners of tomorrow. Democracy’s resilience is in the stability of its institutionalized uncertainty, an uncertainty that even the most dominant of political parties has to confront. While repression may appear to facilitate political stability, authoritarianism actually creates destabilizing conditions. Chinese chauvinism, a purported manifestation of Han nationalism, reflects, among other things, the central regime’s anxieties about its political vulnerabilities. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is not alone in using repressive tactics. Authoritarian single-party states, a kind of dominant party system, feel vulnerable to losing their hold on power, even if they are not subjected to regular elections. Yet, every party eventually suffers some political crisis during which its defeat appears imminent, be it peacefully or violently. Dominant parties in both democracies and non-democracies similarly confront, as James Scott puts it, the “inconvenience” of losing.1 Comparisons across the authoritarian-democracy divide along this particular dimension-losing-can be meaningful and insightful.
