Are Non-competitive Elections Good for Citizens?∗

Many regimes, particularly autocracies, hold elections where the ruling regime’s victory is a foregone conclusion. This paper provides a formal analysis of how these non-competitive elections affect citizen welfare compared to a non-electoral baseline. To do so, I first develop a game-theoretic framework that captures many extant theories of why regimes hold non-competitive elections, which are modeled solely as a public signal of the regime’s strength. Incumbents hold non-competitive elections to signal strength or gather information which allows the regime to manage political interactions more effectively. However, even though non-competitive elections are a useful tool for (autocratic) regimes, they are also valuable to citizens. This is because citizens can utilize the information generated by the election as well and may receive more transfers, less repression, ormore responsive policy than theywouldwith no elections. ∗Previous versions of this paper circulated with the titles “An Informational Theory of Elections ” and “An Informational Theory of Non-Competitive Elections. ” I am particularly indebted to Adam Przeworski for many insightful conversations on the general topics addressed here as well as comments on variou