LAUSR

The relationship between linkage to the West and the survival of political regimes has gained increasing attention in recent years. Despite this attention, one aspect of this linkage remains poorly understood, and that is the effect of linkage to the West on electoral manipulation. Scholars have suggested that linkage to the West raises the cost of government abuse because it increases the probability of Western governments taking action in response to reported abuse. This assumption then suggests that incumbents should choose the forms of repression more wisely. Consequently, in cases of the higher level of linkage to the West incumbents are less likely to use the more visible forms of repression and manipulation. I test the aforementioned assumptions on time series, cross-national data set with observations of 147 elections in competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2010. I find that extensive international relations to the West have only minimal and statistically non-significant effect on visible forms of repression and manipulation. These results contribute to our understanding of international linkage as they show that linkage to the West does not provide sufficient protection to opposition leaders and groups.