THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE

“You don’t have to be the most popular candidate to win an election. You just have to be better at converting power into votes.”

Telos: You’ve shown how incumbents can maintain power even as their popularity erodes. What are the most sophisticated contemporary strategies by which leaders convert state resources, patronage networks, and institutional capture into electoral victories?

Nic Cheeseman: One of the big lessons of my book How to Rig an Election is that you don’t have to be the most popular candidate to win an election – you just have to be better at converting power into votes. The most sophisticated incumbents run what I call integrated dominance strategies: they fuse control of state resources, patronage networks and government institutions into an integrated election machine. In countries with weak democratic safeguards, this can start long before polling day with the strategic distribution of jobs and contracts to create what looks less like a political party and more like a patronage cartel. Around election time, the same networks are mobilised to finance campaigns, bus supporters to rallies, and “encourage” civil servants, traditional leaders and business elites to fall in line. At the same time, incumbents in countries such as Belarus or Uganda selectively capture or neutralise institutions that are supposed to be neutral referees – electoral commissions, courts, security agencies, even state audit offices. The goal is not always crude manipulation, but to tilt every key decision: where polling stations are located, how voter registration is organised, how election complaints are decided. What looks like a close and hard-fought contest from the outside is often the product of years of quiet rule-manipulation, in which public money, personnel and power have been systematically repurposed to keep one faction in office. A worrying new trend is that some rulers are no longer even pretending they are democratic. The recent election in Tanzania demonstrated how increasingly brazen manipulation – including intimidation, disqualification of opposition candidates and internet shutdowns – is being conducted in plain sight. Rather than fearing international condemnation, leaders feel emboldened by recent global changes. The rise of more authoritarian powers, coupled with shifting signals from traditional democracy promoters – including the recent statement by the United States that it will no longer comment on foreign elections – has lowered the risk of rigging. In a more permissive international climate, the assault on democracy has come out into the open.

Your work highlights the importance of misinformation but also of state-controlled narratives. Which forms of narrative manipulation are proving most effective today, and how do they differ from classic vote-rigging techniques?

Classic vote-rigging is largely about numbers: stuffing ballot boxes, fabricating tallies, buying votes. Narrative manipulation is about meaning – shaping what people believe is true and what they feel is possible. The most effective strategies blend state-controlled narratives with targeted online disinformation. Governments still lean on state broadcasters and friendly private outlets, but they now pair this with armies of influencers, bots and “keyboard warriors” on WhatsApp, Facebook and TikTok who pump out emotionally charged stories, half-truths and conspiracy theories. The key difference from old-style fraud is that the aim is less to change hearts and minds and more to change who actually goes to the polls and undermine trust. Narrative manipulation is used to depress turnout among opponents, smear critical journalists and activists, polarise communities along ethnic or religious lines, and, increasingly, to discredit the very idea of impartial institutions. Instead of simply stealing the vote, leaders try to steal the story: to convince citizens that the opposition is dangerous, that critics are foreign stooges, or that “everyone cheats anyway.” In the worst cases we see a new technique emerging – attacking the legitimacy of the result itself, even when the incumbent has lost, in order to justify refusing to concede. One of the biggest problems this generates is falling trust in democratic institutions, because trust is the glue that holds democracies together. Another change compared to twenty years ago is the rise of sophisticated international disinformation ecosystems. Today, misinformation is not just domestic but increasingly transnational, involving coordinated foreign influence operations. Russia, China and other actors have invested in strategic communications that support friendly incumbents, amplify polarising content and undermine trust in electoral institutions. This means that information wars are no longer fought just inside countries but across borders, making control over narratives as important as control over ballot boxes.

You’ve argued that some African democracies are more resilient than many outside observers assume. What are the most underestimated sources of democratic strength you see emerging, whether in courts, civil society, or subnational politics? 

If you only read the headlines about the recent spate coups in countries like Burkina Faso and Guinea Bissau, it is easy to miss the quieter sources of democratic resaleable in Africa. One is that many citizens remain deeply attached to elections and term limits: surveys consistently find strong public support for competitive politics and against leaders for life, even in countries where the regime is sliding backwards. Another is the way that bits of the state – courts, election commissions, subnational governments – sometimes push back. We have seen constitutional courts in places like Malawi and Kenya annul flawed polls, and electoral bodies in Gambia and Zambia announce defeats for the government even under intense pressure. Civil society is also more innovative than it is often given credit for. Youth movements, women’s organisations, professional associations and faith groups have learned to use social media, strategic litigation and election-day observation to raise the cost of manipulation. In some countries, opposition parties have become better at building broad coalitions and deploying their own representatives to protect the vote. None of this guarantees democratic survival – far from it – but it does mean that autocrats face a more demanding environment than they did in the past. The story of African democracy is not just one of erosion; it is also one of adaptation and resistance.

You’ve written extensively about what some have called “constitutional coups.” What patterns are you seeing in how leaders reinterpret, bend, or rewrite constitutional rules to extend their tenure? And which countries today best illustrate this quiet form of democratic backsliding?

I'm not convinced by the term “constitutional coups”; coup should be reserved for situations involving coercion. Applying it to legal manoeuvres muddies analytical clarity, though some of the trends we are seeing are really concerning. Removing term-limits is one of the most important aspects of this, and leaders have got a lot smarter about how to do it. Rather than openly rejecting the law, leaders manipulate it to appear compliant – arguing that a new constitution resets the term count, passing revisions, or holding referendums. This is especially dangerous because once constitutional limits are bypassed, democracies struggle to recover: instead of gradual decline, it accelerates power concentration and blocks turnover. In countries like Burundi and Uganda, for example, removing limits weakens institutions and personalises rule, often alongside growing constraints on dissent. By contrast, protecting term limits as seen in Ghana or Kenya – helps preserve the potential to remove corrupt autocrats from power, and so keeps alive the prospects of political renewal.