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ABSTRACT
The Russian Duma and the Kazakh Mazhilis are typical examples of formally democratic legislatures in authoritarian regimes. This article investigates their role and asks why different authoritarian legislatures have different levels of law-making activity. Neo-institutionalist scholarship argues that legislatures stabilize authoritarian regimes by institutionalizing access to decision-making, but this literature requires further evidence showing which factors stimulate a parliament’s law-making function. The analysis uses an original dataset on 7,564 bills in Russia and Kazakhstan between 2000 and 2016 to explore how different power-sharing arrangements affect the legislative output of both parliaments. The results show that the Duma is much more active in terms of initiating laws and amending executive bills because of its highly differentiated committee system. Nevertheless, both legislatures have become more active after electoral contestedness decreased when United Russia and Nur Otan emerged. This suggests that internal parliamentary organization stimulates law-making activity, whereas electoral contestedness obstructs collective decision-making.
KEYWORDS:
Notes
1. Research was conducted entirely while the author was at the European University Institute (Fiesole, Italy).
2. The present article focuses on the lower chambers of the parliamentary assemblies of Russia and Kazakhstan. Both countries have bicameral systems, but the notion of “parliament” in the current analysis refers to the respective lower chambers as cases of formally elected multiparty legislatures. The role of Russia’s Council of the Federation and Kazakhstan’s Senate are beyond the scope of this article.
3. References to the legislative function, role, and process throughout the article refer to “law-making.”
4. The present analysis does not consider the period after Nazarbayev resigned in March 2019.
5. Russia and Kazakhstan have been authoritarian throughout the period considered here. In line with Linz’s definition of authoritarianism as a political system with limited political pluralism (Linz Citation2000, 159), the regimes of Presidents Putin and Nazarbayev qualify as authoritarian due to implicit restrictions (albeit incomplete) on political pluralism that constitute a genuine threat for the incumbent executive (Olcott Citation2002; Melvin Citation2004; Gel’man, Vladimir Citation2015). Even in the early years of Putin’s presidency, scholars described Russia’s politics in terms of “managed pluralism” (Balzer Citation2003) or “managed democracy” (Colton and Michael Citation2003), defined as systems in which rulers “[seek] to limit participation to parties that … do not effectively challenge the current executive leadership” (Balzer Citation2003, 191). Although, admittedly, denoting a “milder” form of nondemocracy, these notions correspond with Linz’s reference to limited pluralism as a defining feature of authoritarianism.
6. The present analysis starts from the beginning of the Duma’s third convocation (2000–2003) onward, for practical purposes related to the availability of data.
7. The present analysis starts from the beginning of the second convocation (2000–2004) of the Mazhilis onward, for practical purposes related to the availability of data.
8. Note that this fragmented period precedes the periods on which the present investigation focuses and is, therefore, excluded from the empirical analysis below.
9. It is beyond the scope of the present investigation to discuss why fragmentation led to differentiation in the Duma but not in the Mazhilis, although it seems reasonable to suggest that ideological affiliation, government relations, and negotiating style of parliamentary leaders (most importantly Ivan Rybkin and Gennady Seleznev in Russia, and Marat Ospanov in Kazakhstan) could have played a considerable role in this regard.
10. Reglament Gosudarstvennoi Dumy (http://duma.gov.ru/duma/about/regulations/).
11. Reglament Mazhilisa Parlamenta Respubliki Kazakhstan (http://www.parlam.kz/ru/mazhilis/reglament).
12. See the Regulations of the Duma (Art. 108.1) and the Mazhilis (Art. 28).
13. See the Regulations of the Duma (Art. 120, Art. 121) and the Mazhilis (Art. 30.1).
14. See the Regulations of the Duma (Art. 23.1b/g) and the Mazhilis (Art. 127, Art. 128).
15. For the purpose of analytical clarity, the present section only discusses the intervening powers of presidential administrations and disregards interventions by the cabinet of ministers. This seems reasonable, given the strong presidential control over the cabinet in the countries investigated here. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile highlighting that presidential administrations and cabinets in the given countries both have various formal powers in terms of handling legislative drafts and that this would constitute a valuable avenue for future research (see also Schleiter and Morgan-Jones Citation2008; Nurumov and Vashchanka Citation2016).
18. With figures differing between 1,273 words for Russia and 3,071 words for Kazakhstan.
19. words for Russia, 1,538 words for Kazakhstan.
20. Figures based on the identity of sponsors noted in the official parliamentary records available through the Duma’s online information system on legislative activity (http://asozd2.duma.gov.ru/).
21. Figures are derived from the classification of laws based on the identity of their sponsors noted in the explanatory notes that accompany bills and that are available in the official parliamentary records in the PARAGRAF Information System (http://www.online.zakon.kz/). Figures diverge from Turetskii (Citation2019), possibly due to data availability and/or differences between sources used.
22. The decline in the number of executive-led bills could perhaps be explained by Nazarbayev’s use of presidential decrees and would be an important subject for future study.
23. The vertical lines in separate the different periods on which the analysis focuses.
24. Measured as the decadic logarithm of the number of words in bills. Coefficients, standard errors, and model fit statistics are bootstrapped by re-sampling 10,000 times, and the independent variables are standardized.