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ABSTRACT
A large body of scholarship points to the importance of legislatures in authoritarian regimes, arguably making them more stable and durable. Legislatures could, for example, perform a co-opting function by giving legislative power to potential opponents of incumbents. Additional evidence is needed, however, to show that this legislative function of parliament exists in non-democracies. This article, therefore, takes a step back and investigates to what extent parliaments in authoritarian regimes have a legislative function, by focusing on the amendment of executive bills. Based on an innovative way of measuring parliamentary amendment, the analysis uses a unique original dataset with cross-national data on 5271 executive bills from Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. The figures demonstrate a high level of activity across all parliaments analysed here. Importantly, however, some legislatures are more active than others. Contributing empirically and theoretically to existing literature, the results show that legislatures on average amend executive bills for 43.2% and that power sharing institutions, defined as contestation and institutional differentiation, constitute mechanisms causing different levels of activity. The article concludes by discussing the limitations of the investigation and indicates where future research could strengthen further theoretical and empirical links between legislative power sharing, co-optation and regime stability.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship; Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats”; Wright, “Do Authoritarian Institutions Constrain?”
2 Pepinsky, “The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism.”
3 Malesky and Schuler, “Nodding or Needling.”
4 See also Truex, “The Returns to Office in a ‘Rubber Stamp' Parliament”; Schuler, “Position Taking or Position Ducking?”
5 Noble, “Amending Budget Bills in the Russian State Duma”; Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments”; Krol, “Parliamentary Initiative in Authoritarian Regimes: Power Sharing in Eurasian Legislatures”; Krol, “Legislative Performance of the Russian State Duma.”
6 Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats.”
7 Baumgartner et al., “Budgetary Change in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes”; Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments”; Gandhi, Noble, and Svolik, “Legislatures and Legislative Politics Without Democracy”; Williamson and Magaloni, “Legislatures and Policy Making in Authoritarian Regimes”; Lü, Liu, and Li, "Policy Coalition Building in an Authoritarian Legislature.”
8 Linz, Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes, 159 italics added.
9 Gerschewski, “The Three Pillars of Stability’; Gandhi and Przeworski, “Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats’; Reuter and Robertson, “Legislatures, Cooptation, and Social Protest in Contemporary Authoritarian Regimes.’
10 Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study in the Sociology of Formal Organization, 13.
11 Wright and Escriba-Folch, “Authoritarian Institutions and Regime Survival.”
12 Reuter and Turovsky, “Dominant Party Rule and Legislative Leadership in Authoritarian Regimes.”
13 Reuter and Robertson, “Legislatures, Cooptation, and Social Protest in Contemporary Authoritarian Regimes.’
14 Rivera, “Authoritarian Institutions and State Repression,” 2189.
15 Baumgartner et al., “Budgetary Change in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes.”
16 Noble, “Amending Budget Bills in the Russian State Duma’; Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments.”
17 Baumgartner et al., “Budgetary Change in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes.”
18 Pepinsky, “The Institutional Turn in Comparative Authoritarianism’; Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship.
19 Magaloni, Voting for Autocracy; Reuter and Robertson, “Subnational Appointments in Authoritarian Regimes.”
20 Köker, “Why Dictators Veto.”
21 Popova, Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies.
22 Davenport, “State Repression and Political Order’; Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism.
23 Graham, Miller, and Strøm, “Safeguarding Democracy.”
24 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism; Schedler, Electoral Authoritarianism.
25 Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship; Magaloni, “Credible Power-Sharing and the Longevity of Authoritarian Rule.”
26 O’Donnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Reuter and Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties’; Reuter and Szakonyi, “Elite Defection under Autocracy.”
27 Boix and Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government.”
28 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism; Boix and Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government.”
29 Shugart and Carey, Presidents and Assemblies; Elgie, “The Politics of Semi-Presidentialism.”
30 Linz, “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?’; Lijphart, Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government.
31 Elgie, “The Perils of Semi-Presidentialism. Are They Exaggerated?’; Linz, “The Perils of Presidentialism’; Sedelius and Linde, “Unravelling Semi-Presidentialism.”
32 Köker, “Why Dictators Veto.”
33 Tsebelis and Rizova, “Presidential Conditional Agenda Setting in the Former Communist Countries.”
34 Chaisty, Cheeseman, and Power, “Rethinking the “Presidentialism Debate”.”
35 See Martin, “Committees.”
36 Shepsle and Weingast, “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power.”
37 Mattson and Strøm, “Parliamentary Committees.”
38 Carroll, Cox, and Pachón, “How Parties Create Electoral Democracy, Chapter 2,” 155.
39 Noble, “Amending Budget Bills in the Russian State Duma’; Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments.”
40 Noble, “Authoritarian Amendments,” 4.
41 Cross and Hermansson, “Legislative Amendments and Informal Politics in the European Union.”
42 van der Loo, “The Stringdist Package for Approximate String Matching’; see Wilkerson, Smith, and Stramp, “Tracing the Flow of Policy Ideas in Legislatures.” for an application of this method to legislative politics.
43 Levandowsky and Winter, “Distance between Sets.”
44 The present analysis is based on character-sequences with q = 10.
45 The present analysis classifies parties based on assessments by country-experts.
46 Laakso and Taagepera, “The “Effective” Number of Parties.”
47 Shugart and Carey, Presidents and Assemblies. Although the scores do not map onto singular definitions of presidential power (see also Fortin, “Measuring Presidential Powers.”), they are sufficient to preliminarily explore the effects of various forms of presidential power. Future studies into the relation between horizontal differentiation and legislative activity could conclude which constituent indicator proves to be more relevant.
48 Mega-seats include chairs and (first) deputy chairs of standing committees, party groups and the legislature’s leadership council (presidium). This number of mega-seats is divided by the number of standing committees to avoid an overlap between both components of vertical differentiation.
49 Reuter and Gandhi, “Economic Performance and Elite Defection from Hegemonic Parties.”
50 Reuter and Gandhi, 84.
51 Frye, Reuter, and Szakonyi, “Political Machines at Work Voter Mobilization and Electoral Subversion in the Workplace.”
52 Lancaster, “Electoral Structures and Pork Barrel Politics.”
53 Gandhi, Political Institutions under Dictatorship; Boix and Svolik, “The Foundations of Limited Authoritarian Government.”
54 By and large, the 23 categories correspond with those from the Comparative Agendas Project (https://www.comparativeagendas.net/pages/master-codebook), see also Baumgartner, Jones, and Wilkerson, “Comparative Studies of Policy Dynamics.”
55 Olcott, Kazakhstan; Melvin, “Authoritarian Pathways in Central Asia: A Comparison of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan’; Isaacs, “Nur Otan, Informal Networks and the Countering of Elite Instability in Kazakhstan’; Gel’man, Authoritarian Russia; Remington, Politics in Russia.
56 Levitsky and Way, Competitive Authoritarianism; Sedelius and Berglund, “Towards Presidential Rule in Ukraine.”
57 Popova, Politicized Justice in Emerging Democracies; Trochev, “Meddling with Justice.”
58 Isaacs, Party System Formation in Kazakhstan; Huskey, “The Rise of Contested Politics in Central Asia’; Whitmore, State Building in Ukraine; Remington and Smith, “The Development of Parliamentary Parties in Russia.”
59 Olcott, Kazakhstan; Gel’man, “Party Politics in Russia’; D’Anieri, Understanding Ukrainian Politics.
60 Reuter, The Origins of Dominant Parties; Isaacs, “Nur Otan, Informal Networks and the Countering of Elite Instability in Kazakhstan’; Bader, “Hegemonic Political Parties in Post-Soviet Eurasia.”
61 Fumagalli, “Semi-Presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan’; Juraev, “Kyrgyz Democracy?’
62 Semenova, “Patterns of Parliamentary Representation and Careers in Ukraine’; Chaisty and Chernykh, “Coalitional Presidentialism and Legislative Control in Post-Soviet Ukraine.”
63 Presidential power scores based on Nurumov and Vashchanka, “Constitutional Development of Independent Kazakhstan’; Schleiter and Morgan-Jones, “Semi-Presidentialism in Russia’; see also Huskey, Presidential Power in Russia.
64 Presidential power score based on Birch, “Ukraine: Presidential Power, Veto Strategies and Democratisation,” see also; Sedelius and Berglund, “Towards Presidential Rule in Ukraine.”
65 Presidential power score based on Fumagalli, “Semi-Presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan.”
66 Siegler, Standing Commissions of the Supreme Soviet: Effective Co-Optation.
67 Chaisty, “Party Cohesion and Policy-Making in Russia’; Khmelko, Wise, and Brown, “Committees and Legislative Strengthening.”
68 Haspel, “Committees in the Russian State Duma’; Whitmore, State Building in Ukraine; Chaisty, “Party Cohesion and Policy-Making in Russia.”
69 This number excludes ratifications of international agreements.
70 All texts have been extensively cleaned and prepared to generate reliable figures (e.g. removing superfluous spaces, special symbols and punctuation).
76 van der Loo, “The Stringdist Package for Approximate String Matching.”
77 Ramalho, Ramalho, and Murteira, “Alternative Estimating and Testing Empirical Strategies for Fractional Regression Models.”
78 Damgaard, “How Parties Control Committee Members’; Mickler, “Who Gets What and Why?’
79 Brownlee, Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization.
80 Reuter and Turovsky, “Dominant Party Rule and Legislative Leadership in Authoritarian Regimes.”
81 Bader, “Hegemonic Political Parties in Post-Soviet Eurasia’; Geddes, Wright, and Frantz, “Autocratic Breakdown and Regime Transitions.”
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Gerrit Krol
Gerrit Krol is a PhD Researcher in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. In his work he investigates the legislative activity of parliaments in authoritarian regimes by comparing the impact of different political and institutional structures. In previous publications he has focused on the role of legislatures in the law-making process of nondemocratic regimes in countries of the former USSR.