Parliamentary initiative in authoritarian regimes: Power sharing in Eurasian legislatures

ABSTRACT

This article answers the question to what extent authoritarian parliaments perform a legislative function. The analysis focuses on different institutional forms of power sharing and uses two large original datasets with 9.434 and 6.693 micro-level observations on legislative activity in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan between 1998 and 2016 to estimate which of these forms have the largest impact on parliamentary initiative. The analysis demonstrates a high average amount of parliamentary activity. Stimulating factors include institutional differentiation, internal fragmentation and a small opposition. Evidence also shows that initiative is reserved predominantly for loyalists who occupy legislative seats with delegated authority. A large opposition results in less overall activity because it implies that a higher proportion of powerful seats are occupied by members without support from the loyalist majority. The data also demonstrate, however, that loyalists exploit the threat of a large opposition by demanding policy concessions in exchange for loyalty.

KEYWORDS:

• Authoritarianism
• institutions
• parliaments

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Gerrit Krol is a doctoral researcher at the European University Institute. His work focusses on legislative activity, power sharing and parliamentary institutions in authoritarian political systems. In his research, he studies mostly political systems of former Soviet republics.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (https://doi.org/10.1080/13572334.2020.1814505)

Notes

1 The scale classifies constitutions in terms of the presidential power to appoint and dismiss government ministers relative to the power of the legislature to do so, as well as the respective powers of president and parliament to control the legislative process.

2 This is the quotient of the intersection between two texts (i.e. all the unique sequences of 10 characters that occur in both an original bill, as initially presented to parliament, and the final text of the enacted law), and the union (i.e. all 10 character sequences that occur in at least one of both texts) subtracted from one. The formula yields a minimum value (0) when each unique 10-character sequence occurs in both texts and its maximum value (1) when there are no 10-character sequences that occur in both texts.

3 Table 6 specifies the 23 policy areas.

4 Kyrgyz Political Activist Detained In Troubled South (2013, June 2). Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-usenov-abducted/25004746.html; Kyrgyzstan: Lawmakers Charged with Inciting Crowds (2012, October 4). Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/world/asia/kyrgyzstan-lawmakers-charged-with-inciting-crowds.html.

5 Two Kyrgyz Judges Fired Over Lawmakers' Release (2013, October 14). Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-judges-fired-lawmakers/25136070.html.

6 Independent News Website Partly Blocked In Kyrgyzstan (2012, February 12). Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/independent_news_website_partly_blocked_in_kyrgyzstan/24492408.html; Kyrgyz Court Fines Journalist For Inciting Hatred (2012, July 4). Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/kyrgyzstan-court-fines-journalist-inciting-hatred/24634789.html; Kyrgyz Opposition Newspaper Owner Arrested (2012, May 31). Retrieved from https://www.rferl.org/a/owner-of-kyrgyz-opposition-newspaper-website-maidan-arrested/24599048.html.

7 Categorisation is based on secondary sources. On Russia, see Chaisty (2005a) and Gel’man (2008); on Kazakhstan, see Olcott (2002) and Isaacs (2011b); on Ukraine, see Whitmore (2004); on Kyrgyzstan, see Fumagalli (2016).

8 The scores for countries per period on the Presidential Power-scale are based on the analyses by Schleiter and Morgan-Jones (2008) on Russia, Nurumov and Vashchanka (2016) on Kazakhstan, Birch (2008) on Ukraine and Fumagalli (2016) on Kyrgyzstan.

9 Information retrieved from current official webpages of national legislatures as well as from earlier versions conserved by The Wayback Machine.

10 Although this is a relatively small proportion, it is a relevant finding that future research should address. More specifically, although the large majority of parliamentary legislation is initiated by loyalists with mega-seats, this finding begs the question under what conditions MPs without a mega-seat and/or members of the opposition initiate and pass legislation.

11 Variance inflation factors (VIF) suggest that there is no multicollinearity between the independent variables.