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.