Grasping at Straws: Procedures and Opposition Roles in Competitive Authoritarian Parliaments

Research has emphasized the importance of nominally democratic institutions for the survival of authoritarian regimes. Most scholars have focused on the presence of parliamentary institutions or elections in general, neglecting specific parliamentary rules as well as the micro-logic of cooptation. We argue that fully understanding the role of opposition parties in competitive authoritarian regimes and the extent to which they fulfill the expectations laid out in the cooptation theory requires detailed knowledge about how different parliamentary procedures are used. Focusing on Sub-Sahara Africa, we first present a comprehensive data collection effort on parliamentary rules in these regimes. We then analyze how opposition parties strategically use their right to submit questions to the government party. We find that despite the widespread possibility to submit questions to the government, the degree to which opposition parties proactively use query sessions to influence the government varies significantly between countries.