Parliamentary Representation in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes

Parliaments in electoral authoritarian regimes and their members (MPs) spend considerable resources on constituency-related activities. MPs in such regimes face the challenge to maintain a balance between on the one hand, fulfilling their constitutionally defined tasks and with this potentially serving the regime and, on the other hand, exploiting niches for independent action. How, I ask in this paper, do MPs in non-democratic regimes represent the citizens, and how do they resolve the conflict between serving the people while remaining within the legal boundaries of their tasks? I conduct an exploratory paired comparison of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic (2007-2015) based on original interview material. I argue that patterns of activities and the focus on particular sub-constituencies can be traced back to first, how limited political pluralism is and second, the degree of party system institutionalization (which reflects how consolidated authoritarian hold in power is).