Political Fragmentation and Parliamentary Activeness in Presidential Authoritarian Regimes: A Comparative Analysis of Executive-Legislative Relations in Post-Soviet Eurasia

The paper investigates the effect of executive-legislative relations on parliamentary activity in authoritarian presidential systems. Quasi-democratic legislative institutions are, supposedly, useful representative channels through which authoritarian presidents co-opt politically resourceful actors. Comparative literature, indeed, shows a positive correlation between ‘having a legislature’ (versus systems without a legislature) and autocratic regime durability. The literature, however, ignores differences in president-parliament relations across countries that are ‘presidential-with-legislature’, and, consequently, cannot explain when and how authoritarian legislatures are important. Analysing this regime type within a framework that highlights fragmentation within a president's parliamentary following and challenges by parliamentary opposition, the paper investigates parliamentary activeness in four authoritarian former-Soviet countries (Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan) across different time periods. The analysis focuses on the effects of fragmentation in the political structure, through committee institutionalisation (as intermediate variable), on legislative activeness. Legislative activeness is understood in terms of quantity (number of enacted parliamentary bills per legislative period; average degree of text change of executive bills before being enacted by parliament) and scope (size of groups immediately affected by the legislation; size of the impact; externalities for those not primarily affected). Original data show that authoritarian presidents facing internal disputes and/or external challenges concede high levels of parliamentary activity through an institutionalised standing committee system. These presidents, arguably, need to offer policy concessions to avoid defections and, consequently, regime breakdown. By contrast, parliaments in systems with authoritarian presidents who rule over a monolithic political structure are weakly institutionalised and inactive. Interestingly, however, although parliaments in fragmented systems are more active in quantitative terms, the higher level of intra-coalitional dispute impedes parliamentary actors from enacting legislation with far-reaching implications. Parliamentary legislation in monolithic authoritarian systems is low in quantity, but due to low levels of intra-coalitional dispute, it appears feasible to enact legislation of a larger scope.