Legislative Institutions and Performance in Authoritarian Regimes
The literature on authoritarian regimes assumes legislatures are inconsequential because dictators ultimately retain their hold on power. We challenge this assumption arguing that legislatures embedded in power-sharing arrangements are costly to ignore, their design affects lawmaking
patterns, and they are more influential when executives are collective, rather than personal. We test these arguments on a case for which complete records exist: the Legislative Advisory Commission in Argentina's last military dictator-ship. Our findings show that the combination of tripartite
power-sharing by the armed forces, a collective executive, shared legislative power, and decentralized agenda power led to higher rates of government legislative defeats and bill amendments than typical in authoritarian regimes. These findings support the theory that legislatures under authoritarianism
are more influential when power-sharing arrangements include collective executives.
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 July 2017
- Comparative Politics is an international journal that publishes scholarly articles devoted to the comparative analysis of political institutions and behavior. It was founded in 1968 to further the development of comparative political theory and the application of comparative theoretical analysis to the empirical investigation of political issues. Comparative Politics communicates new ideas and research findings to social scientists, scholars, and students, and is valued by experts in research organizations, foundations, and consulates throughout the world.
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