Authoritarian Amendments: Legislative Institutions as Intra-Executive Constraints in Post-Soviet Russia. Comparative Political Studies, 2019.
Why are executive bills sometimes amended significantly in authoritarian legislatures? Bill change clashes with the conventional picture of parliaments in non-democracies as 'rubber stamp' bodies. Recent work challenging the 'rubber stamp' model suggests that cases of amendment are the result of legislator influence. This article proposes an alternative argument: amendment can result from intra-executive policy-making processes, unresolved in the pre-legislative, cabinet-level stage. Factionalised executives can use legislative institutions to help overcome information asymmetries, as well as the commitment and monitoring problems involved in collective decision-making. This article evaluates this alternative account using a combination of statistical and case-study analyses, drawing on both cross-national and fine-grained data from contemporary Russia. The findings contribute to our knowledge of authoritarian legislatures, policy-making processes in non-democracies, and Russian politics.
[PDF]
Authoritarian Legislatures: What do we Know? Comparative Political Studies, 2019 (with Jennifer Gandhi and Milan Svolik).
Parliamentary Politics in Russia. In R. Sakwa, H. Hale, and S. White (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 9. Basingstoke; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Regional Legislatures and National Lawmaking. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 2019.
Recent work has noted the supposedly ‘exceptional’ constitutional authority of sub-national legislatures in Mexico to introduce legislative initiatives into the national congress. Rather than a mechanism unique to Mexico, however, this debate article notes other states’ constitutions with similar provisions, drawing on data from the Comparative Constitutions Project, as well as a new dataset on lawmaking in the Russian Federation. The article calls for a new collaborative research agenda to explore the involvement of sub-national legislatures in national-level lawmaking.
[PDF]
Not Just a Rubber Stamp: Parliament and Lawmaking. In D. Treisman (ed.), The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin's Russia. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2018 (with Ekaterina Schulmann).
[PDF]
Amending Budget Bills in the Russian State Duma. Post-Communist Economies, 2017.
Do budget bills change during review in the Russian State Duma? If so, by how much and why? Portrayals of the contemporary Federal Assembly as a ‘rubber stamp’ parliament would suggest that budget initiatives undergo no amendment during the formal period of legislative review. There is, however, evidence of bill change. The article’s primary goal is to present this surprising evidence, focusing on changes to spending figures, 2002-2016. The article also discusses why such changes are made, assessing hypotheses concerning legislator influence, technical updating, and intra-executive conflict.
[PDF]
Budgetary Change in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes. Journal of European Public Policy, 2017 (with Frank Baumgartner, Marcello Carammia, Derek Epp, Beatriz Rey, and Tevfik Murat Yildrim).
We compare patterns of change in budgetary commitments by countries during periods of democracy and authoritarianism. Previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on democratic governments, finding evidence of punctuated equilibria. Authoritarian regimes may behave differently, both because they may operate with fewer institutional barriers to choice and because they have fewer incentives to gather and respond to policy-relevant information coming from civil society. By analysing public budgeting in Brazil, Turkey, Malta, and Russia before and after their transitions from or to democracy, we can test punctuated equilibrium theory under a variety of governing conditions. Our goal is to advance the understanding of the causes of budgetary instability by leveraging contextual circumstances to push the theory beyond democracies and assess its broader applicability.
[PDF]
The State Duma, the "Crimean Consensus," and Volodin's Reforms. In A. Barbashin, F. Burkhardt, O. Irisova, and E. Wyciszkiewicz (eds), Russia: Three Years After Crimea. Warsaw: The Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, 2017.
[PDF]
Decriminalising Sex Between Men in the Former Soviet Union, 1991-2003: Conditionality and the Council of Europe. In K. Goodall, M. Malloch, and B. Munro (eds), Building Justice in Post-Transition Europe? Processes of Criminalisation within Central and Eastern European Societies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
[PDF]
WORKING PAPERS
Conditional Criticism: Parliamentary Scrutiny of the Executive in Russia under Presidents Putin and Medvedev, 2005-2017 (with Maxim Ananyev and Paul Schuler).
Do parliaments in authoritarian states meaningfully scrutinise the executive? Popular images of capricious dictators and rubber stamp parliaments would suggest not. Recent work has, however, found evidence of substantive criticism of executive actors in non-democratic regimes, as well as specified the conditions under which such criticism is likely to take place. This work has largely focussed on features of legislative actors when explaining the propensity for needling questioning. We know much less, however, about the features of executive actors that make them more vulnerable to critique. In this paper, we draw on a new database of “Government hour” transcripts from the Russian Federal Assembly, 2005 to 2017 – sessions during which federal government ministers, and other senior officials, answer questions from members of parliament. We theorize that, contrary to existing research, legislative criticism is not directed at the autocrat. Rather, the autocrat encourages parliament to criticise executive bodies that are directly supervised by the government. Legislative scrutiny is, therefore, a monitoring device to keep tabs on autocrat-delegated executive bodies. We leverage variation in the identity of the head of state (Vladimir Putin or Dmitrii Medvedev), persistence in the identity of the autocrat (Putin), and the existence of president- and government-controlled bodies to show that: when Putin is head of state, parliament criticises president-controlled bodies (PCBs) less than government-controlled bodies (GCBs); and, when Medvedev is head of state, PCBs receive more criticism. Findings from content analysis of these query sessions add to our knowledge of legislative politics and intra-executive relations under authoritarianism, as well as contemporary Russian politics.
An Elite Consolidation Theory of Authoritarian Legislative Closures (with Paul Schuler and Chad Westerland).
Unpopular Decisions and the Electoral Connection in Authoritarian Regimes (with Andrey Starodubtsev and Margarita Zavadskaya)
Closing Parliaments in Southeast Asia (with Lee Morgenbesser)
Regions with the Initiative: Russian Federal Subjects and Federal Lawmaking.
Why are executive bills sometimes amended significantly in authoritarian legislatures? Bill change clashes with the conventional picture of parliaments in non-democracies as 'rubber stamp' bodies. Recent work challenging the 'rubber stamp' model suggests that cases of amendment are the result of legislator influence. This article proposes an alternative argument: amendment can result from intra-executive policy-making processes, unresolved in the pre-legislative, cabinet-level stage. Factionalised executives can use legislative institutions to help overcome information asymmetries, as well as the commitment and monitoring problems involved in collective decision-making. This article evaluates this alternative account using a combination of statistical and case-study analyses, drawing on both cross-national and fine-grained data from contemporary Russia. The findings contribute to our knowledge of authoritarian legislatures, policy-making processes in non-democracies, and Russian politics.
[PDF]
Authoritarian Legislatures: What do we Know? Comparative Political Studies, 2019 (with Jennifer Gandhi and Milan Svolik).
Parliamentary Politics in Russia. In R. Sakwa, H. Hale, and S. White (eds), Developments in Russian Politics 9. Basingstoke; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Regional Legislatures and National Lawmaking. The Journal of Legislative Studies, 2019.
Recent work has noted the supposedly ‘exceptional’ constitutional authority of sub-national legislatures in Mexico to introduce legislative initiatives into the national congress. Rather than a mechanism unique to Mexico, however, this debate article notes other states’ constitutions with similar provisions, drawing on data from the Comparative Constitutions Project, as well as a new dataset on lawmaking in the Russian Federation. The article calls for a new collaborative research agenda to explore the involvement of sub-national legislatures in national-level lawmaking.
[PDF]
Not Just a Rubber Stamp: Parliament and Lawmaking. In D. Treisman (ed.), The New Autocracy: Information, Politics, and Policy in Putin's Russia. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2018 (with Ekaterina Schulmann).
[PDF]
Amending Budget Bills in the Russian State Duma. Post-Communist Economies, 2017.
Do budget bills change during review in the Russian State Duma? If so, by how much and why? Portrayals of the contemporary Federal Assembly as a ‘rubber stamp’ parliament would suggest that budget initiatives undergo no amendment during the formal period of legislative review. There is, however, evidence of bill change. The article’s primary goal is to present this surprising evidence, focusing on changes to spending figures, 2002-2016. The article also discusses why such changes are made, assessing hypotheses concerning legislator influence, technical updating, and intra-executive conflict.
[PDF]
Budgetary Change in Authoritarian and Democratic Regimes. Journal of European Public Policy, 2017 (with Frank Baumgartner, Marcello Carammia, Derek Epp, Beatriz Rey, and Tevfik Murat Yildrim).
We compare patterns of change in budgetary commitments by countries during periods of democracy and authoritarianism. Previous scholarship has focused almost exclusively on democratic governments, finding evidence of punctuated equilibria. Authoritarian regimes may behave differently, both because they may operate with fewer institutional barriers to choice and because they have fewer incentives to gather and respond to policy-relevant information coming from civil society. By analysing public budgeting in Brazil, Turkey, Malta, and Russia before and after their transitions from or to democracy, we can test punctuated equilibrium theory under a variety of governing conditions. Our goal is to advance the understanding of the causes of budgetary instability by leveraging contextual circumstances to push the theory beyond democracies and assess its broader applicability.
[PDF]
The State Duma, the "Crimean Consensus," and Volodin's Reforms. In A. Barbashin, F. Burkhardt, O. Irisova, and E. Wyciszkiewicz (eds), Russia: Three Years After Crimea. Warsaw: The Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding, 2017.
[PDF]
Decriminalising Sex Between Men in the Former Soviet Union, 1991-2003: Conditionality and the Council of Europe. In K. Goodall, M. Malloch, and B. Munro (eds), Building Justice in Post-Transition Europe? Processes of Criminalisation within Central and Eastern European Societies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2013.
[PDF]
WORKING PAPERS
Conditional Criticism: Parliamentary Scrutiny of the Executive in Russia under Presidents Putin and Medvedev, 2005-2017 (with Maxim Ananyev and Paul Schuler).
Do parliaments in authoritarian states meaningfully scrutinise the executive? Popular images of capricious dictators and rubber stamp parliaments would suggest not. Recent work has, however, found evidence of substantive criticism of executive actors in non-democratic regimes, as well as specified the conditions under which such criticism is likely to take place. This work has largely focussed on features of legislative actors when explaining the propensity for needling questioning. We know much less, however, about the features of executive actors that make them more vulnerable to critique. In this paper, we draw on a new database of “Government hour” transcripts from the Russian Federal Assembly, 2005 to 2017 – sessions during which federal government ministers, and other senior officials, answer questions from members of parliament. We theorize that, contrary to existing research, legislative criticism is not directed at the autocrat. Rather, the autocrat encourages parliament to criticise executive bodies that are directly supervised by the government. Legislative scrutiny is, therefore, a monitoring device to keep tabs on autocrat-delegated executive bodies. We leverage variation in the identity of the head of state (Vladimir Putin or Dmitrii Medvedev), persistence in the identity of the autocrat (Putin), and the existence of president- and government-controlled bodies to show that: when Putin is head of state, parliament criticises president-controlled bodies (PCBs) less than government-controlled bodies (GCBs); and, when Medvedev is head of state, PCBs receive more criticism. Findings from content analysis of these query sessions add to our knowledge of legislative politics and intra-executive relations under authoritarianism, as well as contemporary Russian politics.
An Elite Consolidation Theory of Authoritarian Legislative Closures (with Paul Schuler and Chad Westerland).
Unpopular Decisions and the Electoral Connection in Authoritarian Regimes (with Andrey Starodubtsev and Margarita Zavadskaya)
Closing Parliaments in Southeast Asia (with Lee Morgenbesser)
Regions with the Initiative: Russian Federal Subjects and Federal Lawmaking.
