Legislative Closure and Careers in Autocracies: Evidence from Jordan

• In Event: Parliaments Under Fire: Explaining Legislative Closures

Abstract

Legislatures have long been considered a critical component of managing political elites in MENA autocracies. Opening parliaments and holding elections empowers regimes to divide or co-opt rebellious elites (Albrecht 2005; Baaklini et al, 1999; Herb 2004), reap the benefits of low-stakes electoral competition (Blaydes 2010), and to distribute rents through the parliament itself (Lust 2006; Lust 2009; Kao 2015). But given the theorized importance of parliaments in managing non-democratic elites, we know very little about how closing parliament affects the trajectories of parliamentary careers. By tracking which MPs appear invulnerable to parliamentary closure and which are purged, we can detect patterns in regimes' elite management strategies at the individual level. Studying these dynamics before and after periods of closure also provides greater insight into what political conflicts might drive the political decision to close parliament. I analyze these dynamics in the case of Jordan, a long-standing autocracy with five periods of parliamentary closure. Using a new dataset that tracks the biographical characteristics of all Jordanian parliamentarians from 1933 to 2019, I show that some parliamentarians' class, ethnic, or geographic backgrounds make them more likely to enjoy a long-lasting political career than others, even following legislative closure. I complement this longitudinal study with a text analysis of MP parliamentary behavior before and after a period of closure from 1957 to 1961, and find that those who weathered the closure were more likely to moderate their views in the new session of parliament, suggesting that closure may play a role in disciplining political elites.

Author

• Allison Spencer Hartnett, University of Southern California