Governing at the Margins? Opposition Legislative Behavior Under Authoritarianism

• In Event: Legislatures & Parliamentary Politics Under Autocracy

Abstract

Do opposition legislators and parties cultivate distinct role orientations within authoritarian legislatures? Despite a recent surge in scholarly work on authoritarian legislative bodies, little work has explored whether – or how—opposition parties seek to differentiate themselves from both rivals in the opposition and ruling parties. This paper examines this issue by drawing from an original dataset of over 39,000 parliamentary questions submitted by legislators to Malaysia’s House of Representatives (Dewan Rakyat), combined with interviews of MPs and legislative staff. I find that opposition MPs develop a distinct mix of constituency service, government oversight, and grandstanding. However, contrasting with theories of opposition incentives within authoritarian legislatures, there exists significant party and regional variation in the focus of opposition legislators on national-level policy or local constituent concerns. The findings contribute to a growing literature on authoritarian legislatures by examining inter-party variation in how such authoritarian institutions are used.

Author

• Sebastian Dettman, Singapore Management University