How Opposition Movements Use Legislative Powers in Authoritarian Regimes

• In Event: A Decade after the Arab Uprisings: Democracy and Authoritarianism in the MENA

Abstract

While scholars increasingly recognize the relevance of legislatures to political and policy outcomes in authoritarian regimes, there is little research that analyzes systematically how opposition groups use legislative representation to influence policymaking in these contexts. We address this question by leveraging more than 15,000 legislative texts from the parliaments of Morocco, Kuwait, and Jordan to study how Islamist opposition groups in these countries have drawn on legislative query powers to advance their agendas. The analysis demonstrates that Islamist legislators in Morocco and Kuwait, but not in Jordan, were more likely than their non-Islamist counterparts to query the government on sensitive policy issues like corruption and national security. These results reflect the fact that Islamists in Morocco and Kuwait were well-organized and strongly represented in parliament during the period of study, while the primary Islamist party in Jordan had been replaced in the legislature by Islamist “centrists” closer to the government. The findings have implications for understanding when and how opposition groups use legislative positions to pursue their policy agendas in authoritarian regimes, and they also contribute to a large body of research on the political influence of Islamist groups in the Middle East.

Authors

• Marwa Shalaby, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Scott Williamson, Bocconi University