Canonical theories of legislative institutions in authoritarian regimes highlight the role of oppositions in legitimizing non-democratic rule, shaping the autocrat's policy agenda, and extracting concessions. Despite recent advances in understanding how oppositions shape larger, macro-level outcomes, surprisingly little attention has been given to the question of how legislators behave in office and how the regime manages potential opposition. In this paper, we construct a novel dataset of roll call vote records spanning the entirety of Kuwaiti legislative history---more than 150,000 votes over 53 years. We use this to develop a new method for measuring legislative opposition to and cooperation with an authoritarian regime on substantive policy issues. We then test the effectiveness of regime strategies---rents and policy concessions---for coopting potential opposition and examine the circumstances under which these these strategies are used.

Do existing theories regarding the impact of foreign migration explain preferences in non-oecd countries? The author adapts and applies explanations for opposition to migration in the Arabian Gulf, a significant region in global migration today, using a survey experiment implemented in Qatar. The results offer a rare validation of predictions from the labor market competition model, demonstrating that individual employment circumstances are important preference determinants. Additionally, while OECD citizens prefer high-skilled migrants, Qataris are indifferent about blue- versus white-collar workers. Mediation analysis suggests that this null effect is the result of competing cultural and economic concerns over the effect of differing classes of migrants on economic and social welfare. The novel context provides a critical test case of the labor market hypothesis and offers insight into how migration preferences in the Global South differ from the Western experience.

How do technocrat ministers affect governance under autocracy? Autocrats frequently appoint non-partisan actors with technical competencies to bureaucratic leadership roles. Though their competencies might predict positive performance in office, these ministers are also dependent on the regime for their position and should thus demonstrate loyalty to its interests. I test this in the context of horizontal accountability to the legislature, using data on more than 27,000 legislative requests submitted to ministries in Morocco. I use both exact matching and difference-in-differences analyses to show that technocrat ministers are more than 25 percentage points less likely to respond to legislative queries than partisan cabinet members. The results imply that outside (partisan) participation in government strengthens weak institutions of executive oversight. They also cast doubt on the presumption that technocrat participation in government is universally beneficial to governance.