Explaining Activity in Authoritarian Assemblies: Evidence from China

Abstract

Who attempts to influence policymaking through authoritarian assemblies and why are some delegates considerably more active in doing so than others? Drawing on original data from provincial People's Political Consultative Conferences (PPCCs) in China, this study adopts a delegate-centered perspective and develops a theory of delegates’ activity in authoritarian assemblies. It argues that delegates’ activity can be explained by a combination of both cooptation theory and an understanding of delegates’ position within the authoritarian regime and hierarchy. The results highlight that core elites with more direct means of influencing policymaking will forego assemblies. Yet, peripheral elites lack other institutional channels of access to decision-makers and have to voice their demands in authoritarian legislatures. This study highlights the need for disaggregating groups of actors in authoritarian politics and offers an alternative view of cooptation particularly relevant for closed authoritarian regimes.

Corruption, Elite Contestation, and Parliaments: Why Do Legislatures Become Stronger in Authoritarian Regimes?

“…Recent literature from the African context, for instance, illustrates divergent institutional evolutions qualitatively in Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania, and Uganda (e.g., Collord 2019; Opalo 2019). Even the Consultative Assembly of Saudi Arabia (e.g., Seznec 2002), the People’s Chamber in the German Democratic Republic (e.g., Schirmer 2002), and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (Wiebrecht 2022) have been largely powerless institutions that showed signs of increased activity in different periods of time. These cases also illustrate that legislative strengthening is not necessarily linked to sequences of democratization but can also occur in their absence.…”