Browsing by Subject "authoritarian institutions"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Economic Returns to Deputy Status in Authoritarian Legislatures: Evidence from China
    (2015) Liu, Zhen

    In explaining legislatures in authoritarian regimes, cooptation theory, selectorate theory, and literature on value of political connections and status suggest higher economic returns to legislators. Using survey data concerning Chinese individuals, this paper empirically explores the effect of legislative deputy status on personal income, and does not find the deputies to be better off than non-deputies. The results are qualitatively the same in a series of Heckman two-stage models and Propensity Score Matching methods. However, it might be too early to declare the failure of those theories in China, and this paper calls for cautious interpretation of the result.

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    Experimentally Estimating Safety in Numbers in a Single-Party Legislature
    (Journal of Politics, 2022-07-01) Malesky, EJ; Todd, JD
    This article builds on recent experimental work in the Vietnamese National Assembly to explore a critical qualification regarding responsiveness in authoritarian parliaments: delegates grow increasingly responsive as the number of peers possessing the same information rises. We suggest that this reinforcement, or safety-in-numbers, effect arises because speaking in authoritarian assemblies is an intrinsically dangerous task, and delegates are reluctant to do so without confidence in the information they would present. Here we describe the saturation design for the original experiment, theorize safety-in-numbers behavior among authoritarian legislators, and test an additional observable implication of the logic. Consistent with the safety-in-numbers logic, we find that the effects of reinforcement are greater in televised floor speeches than closed-door caucuses.
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    Paint-by-Numbers Democracy: The Stakes, Structure, and Results of the 2007 Vietnamese National Assembly Election
    (Journal of Vietnamese Studies, 2008-08-01) Malesky, Edmund J; Schuler, Paul J
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    Testing legislator responsiveness to citizens and firms in single-party regimes: A field experiment in the vietnamese national assembly
    (Journal of Politics, 2021-10-01) Todd, JD; Malesky, EJ; Tran, A; Le, QA
    We investigate whether communicating constituents’ preferences to legislators increases the responsiveness of delegates to the Vietnamese National Assembly (VNA). Using a randomized control trial, we assign legislators to three groups: (1) those briefed on the opinions of their provincial citizenry, (2) those presented with the preferences of local firms, and (3) those receiving only information on the Communist Party’s objectives. Because voting data are not public, we collect data on a range of other potentially responsive behaviors during the 2018 session. These include answers to a VNA Library survey about debate readiness; whether delegates spoke in group caucuses, query sessions, and floor debates; and the content of those speeches. We find consistent evidence that citizen-treated delegates were more responsive, via debate preparation and the decision to speak, than control delegates; evidence from speech content is mixed.
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    Unbundling the Relationship between Authoritarian Legislatures and Political Risk
    (British Journal of Political Science, 2014-07) Jensen, N; Malesky, EJ; Weymouth, Stephen
    A strong statistical association between legislative opposition in authoritarian regimes and investment has been interpreted as evidence that authoritarian legislatures constrain executive decisions and reduce the threat of expropriation. Although the empirical relationship is robust, scholars have not provided systematic evidence that authoritarian parliaments are able to restrain the actions of state leaders, reverse activities they disagree with, or remove authoritarian leaders who violate the implied power-sharing arrangement. This article shows that authoritarian legislatures, by providing a forum for horse trading between private actors, are better at generating corporate governance legislation that protects investors from corporate insiders than they are at preventing expropriation by governments. The statistical analysis reveals that the strength of authoritarian legislatures is associated with corporate governance rules and not expropriation risk. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013.