Opposition Participation in Authoritarian Governance: Evidence from Cambodia

Abstract

Competitive authoritarian regimes are the most prevalent form of autocracy in the 21st century. Yet we know little about how the pluralism inherent in these regimes shapes governance. In this dissertation, I develop a theory of opposition representation in local authoritarian institutions that contends that, despite the constrained political landscape of electoral autocracies, marginal increases in opposition representation will lead to improvements in local governance. Focusing on the case of Cambodia’s commune councils, I draw on an original survey of 900 elected officials, extensive fieldwork, including interviews with over 60 commune councilors, and novel data on over 40,000 commune development projects to probe the emergence, nature, and effects of opposition participation in Cambodia’s local institutions. I find that while both de jure institutional rules and de facto authoritarian controls severely constrain the opposition’s opportunity to use elected positions to influence governance, opposition representatives intentionally seek to improve governance in much the same way as oppositions in parliamentary democracies: by expressing dissent and by conducting oversight. To study the extent to which these attempts at influence ultimately matter for governance, I estimate the causal effect of an additional opposition member of the commune council on outcomes related to procurement for local development projects. I find that increases in opposition representation correspond to significant increases in the number of bidders in procurement, but do not affect contract prices. The result provides partial evidence that the opposition’s presence in the autocrat’s institutions shapes at least some important outcomes. Together, the dissertation contributes to a growing literature on the effects of institutional arrangements on day-to-day governance in authoritarian regimes.