Lawmaking in Authoritarian Regimes: Spain and Argentina in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

The literature on authoritarian regimes assumes legislatures are inconsequential for lawmaking because dictators ultimately retain their hold on power. However, the comparative evidence available shows there is significant variation in the outcomes of lawmaking activity. Based on the premise that once legislative institutions are set up as centerpieces of power-sharing arrangements they become costly for dictators to ignore, and are consequently likely to affect both the lawmaking process and its outcomes, we propose that the extent to which legislatures are central to such arrangements is contingent on how each regime designs its power-sharing. We test this argument by comparing the performance of the Cortes under Franco's regime in Spain and the Legislative Advisory Commission (CAL) under Argentina's last military dictatorship, two cases for which significant information is available and with contrasting differences in both the dependent and independent variables. The comparison suggests that legislatures in authoritarian regimes can be consequential for lawmaking when the power-sharing arrangements within which they are incepted establish collective Executives that require lawmaking processes apt to enable different factions to revise and amend legislative initiatives.