Democratic Institutions Under Autocracy Erin A. York Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2020 © 2020 Erin A. York All Rights Reserved Abstract Democratic Institutions under Autocracy Erin A. York This dissertation is about the function of borrowed democratic institutions in autocratic contexts, theorized to provide an arena of limited political competition between the regime and political outsiders. Despite existing explanations for how such institutions benefit the autocrat, there is much that remains unknown about their function in practice. I explore how the regime and opposition manipulate institutional features to their benefit in three papers. In the first, I show that systems of executive oversight create opportunities for the opposition to serve constituents and increase their support base. In the second, I find evidence that regime control over executive appointments is used to limit effectiveness of that opposition activity. In the third, I find that the regime’s authorities over the legislature create distributional distortions in its favor – but that other coalition members can also benefit. I address these topics using empirical analysis of novel data sources gathered during extensive fieldwork in Morocco, as well as theoretical modeling of institutional characteristics. Autocratic regimes are notorious for their opacity, and previous research has been limited by data accessibility; for the research presented here, I collect and analyze a vast database of legislative actions using techniques in webscraping and text analysis in order to obtain a more systematic understanding of legislative behavior and executive response. The results provide insight into how autocratic institutions – superficially similar to democratic analogues – operate differently in practice. Table of Contents List of Tables ...................................... v List of Figures ...................................... vii Acknowledgments .................................... viii Introduction ....................................... 1 Chapter 1: Constituency Service and Opposition Support under Autocracy ...... 12 1.1 Introduction . 12 1.2 Vote Choice under Autocracy . 15 1.3 Institutional Authorities and Opposition Vote Mobilization . 17 1.3.1 Electoral competition in Morocco . 19 1.4 Institutional Avenues for Constituent Service . 23 1.4.1 Pressuring ministers via oral queries . 24 1.4.2 Addressing constituency issues with written questions . 25 1.4.3 Questions submitted during the 2011-2016 legislative term . 27 1.4.4 Deputy activity . 31 1.5 Effort and Electoral Accountability . 34 1.5.1 Opposition-specific electoral benefits . 39 i 1.6 Localized Support for Local Effort . 41 1.7 Regime Strategic Considerations . 45 1.8 Conclusion . 46 Chapter 2: Horizontal Accountability under Autocracy ................. 49 2.1 Introduction . 49 2.2 Moroccan Institutionalism . 52 2.2.1 The elected legislature and executive queries . 54 2.3 Executive Oversight with Weak Institutions . 57 2.4 Data and Approach . 61 2.4.1 2011 elections and cabinet control . 62 2.4.2 Independent and dependent variables . 63 2.4.3 Additional covariates . 65 2.4.4 Approach . 66 2.5 Results . 70 2.5.1 Difference-in-differences . 75 2.5.2 Heterogeneous effects – Royalist versus nonroyalist . 79 2.6 Discussion . 81 2.7 Conclusion . 84 Chapter 3: Distribution under Autocracy ........................ 85 3.1 Introduction . 85 3.2 Autocratic Dissolution Power . 88 3.2.1 Legislative procedures in practice . 92 ii 3.3 The Model . 94 3.4 Results . 98 3.4.1 Policy Periods . 98 3.4.2 Coalition Formation . 100 3.5 Coupled Decision-making . 103 3.6 Conclusion . 108 Conclusion ........................................ 113 References ........................................ 113 Appendix A: Appendices to Chapter 1 ......................... 126 A.1 Moroccan Political Parties . 126 A.2 Robustness Check: Negative Binomial Regression . 128 A.3 Effort and Electoral Outcomes: Deputy Level Analysis . 130 Appendix B: Appendices to Chapter 2 ......................... 133 B.1 Ministry Affiliations during the 2011-2016 Term . 133 B.2 Summary Statistics: Full Data and Difference in Differences Subsamples . 135 B.3 Observational Analyses . 136 B.4 Matching: Robustness Using Exact Matching . 137 B.5 Difference in Differences: Identifying Assumptions . 140 B.6 Difference-in-Differences: Sample Robustness . 143 B.7 Robustness: Technocrats and Non-Royalist Deputies . 145 B.8 Non-Partisan Treatment . 146 iii Appendix C: Appendices to Chapter 3 ......................... 150 C.1 Proofs . 150 C.1.1 Minimum Winning Coalition . 150 C.1.2 Proposition 1 . 151 C.1.3 Remark 1 . 154 C.1.4 Proposition 2 . 154 C.1.5 Remark 2 . 159 C.1.6 Remark 3 . 161 C.2 Empirical Specifications . 163 iv List of Tables 1.1 Summary statistics – Deputies in the 2011 parliament . 32 1.2 Predictors of written query submission . 33 1.3 Legislative activity and electoral outcomes – Party-district level . 38 1.4 Legislative activity and electoral outcomes by party type . 40 1.5 Localized activity and municipal vote share . 44 2.1 Summary statistics – Nearest neighbor matched data . 69 2.2 Responsiveness – Matched data . 71 2.3 Cox proportional hazards model – Matched data . 74 2.4 Difference-in-differences specification – Technocrat ministries . 78 2.5 Heterogeneous effects – Royalist deputies . 80 A.1 Key political parties in the 2011 Moroccan parliament . 127 A.2 Predictors of written query submission – Negative binomial specification . 129 A.3 Legislative activity and electoral outcomes – Deputy level . 131 B.1 Partisan affiliations of cabinet ministers . 134 B.2 Summary statistics . 135 B.3 Observational analysis . 136 v B.4 Responsiveness – Matched data . 138 B.5 Cox proportional hazards model – Matched data . 139 B.6 Difference in differences specification – Restricted sample . 144 B.7 Non-royalist regression – Matched Data . 145 B.8 Average response rates by minister type . 147 B.9 Summary statistics – Matched data, non-partisan treatment . 148 B.10 Non-partisan regression – Matched data . 149 C.1 Data on dissolution power and military expenditures. 163 C.2 Military expenditures as a function of head of state power of dissolution . 164 vi List of Figures 1 Elected legislatures in autocratic states . 2 1.1 Queries submitted by date . 29 1.2 Oral and written query content . 30 2.1 Kaplan-Meier curves – Matched data . 73 2.2 Kaplan-Meier curves – Difference-in-differences . 79 3.1 Use of elected legislatures within autocratic states, 1900-2017 . 89 3.2 Executive powers in nonautocratic versus autocratic states . 90 3.3 Military expenditures as a function of legislative dissolution power . 92 3.4 Game structure . 96 B.1 Technocrat difference-in-differences – Parallel trends . 141 B.2 Technocrat difference-in-differences – Patterns in query submission . 142 vii Acknowledgements I owe a great deal to a great many people for their support of this project. I have benefited immensely from the faculty at Columbia. Dan Corstange and Mike Ting provided generous mentorship and demonstrated incredible patience as I worked through iterations of each chapter. For their instruction, intellectual standard-setting, and feedback, I especially thank: Alessandra Casella, Tim Frye, Nikhar Gaikwad, Donald Green, Shigeo Hirano, Macartan Humphreys, and Kimuli Kasara. And I would be remiss in not mentioning my cohort, surely the greatest in Columbia history. I have depended on your inspiration and support since we arrived in New York, and I look forward to the persistence of this network of friendship and scholarship for the duration of my academic career. I have also profited from connections across the broader academic community. Individual chapters were improved immensely by thoughtful feedback from conference participants at several points. Fotini Christia has been a terrific mentor and friend. Most recently I have benefited from the generous support and fantastic intellectual environment at Harvard’s Middle East Initiative. I owe my thanks to the excellent faculty affiliates, my cohort of fellows, and the staff for their helpful advice. I owe a debt to the countless individuals and organizations that supported the fieldwork involved in this project and others, especially Ismail Ilsouk, my research assistants Khaoula Erraoui, Imane Lahrich, and Ismail Khejjou, as well as the staff at Simsim and the Moroccan political parties, NGOs, and elected officials that gave unselfishly of their time and insights. viii Additionally, I want to acknowledge the generous financial support from Columbia, the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Education, and the Project on Middle East Political Science that made all of this possible. Finally, I thank my family and friends for keeping me sane during this process. I am lucky to have a network of support that is both broad and deep. I want to thank especially: my parents, who raised me (literally) in the PhD tradition and who believed in me unequivocally from day one; Michelle, who constantly inspires me with her hard work and unguarded empathy; and Michael, for being my best friend and stabilizing force while this whole thing got done. ix Introduction Democratic institutions are increasingly common under autocracy. These include the use of competitive national elections to select political representatives at the local and national level, the presence of both regime-linked and opposition political parties, and the estab-