Revisiting the Relationship Between Legislative Power Sharing and Autocratic Survival
Online First, Comparative Political Studies
Conventional wisdom holds that legislatures stabilize autocratic rule by helping leaders credibly commit to sharing power with regime insiders, but empirical evidence supporting this argument is weak. Data limitations make it difficult to directly measure the extent of legislative power sharing across time and space, leading scholars to use the presence or absence of a legislature as a proxy. I use a dynamic Bayesian latent variable model to develop a time-series cross-sectional measure of legislative power sharing in autocracies from 1946 to 2023. After validating the measure, I use it to replicate previous studies of the relationship between legislative power sharing and autocratic survival. I find that their results do not hold. If anything, legislative power sharing appears to be associated with greater, not less, vulnerability to being removed from office by coups and revolts. I suggest that scholars should devote more attention to the threat-enhancing effects of authoritarian institutions.
A Model of Cooptation in Authoritarian Regimes
Manuscript in preparation for submission in May 2026
Paper presented at MPSA, APSA, and UNC's Comparative Politics Working Group
After seizing power, dictators seek to co-opt challengers by integrating them into the central government, offering access to the perquisites of power in exchange for their loyalty. However, co-optation poses a critical challenge: Dictators must not only neutralize immediate threats to regime stability, but also secure the long-term loyalty of challengers, especially in times of crisis when the opportunity costs of revolt are lower. This article presents a formal model to explore why some dictators successfully co-opt their opponents and remain in power, while others falter. In equilibrium, the dictator distributes costly policy concessions and rents to secure the loyalty of the opposition after seizing power and in anticipation of future crises. The model also captures scenarios in which the dictator offers insufficient concessions, failing to prevent an uprising, or makes overly generous concessions that empower the opposition and threaten regime stability. This paper provides a framework for explaining empirical variation in the success of co-optation in promoting autocratic survival across time and place.
Crisis and Compliance: Opposition Rhetoric in Authoritarian Legislatures
Winner of the Prothro Award for Best MA Thesis in the Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Revised version of paper to be presented at UNC's Authoritarian Politics Lab in January 2026
This article examines how crises shape the rhetoric of co-opted opposition elites in authoritarian legislatures. I argue that opposition responses depend on whether crises are exogenous or endogenous to the regime. Exogenous shocks generate elite rally effects that constrain rhetorical differentiation, while endogenous crises undermine elite cohesion and encourage opposition elites to articulate more distinct narratives. I test this argument using a corpus of floor speeches in the Russian State Duma, combining (2) context-embedding regression models with (2) semantic network analysis. The context-embedding results indicate that semantic distance between opposition and ruling-party deputies remains stable during exogenous crises but increases during endogenous ones. Complementing these findings, the network analysis suggests that endogenous crises produce more fragmented linguistic networks, characterized by higher modularity and greater rhetorical distance between opposition and ruling-party deputies. By contrast, exogenous crises are associated with denser, less segmented semantic networks. These results highlight the value of moving beyond macro-level accounts of co-optation to examine how its predictions operate at the level of individual opposition elites.
From Districts to Party Lists: Electoral Rules and Legislative Behavior in Authoritarian Regimes
Working paper in preparation for presentation at UNC's Comparative Politics Working Group in April 2026
How do electoral rules shape legislative behavior in authoritarian regimes? Prior work suggests that dictators' choices of electoral rules---single-member district plurality (SMDP) versus proportional representation (PR)---generate different incentives for elite loyalty, with important implications for regime consolidation. Yet we lack micro-level evidence on how these rules affect individual legislators and whether they operate through the theorized loyalty-inducing mechanisms. Drawing on existing theories of electoral rules, I argue that SMDP encourages legislators to cultivate personal reputations outside the party, weakening their dependence on party leadership, whereas PR centralizes nominations and strengthens incentives for regime loyalty and discipline. To identify the causal effect of electoral rules, I exploit a quasi-experiment: Russia's 2005 transition from a mixed electoral system to closed-list proportional representation. Using a difference-in-differences design among incumbents who served under both systems, I show that deputies previously elected in single-member districts increased their voting participation and became more supportive of government-sponsored legislation after shift to PR.
From Stabilization to Breakdown: Institutions and the Durability of Dictatorship (Book Project)
Why do some authoritarian regimes endure while others collapse? In my book project, I challenge a central yet rarely questioned assumption in the study of authoritarianism: that formal institutions, particularly legislatures, stabilize autocratic rule by enabling leaders to share power with rival elites. I argue that, far from being stable bargains, power-sharing institutions often expose dictators to new risks—turning what appears to be a source of durability into a gamble with regime survival. I develop a unified theoretical framework to clarify when power-sharing institutions facilitate authoritarian regime survival and when they undermine it. To test the theory’s implications, I use a multi-pronged empirical approach that integrates computational social science, large-N statistical analysis, and qualitative process tracing of contemporary and historical cases: Russia, Guinea-Bissau, and Algeria. This book challenges the functionalist logic underlying existing theories of autocratic regimes and advances a new framework for understanding how these regimes function.
Cabinet Reshuffles in Authoritarian Regimes: Theory and Cross-National Evidence
Manuscript in preparation for submission in April 2026
Autocrats often use cabinet appointments as a way to share power with rival elites and to ensure their survival in office. But this strategy is a double-edged sword. While these appointments are intended to foster loyalty by providing elites with access to the perquisites of power, they may inadvertently enhance their ability to challenge the autocrat, turning potential allies into formidable adversaries. In this paper, I suggest that cabinet reshuffles---the strategic movement of elites between ministries---offer a solution to this dilemma. I argue that reshuffles protect autocrats from coup attempts by preventing ministers from developing autonomous power bases and networks that could be used as platforms for mobilizing against the regime. I test this theory using data on cabinet reshuffles and coup attempts in authoritarian regimes from 1967 to 2010. This paper contributes to our understanding of the strategies autocrats use to neutralize elite threats to their rule.
Just Don’t Talk About It: The Effects of Blocking Discussions About Controversial Political Topics in and Outside Classroom (with Matias Tarillo)
Manuscript under review at Perspectives on Politics
A growing body of research suggests that facilitating discussions between members of opposing political parties on controversial issues can reduce affective polarization and increase support for democratic norms. However, little is known about what happens when such discussions are blocked, a scenario that is becoming increasingly common. We seek to fill this gap by focusing on a setting in which discussion is an increasingly contentious and politically charged activity: the university classroom. We propose that students are less tolerant of professors who block discussion of controversial topics because they perceive universities as appropriate venues for such debate. To demonstrate how universities are uniquely positioned as forums for cross-partisan dialogue, we contrast this with the workplace setting, where we hypothesize that individuals may be more accepting of discussion blocking. We find support for these expectations in two pre-registered vignette experiments. The evidence also suggests that political interest and worldview are important moderators: politically interested individuals are more likely to oppose blocking, and the same is true for those with fluid worldviews. Moreover, we show that blocking discussions in the university setting reduces positive emotions among students.
Social Media and the Construction of Identity During Russia’s War in Ukraine (with Graeme Robertson, Sasha De Vogel, and Samuel Greene)
Data collected. Analysis in progress.