Non-Ruling Parties in a Multi-Party Authoritarian Regime: Case of Russia under Putin

Recent research on the role of quasi-democratic institutions in non-democratic regimes finds differential effects of legislatures on economic performance and regime stability across subtypes of non-democracy. This empirically observed variation has however remained a “black box” lacking a micro-theoretical foundation. This paper helps bridge this gap by proposing a theory of two types of non-ruling parties (real and decoy opposition) that might be present in a non-democratic legislature and affect the way the legislature functions. I test behavioral implications of the theory using parliamentary speeches from the Russian legislature under Putin and show that, unlike decoy parties, real opposition strives to set the agenda on the floor of the parliament. I also show that decoy parties, unlike real opposition, avoid raising topics about the foundations of the regime, although they are trying to deceive voters by discussing weak points of the government. This variation in parties’ strategies helps shed new light on the internal functioning of an autocratic legislature.