Resumen de Lawmaking in personalist dictatorships: evidence from Spain
Alejandro Bonvecchi, Emilia Simison
How does lawmaking work in personalist dictatorships? Assuming thatlegislative institutions established within power-sharing arrangementsbecome costly for dictators to ignore and are consequently likely to affectlawmaking processes and outcomes, we argue that while legislatures inpersonalist dictatorships may approve most government initiatives, they canaffect lawmaking via amendments, which signal factional disagreement andmay prompt dictators to kill their own bills. We test this argument byanalysing the performance of theCortesunder Franco’s regime in Spain. Wefind that while its members intervened only in a share of the legislativeagenda, and rarely rejected government bills, they still introduced manyconsequential amendments that reduced the likelihood of bill enactment
