Decentralization has been embraced as a major institutional framework to promote economic development, but scholars have suggested that decentralization engenders several potentially unintended consequences for accountability, such as local elite capture, which subsequently undermines public...

Recent studies of authoritarian legislatures underscore the importance of institutions for cooptation and information collection, but many still consider authoritarian legislatures rubber stamps in policymaking. We argue that authoritarian legislatures could be important arenas of the...