In light of increasingly personalist authoritarian regimes under leaders such as Putin and Erdogan, authoritarian legislatures are often pushed to the margins of politics. Yet, in addition to cross-national differences between authoritarian legislatures, many authoritarian legislatures also develop and become stronger or weaker over time (de jure and de facto). While traditional studies have highlighted that legislative institutions become stronger as their electoral procedures become more competitive, my data suggest that legislative development is not always linked to liberalization sequences in dictatorships. Therefore, this study will analyze the questions of when and why parliaments become stronger in authoritarian regimes. For this purpose, it utilizes panel data from autocracies and their legislatures between 1946 and 2010 compiled from datasets such as V-Dem and the Autocratic Regime Features Dataset. The results highlight that one of the primary drivers for legislators to push for more power of their institution is their desire for self-enrichment. My findings demonstrate that members of parliament will primarily advance the role of the legislature when there are more opportunities for clientelism and corruption in a given regime. Understanding this development will help us to understand the dynamics of power distribution in dictatorships better. This study probes when and why parliaments become stronger in dictatorships. Using panel data from autocracies and their legislatures, the results show that a primary driver for legislators to push for more power is their desire for self-enrichment.