Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability, and Violence, by G. Bingham Powell, Jr.

ABSTRACTDoes the art of crafting and amending a constitution lead to an internal consistency among constitutional provisions, and if so, what effect does that have on countries’ democratic performance? Drawing from theoretical claims on the separation of power and electoral legitimacy, this article develops a concept that identifies the institutional characteristics of consistency and inconsistency in the constitutional design with the example of the presidency. Empirically, this concept is focused on aligning or counterbalancing the mode of presidential election and the de jure power of the president. Based on a comparative perspective of republican parliamentary and semi-presidential systems, the article focuses on the empirical trends of consistent and inconsistent design and addresses their effect on democratic development. The findings show a balance between consistent and inconsistent design in terms of quantity. The influence on democratization varies considerably across different measures but I find significant support for a positive effect of inconsistency on liberal democracy, freedom, horizontal accountability and the rule of law.

The article examines the relationship between constitutional design and democratic performance. To do so, it draws on a new data set, containing measures of eight core values of liberal democratic government (accountability, representation, constraint, participation, political rights, civil rights, property rights, minority rights) for 40 country cases over 29 years. It uses pooled cross section time-series regressions to explore the effects of executive-legislative relations, electoral rules and federal-unitary government, while controlling for the contextual conditions of economic wealth, political culture, and the longevity of democratic government itself. The article reviews previous attempts to explore the relationship in order to sharpen the definition of democratic performance, explore key aspects of the research design, and compare the statistical results with the present state of our knowledge. Overall the results tend to support the superior performance of parliamentary over presidential systems, and, in lesser degree, of unitary over federal systems. The performance profiles of proportional representation and plurality electoral systems, on the other hand, appear as distinct but quite evenly matched. But reasons are given for exercising some care with causal inferences, and for applying the results to closer-focus comparative institutional analysis.

In democracies with stable party systems, voters can more easily trace policy decisions from parties and representatives within the government to specific policy outcomes. Consequently, party system stability (PSS) has been reportedly linked to a variety of factors including economic conditions, democratic performance, political institutions, and socioeconomic cleavages. While informative, these lessons offer precious little insight into other factors that can destabilize a party system. In this work, we surmise that terrorist attacks have important implications for two commonly used measures of PSS. The results of a pooled, cross-sectional time series analysis confirm our hypothesis: deadly attacks proximate to elections destabilize party systems, even when controlling for multiple standard controls. In addition, the level of democratic consolidation within states also influences the degree that fatal terrorist attacks affect party system stability. These findings are based on terrorism data collected from the Global Terrorism Database and from PSS data compiled by the authors.

Abstract. It is a commonplace of comparative politics that the democratic performance of the established democracies of the West is both uniform and superior to that of other democracies across the globe. This commonplace both reflects and reinforces the mainstream measures of democracy, like those of Freedom House or Polity III, that fail to differentiate the democratic performance of the West. This article examines this commonplace by deploying the measures of democratic performance contained in the newly constructed Database of Liberal Democratic Performance, and uses descriptive statistics (means and variance) to compare the performance of individual Western democracies, as well as the West overall with the ‘rest’. The Database is designed to capture a wider normative range of performance than the mainstream measures, and shows that the performance of the West is neither uniform nor superior in every respect, especially with regard to civil and minority rights. These findings are explored and confirmed by comparative case studies of minorities in the criminal justice systems of those Western democracies that tend to perform worst in this respect. In conclusion, it is suggested that the findings may begin to change the way we view the relationships between economic growth and democracy, political culture and democracy, and even constitutional design and democracy.

This article examines alternative visions of “strong” party systems by analyzing relationships between party systems and several dimensions of performance of the political process in 28 democracies of the 1967-1976 decade. Party system theorists agree that voting support for extremist parties manifests a weakness in the party system. They disagree, however, about the virtues or vices of party majorities and close linkages between social groups and parties. The evidence, including multivariate analysis of party system types and characteristics, with controls for environmental conditions, indicates that during this period extremist party support was associated with executive instability and mass rioting. Scholarly concern about other aspects of party system strength or weakness should focus on the desired feature of political performance. The representational, multiparty systems were most successful in limiting rioting.Aggregative majorities,responsible majorities, andrepresentationalparty systems all had good executive stability in the short run, although the first two types seemed somewhat more stable over the decade.Aggregative majorityparty systems were associated with low citizen voting participation.

After empirically documenting the varying degrees to which Latin American party systems were programmatically structured in the late 1990s, our study has explained the observed cross-national pattern with a theory of programmatic alignments that emphasizes long-term investments in the development of partisan competition. Beyond this contribution to the research field on parties and party systems, our results gain significance for the comparative study of political systems if they also speak to questions of democratic performance and political economy. Do patterns of programmatic party structuring leave imprints on the democratic process, on political performance, and on the evaluation of democracy? If so, this would provide persuasive evidence that PPS, and more specifically economic PPS, the issue dimension that has the strongest profile in the greatest number of Latin American countries, is a critical intermediary mechanism shaping the empirical quality and possibly the durability of democracy. We thus focus on economic party system structuration as the most powerful dimension of PPS in Latin America that may affect the quality (actual and perceived) and durability of democracies in the region. We address four baskets of phenomena: intensity and modes of political participation; stability and predictability of democratic competition; the quality of policy making and governance; and support for the democratic polity. Concerning the first basket, the presence of programmatic partisan alternatives in elections clarifies the stakes of democratic competition and may tell citizens that it is meaningful and relevant to participate in democratic politics, to exercise their voice, and to turn out to vote.

Who governs is a central question in political science. Typically, political scientists address this question by relying upon either empirical analysis, which explains existing political practices, or normative analysis, which orescribes ideal politcal practices. Political scientist Paul Schumaker believes the distinction between empirical and normative theory has been overplayed. He weds the two approaches to create the new analytical mode he calls pluralism. With it he can measure variances in government performance from pluralist/democratic ideals and then provide theoretical explanations of why the variances occurred, Schumaker uses critical pluralism to describe, explain, and evaluate variations in three key measures of democratic performance: responsible representation, complex equality, and principle-policy congruence. To test his framework and methodology he analyzes twenty-nine community issues that arose in Lawrence, Kansas, between 1977 and 1987. The results of his study-one of the most comprehensive data bases ever in the study of community politics-will be of interest to those who study community power and democratic theory. The conceptual framework itself and methodology used in assessing democratic performance will have a lasting impact on the way community government is studied.

This article aims to show that whatever the formal arrangements on the or fusion of executive and legislative powers -- whether presidential, parliamentary or semi-presidential -- the way any constitution operates in terms of concentrating or dispersing power is significantly a function of both the political party and electoral systems in place. They can not only fuse what a constitution's executive-legislative relations provisions separate, but also separate what they fuse. As a result, the same set of institutional relations can operate quite differently in of powers terms depending on party and electoral system contexts. In so doing, the article broadens and deepens the insight that the original Madisonian framework of institutional competition between the President and Congress has been rewritten by the subsequent, unanticipated development of the modern political party system, so that concentration or dispersal of political power -- unified or divided government -- depends mostly on electoral outcomes. It broadens the insight by showing this is true of all forms of government and not only the U.S. presidential system. It deepens it by drilling down one layer further and taking into account how party systems and electoral outcomes are themselves affected by the method of voting employed. The article seeks to counter the tendency of constitutional lawyers to focus on inter-branch relations alone and to overlook other important institutional variables in thinking about of powers and constitutional design more generally. It also aspires, through the use of comparative and historical examples, to enhance our understanding of the U.S. system of separation of parties, not powers.

type="graphical" xml:id="gpol12235-abs-0001"> Democracy requires the critical engagement of practitioners and experts alike.

Abstract.The argument presented is that political culture and institutional structures independently shape government performance. This is consistent with Putnam et al.'s (1983) initial argument that ‘endogenous’ and ‘exogenous’ factors are independently at work in shaping institutional performance. It is hypothesized that: (I) social capital within a community positively contributes to government performance, and (2) governmental institutional forms that minimize the number of veto players in the decision making process generate performance superior to those where the number of veto players is large. An analysis of cross–sectional data (mainly drawn from surveys of citizens and elites) on 30 small– to medium–size municipalities in East and West Germany from the year 1995 is undertaken to evaluate these hypotheses. The results from this analysis lead to the following conclusions. Higher social capital within the elite political culture of a community leads to greater citizen satisfaction with local government performance. Local government structures where power is centralized (and thus the number of veto players minimized) generate greater citizen satisfaction with government performance than do those where the distribution of power is more diffuse.

This study aims to determine the characteristics of party systems within the context of electoral systems, forms of government, and continents. There is no study in the literature that quantitatively reveals the relationship between the party system and forms of government. Furthermore, this study differs from other studies in that it deals with the relationship between the electoral system and the party system on a global scale. In the study, the effective number of parties (ENEP and ENPP) was calculated for the last three legislative elections of the countries governed by presidential, president–parliamentary, premier–presidential and parliamentary forms of government, using the Laakso–Taagepera Index. The dataset was then analyzed with ANOVA and post-hoc tests. The study revealed that party systems do not differ significantly from forms of government, that is, forms of government do not determine party systems. Similarly, party systems do not significantly differ in terms of the continents, that is, there are no continental party system characteristics of the forms of government. Also, the study confirmed that it is the electoral system that determines the party systems.

Parties, Party Systems, and Satisfaction with Democratic Performance in the New Europe

Democratic performance and party system institutionalization (PSI) are thought to be integrally linked. Electoral volatility is an important dimension of PSI and has thus been the focus of many studies. Despite the attention given to electoral volatility, its determinants remain elusive. We examine the determinants of electoral volatility in 35 African countries from 1972 to 2010. This study extends the prior literature by analyzing the effects of two previously unexamined variables, foreign aid and structural adjustment, on electoral volatility. Our results indicate that electoral volatility is lower when foreign aid is high, while structural adjustment programs are associated with increased volatility. Our findings contribute to the research on the political economy of aid, illustrating the impact of these economic practices on election outcomes. Political institutions and social demography also appear to affect volatility. Based on our analysis, the party systems of Africa generally do not appear to be institutionalizing.

Debate—Proportional RepresentationThe Problem with PR Guy Lardeyret (bio) Arend Lijphart's article on "Constitutional Choices for New Democracies" [Journal of Democracy 2 (Winter 1991): 72-84] attempts to provide scientific evidence for the superiority of proportional representation (PR) to the system of plurality elections. The author presents a comparative analysis designed to show that regimes based on plurality elections do not measure up to parliamentary-PR regimes in terms of "democratic performance." Lijphart considers the effects of electoral systems on eight variables, which we will consider successively. The first correlation suggests that PR favors the representation of "minorities" and pressure groups. As clearly shown by the statistics, women legislators are more numerous in Nordic countries, which also tend to spend more money on family policies. Although tradition plays a role, the phenomenon is made possible by PR: candidate slates are chosen by party leaders, who are more easily influenced by strong women's movements. The relationship between PR and voter participation is not as clear. If it were calculated on the European basis (as a proportion of registered voters), U.S. voter turnout would be similar to that of Western Europe. Moreover, Lijphart's figures would look quite different if he had not made some questionable decisions in categorizing countries. France, for instance, might be counted as a presidential-plurality democracy alongside the United States. Germany (whose mixed electoral system has majoritarian effects) belongs among the parliamentary-plurality regimes, while Spain and Portugal (which Lijphart ignores) should be included among the third group, the parliamentary-PR democracies. [End Page 30] Lijphart's next set of figures indicates that northern European countries have a more equal distribution of income, which is not surprising. If there is a link between the electoral system and the greater degree of economic equality in these countries, it may not have much to do with democracy. When conservatives win elections in such countries as Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland, they must form coalitions with other parties, which makes it hard for them to pursue their democratically mandated program of reducing the welfare state. Lijphart's use of Robert Dahl's system for rating "democratic quality" raises the question of what criteria best measure democratic performance. If the index includes variables such as turnout (as measured in the U.S.), the number of parties, and the strength of interest groups, it introduces a strong bias in favor of PR with this sample of countries. Finally, the correlations with inflation, economic growth, and unemployment (underestimated in Nordic countries because of highly protected jobs) are difficult to exploit. These indicators are much more powerfully influenced by many other important factors. Consequences of Electoral Systems Lijphart accepts from the beginning a fundamental hypothesis—namely, that the electoral system largely determines the party system and through it the structure of the government. Thus, countries where PR is the rule end up with multipartism and coalition governments, while plurality elections favor the two-party system and single-party governments. But as Lijphart notes, opinions diverge on how the party system affects the exercise of democratic governance. It is precisely on this point that it would have been fruitful for Lijphart to test the hypothesis against empirical data. Such an analysis would have clearly shown that bipartism favors governmental stability and decision-making capacity as well as periodic alternations in power. Multipartism, on the other hand, is positively correlated with ephemeral governments, periods when the chief executive office goes unfilled, repeated elections, and long tenures in office for fixed groups of key politicians. The more parties a country has, moreover, the greater is the incidence of these phenomena. When the government rests on a homogeneous majority, it remains in power for the duration of its mandated term (stability); can apply its program (efficiency); and is likely, should it falter, to lose power to a strong and united opposition (alternation). By contrast, the coalition governments so common in PR systems often cannot survive serious disagreement over particular measures (instability); need inordinate amounts of time to build new coalitions (executive vacancy); and when they fall, call new elections that generally return the same people (nonalternation). [End Page 31] The contention that PR favors...

Representative or indirect democracy is under pressure: citizens’ trust in politics and satisfaction with democratic performance is waning. I argue that this has led to the emergence of new parties. This complicates consent and support not only at the domestic, but also at the EU level. It appears that established political parties are less capable to play the two level game effectively. I discuss the emergence of ‘new’ parties and argue that the type and strategy of these perturb the institutions of indirect representation and delegation. A typology of new parties is examined across 15 EU member states. I explore the effects of new types of parties on party systems, voter participation, electoral volatility and government survival. This demonstrates that party governance is under pressure: indirect democracy tends to lose its persuasion. Yet, the behaviour of new parties also shows that the institutions of indirect democracy can still integrate citizens to govern through political parties.