Development Of Representative Institutions Research Articles

The erosion of corporatist voting and party fragmentation in Chiapas: Pluralism, or political decomposition?

AbstractUnlike studies that view democratization merely as free and fair competitive multiparty elections, this case study provides a subnational, socioterritorial analysis of the demise of single‐party rule in Chiapas, one of the last strongholds of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, revealing the contradictory and erratic processes of local politics in Mexico. Democratization requires not only regular alternation in office but also the development of representative institutions and of solid political parties that are able to constrain the executive branch. In Chiapas, electoral democratization occurred very late, with significant geographic variation, as the result of a convulsive process of political decomposition that included the indigenous Zapatista rebellion. Yet, corporatist structures and illiberal practices resisted, reproduced, and accommodated to electoral pluralism. The gradual erosion of the local “Revolutionary Family” spurred the fragmentation, and then the collapse, of the incipient party system, instead of fostering democratic governance with genuine checks and balances.

Succession, power‐sharing and the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe

AbstractHistorians have documented that in medieval Europe, bargaining over the loyalty of lay magnates and high clergy was most intense during successions and that this often forced monarchs to give political concessions. We argue that matters related to succession predict short‐term power‐sharing concessions by rulers but that – because they do not permanently alter the balance of power between ruler and elite – they only trigger lasting changes of political institutions if these changes are in the mutual interest of the ruler and the elite groups. It follows that successions are unlikely to have long‐term effects on representative institutions but that they may consolidate the rules regulating succession (the succession order). Using the natural deaths of monarchs as an instrument for successions, we confirm these claims with a new dataset that includes fine‐grained data on succession and parliament‐like assemblies in 16 European polities between 1000 and 1600. These findings shed new light on the development of representative institutions in medieval Europe, on the changes in succession orders that brought about clear rules about primogeniture and on the political leeway of legislatures in authoritarian regimes more generally.

The Birth of Representative Institutions: The Case of the Crown of Aragon

A new research agenda within political science and economics has been devoted to elucidating the development of medieval representative institutions. However, if we wish to get a clearer grasp of the birth of representative institutions, much more detailed data are needed. This paper introduces and interrogates a new data set on assemblies in one of the first instances where representative institutions arose: the Crown of Aragon. An analysis of these new data, which cover the period 1100–1327, supports several important conclusions. First, the development of representative institutions took place in a couple of brief “bursts” of activity. Second, factors pertaining to the establishment of public order (land peace and the regulation of succession) feature as more important than “geopolitical” factors (war and taxation) in the early part of the period, but the latter factors become more important after assemblies turn representative; indeed, they turn out to be crucial for understanding how assemblies eventually came to constrain rulers. A comparison with the only other early case of representative institutions on which there are good data, thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century England, supports a third finding: There is a striking, temporal parallelism in the development of representative institutions across the two realms.

A framework for congruence analysis in comparative historical analysis of political change

Scholars engaging in comparative historical analysis rely on observational data. The use of these data to analyze causal factors is affected by a number of problems that follow from studying historical developments. First, scholars often face a dearth of data which inhibits both large-n statistical analysis and in-depth qualitative analysis of individual cases. Second, scholars often confront the problem of historical diffusion, a problem that is in itself aggravated by the absence of good historical data. Against this backdrop, this paper devises a “middle-range” framework based on congruence analysis. This framework includes considerations about case selection in the face of diffusion and about the kind of within-case evidence that allows scholars to analyze the causes of political change. The framework devises a systematic way of converting narrative historical descriptions into within-case binary observations. This conversion allows other scholars to replicate the analysis in a transparent way and to probe the validity of the scoring based on the sources referred to. The framework is illustrated via empirical analysis of the origins and development of representative institutions in the medieval Crown of Aragon.

As fontes do espaço político: técnicas eleitorais e práticas deliberativas nas cidades Italianas (séculos XII - XIV)

Para quem pesquisa, nas práticas usuais da Idade Média, os vestígios de um espaço de mediação política, o mundo das comunas italianas dos séculos XII-XIV oferece um laboratório privilegiado de observação. O desenvolvimento de instituições representativas (conselhos "legislativos" e colégios "executivos") se caracterizou pela utilização de técnicas de seleção de pessoal dirigente destinadas a evitar o monopólio de algumas famílias e a garantir a rotatividade das atribuições no seio das classes dirigentes. O presente artigo examina as fontes, notadamente estatutárias, que definem as modalidades de representação dos cidadãos chamados a governar ou a tomar decisões. Ele retoma a cronologia de instauração do princípio de representação que se impõe sobre o de unanimidade. Examinando igualmente os processos eleitorais, ele busca precisar o que os contemporâneos desejavam valorizar por meio da seleção eleitoral dos governantes. Uma atenção particular é dada às questões materiais dos votos e dos escrutínios (segredo das eleições, instalação de graus eleitorais, etc.).

German Parliaments. A Study of the Development of Representative Institutions in Germany

German Parliaments. A Study of the Development of Representative Institutions in Germany

Book Reviews : German Parliaments — A Study of the Development of Representative Institutions in Germany. By RICHARD K. ULLMANN AND SIR STEPHEN KING-HALL. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1955. Pp. iv., 162. $4.00.)

Book Reviews : German Parliaments — A Study of the Development of Representative Institutions in Germany. By RICHARD K. ULLMANN AND SIR STEPHEN KING-HALL. (New York: Frederick A. Praeger. 1955. Pp. iv., 162. $4.00.)