1 / 15

Institutional Design and Democracy in Post-Communist Countries Florin Fesnic fesnicuiuc.edu www.florinfesnic.us

Summary .

chars
Download Presentation

Institutional Design and Democracy in Post-Communist Countries Florin Fesnic fesnicuiuc.edu www.florinfesnic.us

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

    1. Institutional Design and Democracy in Post-Communist Countries Florin Fesnic fesnic@uiuc.edu www.florinfesnic.us

    2. Summary · I focus on the impact of institutional design on democracy Political Institutions: Regime type: parliamentary vs. presidential systems Electoral system: proportional representation vs. single-member district majoritarian systems

    3. What is “democracy”? Robert Dahl, “Polyarchy” (1971): Two dimensions: - inclusiveness (participation) - public contestation (liberalization) Democracy (“polyarchy”) is high on both dimensions

    5. Institutional design & democracy Some institutions are more conducive to democracy than others: Parliamentarism ? Democracy Proportional representation ? Democracy

    6. Puzzle · Negative relationship between economic development and democracy across Orthodox post-Communist countries · Why? An institutional explanation: less developed countries have made better institutional choices

    7. What makes democracy work? Three types of explanations:  Economic Cultural Institutional

    8. Testing the impact of Economy, Culture, and Institutions on Democracy Post-Communist region: -  large N (28 cases) -  variability on E, C, and I - same previous regime ? control -  same starting point: 1989-91 ? good setting for testing E, C, I

    9. How? Economic development in 1990 ? Democracy in 2004 Economic development = GDP per capita Democracy = Freedom House score Political rights & civil liberties, modified 0 to 6 scale “full autocracy” = 0 “full democracy” = 6

    11. Development ? Democracy? Positive relationship Fit is rather weak Cultural-religious clusters: Protestant-Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim

    13. The “Orthodox Puzzle”: An Institutional Explanation Less developed - better institutional choices: parliamentarism + party list proportional representation More developed - worse institutional choices: presidentialism + mixed/majoritarian electoral systems Evidence?

    15. Institutional Design & Democracy in Eastern/Orthodox Countries

    16. Discussion Institutional design ? democracy Institutions matter Evidence? Development & democracy in Orthodox post-Communist countries: - effect of religion is controlled - negative relationship btw development & democracy - institutional explanation? Yes. Different institutional choices

More Related