Sing Ming Sept 18, 2004

1. Executive-legislative Relations, Political Institutions & Democratic Survival: Lessons from Comparative Studies Sing Ming Sept 18, 2004

2. 1. Objectives • 1.1 To explain democratic survival around the world between 1950 and 2000 with a wide range of possible institutional and non-institutional causes. • largest updated sample to-date. • Through combining many cross-national databases, I will test various models covering every regime that has been democratic for some time between 1950 and 2000, worldwide, with a population of no less than one million. • 1.2 To test whether parliamentary democracy is more capable of enhancing democratic survival than presidential democracy around the world between 1950 and 2000. • 1.3 To assess whether other institutional and non-institutional causes have shaped democratic survival around the world. • 1.4 To draw initial implications on the design of Hong Kong’s political institutions should it become fully democratic.

3. 2. Introduction Original title “Balancing the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government” is not clear “Balance” is too vauge a concept to be useful” Dynamic Probit analysis is used to explain the annual probability of democratic breakdowns of presidential or parliamentary democracies in the period with some theory-driven explanatory variables.

4. Dynamic Probit Specification The model examines the transition from a lagged one year R of zero or one to a current year R of zero or one, where R is political regime with coding 1 refers to autocracy and 0 refers to democracy, X represents the vector of the exogenous variables at one-year lagged time, t – 1.

5. Some of those variables have been ignored in the most well-known recent works (Boix, 2003; Cheibub, 2002), including institutional, historical, political , cultural and socio-economicones.

6. 2.1 Independent variables involved and their presumed effects on democratic breakdowns

7. 2.2 Hypotheses about Institutional Factors H1: Presidential regime (vs. Parliamentary)  Democratic Breakdown Many cross-national findings show presidential democracies are more prone to collapses than parliamentary ones in the last few decades

8. H2: Larger number of (Effective) Parties (ENPP)----- Democratic Breakdown When a president does not have a “legislative majority” or “near- legislative majority” in the legislature, his/her motions/bills are more likely to fail to secure passage. The repeated failures favor democratic breakdowns in presidential democracies. When number of “effective parties” or mutlipartyism is increased in legislatures, the failures to secure at least a “near- legislative majority” are more likely than the otherwise.

9. H3: Proportional Representation (PR) System (vs. non-PR) (ENPP)  Democratic Breakdown H4: Ineffective or Partially effective legislature Democratic Breakdown H5: Legislative Deadlocks Democratic Breakdown (deadlock: the largest party controls more than 1/3 but <= to 1/2 of seats)

10. H6: Party Coalition Whether the government is a coalitional one formed by various parties has negative effect on democratic breakdown. H7: Presidential Runoff (two-round voting system) is more likely than plurality method (one round)  Democratic Breakdown Plurality method is less associated with multipartism than the two-round system in various parts of the world (Jones, 1995).

11. 3. Findings Given the quasi-presidential political structure of Hong Kong, and the importance of inertia on institutional designs (Foweraker, 1998, 652; Sadurski, 2001, 459), this paper focuses on conditions for adopting the presidential system in Hong Kong.

12. Samples

13. Nations

14. 3.1 Full Samples Probit Estimates

15. Presidential Probit Estimates

16. Parliamentary Probit Estimates

17. 3.2 There is no evidence that presidential regimes are by themselves more favorable for democratic breakdown than parliamentary ones. This finding has contradicted many recent research papers (Przeworski, 2000). But we need to heed under what conditions presidential regimes will be more likely to “survive”.

18. 3.3 ENPP There are several competing interpretations of the effects of ENPP on democratic survival: a. Mainwaring (1993; 1999): “multipartism exacerbates the problems of presidentialism by increasing the probability of immobilism in executive/legislative relations, by promoting ideological polarization and by making inter-party coalition-building difficult to observe. He argued for two-party system. He has more or less assumed a positive linear relationship between ENPP and democratic survival (consolidation).

19. b. Lijphart (1999): multipartism can cater for multiple cleavages or issue dimensions among plural societies marked by regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious or political divisions. c. Cheibub (2001; 2002): argue for a quadratic relationship with their descriptive statistics, and that probabilities of breakdown were the highest when 3< ENPP <4. Yet, their descriptive statistics were not conclusive, as they have not statistically controlled the effects of other factors.

20. Findings • For the sub-samples of presidential regimes, when ENPP reaches 4.93, the probability of breakdown becomes the highest, after controlling the effects of other factors at their means). • ENPP increases the probability of breakdown when the former rises initially, then falls off when it increases further, i.e., an inverted quadratic relationship is found with respect to the breakdown of democracies.

21. Breakdown Probabilities by ENPP: highest when ENPP reaches 4.93

22. Table: Breakdown Probabilities by ENPP

23. Interpretation: When ENPP rises from 2 to 4.93, controlling other variables at their means, the probability of democratic breakdown escalates with a sharply increased slope. WHY?

24. Within the range of 2< ENPP < 4.93, when ENPP rises or multipartism intensifies, it engenders a greater likelihood for the governing parties to i./ have smaller share of seats in legislature, and ii./the largest party in the legislature to have <= ½ of total seats in legislature (minority). Strong initial evidence that greater ENPP increases the chance for a Minority  As ENPP and PR are regressed on “minority”, a very good model of fit has been found. The result may imply that when ENPP and PR increase, the chance for the forming of a minority govt. may rise.

25. DV: Minority

26. Another explanation: when there are about 3 to 4 parties with more or less equal strengths, it would be difficult for regime stability when each of which tries to implement their own programs by itself or in coalitions. Coalitions under such conditions may not be stable under the fear that their partners may defect to shifting coalitions (Cheibub, 2002).

27. 3.4 Electoral System Three competing hypotheses: a. Boix (2003) - electoral systems exert little effect b. Mainwaring (1993) – PR will increase ENPP, and thus jeopardize democratic stability especially when presidentialism coexists with a legislature produced via Proportional Representation system (PR). c. Lijphart (1992): PR will encourage multipartism and will suit societies with more cleavages or issue-dimensions.

28. Findings PR favors democratic stability than non-PR in full sample at 1% level of sig. For the presidential sample, it is sig. at 10% of level of sig. (9.8%).

29. Breakdown Probabilities by Electoral System: highest when ENPP reaches 4.93 Non-PR PR

30. Table: Breakdown Probabilities by Electoral System

31. For both presidential and parliamentary democracies, when there are multiple cleavages or issue-dimensions, PR can enhance the formation of different parties to address those issue-dimensions and raise their chance of democratic survival  

32. ENPP & PR: Effects on Democratic Survival As PR will raise the ENPP, and greater ENPP reduces chances of democratic survival, how can we reconcile the seemingly contradictory findings that both PR and larger ENPP will enhance Democratic Survival?

33. This argument is partly borne out by that PR *ethno-linguistic fractionalization is significant in the full sample, though not in the sub-samples for presidential and parliamentary regimes. More data on the number and nature of cleavages and PR system are needed to confirm their joint effect on Democratic Survival.

34. 3.4 Importance of Deadlock • a. Conventional explanation: deadlocks in presidential democracies explain the higher percentage of their democratic breakdown. • b. Cheibub rejected the claim by arguing coalitions can help resolve deadlocks or make minority governments work • I use a proxy: it is significant for presidential regime. • How to explain deadlock : ENPP and PR: limited model fit. • More work needs to be done in future.

35. 3.5 Effective Legislature Democracies with ineffective or partially effective legislature are more likely than effective one to suffer from democratic brakdowns A legislature is effective if it has significant autonomy, including the power to tax, spend, and override executive vetoes. A legislature is partially effective if it lacks one or more of the powers needed to be an effective legislature.

36. Breakdown Probabilities by Effectiveness of Legislature and Electoral System Non-PR & Partially Effective PR & Partially Effective

37. Table: Breakdown Probabilities by Effectiveness of Legislature and Electoral System

38. 3.6 Party Coalition and Presidential Runoff: No Effect on Survival Whether the governing party is a coalitional one, and whether the president is chosen by one-round or two-round elections exert no appreciable effect on Democratic Survival.

39. 3.7 Level of Economic Development Level of economic development measured by GDP per capita and openness of trade both favor democratic survival, which generate very positive implications on Hong Kong’s democratic development.

40. Breakdown Probabilities by Real GDP per capita

41. Table Breakdown Probabilities by Real GDP per capita

42. 4. Lessons on Hong Kong’s Executive-legislative Relations & Institutional Design 4.1 Hong Kong’s level of economic development is big enough to secure democratic survival – the probability of breakdown is virtually zero at Hong Kong’s average GDP per capita between 1975 and 2000, that exceeds $10,000 per capita!

43. The optimism for democratic survival is further enhanced by Hong Kong’s relatively large degree of openness to trade and the presence of British heritage. 4.2 To reduce the risk of democratic breakdown even further, presidential regime should not encourage the creation of too great the effective number of parties (4.93 > ENPP> 2.5).

44. 4.3 Electoral System • Finding: PR favors democratic stability in all three samples. • How to reconcile contradictory findings between ENPP and PR? • PR suits many plural societies (Lijphart, 1992; Jones, 1995). • Though PR raises ENPP a bit, PR enhances more parties to address multiple issue dimensions/ cleavages in PLURAL SOCIETIES .

45. 4.4 Overall Recommendations: • 4.4.1. Hong Kong should have 2 and at most, 2.5 effective number of parties. • Justifications: • Hong Kong lacks the ethnic, regional and religious cleavages, as found in some plural societies adopting presidential regimes in Latin American • Hong Kong has the cleavage surrounding i./ socio-economic redistribution; ii./ pacing and desirability of democracy; and arguably iii./ the center-periphery (Beijing-Hong Kong cleavage).

46. If and when full democracy is allowed to implement, only 1 or arguably 2 major cleavages or issue-dimensions remain. • We may thus just adopt majority electoral system, or mixed members system to produce the 2 party system or 2.5 ENPP, to maximize the chance of democratic survival. • Adopting PR may unnecessarily raise the number of ENPP and reinforce some cleavages that should have been subsiding when full democracy is implemented in the non-plural society of Hong Kong

47. 4.4.2 Adopting the mixed-member system, i.e., with both simple majority system and the PR carries the following advantages: • Reduce the danger of multipartism (Norris, 2004) and the danger of executive-legislative deadlocks.

48. Strengths of Mixed Members Electoral System • Encourage the dual emphasis of city-wide and individual geographical constituencies’ interests, and hence the deepening of policy research (Shugart & Wattenberg, 2001). • Favor professionals who do not want to spend too much time on electoral campaigns in geographical constituencies to stand for elections via the party-nominated party list.

49. 4.4.3: If no full democracy will be implemented in the political reform of 2007/2008, the reform should Dovetail with Full Democracy in future in the following way: • HKSAR Govt. should reduce the fragmentation of the existing political parties further by increasing the threshold under the existing PR formula. • Better still, HKSAR Govt. should replace the PR with either the simple majority or mixed-member electoral system.

50. In case Functional Constituencies (FC) are to be retained, and/or that its total number of seats rises further in 2008, each FC has to be chosen by:  • i/ individual vote & • ii./ a reasonably “large” and broad-based electorate to enhance their representativeness and the promotion of party development. Or else, ENPP may rise, reducing the chance of democratic survival and “public satisfaction with democracy” in future (Norris, 1999).