Title: Constitutional Designs and Democratization in the Third World
Abstract: INTRODUCTION Theoretical debates about constitutional designs of new democracies started from Linz's criticism on presidentialism based on his research of the Latin American experience. (1) According to him, presidentialism is a system that structurally produces conflict and instability, thus it becomes a cause of the breakdown of fragile presidential democracies. In contrast, a parliamentary form of government is very flexible, hence is conducive to stable democracy. (2) Since then, debates on constitutional choices have been actively progressed by counter-arguments of scholars preferring a presidential form of government. (3) Their theoretical arguments, however, simply compare constitutional designs and a particular regime's survival. In addition, their concerns are mainly limited to Latin America countries. Thus, it is necessary to extend their disputes into other cases of new democracies. In fact, a new constitution is the result of a combination of the political actor's rational choice with some constraints on his/her rational choice such as political traditions and political institutions. According to Lijphart, of the twenty-one continuous democracies of the world since World War II, seventeen were pure parliamentary democracies, two were mixed, one was semipresidential, and only one, the United States, was pure presidential. (4) Especially, with the exception of the United States, Fifth Republican France, and Switzerland, the industrial democracies have all been variations on the basic parliamentary theme. (5) Over ninety countries in the world have become independent since World War II. Some of them have chosen parliamentary systems and others have chosen presidential or mixed systems. Many of the developing countries have been interrupted democracies in spite of their desire. The purpose of this study is to find empirical difference between parliamentary systems and presidential systems for democratization in the developing countries. This research starts with the following questions: Can we detect the difference between parliamentary systems and presidential systems for democracy in the developing countries? If so, which one is more effective? By a quantitative analysis of political outcomes of ninety-three developing countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this study tests a hypothesis: parliamentary systems are more effective for democratization than presidential systems in the developing countries. Whether the difference is statistically significant or not, the result of this research will have some utility for understanding the relationship between constitutional frameworks and political outcomes. This study first looks over the theoretical debates on the characteristics of constitutional designs themselves. Then, it empirically compares the political outcomes of the parliamentary systems and presidential systems using a quantitative analysis. THEORETICAL DEBATES ON CONSTITUTIONAL DESIGNS While considering constitutional choices in new democracies, it is important to take into account the criteria used by constitution designers. Those criteria might be representation and effectiveness of a constitutional form. These are essential elements for a good political system. (6) However, these two concepts actually are not easily mixed in a constitutional form. This is because there is basically a conflict between the legislative and the executive branch. Thus, good government depends on how this conflict can be solved well within a certain constitutional framework. Theoretical debates between presidentialism and parliamentary system are ultimately related to executive- legislative relations. (7) In particular, the issue of the role of executive power and its limitation for good government is the core of this debate. This study examines the characteristics (strengths and weakness) of constitutional forms (parliamentary system, presidential system, and alternatives) in terms of executive-legislative relations and limitation of executive power. …
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-03-22
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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