week 11 - Democratic Institutions Flashcards
Back to transitions and waves
- third reverse wave - some signs of authoritarianism
- but Levitsky and Way: emergence of hybrid regimes combing Democratic and authoritarian features
- deep challenges to transitology - hybrid regimes that are sustainable rather than merely transitional
Why hypertization over democratization?
Levitsky and Way:
a) post Cold War: authoritarianism harder to sustain - pro democratic US, EU
b) but many countries lacked the conditions for democracy: development, middle-class, strong State and civil society
c) while lacking the lead cohesion and state capacity required to impose dictatorship against societal resistance
d) The result: neither democratic nor fully authoritarian
e) but it is authoritarian
Is competitive authoritarianism still here?
Levitsky and Way:
- yes, in 2019, in: Bangladesh, Bolivia
- competition brings some level of uncertainty
- US and EU are not the pro-Democratic powerhouses they once were
- but there are still roughly as many CA regimes as in the 1990s (35 then, 32 now)
- The model survives where weak institutions permit the playing field to be tilted but not trashed
- or where populist leaders weaponize grievances to overcome resistance to a tilted playing field
- competition is hard to eliminate without a popular alternative to democracy
Two major pathways to democracy:
- monarchical: keep and control the king
- republicans: kill or remove the king
Constitutional monarchy features
- acknowledged formal limits to monarchical prerogative
- Constitution disperses at least limited power to representative assemblies, courts mixed constitution
- Benjamin Constant: monarchy as a neutral power guaranteeing institutional balance in the polity
Constitutional monarchy in France
France 1791:
a) first constitution of the French Revolution
b) revolutionaries: monarchy, through weaker, to bring stability to new order
c) King gains legislative veto, right to appoint and dismiss ministers
d) unstable - veto merely suppressive, separation between assembly and ministry too complete
- with two years, king Louis XVI beheaded
- France sets on revolutionary path (bagehot):
a) republics
b) restorations
c) Bonapartist authoritarianism
Parliamentary monarchy
- evolves in England from 17th to 19th centuries
- political role of monarchy gradually declines, replaced by largely ceremonial role
- political role of House of Lords also shrinks
- shift of executive functions to cabinet, the efficient secret (bagehot)
- parliamentary regime - function of executive and legislative power
- elasticity and continuity
Republicanism
- a polity without traditional legitimacy of monarchy
- pursuit of public interest and engagement
- Northern Italian city states: oligarchical republicanism - limited but intensive political participation
Presidential Republicanism
- seen as necessary in America due to larger scale
- President at first indirectly elected, electoral college as mediating body
- now college channels popular vote within states
- essence of presidentialism:
a) president holds executive power
b) separate election of executive and legislative
c) divided, not fused of concentrated governmental - mutual independence
republicanism France
- revolutionary origins - France: parliamentary republican regime 1875
- ## key: establishing that prime minister, not president truly leads the government
Semi-presidentialism
- lane: European strong presidentialism
- features: A strong and independently elected presidency and a Prime Minister as head of state governing through an elected assembly
- France since 1958:
a) President appoints and dismisses Prime Minister may disregard composition of assembly
b) cohabitation parliamentary majorities cannot be ignored
Perils of presidentialism
- indivisible prize winner take all
- fixed term - inflexibility
- President both partisan and national leader
- governing coalitions hard to form
- dual democratic legitimacy - impasse
- tendency to use extra constitutional means to break impasse
- USA as the stale case
- Trump like Obama got two years without serious danger of executive legislative impasse then divided government
- Failed coalition building and executive legislative deadlocks not empirically linked to collapse of presidentialism
- instead, democracy‘s falling dictatorship headed by professional military 70% more likely to fail
- and presidential systems have much more often come after such regimes
Lijphart - Westminster model
Keys to the majoritarian model:
a) Government should be by the majority
b) even if it is a bare majority
c) representing less than majority of voters
d) with the opposition party in place
e) to challenge and replace government 
Lijphart- consensus
Keys to consensus model:
a) Government should be by larger majorities
b) consisting of as many parties and representatives as possible
c) emphasizing negotiation at the expense of quick action and clear accountability
d)  and fewer complete changes of government
