Institutional Design and Democracy in

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

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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

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What is democracy?

• Robert Dahl, Polyarchy (1971)
• Two dimensions
• - inclusiveness (participation)
• - public contestation (liberalization)
• Democracy (polyarchy) is high on both
  dimensions

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Institutional design democracy

• Some institutions are more conducive to democracy
  than others
• Parliamentarism ? Democracy
• Proportional representation ? Democracy

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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

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What makes democracy work?

• Three types of explanations
•  Economic
• Cultural
• Institutional

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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

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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

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Development ? Democracy?

• Positive relationship
• Fit is rather weak
• Cultural-religious clusters Protestant-Catholic,
  Orthodox, Muslim

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The Orthodox PuzzleAn Institutional
Explanation

• Less developed - better institutional choices
  parliamentarism party list proportional
  representation
• More developed - worse institutional choices
  presidentialism mixed/majoritarian electoral
  systems
• Evidence?

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Institutional Design Democracy in
Eastern/Orthodox Countries
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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