In recent decades, political scientists have examined how institutions or the “humanly devised rules and procedures – both formal and informal – that constrain and enable political behavior”^[1] affect democracy. Scholars such as Juan Linz and Arend Lijphart have argued that new democracies should choose certain institutional arrangements to increase their likelihood of survival. This essay will argue that so-called “constitutional choices” have a limited impact on democratic outcomes. It will agree that institutions affect democratic outcomes. However, it will assert that strong institutions are the key to democratic survival, thus constitutional choices can only improve the chances of democratic survival if they can create stronger institutions.

        While democracies all allow citizens to choose governments through open elections, there is variation in how democracies elect leaders and how they divide power among those leaders. Most democracies can be placed into two categories based on how they choose the executive or head of government.^[2] In presidential systems, voters directly elect the executive to a fixed term. In contrast, the executive in a parliamentary system is elected from and by the legislature and serves as long as he or she has a majority of support. Democracies can also be classified by their electoral systems or how they translate votes into seats in the legislature or the presidency.^[3] Plurality systems generally divide voters into single-seat districts where the candidate with the most votes wins, while proportional representation (PR) systems allocate seats to parties based on the proportion of votes. Out of these categories come four major types of democracies: presidential-plurality systems such as the United States; presidential-PR systems which are often found in Latin America; parliamentary-plurality or Westminster systems found in the United Kingdom; and parliamentary-PR systems found in much of Western Europe. Although these categories do not accurately definite countries like France that have hybrid systems, this conceptualization offers a straightforward way to examine the relationship between institutions and democracy.

        Much of the literature on the relationship between institutions and democracy focuses on institutional design or what sets of rules lead to longer lasting democracies. One of the most notable pieces about institutional design comes from Juan Linz, who argued in “The Perils of Presidentialism” that new democracies should adopt parliamentary systems.^[4] Linz proposes that presidentialism can endanger democracy in numerous ways. For example, he asserts that the separate election of the executive allows the president and the legislature to both claim to speak for the people. In this system of what Linz calls “dual legitimacy” the president and the legislature disagree, neither can overrule the other, leading to deadlock. Since unlike parliamentary systems, presidential system have no mechanism to remove an executive between elections, there may be an extra-legal intervention  such as a coup to remove the president that undermines legitimacy of democracy. Scholar Arend Lijphart also argues for the adoption of parliamentary systems in combination with proportional representation based on what he argues has been the superior performance in terms of democratic and economic outcomes of parliamentary systems.^[5] 

        Linz and Lijphart are not without criticism. Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Shugart argue that parliamentary systems may appear to have better historical performance because they are found in wealthy, Western European countries that are more hospitable to democracy than countries in Latin America that have presidential systems.^[6] Further, argue that Linz overstates the dangers of presidential systems and propose a series of institutional designs, such as limiting presidential power, to mitigate some of his concern. Guy Lardeyret agrees with the potential for a spurious relationship between parliamentary systems and democratic stability, and proposes that PR electoral systems can lead to unstable ruling coalitions that take too long to form. ^[7] Despite these criticism, there is not substantial opposition to parliamentary systems. Mainwaring and Shugart acknowledge Linz makes a number of valid points regarding presidentialism while Lardeyret advocates a Westminster parliamentary-plurality system. Thus there appears to be at least a tacit consensus that parliamentary systems are safer choices regarding democratic stability.

        Although these arguments about how institutions can help democracy, there is the fact that all these arrangements have led to stable democracies. Despite what Linz says about presidential systems, the United States has had excellent democratic, and also economic, outcomes over the past two hundred years. Even though the presidentialism-PR combination, which Lijphart describes as “a particularly unattractive option”^[8] due to its historical failure in Latin America, has experienced success recently in countries such as Brazil. Further, Seymour Martin Lipset notes that parliamentary systems have failed in much of Africa, thus calling into question the institutional approach.^[9] Perhaps, as Lipset argues, culture is responsible for democratic stability.

        Instead of throwing out the institutional approach, it is worth noting that the arguments Linz, Lijphart, Mainwaring, and others make assume that the rules of institutions are always followed. As Steven Levitsky and María Victoria Murillo note, this is often not true, especially in areas of the world with new democracies.^[10] Thus it is necessary to examine not only institutional design, but what Levitsky and Murillo call institutional strength. They define institutional strength along two axes: enforcement, or whether rules are follow, and stability, or the ability of rules to persist over time and different conditions. When institutions are strong, people obey the rules that are written down and expect that others will do so both in the present and the future. However, weak institutions cannot be expected to have much influence on behavior.

        The relation between strong democratic institutions and democratic outcomes should be clear. When democratic institutions are strong, politicians follow the rules of democracy. They tolerate the opposition, accept constraints on power, and step down when voted out of office because they expect others to do so and enforce the democratic rules. This can help explain some of the issues surrounding the debate about institutional design. Perhaps the exact design of institutions matters less than whether those institutions are enforced, thus explaining why a variety of institutional arrangements have succeeded. On the flip side, when institutions are weak, democracy is prone to collapse. If a president with a legislative majority does not expect limits his power will be enforced, he may abuse his power and become an autocrat. Neither are weak democratic institutions likely to keep the military in the barracks during political crises, further threatening democratic stability. Finally, when weak democratic institutions lead politicians to not feel accountable to voters, there is little incentive to engage in state building, meaning the state will provide few public goods and create little public support for democracy.

        India is an example of the power of strong institutions. India has been democratic almost continuously for the last sixty years despite, as Ashutosh Varshney points out, a host of unfavorable structural conditions for democracy such as widespread poverty, illiteracy, and ethnic division.^[11] However, India also benefited from British colonial policy. When the British withdrew from India, they left set of Westminster-style democratic institutions that had succeeded in governing the sub-continent. Thus India began its life with a relatively strong set of democratic institutions. Political actors were accustomed to playing within a set of rules and continued to do so after independence. In other words, strong institutions may have played a role in the success of Indian democracy.

        Unfortunately, most new democracies are not born with strong institutions. Thus how does a new democracy create strong institutions? One way appears to be setting a precedent. At many scholars have noted, vanguard leaders like George Washington,^[12] Jawaharlal Nehru,^[13] and Nelson Mandela^[14] purposefully under-utilized their power, thus setting an expectation of restraint and respect for democratic norms. In a similar manner, if the first legislative sessions can get many actors to take part in the legislature, it may set expectations for future interactions. Levitsky and Murillo offer another suggestion for building strong institutions. Noting that in many countries, those who write the rules of democratic institutions are not necessarily those who actually have power, they suggest “new institutional arrangements are most likely to endure where rule writers… gain the acceptance of powerful actors and groups who remain outside the rule-writing process.”^[15] 

        While the emergence of leaders like Washington is outside the control of constitution writers, constitutional choices may be able to help set a legislative precedent.  To return to the debate about institutional design, some arrangements may be more likely to help establish democratic legitimacy and give actors in society a stake in democratic institutions. For example, by eliminating the winner take all prize of the presidency and creating the potential for parties that do not receive the plurality of votes to be part of the governing coalition, parliamentary systems give those parties a greater stake in the democratic system. Similarly, Lijphart’s argument regarding a PR-electoral system might apply here. As Lijphart shows, PR electoral systems have lower disproportionality or difference between the proportion of votes and proportion of seats a party receives than plurality systems.^[16] Not only does this mean more parties likely to be represented in the legislature, but it reduces the chances that parties will reject the democratic system because it allocates seats unfairly. So parliamentary-PR arrangements may be superior to creating a legislature that is seen as legitimate.

        Pacting and consociationalism may also help build strong institutions. As Giuseppe Di Palma suggests, the formation of pacts that make guarantees to groups who could potentially lose power in democracy may make those groups more willing to support or participate in democracy.^[17] Thus pacting is a potential way to bring powerful groups outside the rule-writing process into it. Consociationalism is pacting on a grand scale that can be effective when society is deeply divided along ethnic or other internal lines. By creating an oversized “grand-coalition” that draws from across social divisions, giving each group a mutual veto over matters in crucial to it, allocating the spoils of power proportionally, and giving each group a certain amount of autonomy, consociationalism can a precedent of cooperation and make groups invested in the institution.^[18] 

         In conclusion, this essay seeks to point out that while an institutional approach to democratic outcomes may be very powerful, we must look beyond theoretical institutional design. To understand how institutions affect outcomes, we must look at them in practice, examining both their design and their strength. We must also look at how to make institutions strong. Why this essay argued that strong institutions are important, it only touched on the more important question of how do we make them strong. While institutional design may have an impact on institutional strength, there are almost certainly other factors. Pacting and consociationalism may be able to help the formation of strong institutions, there are likely other structural factors that contribute to institutional strength. Identifying these and ways in which to make more favorable environments for institutions will be key to helping the consolidation of democracy around the world.