Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes

222 Pages·1994·19.331 MB·English

by  Giovanni Sartori (auth.)

COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL
ENGINEERING
Also by Giovanni Sartori
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THE THEORY OF DEMOCRACY REVISITED
TOWER OF BABEL: On the Definition and Analysis of Concepts
in the Social Sciences (with F. W. Riggs and H. Teune)
CoDlparative
Constitutional
Engineering
An Inquiry into Structures,
Incentives and Outcomes
Giovanni Sartori
.tflll~rt Smwnt.t~r Prqfissor in 1/u Hu'lfllltlitiu
Colum!JU. Uniwrsib'
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MACMilLAN
©Giovanni Sartori 1994
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1994
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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First published 1994 by
MACMILlAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-22863-8 ISBN 978-1-349-22861-4 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-1-349-22861-4
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Contents
Preface ix
PART ONE: ELECTORAL SYSTEMS
1 Majoritarian and Proportional Systems 3
1.1 Premises 3
1.2 Majority Systems 5
1.3 The Majority Premium 6
1.4 PR Systems 7
1.5 The Double Ballot 11
2 Who Gets Elected? 15
2.1 Person Voting and List Voting 15
2.2 The German and the Hare Systems 18
2.3 Minority Representation and
Gerrymandering 20
2.4 A Coda on Japan 22
3 The Importance of Electoral Systems 27
3.1 How Important? 27
3.2 The Effects of Electoral Systems: A
Discussion 29
3.3 The Influence of Electoral Systems
Restated 32
3.4 The 'Laws' 40
4 Choosing an Electoral System 53
4.1 Assessing Majoritarianism 53
4.2 Assessing Proportionalism 58
4.3 Assessing the Double Ballot 61
4.4 Which is Best? 69
v
vi Contents
PART TWO: PRESIDENTIALISM AND
PARLIAMENTARISM
5 PresidentiaUsm 83
5.1 Defining 'Presidential System' 83
5.2 The American Prototype 86
5.3 The Latin American Experience 91
5.4 Is Parliamentarism a Remedy? 94
6 Parliamentary Systems 101
6.1 Types of Parliamentarism 101
6.2 Power Sharing 102
6.3 Premiership Systems 104
6.4 Working Parliamentarism 108
6.5 Assembly Government 110
6.6 Stability and Effectiveness 112
6.7 The Directly Elected Premier 115
7 Semi-Presidentialism 121
7.1 The French Prototype 121
7.2 Similar and Dissimilar Cases 126
7.3 Defining Semi-Presidential Systems 131
7.4 Which is Best? 135
PART THREE: ISSUES AND PROPOSALS
8 The Difficulty of Politics 143
8.1 Democratic Primitivism and Negativism 143
8.2 Corruption and the Rejection of Politics 145
8.3 Video-Politics and Video-Democracy 148
9 Alternating Presidentialism: A Proposal 153
9.1 From One Engine to Two 153
9.2 Strong-Intermittent Presidency 155
9.3 The Best of Two Worlds? 158
10 The Paradox of Governing by Legislating 161
10.1 Initiative and V cto 161
10.2 Decree Power 163
Contents vii
10.3 Crossing Parliament Effectively 165
10.4 Toward Solving the Executive-Legislative
N~m 1®
11 Problems with Presidential Systems 173
11.1 Reelecting Presidents 173
11.2 Twoparty versus Multiparty
Presidentialism 176
11.3 Staggered versus Synchronized Elections 178
12 Problems with Parliamentary Systems 183
12.1 Bicameralism or Not 183
12.2 Party Discipline 189
13 Constitutional Engineering 197
Bibliography 205
Index 211
Preface
The proper study of politics is not man but institutions.
John Plamenatz
Bentham once said that the two great 'engines' of reality are
punishment and reward. And, to be sure, 'engineering' is a
derivative of engine. Putting metaphor and etymology to
gether I come up with 'constitutional engineering' as a title
that conveys, first, that constitutions are like (somewhat like)
engines, i.e., mechanisms that must 'work' and that must have
an output of sorts; and, second, that constitutions are unlikely
to work as intended unless they employ the engines of
Bentham, i.e., punishments and rewards. Indeed, in much of
this book I argue the case for conceiving and building
constitutions as incentive-based structures.
The title also indicates that the book is comparative. Indeed,
it is 'very comparative'. The general idea is that by comparing
we draw lessons from other countries. Right. However, and
further, this work is 'systematically comparative' both in
coverage and in method. In coverage because the arguments
are drawn from, and extend to, all existing democratic forms;
and in method because the analysis crucially relies on
comparative control: all generalizations are checked vis-a-vis
the cases to which they apply.
The work is divided into three parts, namely, (i) Electoral
Systems, (ii) Presidentialism and Parliamentarism, and (iii)
Issues and Proposals. Electoral systems may not be formally
included in the constitutional text and yet remain, in fact, a
most essential part of the workings of political systems. Not
only are electoral systems the most manipulative instrument of
politics; they also shape the party system and affect the
spectrum of representation. They are thus reviewed first. I
overview proportional representation systems, the single
member district system, and the various (little known or
unduly neglected) double ballot formulas. Which are, in each
ix
Preface
X
case, the effects of any given system? It will be shown that the
literature on electoral systems is often quite wrong in its causal
analysis and also in its praises and blames. The Lijphart thesis
that proportional representation is always better in that it is
conducive to consensus democracy is untenable; the 'direct
ness' of single member district systems is often dubious and
must be related to 'localism'; the double ballot systems need
not be majoritarian but can also apply to multi-member (if
small) electoral districts.
Part Two provides an underpinning of presidential versus
semi-presidential systems. I propose definitions of both, single
out the borderline cases (such as Finland), and then probe the
conditions that indeed 'condition' the performance of presi
dentialism and semi-presidentialism. Why does South-Amer
ican presidentialism seldom work? And under what conditions
does the American prototype work best? Assuming that
undivided government is the major working condition of
presidential systems, one must also consider party discipline
(or, conversely, its lack) in Congress, the degree of opinion
polarization, and other factors. As for French-type semi
presidentialism, the major asset of its dual authority structure
appears to be that the formula can cope with divided
government.
Part Two also discusses in detail the parliamentary systems
largely a misnomer for a variety of fundamentally different
formulas. The English system clearly is a premiership system;
the German Kanzlerdemokratie is a controlled parliamentary
system; whereas at the other end one finds assembly systems
(the French III and IV Republic) whose working capabilities
hinge on party discipline, on the degree to which parliaments
are party-controlled. Here again, condition analysis is crucial.
The English system hinges on a single-member district system
which does produce single party government (a condition that
fails to apply to India). The German formula presupposes a
two-and-a-half party system, and can hardly be successfully
extended and even less exported to four-five party systems.
The Third Part illustrates - among other things - a new
proposal, namely, a system of alternating or intermittent
presidentialism that squarely confronts the straits of both the