Constitutional Design 2000

Policymakers and scholars met at the Institute December 9-11, 2000, to discuss the relationship among institutional design, conflict management, and democratic development.

Andrew Reynolds (Kellogg/Department of Government and International Studies) and Scott Mainwaring (Director of the Kellogg Institute/Government Department) chaired the conference, and the Ford Foundation, the United States Institute for Peace, the Nanovic Institute, the Keough Center, and the Graduate School provided support.

Donald Horowitz (Duke University) and Arend Lijphart (University of California, San Diego) opened the conference with a lively debate on the relevance of integrative and consociational theories to constitutional design in the third wave. Juan Linz (Yale University) responded that some conflicts may simply be beyond solution through constitution making. Dieter Nohlen (University of Heidelberg) added that there may not be one best system and there is no way to impose one total design solution.

Giovanni Sartori (Columbia University) commented further that confusion surrounds the idea of 'power-sharing' and its relationship to consociational theory. Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) concluded that the process of institutional change is as important as theories of institutional design, adding that group autonomy and federalism will be crucial to constitutional design in the next millennium.

Addressing the power-sharing versus majoritarian debate Reynolds maintained that power-sharing is not restricted to one type of system; instead he identified a five-type scheme. Olga Shvetstova (Washington University, St. Louis), in her analysis of the countries of East Central Europe, maintained that the focus of constitutional design should be on institutions' ability to promote or inhibit short-term processes of coalition making within a transitional party system.

Commentators Vincent Maphai (former head of the South African Presidential Review Commission) and Steven Levitsky (Harvard University) asked if Shvetstova's conclusions regarding postcommunist transitions were generalizable to other contexts.

Taking up the topic of presidentialism versus parliamentarism José Antonio Cheibub (University of Pennsylvania) asked if the institutional explanations of democratic instability in Latin America, primarily focused on weaknesses in presidentialism, could stand up to empirical investigation. Timothy Frye (Ohio State University) gave a political economy account of why some postcommunist presidents expand their powers while others cannot.

John Carey (Washington University, St. Louis) welcomed the focus on the variation among types of presidentialism and extended Frye's conclusions to Latin America.

Turning to decentralization, federalism, and autonomy, Linz and Stepan described their work in progress on the costs and benefits of federalism for managing conflict. Since the term 'federalism' is ambiguous in the political science literature, they distinguished between 'coming-together' and 'holding-together' federal arrangements. Steven Solnick (Columbia University) examined bargaining between central and regional powers in transitional states. Bernard Grofman (University of California, Irvine) complimented Solnick's use of game-theoretic principles to discuss federalism. He reinforced Stepan's caution about the US federal system, which may offer no important lessons to other multinational states since it is such an unusual case of federalism. Ruth Lapidoth (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) added that the constitutional design literature describes at least three different types of autonomy (territorial, administrative, and cultural).

In her discussion of electoral system design in new democracies Pippa Norris (Harvard University) found that the latest Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) survey data do not confirm consociational theory's claim that proportional representation party-list systems produce greater minority ethnic group satisfaction than do straight majoritarian systems.

The very possibility of defining electoral systems was questioned by Rein Taagepera (University of California, Irvine). He recommended that scholars and advisors should keep electoral rules simple and that countries in transition should maintain an electoral system for at least three cycles before making any changes.

Dieter Nohlen agreed with Taagepera's pessimism regarding the science of electoral systems. Cheryl Saunders (University of Melbourne, Australia) and Nigel Roberts (Victoria University at Wellington, New Zealand) welcomed Taagepera's attention to the unintended consequences of institutional design. Roberts praised Norris's use of survey research as the future in constitutional design studies.

In a roundtable to discuss the experience of practitioners in constitutional design, Jørgen Elklit (University of Aarhus, Denmark) gave humorous examples to illustrate the distance between scholarly work and the decision calculus of elites in transition contexts. Peter Manikas (National Democratic Institute) concurred that constitutional development is a political process in which power relations among participating parties are more influential than scholarly discourse on the best system of design.

John Packer (Legal Adviser to the High Commissioner on Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) emphasized that Westphalian nations of self-determination appear increasingly unworkable. Carina Perelli (Director of the Electoral Assistance Division, UN Department of Political Affairs) confirmed Taagepera's point that the adoption of systems is rarely a coherent process. Richard Soudriette (President of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems) encouraged electoral assistance professionals to exchange information through networks.

In the penultimate panel, on constitutional design and conflict management, Brij Lal (Australian National University) discussed the Constitutional Review Commission in Fiji. Brendan O'Leary (London School of Economics) described Northern Ireland as a case that blends consociational and integrative theory. Bereket Selassie (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) described civic education and public discussion in Eritrea preceding constitutional change, stressing public ownership of institutional change for achieving stable outcomes.

William Liddle (Ohio State University) examined three Indonesian crises: the challenge to Suharto, the uncertainties following Suharto's resignation, and the 1999 presidential election.

Rotimi Suberu (Woodrow Wilson Center) discussed the Nigerian experience, based on work coauthored with Larry Diamond.

David Stuligross (University of California, Berkeley) and Ashutosh Varshney (Kellogg/ Government Department) argued that political institutions have played a major role in effectively managing interethnic violence in India's multiethinic democracy.

In a final roundtable discussion of lessons learnt, Stepan advocated finding analytically distinct categories in the debate over presidentialism and parliamentarism. Sartori, unlike many participants, held out hope for a predictive science of institutional design. Nohlen asked that theory distinguish between countries where institutions matter and those where they may not. Linz emphasized that too much attention has been given to electoral systems.

Lijphart asked if we know enough about institutional design and outcomes to make any policy prescriptions. He concluded that consociational theory can provide specific recommendations for divided societies. Horowitz called for more work on the failures of institutional design, such as the Bosnian case, to determine what encourages stalemate and breakdown as well as studies of the exceptional cases, such as the United States, to see how and why they work.

Katharine M. Belmont