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This chapter examines the theory and practice of the various approaches to the sharing and dividing of governing power in the Asia-Pacific. It first looks at the broad issues of executive structure and the distinction between presidential and parliamentary systems across the region, at the divergent approaches taken by Asian and Pacific states to both formal and informal practices of executive inclusion, and at the empirical relationship between these variables and broader goals of political stability. An ‘index of power-sharing’ is constructed to compare the horizontal sharing of powers over time. The experience of vertical power-sharing via measures such as federalism, devolution, and autonomy is then considered. Overall, the evidence suggests that while informal executive power-sharing practices have been relatively successful, formal requirements for inclusive cabinets have been dogged by problems.

This is a comparative introduction to elections and electoral systems in Africa. The first section is a historical overview, which points out that although elections have been an integral part of African politics since political independence, they take place with a wide range of frequencies and under very difficult political conditions. The second section discusses the types of electoral systems found: parliamentary and presidential (or semipresidential). The last section discusses the problem of compiling electoral statistics.

This chapter presents accountability as an inherently vertical relationship. It discusses the conflicts between vertical accountability, horizontal exchange, and superintendence in presidential systems. It is argued that the relations between agents of the state are a function of their connections to the ultimate principal — the citizenry. The proliferation of superintendence agencies may raise expectations that cannot be met without an overhaul of the institutions of vertical accountability in Latin America.

Begins by pointing out that the concept of institutional engineering was not invented for the latest wave of transitions from dictatorship to democracy, but rather created for evaluating a democratic country at a time when it was in crisis. In Eastern Europe, a peculiar constellation of old and new elites led the way through the process of compromise between old and new forces and old and new institutions. Voters’ increased fickleness and a weaker party system left more room for manoeuver to institutional engineers. This chapter describes and analyses four models of institutional engineering: constitutional engineering; semi‐presidential systems; electoral laws; and decision‐making by plebiscite. These models are then compared with the paths of transition of selected Eastern European countries and contrasted with countries from Western Europe.

The final chapter reviews the major findings. It also discusses the practical implications of these findings reiterating that the focus of constitution designers on the election mechanism of the head of state is largely misplaced because for many important aspects of the functioning of the regime, this selection mechanism has little, if any, effect. This chapter then addresses the theoretical implications of the project underlining that treating indirectly elected presidents differently from directly elected ones is not justified: semi-presidential systems and those with indirectly elected presidents are very similar in many aspects. This chapter concludes with summarizing this book's contribution to the study of political institutions and democratic theory.

Substantial cross‐national variations have been demonstrated in political support/institutional confidence; the aim of this chapter is to investigate why these major differences between countries exist. It identifies at least three separate schools of thought seeking to explain this phenomenon: the role of cultural values, government performance, and political institutions. Comparisons are made among a broad range of political systems, drawing on the 1981–4, 1990–1 and 1995–7 World Values Surveys, the Latinobarometer and the Eurobarometer, and various support hypotheses are advanced (support for the party in government; dependence on level of democratization; differences between presidential and parliamentary systems (executive structure); variation with party system; differences between federal and unitary state structures; and variation with electoral system) and tested. The findings indicate that institutional confidence is most likely to be highest in parliamentary democracies characterized by plurality electoral systems, two‐party or moderate multi‐party systems, and unitary states, and that these relationships are confirmed even after controlling for differences in levels of economic development and post‐material values; social background and education are also related to institutional confidence, while the influence of socioeconomic status and gender are very modest. The results replicate one of the main theoretical principles of Anderson and Guillory (1997)—that winners express more confidence in the system than losers, and they also show that majoritarian institutions tend to produce greater institutional confidence than consociational arrangements.

Assembles cross‐national data to demonstrate the behavioural consequences of partisan dealignment. Without the reinforcement of habitual party ties, more voters are waiting longer to decide for whom they will vote, and in the countries where ticket splitting is possible, more are dividing their party choices. Candidate‐centred politics appears to be on the rise, although this is much more pronounced in presidential than parliamentary systems, and signifying the different style of dealignment politics, participation in campaigns and volunteer work for political parties is decreasing. In short, partisan dealignment is transforming the relationship between some voters and political parties—a relationship that was once seen as an essential element in the process of representative government.

Describes the process of adopting a new constitution in post‐communist Lithuania. The reasoning behind the quick adoption of a constitution was the urgent need to create links to Western constitutional traditions, to legitimize the country's independence from the USSR, and to distinguish Lithuania from other Soviet satellite states. The Constitution was intended to contribute to the perception of Lithuania as an independent state in the international community, in the hope of securing itself from possible re‐annexation to the Soviet Union. Furthermore, the chapter points out that despite its quick adoption, the constitution includes important safeguards for democracy, such as the balance of powers and basic rights.

Indira Gandhi's Congress(I) roundly defeated the Janata Party in the elections of January 1980, but the approximately five years of her ‘second reign’ were not happy ones for the country. Neither Mrs Gandhi nor her critics could shake loose from the past, and they had bitter memories of each other. These years bought renewed attention to constitutional issues such as the independence of the judiciary and the calibre of judges and changing from a parliamentary to a presidential system — with its obvious implications for the relationship between the legislative and the executive branches of government. Of all the ghosts from past governments that haunted the opening years of the decade, that of ‘authoritarianism’ was pervasive. The language Mrs Gandhi and her supporters used reinforced impressions that their sentiments were anti-democratic.

Using an experimental approach, this chapter tackles the endogeneity problem of leader effects and disentangles the relationship between political and apolitical factors in the formation of judgments on political leaders: to what extent are evaluations of leaders the product of political considerations and to what extent are they solely based on their character traits? A second objective of the chapter is to analyse the institutional effects of parliamentary and presidential elections on the influence of character assessments on vote choices. The results of three experiments conducted in France, Germany, and Sweden suggest that perceptions of character traits are heavily influenced by the political assessments of candidates. Supposedly apolitical evaluations of political leaders will then often have a political foundation. In addition, the experiments revealed an institutional effect indicating a stronger influence of leader traits in presidential elections than in parliamentary elections.

This chapter examines whether the role of leader characteristics in parliamentary systems, where political parties are traditionally stronger, is similar to the one in a presidential system. Analyses of parliamentary and presidential systems show that leader traits such as leadership capabilities, trustworthiness, reliability, and empathy are closely related to the overall image of political leaders as well as to the eventual voting decision. In other words, politically relevant and performance-related leader traits are important criteria for voters’ political judgements and decisions, and this importance is fairly similar across the political systems analysed.

This chapter deals with the question of the relative influence of different types of liberal democratic institutional arrangement on the capacities of leadership. It notes that in the institutionalist approach to leadership, there has long been the theoretical assumption that parliamentary systems are more likely to generate better leadership outcomes than presidential ones, but that, surprisingly, empirical research fails to support this. The central argument is that institutionalists have handled the problems of equifinality (where different starting points can lead to identical outcomes) and multifinality (where similar starting points lead to quite different outcomes) very poorly. We must therefore be very careful drawing conclusions about the implications of institutional analysis for any type of leadership, good or bad.

Electoral laws are often regarded as the key factors structuring party competition. Yet, despite having very similar electoral systems, reflecting a shared colonial legacy, the United States (U.S.) and Canada have had very different party systems. For the past 100 years, the U.S. is perhaps the most consistently two-party system among the world’s major democracies, but during this same period Canada has experienced considerable variation in the number of parties represented in Parliament at the national level. This chapter addresses both the causes and consequences of this puzzling divergence in party systems in the two countries. We also compare a number of other features of the two nation’s electoral institutions, including campaign finance rules, rules for constituency boundary drawing, bicameralism, and the mechanism for the selection of the executive, with particular attention to the U.S. Electoral College and its alleged link with two-partyism. We also examine the policy consequences of the divergence in party systems and look at the way in which party competition in the two countries may affect voter turnout.

This chapter discusses the Forty-second Amendment itself. It summarizes the essence of the Forty-second Amendment, the government's and critics' contention over it, and considers the puzzle of the amendment's drafting. It also examines examine a strange event of the time: an apparent attempt to derail the amendment entirely and substitute a presidential for the parliamentary system. Mrs Gandhi's wrenching of the seamless web brought the repudiation of the Emergency, her government's downfall, and the repeal of the Forty-second Amendment. So was proved what the founding fathers knew: that the character of the country depended upon the integrity of the web, which depended on the health and strength of its individual strands.

This chapter focuses on the presidential system of Indonesia. The amendments to the 1945 Constitution have transformed the constitution from a vague and incomplete document rooted in the antidemocratic political philosophy of organic statism into a more coherent, complete, democratic framework for a presidential system with significant separation of powers and checks and balances. The very fact that Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world did not lead Islamic political parties to propose that Indonesia should become an Islamic state. According to the amendments, Indonesia remains a republic, with a presidential system and three branches of government. The chapter discusses the form of the Indonesian state, method of election, requirements, accountability, and relationship among the executive, the parliament, and the judiciary.

The chapter seeks to explain the distinctive combination of a relatively formidable investiture rule and a high incidence of minority cabinets in post-communist Romania as the outcome of two factors: (1) the semi-presidential political system shaping the investiture rules, with both the parliament and the President playing significant roles, and (2) the frequency of party switching, which enables the formation of ad hoc legislative coalitions supporting minority cabinets.