Published
Sep. 29, 2014 5:46 PM
José Antonio Cheibub
In this article, I discuss the role of political institutions in democratic consolidation. Regarding the forms of democratic government, I like to think that there are essentially two: those with a separation of powers and those that require assembly confidence. The first are typical presidential democracies, systems with constitutions that prescribe a fixed term in office for both a popularly and independently elected president and a congress. The second are the parliamentary (and semi-presidential) democracies, in which the government must be at least tolerated by a parliamentary majority in order to exist. I will therefore focus on the effect of political institutions, whether parliamentary or presidential, on democratic consolidation.