Changing Patterns of Democracy: A Dimensional Approach

Philipp Harfst Greifswald University

pharfst@uni-greifswald.de

Henrike Schultze Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)

schultze@wzb.eu

Ferdinand Müller-Rommel Leuphana University Lüneburg

muero@uni.leuphana.de

Paper presented at the ECPR General Conference, Reykjavík, August 25.-27. 2011

Draft version Please do not quote without permission.

Comments welcome

Abstract This paper introduces a new approach to the conceptualization of patterns of democracy. The concept is based on a three dimensional approach that combines power-concentrating and power-dispersing effects of electoral and legislative decision-making rules as well as configurations of political actors. This dimensional approach is better suitable to map changes in institutional arrangements than the classical, mostly bipolar, typologies because changes in each dimension can be traced individually. The paper corroborates its conceptual reasoning with empirical findings from ten Central Eastern European parliamentary democracies (1995–2004). Thus, the paper contributes to the theoretical and empirical debate about how to map institutional developments in modern democracies.

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1 Introduction

Empirical research on democracy faces different theoretical and methodological challenges

that arise when interactions between institutional arrangements and the behaviour of political

actors are used to explain policy performance (for a summary cf. Roller, 2005). These

challenges are reflected in widespread discussions on different types of democracy. Although

there is consensus that levels of performance vary between different types of democracy, the

exact specification of this relationship remains controversial (Schmidt, 2002, p. 148).

Doubtlessly the most influential approach in this tradition is Arend Lijphart’s (1999) Patterns

of Democracy. Lijphart (1999) in his analysis differentiates between two ideal types of

democracy: the consensus and the majoritarian democracy (on the development of types of

democracy cf. Lijphart, 1977, 1984, 1999, 2000). Furthermore, recent theoretical

developments led scholars to look at changes of institutions (Greif & Laitin, 2004; Mahoney

& Thelen, 2010; Streeck & Thelen, 2005). We believe that this new perspective brings

additional challenges in terms of empirical identification and confirmation of different types

of democracies to political science. Beyond the identification of stable patterns or types it is

necessary to enable approaches to account for institutional change (or stability) in liberal

democracies in an empirical sound and internationally comparable manner.

According to Fuchs (Fuchs, 2000, p. 41), Lijphart introduces “empirical characteristics that

correspond to constellations of actors” and “formal (constitutional) characteristics” in the

discussion on types of democracy. In this respect, Lijphart’s approach conforms to one of the

central claims of neo-institutionalism that aims at a combination of an actors and an

institutional perspective (Peters, 1996; Rothstein, 1996). Even though Lijphart’s Patterns of

Democracy has been labelled „pathbreaking“ (Armingeon, 2002, p. 82; Schmidt, 2000), the

study has been widely discussed (for a summary cf. Müller-Rommel, 2007; Roller, 2005). We

can distinguish a methodological critique and concerns with his conceptual decisions.

Critics highlighting methodological problems point to the development of different types of

democracy. Bogaards (2000) for example discovers an incongruence between the two polar

types of majoritarian and consensual democracy and the relevant empirical indicators.

Additionally there is some doubt whether each of Lijphart’s indicators really matches the

respective dimension (Schmidt, 2000, p. 350) and whether the operationalisation of individual

indicators as well as their unweighted contribution to the dimensions are justified

(Armingeon, 2002; Kaiser, 1998; Schmidt, 2000, p. 341).

The research for this paper has been supported by a grant of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG Mu 618/14). We would like to thank Katja Fettelschoß, Jessica Fortin, Detlef Jahn, Kati Kuitto and Holger Meyer for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

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With regard to conceptual concerns, Ganghof (2005) identifies Lijphart’s attempt to describe

democratic types by using indicators that intermingle institutional rules and forms of

behaviour as particularly problematic. There is a widely shared agreement in the discipline

that institutional arrangements guide behaviour by setting the rules of the game that define the

relevant actors and their roles. Roles defined by institutions frame the expectations of what

actors are allowed and ought to do (North, 1990). Since actors are familiar with these rules,

they can be expected to develop an adaptive and / or anticipatory behaviour to compensate

institutional effects. Combining institutional rules and behaviour in one indicator than

encounters the risk that institutional effects and behavioural counterstrategies cancel each

other out in an empirical analysis. In addition, many researchers consider Lijphart’s one-

dimensional conceptualisation of democratic patterns debatable as he uses it to classify

democracies empirically despite of his analytical distinction of two dimensions (Bogaards,

2000; Ganghof, 2005; Kolk, 2000; Nagel, 2000).

These criticisms are confirmed by attempts to apply Lijphart’s concept empirically in further

studies. Fortin (2008) and Roberts (2006) for example show that the ideal types of consensus

and majoritarian democracy cannot be found in new Central and Eastern European

democracies. This can be understood as a hint that Lijphart’s concept of patterns of

democracy cannot be used in different contexts. This finding can also be interpreted as a

strong indicator for the fact that Lijphart’s typology is in general unable to identify different

types of democracy.

Additionally, even though Lijphart (1999, pp. 253-257) himself recognizes the importance of

“shifts on [his] conceptual map” that were supposed to account for institutional changes in the

patterns of democracy, he does not explore these shifts in a systematic manner but discusses

them rather impressionistically using purely illustrating examples from individual countries.

These examples suggest that the shifts Lijphart identifies in the overall type of democracy

stem from changes in individual indicators like the one for party systems. Unfortunately, these

changes, due to the aggregate character of Lijphart’s democratic patterns, cannot be traced

systematically / adequately. This is problematic as it contradicts the idea of identifying types

of democratic systems based on the interrelation of its single sub-systems that would allow in

addition for a systematic analysis of the nature of the change of these systems over time.

Since in Ganghofs opinion the methodological and conceptual problems cannot be remedied

within the original concept (Ganghof, 2005, p. 408) he consequentially advocates a newly

developed typology of democracy that overcomes the shortcomings of Lijphart’s concept and

is therefore better able to systematically explain different performance levels in democratic

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states. The same argument is advanced by a number of contributions that critically review

Lijphart’s typology of democratic regimes. Hence, based on the insights generated by

Lijphart, it is necessary to test alternative explanations and variables (Armingeon, 2002, p. 89

ff), to experiment with different revised types of democracy (Armingeon, 2002; Kaiser, 1997,

1998) and, above all, to systematically attempt to analyse the effects of different combinations

of institutional sub-systems on political performance. This more differentiated analysis

addressing sub-systems will also enable us to focus on changes in each sub-system

individually and derive thereof more detailed information on the change in the overall system.

Additionally, it is essential to apply these concepts to different world regions in order to

critically asses their capacity to travel across contexts. At the moment, most typologies of

democracy have only been applied to established Western democracies. Therefore, especially

the new parliamentary democracies in Central and Eastern Europe that today can be labelled

consolidated require closer inspection. This article aims at closing this research gap. Based on

the existing literature we develop a new concept for the description of patterns or types of

democracy and apply it to consolidated Central and Eastern European parliamentary

democracies. In doing so, we remedy the conceptual, theoretical and methodological

shortcomings of existing concepts.

We state that the typological analysis in the tradition of Lijphart is – for methodological as

well as for theoretical reasons – less able to determine the pattern of democracy of a given

state than a dimensional analysis of parliamentary democracies. We hypothesise that the

performance of democratic systems does not depend on the consensual or majoritarian

character of a polity. Rather, its performance depends on different combinations of formal

institutional structures and constellations of political actors. What is more, the different

dimensions will allow to systematically exhibit different patterns of change over time. In

particular, the dimensional approach is better suited to map changes in the structural

arrangement of democratic systems than aggregated patterns because changes in each

dimension can be observed individually. This allows for analysing the effect of changes in the

sub-systems of different institutional settings and the constellation of actors on the changes to

the overall type of the democratic system.

In a nutshell, this article presents an analytical framework for the description of patterns of

democracy that firmly rests on a theoretical foundation. In contrast to Lijphart’s approach, this

concept provides different dimensions for institutional characteristics and those regime

attributes related to political actors. In this framework, we do not aggregate the different

dimensions into one typology, but explicitly – and in opposition to most of the current

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concepts – maintain each dimension separately. Each dimension is characterised by its power

concentrating and power dispersing effects. These effects will most likely vary across time

periods, countries, and dimensions. The importance of the different combinations of these

dimensions over time and between countries stems from their varying power concentrating

and power dispersing effects on the political decision making process. As a result, our

approach prevents the artificial reduction to ideal types like majoritarian and consensus

democracy but allows for the identification of different and possibly changing hybrid types. In

our view, this enables us to provide a more adequate description of modern democracies.

By concentrating on the combination of different power concentrating and dispersing

institutional characteristics and actor constellations, we propose a concept that enables us to

consistently explain different levels of democratic and policy performance across varying

contexts. We apply this newly developed concept empirically to consolidated parliamentary

democracies in Central and Eastern Europe in order to close the research gap that exists on

this region.

We proceed as follows: We first critically review the refinements to Lijphart’s Patterns of

Democracy that have been proposed by Ganghof (2005), Freitag, and Vatter (Freitag &

Vatter, 2009; Vatter, 2009). Building on this literature, we secondly develop an alternative

conceptualisation that systematically avoids the pitfalls and shortcomings of the existing

proposals and allows for a time variant description of political regimes. Third, we propose an

empirical operationalisation of this alternative concept. In the remainder of this article, we

empirically apply this new concept to Central and Eastern European democracies in order to

characterise these systems. We end with a summary and a discussion of the advantages and

limits of dimensional patterns of democracy. The focus of this article is therefore the

presentation of conceptional considerations and the demonstration of their empirical

applicability. With this contribution we wish to provide a theoretically guided and empirically

founded grounding for future quantitative analyses of political performance in different

contexts.

2 State of Research

Especially Ganghof (2005) has stimulated the theoretical discussion on the definition of

different types of parliamentary democracy. He proposes to further differentiate Lijphart’s

(1999) executive-parties dimension into two separate dimensions. In order to achieve this

differentiation, he discerns two decision rules: the electoral decision rule that captures the

effects of the electoral institutions in place; and the legislative decision rule that describes the

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effect of veto institutions in the law making process. Based on works by Scharpf (1997) and

Schmidt (2000), Ganghof (2005, pp. 416-420) in addition includes the effects of actor

constellations in the analyses of performance differences between regime types. The actor

constellation in this context is defined as the interaction between government and parliament.

Finally, in order to derive specific assumptions on the performance of governments and

governmental systems, Ganghof (2005, pp. 421-423) discusses how the characteristics of

different regime types affect the capacity of governmental majority and opposition to agree.

With his approach, Ganghof convincingly argues that the electoral and legislative decision

rules have to be considered as equally important basic dimensions of democratic political

systems (also see Fuchs, 2000). In doing so, he provides a central key for the

conceptualisation of relevant institutional dimensions in a neo-institutional analysis of

different types or patterns of democracy. Nonetheless, two problems remain: First, Ganghof

treats the effects of the electoral and legislative decision rules as additive. This allows him to

match his concept with Nagel’s (2000) conceptualisation of different types of political

regimes which emphasises the inclusion of voter preferences. Unfortunately, the additive

nature of Ganghof’s concept finally again leads to a one dimensional model of democracy that

disguises relevant differences in regime characteristics. Second, and in contrast to his own

theoretical reflections, Ganghof, in the operationalisation of his dimensions of democracy,

intermingles behaviour of political actors and institutional arrangements. These two problems

in Ganghof’s conceptualisation are surprising since his critical reading of Lijphart explicitly

concentrated on the one dimensional character of and the confounding of behaviour and

institutions in Patterns of Democracy.

Another attempt to elaborate on Lijphart’s Patterns of Democracy has recently been proposed

by Vatter (2009). Instead of the two polar types of democracy described by Lijphart, Vatter

identifies “three dimensions of democracy”. After solving the methodological problems in

Lijphart’s analysis, his main concern is the inclusion of instruments of direct democracy into

the analysis. In doing so, and analysing 23 modern OECD democracies, he finds three

dimensions of democracy. Two of these dimensions more or less reproduce Lijphart’s

analysis, while the third dimension combines the share of oversized coalitions and the

institutions of direct democracy. In their analysis of the German Länder, Freitag and Vatter

(2009) describe a similar pattern. After including direct democracy into the analysis, they also

find three dimensions of democracy, even though these dimensions differ from those

presented in Vatter’s (2009) international comparison: in the case of the German Länder,

executive-legislative relations instead of the share of oversized coalitions load on the same

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factor as the strength of direct democracy; additionally, the degree of decentralisation clusters

with the type of cabinet, the electoral disproportionality and the number of parties. All in all,

Freitag and Vatter again solve the methodological problems inherent in Lijphart’s study by

resorting to a different operationalisation of several indicators and by using a coherent sample

of cases. Furthermore, the inclusion of institutions of direct democracy is well argued: it is

doubtlessly a core concept of consensual democracy. Nonetheless, neither of these studies

copes with the conceptual critique Ganghof (2005) formulated with respect to Lijphart’s

approach. On the contrary: both studies exactly follow Lijphart’s path in the purely inductive

identification of patterns of democracy. As a result the approach by Vatter and Freitag / Vatter

is problematic with regard to two aspects. Questionable is first the lack of conceptual

considerations as they, based on the result of a factor analysis, combine variables into three

dimensions without any prior theoretical reflections on the logic of power concentrating and

dispersing elements of democratic systems. This results in combinations of elements from

both domains which is meaningless with regard to the differentiation of specific regime types

as well as the explanation of their performance. Additionally, neither study clearly

differentiates between institutional arrangements and political actors’ behaviour. This

problem in Vatter’s (2009) case even occurs at the level of individual indicators: alongside

with institutional characteristics, his index of direct democracy also includes a measure of the

use of instruments of direct democracy. The same is true for the indicator on electoral

systems, Gallagher’s (1991) disproportionality measure, that Vatter (2009) adopts from

Lijphart (1999). The indicator is not only influenced by institutional arrangements but also by

the behaviour of parties and voters (cf R. Taagepera, 2003). This is, as stated above,

problematic with respect to distinguish between institutional necessities and adaptive

behaviour to compensate for these. In sum, Vatter’s and Freitag / Vatter’s approach is as

problematic as Lijphart’s with respect to conceptualisation and therefore cannot be considered

as a beneficial development of the concept of patterns of democracy in this context.

To summarise the review of the recent literature on patterns of democracy, we can conclude

that Ganghof’s (2005) proposal to systematically differentiate between electoral and

legislative decision rules and behaviour of political actors is important, innovative and

theoretically far reaching. Unfortunately, neither Ganghof (2005) himself nor Freitag and

Vatter (Freitag & Vatter, 2009; Vatter, 2009) have respected these conceptional developments

in their contributions. In our view, it is therefore necessary to underline again the importance

and the potential of a differentiated and theoretically guided look at patterns of democracy

that allows for the analysis of temporal variance. We aim at closing a gap in very often too

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inductive comparative political science by developing theoretically and applying empirically a

new and truly dimensional concept of patterns of democracy that differentiates two purely

institutional decision rules and the behaviour of political actors. This concept can be used

fruitfully in further research to explain different levels of systemic and democratic

performance.

3 Alternative Conceptionalisations

3.1 Conceptional Foundations

In order to overcome the theoretical shortcomings of existing concepts for the identification of

patterns of democracy, we first need to clarify the aims of such a concept. Only on this basis,

a logically consistent and theoretically convincing model can be formulated.

Generally speaking, the existing approaches to the identification of distinct types of

democracy describe these types on the basis of certain observable characteristics. Theses

types are than used to explain differences in the quality or performance of the respective

regimes. Performance is a rather broad concept: In general we can distinguish between

systemic and democratic performance (Almond & Powell, 1978; Eckstein, 1971; Fuchs,

2000). Systemic performance is usually understood as the performance related to specific

policies (as measures of societies’ ability to problem solving) whereas democratic

performance is related to the quality in which democratic values and rights are granted to the

citizens. We tie on these basic considerations. Our newly devised concept will discern

different institutional and actor related characteristics that can be directly linked to differences

in democratic and systemic performance and explain these differences.

In this context, we can build on Nagel (2000) who bases his typology on the capacity of a

system to include voter preferences. This results in a continuum ranging from dictatorship to

unanimity. To base an attempt to define types of democratic systems on the inclusion of voter

preferences is promising since it allows link the concept to democratic as well as to systemic

performance. Voter preferences relate to democratic performance in that they introduce the

guarantee of political freedoms and human rights as well as representation. They additionally

introduce the systemic performance into the model since systemic performance can be

understood as the capacity of a system to translate preferences into policies. On this account

the starting point of our model building is the capacity of a political system to include voter

preferences. We assume that this capacity is defined by characteristics of a polity.

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In addition, our approach is designed in order to adequately capture structural change in

modern democracies. Structural change can occur in institutional settings as well as in the

constellation of political actors.

With regard to the first, the change of institutional settings, in the economic literature,

(formal) political institutions in general are often considered to be able to be subjected to a

“change by authoritative decision” (Roland, 2004, p. 116). By means of ‘constitutional

engineering’, institutional settings from electoral rules to the concentration of power between

executive and legislative, can be changed by political decision of the democratic legitimized

majority. Yet, despite the potential for change through authoritative decision making, political

institutions are not uniformly easy to amend, nor are changes necessarily abrupt and

revolutionary: political institutions are also subject to gradual changes. Armingeon and Careja

(2008) therefore distinguish between two types of institutions according to their rigidity: the

institutional core of the political system and flexible parts. The institutional core is amendable

only with difficulty and usually represents the foundations of the political system that are

codified in constitutions. Alongside the core features of political systems, Armingeon and

Careja distinguish a category of “flexible” institutions that are more amenable to reform and

thus can be transformed more easily. Further, Campbell (2004, p. 5) argues that institutional

change cannot be faithfully described if we fail to consider different “institutional

dimensions” in a polity. If we look at only one (or several irrelevant) institutional

dimension(s), we might overlook important modifications. Therefore, we have to carefully

choose individual institutions and their dimensions if we are interested in how modern

political systems evolve.

In addition, with regard to the second kind of structural change of a democratic polity, the

change in patterns of actor constellation that systematically define the characteristics of the

political system, the literature suggests, that these are of a faster, more rapidly varying nature.

With our newly proposed concept to distinguish different patterns of democracy we therefore

first intend to identify the relevant dimensions that potentially drive systemic and democratic

performance. Furthermore, we aim to differentiate between hypothetically more rigid core

dimensions and more flexible characteristics of a polity. Our three dimensional approach will

fulfill these requirements.

3.2 A three dimensional conception of patterns of democracy

Neo-institutional models of types of democracy assume that the characteristics of a political

system are defined by the interplay of institutional arrangements and behaviour of political

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actors. Institutions define resources and restrictions for the action of the relevant actors and

their roles. The institutionalist approach has demonstrated the explanatory power of

institutional arrangements for outputs and outcomes in various policy fields (Castles, 1982;

Lijphart, 1999; Roller, 2005; Schmidt, 1982). Nonetheless, we believe that political outcomes

and outputs can only be consistently explained when both, institutions and behaviour are

taken into account (Scharpf, 1997). Therefore, the cornerstone of our concept is the following

reflection: democratic and systemic performance cannot be explained by institutional

arrangements alone. Institutions structure but not fully predetermine the behaviour of the

relevant political actors. Any political decision is significantly affected by their behaviour.

Therefore, a concept that aims at the explanation of political performance has to comprise

both institutions and behaviour. Additionally, we assume that institutions belong to the core

elements of a state’s institutional arrangement whereas behaviour, even though it is influenced

by institutions, represents the flexible part of our analysis. In order to map the interactions

between different institutional and behavioural dimensions and to capture their temporal

variations, each dimension has to be explicitly examined and operationalised individually.

Consequently, in our analysis we focus explicitly on each dimension’s particular effect on the

inclusion of voter preferences.

Based on these assumptions and theoretical postulates, we have to answer the question how

institutional arrangements and political actors’ behaviour can be incorporated into our model

in order to adequately grasp the effects of a political system’s elements on its performance as

well as its potentially changing nature. To answer this question, we have to recognise the

central role of majorities for the political process in a democracy. Gaining a majority is

necessary not only for access to political offices but also when political power shall be used to

change the societal or legislative status quo. The majority requirement, regardless whether the

selection of personnel or specific decisions are concerned, therefore is vital for the democratic

process.

Since a democratic majority always depends on voter support, it is possible to translate a

political system’s capacity to include people’s preferences into the decision rules it has

implemented on a formal and behavioural level. These decision rules base on the

characteristics of a given political system and can, depending on their relevant thresholds,

either have a power concentrating or a power dispersing effect. More power concentrating

systems include a lower number of voter preferences while more power dispersing systems

impose higher majority requirements and force decision makers to include a larger number of

voters and their preferences to take collectively binding decisions.

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In the following, we elaborate on how institutional arrangements and actors’ behaviour relate

to the majority requirements and the respective decision rules in a given political system.

With regard to institutional arrangements we differentiate two relevant dimensions:

According to Fuchs (2000, pp. 31-34), the role of formally defined institutional characteristics

of a political system boils down to the selection of rulers and to the provisions governing the

exercise of power. In our reading, these two roles of political institutions and their effects are

defined by two decision rules: the electoral decision rule, embodied in the electoral system;

and the legislative decision rule, embodied in the veto institutions of a democratic polity.

Therefore, the relevant decision rules in a given system are shaped by the formal rules on the

electoral system and the system of government respectively. By translating the elements of

the electoral and governmental systems into the more general electoral and legislative

decision rules, we gain analytical clarity. With this translation we are able to discern the

combined and individual power dispersing vs. power concentrating effects that each of these

elements within a particular pattern of democracy has on the capacity to include voter

preferences. Even though the effects of the electoral and the legislative dimensions manifest

themselves at different stages of the political process, they are nonetheless comparable in that

they both increase or decrease the number of voter preferences that need to be included to be

able to fulfil the majority requirement to take collectively binding decisions. The electoral

decision rule unfolds an effect on the inclusion of preferences at a very early stage in the

political process as it defines the number of voters a party or actor needs as supporters in

order to gain a majority. The legislative decision rule in comparison has a more subsequent

effect on the preference inclusion as it affects the decision making of the actors that gained

majorities by overcoming the electoral decision rule. This is why both decision rules are part

of an encompassing concept of patterns of democracy. But even if they have comparable

effects, since they occur at different stages of the political process, they have to be regarded as

separate dimensions that cannot be aggregated and as a result artificially be forced into a polar

typology. This latter claim is especially relevant with regard to possible changes in these two

dimensions which will become invisible once the aggregation has taken place.

Electoral Decision Rule

Electoral systems are composed of several elements such as legal thresholds, district

magnitudes and electoral formulas that together influence its level of proportionality. The

level of proportionality in turn defines the number of voters whose preferences have to be

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included to gain the absolute majority of seats in parliament. Therefore, the electoral system

can be considered as the electoral decision rule of a given system.

Legislative Decision Rule

The electoral decision rule alone does not always capture the majority criterion that applies in

parliamentary votes and decisions that aim at a collectively binding and enduring

transformation of the legislative or societal status quo. Certain additional rules de facto might

increase the majority requirement and force decision makers subsequently to take into account

the preferences of additional voters. This leads to a deviation between the majority

requirements of the electoral and legislative decision rules. The need to include additional

voter preferences is defined by institutions of the governmental system that either directly or

indirectly increase the legislative decision rule. Direct increases can be observed if decisions

require qualified majorities. Indirect increases are caused by institutions with a certain

potential to veto parliamentary decisions. The literature on veto institutions is extremely rich

and diverse (Armingeon, 1996; Birchfeld & Crepaz, 1998; Colomer, 1996a; Crepaz, 2001;

Crepaz & Moser, 2004; Fuchs, 2000; Huber, Ragin, & Stephens, 1993; Kaiser, 1997;

McGann, 2006; Schmidt, 1996; Tsebelis, 1995, 2000). Generally speaking, we can determine

that veto institutions with an effect on the legislative decision rule are those institutions that

belong to the horizontal system of checks and balances. They exercise their veto power either

through primary or secondary control mechanisms. Primary control mechanisms rely to the

fact that the relevant institutions are explicit partners in any decision process, like second

chambers or institutions of direct democracy. Secondary control is exerted ex post through

mechanisms that set in only after a decision is taken. Examples are the retroactive control by

constitutional courts or veto powers of a president. Some of these procedures are limited to

certain thematically restrained areas. Depending on their formal characteristics, these

institutions affect the legislative decision rule in very different ways. In order to differentiate

generalised institutional patterns with effects on democratic and systemic performance, we do

not further consider thematically bound veto institutions. All other horizontal control

mechanisms however – regardless whether they belong to the primary or secondary control –

have a relevant and continuous effect on all parliamentary votes since we can reasonably

assume that parliamentary actors anticipate the effect of these veto institutions and try to

absorb them by including actors that represent additional voter preferences into their

decisions. These institutions therefore have to be taken into account in order to identify the

relevant elements defining different patterns of democracy.

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Political Actor Constellations

So far we defined the institutional characteristics of political systems. Missing in the

conceptualisation as yet is an argumentation of whether and how to include political actors or

their behaviour in a typology to identify different patterns of democracy. We believe that the

inclusion of actor and behaviour related aspects is in fact necessary in order to differentiate all

relevant characteristic of a political system since political actors might adapt to institutional

necessities, which leads to a potential compensation of institutional effects. At the same time,

behaviour is a more flexible element of a nation’s polity than institutional arrangements.

Therefore, behaviour has to be modelled separately in order to make potential changes visible.

From the neo-institutional literature we can draw the conclusion that political outputs and

outcomes can only be explained by the interplay of institutional arrangements and the

behaviour of political actors. We therefore propose a broadened concept of patterns of

democracy that goes beyond existing notions of democratic patterns by including political

actors. This approach ties with Ganghof’s (2005) and Schmidt’s (2000, p. 347) concepts who

both argue that political performance can only be realised through the behaviour of political

actors. Additionally, Ganghof points to the challenge that behaviour analytically has to be

treated separately from institutional arrangements. We therefore introduce the constellation of

actors as a third, independent dimension that supplements the two institutional dimensions. In

this behavioural dimension, in order to follow the logic of explaining democratic and systemic

performance, the focal point of the analysis is again the inclusion of voter preferences.

Political actors only are capable of acting if they adapt their behaviour to the relevant political

majorities. This is why political performance can, in the first place, be explained by the

majority seeking behaviour of political actors. Majority seeking behaviour conceptualised in

this understanding is observable behaviour that aims at the stabilisation and / or increase of

the majority status that is needed to override the hurdles set by the institutional decision rules.

Since we describe generalised patterns of democracy, we will nonetheless not look at

individual behaviour pertaining exclusively to a particular situation or even an actor’s

motivations and preferences. Instead, we concentrate on the result – or pattern – of political

actors’ behaviour. Majority seeking behaviour relating to political decisions and thereby to

political performance primarily manifests itself in the characteristics of governments. In the

context of government formation, political actors, who seek majorities, ultimately seek

influence on decision making processes. Beyond the numerical majority building the

ideological homogeneity of a government is relevant. It influences the decision making

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process since a more homogenous government will better be able to agree and compromise on

relevant political decisions. Therefore, the dimension of actor constellations combines

numerical as well as ideological patterns of governments as they are the behavioural elements

of the political system that affects its power concentrating or power dispersing characteristics.

The Three Dimensions of Patterns of Democracy

To sum our conceptual considerations up, we believe that patterns of democracy have to be

conceptualised in a three dimensional way. We combine two institutional and one behavioural

dimension: the electoral and legislative decision rules and the majority seeking constellation

of actors. These three dimensions have to be considered as individual dimensions that jointly

(but not in their aggregate) allow to identify and systematically compare the characteristics of

democratic systems over time and that jointly (but not in their aggregate) explain democratic

and systemic performance. We therefore propose a three dimensional pattern of parliamentary

democracies that combines elements of the electoral and governmental systems as well as the

constellations of actors in a dimensional way. The resulting three dimensional pattern of

democracy can be graphically represented in the following way.

[Figure 1 about here]

4 Three Dimensions of Democracy in Empirical Perspective

The following paragraphs are devoted to the empirical examination of our three dimensional

pattern of parliamentary democracy. First, we operationalise the three dimensions of our

concept. Second, we show that our theoretically derived concept can be empirically applied to

ten Central and Eastern European democracies in order to illustrate changes in these countries

over time. We demonstrate the viability of our concept with these cases for two reasons. First,

Lijphart’s (1999) typology – apart from the conceptual problems discussed above – cannot be

successfully employed in the context of the postcommunist world (Fortin, 2008). Secondly,

since systematically comparative research on the types of democracy in the region is scare,

there is a need to classify these systems in an adequate manner. By basing our empirical

exploration on ten states with a similar historical background and the prospect of a common

development within the European Union, we avoid the danger to mix up a “most similar” and

a “most dissimilar case design” (Przeworski & Teune, 1970), a criticism that confronted

Lijphart’s (1999) empirical study (Armingeon, 2002, p. 88). We collect yearly data for the

period from 1995 to 2004 as in this period, all ten states can be considered consolidated

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democracies (Blondel, Müller-Rommel, & Malová, 2007; Merkel, 2007; Schneider &

Schmitter, 2004). Yearly data for a relatively long time period also allows us to show the

modifications of the patterns of the democratic system over time.

4.1 Data Sources and Coding Techniques

In order to empirically account for Central and Eastern European patterns of democracy, we

first need to measure the individual indicators that operationalise the three dimensions. A

particular challenge is to exclusively incorporate those elements that influence the power

concentrating or dispersing character of a given political system. Since there is no data with

this specific focus available in disaggregated form, we have to resort to a primary data

collection. To assemble the relevant data for the electoral and legislative decision rules as well

as for the constellation of actors, we exploit electoral statistics, composition of parliaments

and governments (cf. Müller-Rommel, Fettelschoss, & Harfst, 2004; Müller-Rommel,

Schultze, Harfst, & Fettelschoß, 2008), and constitutional and legal texts. In addition, we rely

on secondary literature in order to validate our findings.1

The selection of information and variables we use all relate to the power concentrating or

dispersing potential of the formal institutions or the constellation of actors in question. In all

cases, this is characterised by a multitude of elements, which causes specific challenges for

the operationalisation. Some power related characteristics can only be measured in a

qualitative way and even if individual elements can be measured quantitatively, they often can

only be captured at different levels or scales of measurement (cf. Stevens, 1946). This reflects

the peculiarity of political systems that divide power in very particular ways by according

each institution or actor constellation a given share of veto power on political decisions. We

therefore face the challenge to describe each institution or actor constellation as gradually

equipped with (or without) veto potential. Since we aim to construct for each of the relevant

elements of the political system one indicator that reflects the joint power concentrating or

1 There is a number of indices and operationalization proposals for the description and classification of institutional arrangements some of which provide data for Central and Eastern European countries (see, for example Armingeon, Gerber, Leimgruber, & Beyeler, 2009; Fish, 2006; Johannsen, 2000; Krouwel, 2003; Rüb, 2001). These data sources cannot be used for the present analysis for two main reasons: First, they all publish the data on a level of aggregation that precludes a differentiated examination of individual dimensions of democracies. The endeavour to differentiate patterns of democracy in our conceptualization requires disaggregated data. Second, the reference point of our theoretical reasoning is the democratic and systemic performance of political systems. All approaches to the classification of political systems we are aware of first measure institutional characteristics and relate these to political performance only a posteriori. Therefore, these studies often include competences like the powers of a president in the state of emergency that do not have an influence on the result of parliamentary votes in general. Therefore, the use of these approaches and data sources is not possible in our particular case. We nonetheless use them as yardsticks and sources of inspiration.

15

dispersing effect of all these factors, we make use of a coding procedure that allows – in cases

it is necessary – to translate qualitative information into quantitative data.

Based on the discussions on social science methods for the conversion of qualitative

information into quantitative values (Bryman, 2004, pp. 65-69; Gerring, 2001, pp. 35-64;

Sartori, 1984), we develop for the operationalisation of qualitative characteristics an index

that bases on argumentative techniques. The development of this argumentative index profits

from advances in formal logic and the technique of fuzzy sets (Ragin, 2000). By using this

technique, we ensure that different levels or grades of power concentration or dispersion of a

given variable are able to describe the interplay of different formal characteristics of the

respective phenomenon adequately (Klir, Saint Clair, & Yuan, 1997; Zadeh, 1965, 1968).

As a result, in our analysis, the veto potential of political institutions and actor constellations

in parliamentary democracies is identified by the help of scales. This leads to the question

how to define the different scales. According to Ragin (2000, p. 7 and 150) the definition of

extreme points as well as indifference points has to be built on theoretical reasoning. In the

following, we therefore present the theoretical foundations of our concepts and justify the

categories we use (Hall, 2003, p. 389; Mahoney, 2003, p. 347). This leads to a scale for which

a) extreme values as ideal types of the concept under consideration (maximum veto

potential) or its complement (absence of veto potential) can be specified, but not

necessarily be observed;

b) there is a point of indifference or cross-over point where neither the concept under

consideration nor its complement can be found; and

c) there are gradual manifestations of the concept under consideration between the

extreme points and the point of indifference (Ragin, 2000, pp. 153-159; Schneider &

Wagemann, 2007).

In the coding process, all values between zero and one may be used. In our case, a value of 1

corresponds to the ideal type of an institution or actor constellation with high veto potential

while we code 0 for a perfect “non-veto” institution or actor constellation. The point of

indifference, coded 0.5, designates a situation in which a case cannot be classified (neither) as

rather belonging to nor as rather not belonging to the concept under consideration.

In the following we describe the operationalisation of the single elements within the given

three dimensions of the patterns of democracy with special regard for the coding procedure in

cases where qualitative information has to be translated in veto or power dispersing potential.

The use of this kind of coding procedure more often than not is confronted with the question

how it can be reproduced and how intercoder reliability can be assured. The only acceptable

16

answer in this case is a maximum of transparency in the coding process. In every single case,

it has to be exactly spelled out how the categories used are defined and understood and which

empirical observations lead to which coding decisions.

Dimension I: Electoral Decision Rule

The electoral decision rule reflects the proportionality of an electoral system. More

proportional electoral institutions have a power dispersing effect while less proportional

electoral system have a power concentrating effect. A proportional distribution of

parliamentary seats requires the inclusion of a large number of voter preferences in the

decision making process since more parties gain access to this process. Inversely, a

disproportional electoral system lowers the number of voter preferences that have to be

included in order to be able to take and implement collectively binding decisions.

Research on electoral systems has proposed a number of different indicators to measure the

institutional characteristics of electoral rules. In our context, it is important that the

“institutionalised” proportionality of the electoral rules in place instead of an amalgam of

institutional features and behaviour of relevant actors is reflected by the indicator. The latter is

the case for Gallagher’s (1991) disproportionality measure that compares electoral and

parliamentary party systems. A truly institutional measure should exclusively take the

institutional configuration of the electoral system into account. One such measure is the often

used “effective threshold” (Lijphart, 1994). We cannot use this indicator here because it

focuses on individual constituencies, not on the national electoral system that we are

interested in. Taagepera (2002) has developed an alternative measure, the national threshold,

in order to be able to describe an electoral system at the national level. After the calculation of

the national threshold, we transform this measure into a national district magnitude (Lijphart,

1994; R. Taagepera, 1998). Because the national magnitude takes low values for less

proportional electoral systems this operationalisation reflects the logic of the power dispersing

vs. concentrating conceptualisation of our patterns of democracy better than the national

threshold as it corresponds to the polarity of the other indicators used in this analysis.

Dimension II: The Legislative Decision Rule

The second dimension, the legislative decision rule, measures the veto potential of extra-

parliamentary political institutions vis-à-vis the government and the parliamentary majority.

We only consider horizontal primary and secondary institutions of ex post control that

influence parliamentary votes at the level of the nation state. Since the focal point of the

17

analysis is the definition of a generalised pattern of democracy with effects on political

performance, thematically limited or vertical institutions are not considered. We therefore

concentrate the following analysis on bicameralism and federalism, presidential powers,

constitutional courts and institutions of direct democracy as they are the relevant veto

institutions in this context that influence the additional majority requirement beyond the

electoral decision rule. This selection is based on Birchfeld and Crepatz’s (1998) analysis of

competitive veto points and similar concepts (Armingeon, 1996; Colomer, 1996b; Fuchs,

2000; Huber et al., 1993; Kaiser, 1998; McGann, 2004; Schmidt, 1996; Tsebelis, 1995, 2002).

Each of the four veto institutions is characterised by a multitude of competences that

influence its veto potential vis-à-vis government and parliamentary majority. In order to

measure their effect on political performance, the following analyses only incorporate those

competences that are relevant for decisions on political issues. Purely ceremonial or

representative competences or special powers in cases of emergency are explicitly excluded

since they do not have a direct effect on the democratic and systematic performance of a

political system. In the following paragraphs, we turn to the operationalisation of the four

institutions’ veto potential in the political process. In this particular case, fuzzy logic has been

thoroughly used.

Bicameralism and Federalism

A first possible veto institution that influences votes and political decisions at the level of the

nation state and can therefore unfold a considerable effect on the legislative decision rule are

second chambers and a federal organisation of the country. In order to capture their effect, we

build an index of bicameralism and federalism. This index will map the power sharing at the

level of the central state. As a rule, this can be done by evaluating the competences of second

chambers. Even in federal states this is sufficient without considering the characteristics of

federalism separately. Only in those cases where the mechanisms of power sharing in federal

states are not reflected in a second chamber, the competences of subnational units are taken

into account. By this procedure we avoid to overestimate the power distribution related effects

of federalism and bicameralism as it is problematic within existing classifications of political

systems (Armingeon, 1996; Birchfeld & Crepaz, 1998; Colomer, 1996b; Fuchs, 2000; Huber

et al., 1993; Kaiser, 1998; McGann, 2004; Schmidt, 1996; Tsebelis, 1995, 2002).

18

Presidential Powers

Presidents in parliamentary democracies have varying veto competences. Under which

circumstances, we ask, can presidents veto parliamentary decisions? The first characteristic

we analyse to address this question is the direct election of the president. A direct election

increases the legitimacy of the president and therefore her ability to achieve his political goals

and to impose his point of view vis-à-vis parliament and government. Therefore, the direct

election of the president structures her competences. As a rule, presidents in parliamentary

democracies are granted three classes of competences: political competences, the power to

nominate, and symbolic competences (Johannsen, 2000). Neither powers to nominate nor

symbolic competences significantly influence the president’s role in the political decision

making process. Only the political competences have a direct influence on the political

decision making process as they define a president’s relative veto power vis-à-vis

parliamentary decisions. For this reason, only these political characteristics of the presidency

are taken into account in the following analyses. With respect to this, four competencies have

an important effect on the legislative decision rule in parliamentary systems. These are the

right to send laws back to parliament for an additional reading, the right to submit a law to a

constitutional review, the right to propose laws as well as the right to initialise a referendum.

Six more competencies that allow the president to influence sessions of parliament and

cabinet meetings play a subordinate role that nonetheless support the core competencies of the

president. These are the right to call for parliamentary sessions, the dissolution of parliament

and the right to all for new elections, the right to address parliament, the right to call cabinet

meetings as well as the right to participate in cabinet meetings.

Constitutional Courts

Constitutional courts are an important element of the legislative decision rule since they

control decisions of parliament and government and have therefore a power dispersing

function. Tsebelis (2002, pp. 225-235) even compares the veto potential of constitutional

courts to that of second chambers. Decisive for the veto potential of a constitutional court is

not the simple existence of this institution but its competences in the field of control over

national legislation. The following formal rules with direct effects on political decisions are

included in the following analyses: the constitutional court’s possibility to decide on popular

and individual complaints, the right to interpret the constitution and the court’s right to act on

its own initiative. Possible other competencies are not relevant for the present study.

19

Direct Democracy

Institutions of direct democracy allow the population to directly participate in the process of

political decision making. Therefore, direct democracy is an important element of the

legislative decision rule. The more pronounced direct democratic elements in a polity, the

more the political process is characterised by power dispersion. Institutions of direct

democracy can be distinguished according to their subjects, the degree of binding force and

the institutions or persons who are allowed to initiate a direct democratic procedure (Schiller,

2002, pp. 13-14). Tsebelis (2002, pp. 116 and 122-135) further differentiates institutions of

direct democracy by asking who formulates the question to be voted on. This leads to a four

fold classification power dispersing effect in decreasing order: initiatives, (facultative)

referendum, obligatory referendum and plebiscite. Within each category the openness of the

relevant procedures is of great importance. This depends on the quota for the initiation,

participation and ballots cast as well as time limits for the collection of signature and

standards for the formulation of the question. More open systems with a low quota for

initialisation, participation and the needed vote share as well as permissive time limits for the

collection of signatures and low standards for the formulation of the question have a stronger

influence on the political decision making process. Furthermore, we account for the

consequences of a vote in a direct democratic procedure. Finally, we include the number of

different procedures of direct democracy as well as the number of persons or institutions who

are granted the right to initialise such a procedure. The more different procedures and the

more persons who are allowed to initialise them, the higher the probability that direct

democracy is used to veto a decision taken by parliament.

Dimension III: Constellation of Actors

An approach that is designed to explain different performance levels between political

systems by relying exclusively on institutional characteristics is incomplete. Neo-institutional

theory has clearly demonstrated that the behaviour of political actors has a decisive influence

on democratic and systemic performance (Rothstein, 1996). Our third dimension therefore

introduces the influence political actors have on the lawmaking process. We assume that a

given legislative or societal status quo can only be changed if political actors are powerful. In

a parliamentary democracy, political power depends on the ability of a political actor to build

a parliamentary majority for a specific decision. Majorities can be assured in particular if

governments act in a united way. The unity of governments themselves depends on their

ability to agree on policy proposals and to impose these proposals on a parliamentary

20

opposition. Single party majority governments usually act in a united way and therefore are

able to dominate the political decision making process effectively. The unity of coalition

governments depends on the number of coalition partners and their ideological proximity. The

more parties in a coalition and the larger the ideological distances between the partners, the

more difficult, due to potential conflict, it will be for this coalition to effectively dominate the

decision making process. In this case its ability to change the legislative and societal status

quo will be lower. Based on these considerations, in the following we propose measures for

the power relations between government and opposition as well as governmental unity.

Power Relations Between Government and Opposition

The power relations between government and opposition are best captured by the

parliamentary support of the government. This indicator measures the seat share in parliament

controlled by a government. It not only discriminates between majority and minority

governments but also picks up the formal enforcement potential of a government vis-à-vis the

opposition.

Unity of Governments

The unity of governments is measured by two indicators, the effective number of governing

parties and the ideological distance between government parties. The effective number of

government parties, based on the number of parties and their mutual relative strength

measured again by the parliamentary seats controlled by each government party, is calculated

using Laakso and Taagepera’s (1979) index.

Along with the number of government parties, the ideological distance between these parties

is relevant for the ability of governments to agree on issues. The lower the distance between

government parties, the more likely they achieve consensus and can act as a unified

government that can therefore control the decision making process more effectively. In order

to measure the ideological distance within governments, we compare the positions of parties

on a left right scale, ranging from 1 (left) to 20 (right) and calculate the difference between

the two most extreme parties. Data for these calculations is taken from Benoit and Laver

(2006). Those cases not covered by this distribution were supplemented with the help of

interviews with country experts.

21

4.2 Patterns of Democracy in Central and Eastern Europe

In the previous sections, on the basis of theoretical and conceptual considerations, we derived

eight indicators to measure patterns of democracy more reliably than in previously published

approaches. These indicators will now be integrated in a multidimensional analysis. We aim

at an empirical demonstration of the interrelationships of the three dimensions, the legislative

and electoral decision rules and the constellation of actors. Our example will be ten

parliamentary democracies in Central and Eastern Europe in the period from 1995 to 2004.

Statistical Measures of Association

The eight indicators we developed and operationalised in the previous sections are first

submitted to a test on normal distribution. This is necessary since we intend to employ

correlation as well as factor analysis that both assume a normal distribution of the data. Using

a Shapiro-Wilk test, a normal distribution can only be shown with certainty for the variables

Constitutional Courts and Cabinet Support. Especially in the case of District Magnitude,

Bicameralism-Federalism, Number of Government Parties as well as Ideological Distance we

have to assume a skewed distribution while the variable Presidential Powers seems to be a

case of kurtosis. This result is confirmed by a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. A visual inspection

of the data nonetheless suggests that the deviations from normal distribution can be tolerated

in the following analyses.

Since the data distribution allows for it, we calculate Pearson’s correlation coefficients for all

the eight variables to show that the hypothetical three dimensions are reflected in the data at

hand. According to our theoretical assumptions concerning the relationships between the

variables, we expect that the indicators of one dimension display considerably more important

measures of association between each other than with the indicators of the other dimensions.

The statistical analysis confirms this expectation for two of our dimensions (see Table 1

below). The indicator that operationalizes the electoral decision rule (District Magnitude)

correlates to only one other indicator that measures the power concentration or dispersing

effect of institutions of direct democracy. Since direct democracy’s association with the veto

potential of constitutional courts is still more substantial, we nonetheless conclude that the

electoral decision rule is adequately pictured by District Magnitude. The second dimension

we can identify without any doubt is the level of power concentration or difusion, which is

realised by the behaviour of political actors and that we designated as actor constellation

(Cabinet Support, Number of Government Parties, Ideological Distance Between Government

Parties). These three indicators closely relate to each other (see bold coefficients in Table 1).

22

We can therefore conclude that the indicators of Dimension I (electoral decision rule) and

Dimension III (actor constellation) correspond to our theoretical assumptions.

[Table 1 about here]

In Dimension II (legislative decision rule), we observe two groups of indicators. On the one

hand, Direct Democracy and strong Constitutional Courts correlate to each other. On the

other hand, strong Presidents and far reaching competences for Bicameral-Federal structures,

that display an only weak relationship with each other, are negatively correlated with the first

group. We believe that these two groups of indicators reflect two different ways of assuring

an institutional veto in a polity. Either a constitution provides for mechanisms where popular

vote has the possibility to influence the legislative process via veto institutions such as

constitutional courts and direct democracy or a constitution conversely limits the veto power

to formal institutions like presidents or second chamber that can act independently from

popular vote in the decision making process. Both control mechanisms are not combined in

Central and Eastern European democracies. Such a combination would presumably bear the

risk of a continued blockade of the political process and is therefore not realised in the sample

of countries we analyse. Furthermore, there are no cases of federal states in this sample; with

Romania there is only one country with a second chamber. At the same time, presidents in

Central and Eastern Europe are relatively strong compared to those in other parliamentary

democracies. We therefore believe that our sample reflects a biased picture of potential veto

institutions of a modern parliamentary democracy. For these reasons, we will drop the two

closely related variables Presidential Powers and Bicameral-Federal Structures from the

following analysis.

Validity and Reliability of the Three Dimensional Pattern of Democracy

In a second step, we complement Pearson’s correlations with additional analyses that test for

validity and reliability of the proposed concept of patterns of democracy and its

operationalisation. First, we implement an analysis that helps us to judge the validity of our

three dimensions. Therefore, the six remaining indicators (Dimension I – Electoral Decision

Rule: district magnitude; Dimension II – Legislative Decision Rule: direct democracy and

constitutional court’s competencies; Dimension III – Actor Constellation: cabinet support,

effective number of government parties and ideological distance of government parties) are

subjected to a factor analysis (see Table 2 below). The rotated solution, respecting the

23

commonly accepted Kaiser criterion (eigenvalue above 1), retains three factors that

correspond to the three proposed dimensions: The indicator for the electoral decision rule

(district magnitude) loads on factor 3 which matches Dimension I. The competences of

constitutional courts and institutions of direct democracy both load on factor 2 which

corresponds our Dimension II. Finally, the three indicators that measure the power

concentrating vs. dispersing constellation of actors all load on factor 1 which corresponds our

Dimension III (all relevant coefficients in Table 2 in bold). With these findings, the factor

analysis confirms the internal validity of the three theoretically derived dimensions of

democracy.

[Table 2 about here]

Secondly, we are looking for confirmation whether our patterns of democracy are reliable. We

use Cronbach’s Alpha to additionally perform a statistical test for reliability of one of our

dimensions. This test confirms that the three indicators of the actor constellation can reliably

be combined into one dimension.2 In summary, with this test for reliability we can strengthen

our finding that our three dimensional model of democracy can be empirically applied to

Central and Eastern European countries. This validates that our reflections on dimensions of

democracy, derived from theoretical considerations, are conceptually better informed than

previous approaches and can therefore be confirmed.

With this finding supporting our theoretical considerations, we can now confidently describe

the changing three dimensional pattern of democracy in Central and Eastern European sates

(see Figure 2 below).

[Figure 2 about here]

We plot the two institutional dimensions, the electoral and legislative decision rules on the y-

and x-axis respectively. Than we add bubbles, whose size corresponds to the value of the

actor constellation dimension. Low values in all three cases stand for power concentration,

while high values indicate power dispersion. This means that the lower left quarter of each

graph stands for institutional arrangements that strongly concentrates power. The upper right

2 For the three standardised variables of Dimension III α = .74. The usually accepted threshold for this test is a value of .7 or higher. We therefore conclude that Dimension III reliably measures constellations of actors’ behaviour. Since Cronbach’s Alpha can only be calculated for three or more variables, this test cannot be performed for the other two dimensions which are composed of one or two indicators respectively.

24

part of the graph represents a combination of strongly power dispersing institutions. If actor

constellations were completely predetermined by institutional arrangements, we would expect

power concentrating actor constellations (small bubbles) in the lower left area of the graph,

power dispersing actor constellations (large bubbles) in the upper right area. Looking at the

upper panel of Figure 1 we observe that Bulgaria is an outlier with regard to it’s

comparatively power dispersing electoral decision rule. Excluding Bulgaria for the sake of a

better demonstration (lower panel of Figure 2), we first have to stress that purely power

concentrating or purely power dispersion institutional arrangements do not exist in Central

and Eastern Europe. The political systems under observation are institutional hybrids. This

confirms our assumption that an aggregation of the two institutional dimensions into one polar

type will cancel out differences in the two dimensions and result in mean values on the polar

scale. This kind of scale masks more than it reveals and is therefore not suitable to adequately

describe patterns of democracy. Additionally, we can state that Central and Eastern European

actor constellations are not predetermined by institutional arrangements. There is no

systematic pattern observable that relates actor constellations (size of bubbles) to institutional

characteristics (values on x- and y-axis).

Turning to temporal variations in patterns of democracy in Central and Eastern Europe (see

Figure 3), we can observe that the two institutional dimensions are not strongly affected by

change. The assumption that these institutions belong to the slow moving structural core of

Central Eastern European democracies can therefore be confirmed. At the same time, there is

– as expected – a large amount of temporal variation in the constellation of actors. These

constellations, at the beginning of the period under observation, tend to be rather power

concentrating, as indicated by small bubbles in Figure 3. From 1997 onwards, actor

constellations become more and more power dispersing, meaning that cabinet support, the

ideological distance of coalition partners, and the number of parties in government are

growing in a considerable way. The power dispersing character of actor constellations in the

region is maintained until the beginning of the new century. In 2002 and the following two

years, actor constellations again become quiet power concentrating, even though they do not

reach the level of power concentration that we observe at the beginning of the period. We can

assume, that these changes reflect behavioural adaptations of the political actors to challenges

the countries in Central and Eastern Europe faced in the period from the end of the 1990s to

the beginning of the new century. One interpretation would be that these developments are

possibly reflecting the special challenges caused by the process of the European Integration.

25

These observations corroborate our conviction that, first, actor constellations have to be

included in an analysis of democratic patterns and that, second, actor constellations have to be

thoroughly kept separate from institutional characteristics. To conclude, the main finding of

this paper is that Central and Eastern European political systems are hybrid types of

democracy that do not display consistent patterns of power concentration of dispersion,

neither with respect to institutions, nor regarding their actor constellations. This becomes

especially clear regarding temporal variations: Institutions do not display a determining effect

on the behaviour of political actors which are undergoing extreme changes in the ten years we

analyse. This finding provides support for neo-institutional theories that stress the importance

of institutions as resources that structure behaviours as well as the very nature of political

behaviour for analytical approaches in political science. In sum, our analysis shows that the

countries in Central Eastern Europe all combine institutional and actor related elements in

very different ways. This precludes aggregation of the three dimensions into one polar

concept and confirms our assumption that three dimensions are needed to adequately describe

patterns of democracy.

5 Conclusion

In this paper, we developed an alternative concept for the identification of patterns of

democracy and analysed their changes in time. The foundation of this concept is the clearly

stated aim of the analysis: provide a tool that enables us to systematically evaluate democratic

and systemic performance of parliamentary democracies. The theoretical focus is, first, the

systematic reference to power dispersion or power concentration and, second, the clear

distinction of three dimensions of democracy. The electoral and legislative decision rules and

the actor constellation jointly exert an effect on performance, but may not be aggregated. This

aggregation is one of the major failures of all the other concepts we are aware of, and we were

able to demonstrate that any attempt to aggregate these dimensions will necessarily disturb the

picture we draw of patterns of democracy. Aggregation into one polar type forces differences

to cancel each other out. In Central and Eastern Europe we find hybrid types of democracy

which are, in their behavioural component, subject to remarkably variations over time.

Therefore, patterns of democracy cannot be adequately described by a polar concept of

democracy like the one proposed by Lijphart. Especially the changing nature of actor

constellations, but also possible changes in the core institutional setting of the system that are

relevant for the characteristics of the polity even thought the changes are not as fast as the

26

changes in the actor constellation, can only be captured in an adequate manner if each

dimension is regarded separately.

One of the shortcomings of the present paper is that one of our dimensions is clearly biased.

The legislative decision rule is characterised by the absence of bicameralism and the presence

of comparatively strong presidents. We therefore had to exclude both indicators from our

analysis. This can be remedied by the inclusion of additional cases. Once these cases are

included, we will proceed with the introduction of data on democratic and systemic

performance in order to test whether our concept can explain observable differences in levels

of performance.

27

Table 1 Correlations of Eight Indicators Operationalising Three Dimensions | Dist. M CC DD BicFed PresiP NGov Dist. CS -------------+----------------------------------------------------------------------- District | 1.0000 Magnitude | | Const. | 0.0971 1.0000 Courts | 0.3367 | Direct | -0.4785 0.4805 1.0000 Democracy | 0.0000 0.0000 | Bicamer. | -0.1363 -0.0211 -0.2769 1.0000 Federalism| 0.1762 0.8346 0.0053 | President.| 0.1133 0.0728 -0.1841 0.2329 1.0000 Powers | 0.2616 0.4719 0.0667 0.0197 | Number Gov| -0.3325 -0.2558 0.1861 -0.2160 -0.0319 1.0000 Parties | 0.0007 0.0102 0.0638 0.0309 0.7527 | Ideologic.| -0.3139 -0.1679 0.1694 0.0630 -0.2250 0.6234 1.0000 Distance | 0.0015 0.0950 0.0920 0.5336 0.0244 0.0000 | Cabinet | -0.0685 0.0975 0.3287 -0.2446 0.1917 0.4764 0.3445 1.000 Support | 0.4980 0.3348 0.0008 0.0142 0.0560 0.0000 0.0004 |

Table 2 Factor Analysis of Six Indicators ----------------------------------------------------------- Variable | Factor1 Factor2 Factor3 | Uniqueness -------------+------------------------------+-------------- Dist. Mag. | -0.1067 -0.0248 0.9466 | 0.0920 Judicial Re | -0.1257 0.9015 0.1099 | 0.1595 Direct Demo | 0.2062 0.7372 -0.5403 | 0.1220 N Gov Part. | 0.8204 -0.1957 -0.2979 | 0.1999 Ideologic D | 0.7281 -0.1790 -0.3309 | 0.3283 Cabinet Sup | 0.8216 0.3330 0.1374 | 0.1953 ----------------------------------------------------------- Notes: Principal components analysis and orthogonal rotation; an oblique rotation slightly decreases the ex- plained variance of the model, but a correlation analysis of oblique factors yields a maximum R = .35 which provides no evidence that the factors are correlated. This conclusion is also supported by the results of the correlation analysis of individual indicators (cf. Table 1). Extraction of factors with eigenvalue > 1 only (Kaiser criterion). A Scree plot confirms this decision. Explained variance of the whole model (cumulative): .82 -----------------------------------------------------------

28

Figure 1 Graphical Representation of a Three Dimensional Concept of Democratic

Patterns

Constellation of Actors

Legislative Decision Rule

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Figure 2a Three Dimensional Patterns of Democracy in all Ten Central and Eastern European States (Mean Values Over the Whole Period of Observation)

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Size of Bubbles - Dimension III: Actor Constellation (Mean)

Figure 2a Three Dimensional Patterns of Democracy in Central and Eastern European States Excluding Bulgaria (Mean Values Over the Whole Period of Observation)

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Figure 3 Temporal Variations in Patterns of Democracy in Central and Eastern European States Excluding Bulgaria

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LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

CZ

EEHU

LV

LT

PL

RO

SK

SI

20

40

60

80

20

40

60

80

20

40

60

80

.2 .4 .6 .8 1 .2 .4 .6 .8 1

.2 .4 .6 .8 1 .2 .4 .6 .8 1

1995 1996 1997 1998

1999 2000 2001 2002

2003 2004

Size of Bubbles - Dimension III: Actor Constellation

Dim

ens

ion

I: E

lect

ora

l Dec

isio

n R

ule

Dimension II: Legislative Decision Rule

Graphs by year

31

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