Forms of government, party legislation, and the decision process

Abstract

The so-called neo-institucionalism applied to compared politics has focus its attention on the emphasis put into effect by the forms of government and/or the electoral legislation. Either the fusion or the separation of powers was then evoked as some kind of “primary principle” from which the entire political system would be understood: crisis probability, party disci­pline, etc. The analysis centered on the effect of the electoral legislation variations takes sim­ilar shape, i.e., the running of the political system is traced from the control exerted by party leaders over the electoral chances of politicians. This paper aims at offering a critical review on such arguments. It emphasizes the process invoked to explain the variation of the so-called performance of the democratic regimens. It also points out, in the last section, the importance of the level of centralization/decentralization on the decision process, variable that hasn’t received considerable attention in spite of its importance.