Revisiting the “Difficult Combination”: Multiparty Presidentialism and Democracy

• In Event: Party Competition and Democracy

Abstract

Which combination of a government form and party system is conducive or detrimental to stable democracy? One of the most oft-cited arguments comes from Mainwaring (1993), which posits that presidentialism and multipartism make a "difficult combination" for the survival of democracy. Although this claim made significant contributions to the study of party politics and comparative politics, little scholarly effort has been made to test or update it with more recent empirical cases. Revisiting the "difficult combination" thesis matters for several reasons. First, the third wave of democratization and the end of the Cold War, which occurred after cases examined in Mainwaring's original study, increased the number of democracies to further test his argument. Second, the rise of semi-presidentialism in recent years has created new ground for modifying the thesis. Third, most democracies after the 1990s are long-lasting, which has led to the shift of our focus from democratic survival or breakdown to democratic consolidation or erosion.

Extending the time horizon of Mainwaring's analysis, this paper examines whether his argument well explains the (in)stability of democratic countries after the 1990s. To this end, I created an expanded dataset that classifies democratic countries according to government form, party system, and the duration and quality of democracy. Using this data, I test whether the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is more prone to democratic breakdown and erosion than other combinations (e.g., presidentialism with a two-party system, semi-presidentialism and parliamentarism with any party system). My empirical analysis lends only partial support for the "difficult combination" thesis, suggesting that there is no pre-determined combination to promote or undermine democratic stability. Instead, I find that the effect of a government form and party system on democratic stability is mediated by other factors such as years since democratization, party system institutionalization, and the level of ideological polarization.

Author

• Moohyung Cho, Ewha Woman's University