Institutional Sequencing and Regime Stability in the U.K., France, and Germany

• In Event: Historical Dynamics in European Parties, Regimes, and States

Abstract

The survival of a new democracy often depends on patterns of early competition. Building on scholarship that has noted the importance of institutional sequencing for regime outcomes and the asynchronous nature of institutional development in historical democratizers, this study seeks to examine the impact of sequencing in a critical arena of political development: the order of the introduction of competitive elections relative to parliamentary control. I seek to explain the impact of such sequencing on party formation and interparty cooperation in legislative bodies. I do so through comparative analysis of three foundational cases in the study of democratization, The United Kingdom, France, and Germany during key phases of political development from 1867-1939. I employ an integrative multimethod approach combining new advances in network analysis of roll call voting behavior, within-case analysis of the structure of legislative coalition patterns over time and across policy domains, and cross-case comparison of coalition patterns in different institutional contexts. I argue that that the order of institutional development shapes the dynamics of legislative coalition-building, with important consequences for long-term democratic stability.

Author

• Amel F. Ahmed, University of Massachusetts, Amherst