01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 235

Journal of Theoretical Politics 13(3): 235–247 Copyright © 2001 Sage Publications

0951–6928[2001/07]13:3; 235–247; 018072 London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi

INTRODUCTION

DISEQUILIBRIUM INSTITUTIONS AND PLURALIST

DEMOCRACY

Josep M. Colomer

Political institutions seem to be more frequently reformed and replaced than

has traditionally been assumed in many political studies. First, regime change
and democratization has been a frequent phenomenon in modern times (no
less than 118 attempts of democratization only in countries with more than
one million inhabitants can be registered in the world since the late 19th
century, while 133 changes from and to democracy occurred only since 1945;
Przeworski et al., 2000; Colomer, 2001). Second, major institutional changes
within democratic regimes, including changes to alternative electoral systems,
the introduction of direct elections of executive presidents, and decentraliza-
tion, tend to proliferate (Lijphart, 1999). Third, apparently minor institutional
reforms are also very frequent; sometimes they look as modest and regular
as policy changes in other fields, but some of them have major effects on elec-
toral strategies, party systems, and government performance.

1. Accounting for Institutional Change

The relatively high frequency of institutional change has not usually been
included in the analysis of political processes based on elections of rulers
and policy decision-making. Standard models in political science and public
policy studies basically focus on three elements: citizens’ preferences, politi-
cal party’s or candidate’s positions, and institutional rules. The typical
assumption is that the set of institutional rules is the most stable of these
elements, the political game being played through exchanges between citi-
zens and parties or candidates according to the opportunities, constraints,
and incentives supplied by the given institutional framework.
In standard rational choice theory and related approaches, since an
‘open’ process of interactions between citizens and parties might be in dis-
equilibrium and could produce unpredictable outcomes, institutions appear

First drafts of the articles and comments in this issue were presented to the Annual Meeting
of the American Political Science Association held in Atlanta, GA, on 2–5 September 1999,
and the Public Choice Society (San Antonio TX, March 2000). All participants thank each
other, as well as Arend Lijphart for his participation and comments.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 236

236 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

to be restrictive mechanisms able to induce stability – in addition to their

role in solving coordination, cooperation, and agency problems. In this
approach, political equilibria can be conceived as stable outcomes induced
by relatively stable institutions in spite of the potential instability and
unpredictability of citizens’ and parties’ interactions (Shepsle, 1979, 1986,
1989).
Yet, updated empirical evidence seems to be able to challenge the realism
of this assumption regarding the relative degree of stability of each of the
three basic political elements previously mentioned. First, citizens’ prefer-
ences, although they can be somehow endogenous to the political process
and manipulable in the short term, appear to be highly stable in the long
term, as shown, for instance, by certain studies of electoral behavior and
volatility (see, among others, Bartolini and Mair, 1990).
Second, political parties appear to be more movable and their political
agendas can be somewhat innovative from one election to another. But a
number of long-term observations show that major parties in durable
democracies tend to be stuck to ideological labels, typically on the left–right
axis or other similar constructs. Dramatic moves, such as leapfrogging other
party positions, are risky and tend to be avoided, especially because they
would harm the capability of political leaders to communicate with voters.
Precisely because a party’s basic ideological positions work as useful heuris-
tic and information tools in mass elections – as has traditionally been
remarked in the spatial theory of voting – they require some significant
degree of continuity. (The stability of relative party positions in surveys for
different periods can be observed in Castles and Mair, 1984; Laver and
Hunt, 1992; Huber and Inglehart, 1995; Knutsen, 1998).
In this framework of relatively stable citizens’ preferences and party pos-
itions, changes in electoral outcomes, rulers and policy may depend to a
great extent on political leaders’ manipulative skills in the short term,
including their maneuvers in agenda-setting, rhetoric, and strategic behav-
ior within the institutions (as developed by Riker, 1983, 1986, 1993).
Yet the stability of formal institutions may have been overestimated in
well-known versions of this analytical framework. In particular, the theory
of equilibrium institutions, as developed by Douglass North, is notorious for
having marked the capability of institutions to reinforce themselves and to
make their replacement difficult thanks to the effects of incentives embod-
ied in their structure. According to the Northian framework, inefficient
institutions may survive as a consequence of actors’ learning by use, their
adaption to institutional regularities, and the costs of their replacement
(North and Thomas, 1973; North, 1990a, b; Pierson, 2000).
The basic foundation of this argument is that institutional developments
are subject to increasing returns, that is, that people obtain positive net ben-
efits from using the existing institutions and the costs of replacing them rise.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 237

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 237

The original analyses in this approach developed by economists tend to

focus on institutions such as property rights, contract guarantees, rule of
law, justice and others producing efficient markets for the provision of
private goods. The corresponding applications to politics are appropriate to
the extent that certain institutions for the provision of public goods can also
produce widespread satisfaction among large numbers of citizens, even uni-
versal benefits because some public goods can be consumed by all citizens
in ways that each of them can hardly anticipate (including, for instance,
national defense, security, and environmental protection).
But public goods are also the subject of political competition because they
always involve some redistributive dimension – including taxes, allocation
of public expenditures, decisions on location, etc. In fact, all political activity
– and electoral politics in particular – involves some degree of competition
and the production of winners and losers. In other words, the benefits and
costs of many institutional political outcomes are significantly different for
different actors. In these contexts, for some actors the temptation to exit
from the existing institutions can be neutralized to some extent by the rela-
tive benefits of routine, predictability, and previous adaption to the existing
institutional rules, but not necessarily by significant gross benefits derived
from institutional outcomes. Thus, some aspects of institutional politics may
not be subject to increasing returns because, for some actors, learning and
adapting to the existing rules can be almost equivalent to accustoming them-
selves to lose. Then, if the costs of exit are relatively low, promoting insti-
tutional change can be a rational strategy.
More precisely, actors who anticipate that they will become absolute and
permanent losers as a consequence of the political game played under the
existing institutional rules may prefer institutional change – in spite of its
uncertain benefits and its certain costs – to sure defeat. The actors inter-
ested in institutional changes are not only the permanent losers in the game.
Also risk-averse rulers submitted to new challenges from alternative poten-
tial winners may rationally choose to change the institutional rules of the
game in order to minimize their likely losses.
Somehow, the potential high frequency of institutional changes was
anticipated by William Riker in his seminal work on the study of insti-
tutions. According to Riker, ‘rules or institutions are just more alternatives
in the policy space, and the status quo of one set of rules can be supplanted
with another set of rules’ (Riker, 1980: 22). Certainly, he noted that insti-
tutional changes and reforms can be restrained or delayed by actors’ uncer-
tainty regarding the effects of alternative institutions and by the costs of
change. As a consequence, institutions tend to be relatively more stable
than the successive teams of electoral winners and rulers and the corre-
sponding policies, which are produced by easier, more frequent short-term
interactions of citizens’ preferences and leaders’ manipulative skills. In
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 238

238 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

Riker’s words, ‘the revelation of institutional disequilibrium is probably a

longer process than the revelation of disequilibria of tastes’ (Riker, 1980).
But Riker himself stated that ‘institutional choices differ from policy
choices in degree, not kind’. As a paramount example of the large room for
maneuvering that can exist in institutional choices and their corresponding
unpredictability, he developed a remarkable analysis of politicians’ strategic
maneuvering during the ratification process of the 1787 United States Con-
stitution (Riker, 1996).
For an integrated analysis of institutional choices and policy choices, pre-
cisely defining the threshold of frequency of change at which a difference
‘in kind’ could be reduced to a mere difference ‘in degree’ can be a difficult
task. But recent institutional developments in different parts of the world
suggest that the frequency of actual institutional changes can be higher than
previously assumed.
The rationale of a strategy in favor of institutional change can be sum-
marized in a few words: political actors may find it worthwhile to launch a
process of institutional change if the likelihood that alternative institutional
formulas will produce undesired effects and the costs of replacing the exist-
ing institutions are surpassed by the disadvantages of playing by the exist-
ing institutional rules.
Therefore, institutional change can be faciltitated in several ways. First,
it can be fostered by accumulative learning on the benefits that can be
reasonably expected from different institutional formulas on the selection
of rulers and policies, as well as by imitation or contagion from changes in
other communities where alternative institutions have produced desirable
effects. Second, the risks that the effects of institutional change are not as
expected, including the possibility that it may favor threatening policies for
some of the actors or even a social clash, may be reduced by the introduc-
tion into the reform process of parallel agreements and guarantees among
the relevant actors regarding some basic policy issues and rights. Finally, the
risks of institutional change can also be reduced with the implementation
of partial reforms instead of complete overhauls of institutional regimes. To
some extent, all these and other favorable conditions and the correspond-
ing strategies in favor of institutional change can be found in worldwide
developments in recent times.1

1. It is interesting to note that, perhaps in the inadvertence of political theorists, standard

studies in public policy include subjects such as ‘electoral policy’ and ‘legislative change and
reform’ as common fields of policy decision-making, together with foreign policy, economic
regulation, education policy and alike. See, for example, the encompassing Encyclopedia of
Policy Studies (Nagel, 1983).
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 239

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 239

2. Strategic Institutions

Changes of institutional rules oriented to modify the subsequent political

equilibria can be developed with similar strategic calculations and choices
as those producing political outcomes within stable institutional frame-
works. The contributions to this special issue focus on institutional changes
and their effects in different countries and periods, as well as on different
types of regime. They suggest that a general strategic model can account for
institutional changes both within non-democratic regimes, in the trespass-
ing between authoritarian regimes and democracy, and within democratic
regimes.
The basic assumption in all these different situations is that self-interested
political actors, whatever the policies they support, seek power. Actors’
preferences regarding political institutions greatly depend on their expec-
tation to stay in or to achieve power under different institutional frame-
works: its likelihood, its expected proximity, and durability.
Actors’ expectations to get power can depend on the degree of inclusive-
ness of the existing institutional regime and the challenge or threat to which
it is submitted. A situation of uncertainty appears when the incumbent rulers
are challenged by new groups’ demands. If the existing institutional frame-
work is rather exclusive, that is, if it permits only the absolute victory of one
actor (one party or group with compact preferences) at the expense of all the
others, then the incumbent rulers risk becoming absolute losers. The emerg-
ing challengers can feed expectation of becoming new absolute winners by
replacing the incumbent rulers under the existing institutional rules. Yet, if
some degree of uncertainty regarding future outcomes is also shared by the
challengers, they may develop risk-averse preferences similar to those of the
challenged rulers in favor of more inclusive institutions.
In other words, actors with uncertain expectations of staying in or of
gaining power can promote or accept institutional changes in favor of more
openness and inclusiveness for the sake of minimizing the risk of being com-
pletely excluded from power. Changes of this kind include the introduction
of broader voting rights creating more complex electorates; electoral
systems encouraging the formation and survival of new parties; and sepa-
rate elections for different offices able to produce multiple winners and fos-
tering multi-party and inter-institutional bargaining and power-sharing.
With changes to more inclusive institutional formulas, both the challenged
incumbent rulers and the emerging challengers can expect to prevent their
complete defeat or exclusion from power and guarantee some minimum
amount of power for themselves in the long term.
Actors’ support for either the existing institutions or the newly estab-
lished ones depends on the distribution of power that can be expected from
each alternative. If significant actors are regular losers and can expect to
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 240

240 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

stay in that situation – as happens in exclusive institutional frameworks pro-

ducing a single absolute winner – they may prefer to challenge the existing
institutions. In contrast, if significant actors have reasonable expectations of
gaining or sharing power within the existing institutional framework, they
are likely to give it support. In contrast to exclusive regimes, institutional
rules producing multiple winners and widespread political satisfaction are
able to foster relatively broad acceptance of the existing institutional
arrangements. (For previous discussion along these lines, see Miller, 1983;
Przeworski, 1991; Elster, 1991, 1993; Lijphart, 1992; Colomer, 1995, 2000;
Geddes, 1996.)
In this approach, it is possible to compare strategies of institutional
change in different contexts. Incumbent rulers in authoritarian regimes may
accept or promote liberalization and democratization for similar reasons as
democratic actors in a simple democratic regime favoring concentration of
power – such as the typical Westminster model – may support institutional
reforms toward more complex formulas creating division of powers. The
contributions collected in this issue discuss, develop, and apply an analyti-
cal framework based on the variables just mentioned: actors’ expectations
and threats, institutional preferences, challenges, interactions and bargain-
ing, and institutional change, as well as further adaptation or counter-
reaction to the effects of the new institutional formulas. The corresponding
analyses can enlighten the moves from hard to soft authoritarianism, from
authoritarianism to democracy, for stabilizing democracy, and from majori-
tarian to pluralist democracy or other democratic institutional changes.
The assumption of a common strategic model that can be applied across
a succession of stages may suggest an analytical continuum of political
regimes. Different degrees of relative inclusiveness and exclusiveness can
certainly be distinguished both within non-democratic regimes and within
democratic regimes. But this is not only compatible with a normative dis-
tinction between authoritarianism (in the broad sense of the word) and
democracy; it can even help to make the distinction clear since it can be
associated to a point in the continuum at which certain minimum conditions
are fulfilled – basically, civil rights, broad suffrage, electoral competition
with uncertain winners, and rule of law.

3. Pluralist Democracy

In consistency with the model sketched earlier, a general trend towards

more inclusive, pluralistic institutional formulas can be identified in (1) the
accelerated rhythm of democratization in different parts of the world; (2)
major changes of democratic regime (referring to the foundations of
the electoral system and the relations between the executive and the
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 241

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 241

legislative); and (3) relatively minor institutional changes within democratic

regimes. These three categories of institutional change are now briefly
revised.

Democratization
In 1900 there were only nine electoral democracies with universal male
suffrage out of 55 independent countries in the world (less than one-fifth).
In 2000 the number of democracies had been multiplied by 10 while the
number of independent countries had increased less than four times: 92
liberal democracies out of 191 countries (almost a half). If ‘partly free, elec-
toral democracies’ are also taken into account, the number of countries with
soft forms of government in the present world rises to 141, which is about
three-quarters of the independent countries encompassing two-thirds of the
world population.
The numbers of presently existing democracies that were established in
different periods also shows an increasing rhythm. Starting with the year in
which universal male suffrage was established in today’s oldest democracy,
Switzerland, and limiting the calculation to countries with more than one
million inhabitants, only nine enduring democracies were established
during the 69-year-long first wave from 1874 to 1943; 18 enduring democ-
racies were established during the 29-year-long second wave, from 1944 to
1973 (twice as many as in the previous longer wave); and 37 enduring
democracies have been established since 1974 (again more than double the
number in a shorter time). The long-term acceleration process has been
confirmed during the third wave: 18 enduring democracies were established
during a 15-year period from 1974 to 1988, and other 19 democracies during
the following 10 years.
The diffusion of democracy has brought about a blossoming of insti-
tutional pluralism. Most attempts of democratization during the first wave
were promoted with relatively restrictive institutions. Specifically, six out of
the nine electoral democracies existing in 1900 were parliamentary regimes
with majoritarian electoral systems limiting political competition to two
major parties (Canada, France, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and the
United Kingdom). This was in contrast only to the presidential United
States and two parliamentary regimes with proportional representation in
Belgium and Norway. But restrictive democratic formulas based on plural-
ity rule elections provoked a high number of failures in some of the men-
tioned countries and in subsequent attempts at democratization, not only in
Europe in the 1920s and the 1930s, but also in a number of former British
colonies in Africa and Asia with plural ethnic, religious, or language com-
position.
In contrast, democratization with parliamentary institutions based on
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 242

242 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

proportional representation obtained higher rates of success. It is remark-

able that even the 11 European democracies with proportional represen-
tation that broke down between the two World Wars, all re-established
proportional representation: seven at the end of the Second World War
(Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway)
and four at the fall of communism in the 1990s (Czechoslovakia, Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania) (sources: Gasiorowski, 1996; Przeworski et al., 2000;
Colomer, 2001; and Freedom House reports).
The advantages of another major element of institutional pluralism and
division of powers – separate elections for president and for the assembly
– has been submitted to intense discussion among political scientists. But
empirical observation in a broad long-term perspective suggests that once
installed, direct presidential elections are not easily abandoned. There
have been a few instances of reverse moves, such as Germany after Nazism.
But in almost all cases, further redemocratization after an authoritarian
period has been followed by a reinstatement of direct presidential elec-
tions, especially in Latin America in the 1980s (see the discussion in Linz
and Valenzuela, 1994; Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997; Power and
Gasiorowski, 1997).

Change of Democratic Regime

If we distinguish only three different types of democratic regime: parlia-
mentary/majoritarian, parliamentary/proportional representation, and
presidential and semi-presidential, five major changes of political regime
without democratic breakdown can be identified. Three are moves in parlia-
mentary regimes from majoritarian electoral systems producing single-
party governments to proportional representation or mixed formulas
permitting multi-partyism and coalition governments: Switzerland in 1918,
New Zealand in 1993, and Japan in 1994, while two are moves from parlia-
mentary regimes to presidential-like formulas with frequent different
majorities in the assembly and in support of the elected chief executive:
France from 1958 on and Israel in 1996. No established democracy has
changed so far from any of these pluralistic formulas towards a more restric-
tive formula such as a parliamentary regime with a majoritarian electoral
system. Even the United Kingdom has recently introduced some pro-
portional representation electoral rules and decentralization (as explained
in one of the articles in this issue).
At the end of the 20th century, out of 64 democracies in countries with
more than one million inhabitants, only 16 percent were parliamentary
regimes with majoritarian electoral rules, while 34 percent were parlia-
mentary regimes with proportional representation and 50 percent were
presidential or semipresidential regimes.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 243

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 243

Institutional Changes Within Democratic Regimes

Relatively minor changes in the institutional structure have taken place in

most democratic regimes. Arend Lijphart identified 70 different electoral
systems having been implemented in 27 old democracies during the period
1945–90. At least 10 of these old democracies experienced changes in one
or more of the basic elements: district magnitude, electoral formula, thresh-
old and assembly size (including France and Germany with six different
electoral systems each, Greece with five only from 1974 to 1990, Israel, Italy,
Japan, Malta, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden). Less radical changes in
the same elements were implemented in at least seven other stable democ-
racies (Australia, Austria, Denmark, India, Costa Rica, Iceland, and the
Netherlands). Seven countries introduced new electoral rules for the elec-
tions to the European Parliament. Only three old democracies, thus,
retained the basic elements of their electoral systems in the aforementioned
period unmodified (Canada, Switzerland, and the United States). ‘Overall,
the trend has been to greater proportionality in electoral systems’ (Lijphart,
1994: 52–6, quote on p. 53; lists updated to 2000 by the author).
Changes in the rules for the election of a president in less old democra-
cies not included in the survey just mentioned have always moved towards
more inclusive formulas. Simple plurality or relative majority rule has been
replaced with majority runoff or qualified plurality rules in 12 Latin Ameri-
can countries during the period 1978–2000 (Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela). Plurality rule is used by 2000 in
only four Latin American countries (Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and
Paraguay).
Major institutional reforms regarding presidential term limits and lengths
and the relations between the executive and the legislative were introduced
from 1991 to 2000 in at least nine Latin American democracies (Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela).
In most cases, these reforms created more balanced divisions of powers,
higher accountability of presidents, and more opportunities for inter-insti-
tutional cooperation (details in Colomer, 2001).
All these and other institutional changes sketch a broad picture of poli-
tics which is not always centered on policy exchanges between citizens and
political leaders under stable institutional rules. It is rather made of both
policy and institutional alternatives between leaders against the background
of relatively stable citizens’ preferences. As we know from standard politi-
cal science, the scope of feasible policy choices partly depend on the exist-
ing institutional rules at every moment, but – as discussed in the following
articles – institutions are also chosen, reformed, and replaced by strategic
decisions.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 244

244 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

4. The Issue

The contributions to this issue focus on institutional changes and, in par-

ticular, changes of electoral systems, one of the most important and difficult
institutional changes to accomplish. In ‘Institutions, Path Dependence, and
Democratic Consolidation’, Gerard Alexander develops a general theoreti-
cal argument to explain institutional and electoral change. He disputes both
the thesis that political institutions are sources of predictable outcomes fos-
tering support for democracy and consolidation and, more specifically, path
dependence and vested interest arguments for predicting institutional stab-
ility. Alexander, in contrast, argues that political institutions are more con-
tingent and susceptible to revision than has often been assumed. With an eye
on old democracies in Western Europe, the author summarily revises insti-
tutional changes in the French Third Republic during the late 19th century
and Britain during the early 20th century, as well as more recent develop-
ments in France and Italy in the second half of the 20th century. Alexander
holds that ‘the directions of [institutional] revision in Western Europe since
1945 are diverse’, including several attempts towards institutional formulas
favoring higher concentration of power (‘greater win-and-loss concen-
tration’). Rather than by the consensual effects of multi-partyism and power-
sharing, the author suggests that democratic ‘consolidation’ can be explained
by a gradual diminution of policy differences between major left and right
political parties, which diminishes the likelihood that threatening policies
will emerge even in institutional frameworks favoring high concentration of
power and complete alternations of rulers.
The following contribution focuses on a prominent case of institutional
change within a long-lasting non-democratic regime. In ‘Party Dominance
and the Logic of Electoral Design in Mexico’s Transition to Democracy’,
Alberto Díaz-Cayeros and Beatriz Magaloni analyze the strategy of insti-
tutional and electoral reform by a dominant ruling party in order to inte-
grate opposition fractions, divide and rule. As the authors explain, the
Mexican PRI, which was the ruling party for more than 70 years (from 1929
to 2000, although with three different names) crafted electoral institutions
in such a way that party dominance reinforced itself. The rulers imple-
mented ‘from above’ a series of controlled opening reforms addressed to
different minority fractions in opposition with the aim of reducing a nation-
wide challenge to its domination. Instead of analyzing again the mechani-
cal effects of the several electoral rules established since the 1960s (largely
studied elsewhere), Díaz-Cayeros and Magaloni focus on the strategic
calculations of the long-term ruling party at choosing the new rules and on
their effects on the strategies of opposition party leaders and voters. Basi-
cally, the strategy of electoral change they identify include: (1) keeping the
majoritarian nature of the initial electoral system based on single-member
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 245

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 245

districts which rewarded the incumbent ruling party; and (2) adding multi-
member district races that could benefit fractions of the opposition by
reducing entry costs, but would also promote competition among them,
thus making it difficult for the opposition to coordinate at the national
level, and prohibiting voters from splitting the ticket among different
candidates in different races. The PRI was defeated only when the oppo-
sition was able to win in single-member districts, in July 2000. If further
institutional and electoral reforms can be expected in the future in Mexico,
they will likely be oriented by a different strategy towards more pluralistic
formulas because, as the authors point out, there is no longer a dominant
party.
Finally, in ‘From Majoritarian to Pluralist Democracy? Electoral Reform
in Britain since 1997’, Patrick Dunleavy and Helen Margetts focus on the
feasibility of institutional reforms in an old democracy. They analyze the
strategy of a long-term loser, the British Labour party, for replacing the tra-
ditional Westminster electoral system – ‘the genetic forerunner of almost all
other plurality systems’ in the world – with decentralization and pro-
portional formulas permitting multi-partyism to develop. After considering
some other long-term factors of democratic renewal, Dunleavy and Mar-
getts explain that the Labour party leaders’ strategy of electoral reform
began to be considered in the 1980s after several electoral defeats which
raised serious doubts about whether the party could regain power under the
existing rules and party configuration. After winning government in 1997,
thanks in part to voters’ coordination and strategic behavior, the Labour
party established proportional electoral systems for the new assemblies of
Scotland, Wales and London, as well as for the election of the British
members of the European Parliament, while additional proposals have been
crafted to provide a measure of proportionality to the House of Commons
and to local governments. The immediate effects of these reforms have sur-
passed both political leaders’ expectations and experts’ projections based
on the new rules’ mechanical effects, especially because, with more inclu-
sive rules, many voters were no longer constrained into supporting one of
the two largest parties for fear that their votes will otherwise be wasted. As
a consequence, very innovative multi-party coalition governments have
been formed in Scotland, Wales, and London, in contrast to the traditional
concentration of power in a single party at the national level. Dunleavy and
Margetts warn about the high resistance that can still be expected from
vested political interests to further institutional reforms, but they consider
change irreversible because it has already provoked a remarkable realign-
ment of British party politics ‘which should mark a decisive end to talk of
Britain as a “two party system” ’.
The issue is completed with a discussion by Kenneth Shepsle that identi-
fies key issues and suggest further lines of research.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 246

246 JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL POLITICS 13(3)

REFERENCES

Bartolini, Stefano and Peter Mair (1990) Identity, Competition, and Electoral Availability: The
Stabilisation of European Electorates 1885–1995. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Castles, Francis and Peter Mair (1984) ‘Left–Right Political Scales: Some Experts Judgements’,
European Journal of Political Research 12: 83–8.
Colomer, Josep M. (1995) ‘Strategies and Outcomes in Eastern Europe’, Journal of Democ-
racy 6(2): 74–85.
Colomer, Josep M. (2000) Strategic Transitions. Game Theory and Democratization. Balti-
more, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Colomer, Josep M. (2001) Political Institutions. Democracy and Social Choice. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Elster, Jon (1991) ‘Constitutionalism in Eastern Europe: An Introduction’, The University of
Chicago Law Review 58(2): 447–82.
Elster, Jon (1993) ‘Constitution-Making in Eastern Europe. Rebuilding the Boat in the Open
Sea’, Public Administration 71(2): 169–217.
Freedom House (R. D. Gastil and A. Karatnycky, eds) (1972–2000) Freedom in the World, The
Annual Survey of Political Rights and Civil Liberties. New Brunswick: Transaction.
Gasiorowski, Mark J. (1996) ‘An Overview of the Political Regime Change Dataset’, Com-
parative Political Studies 29(4): 469–83.
Geddes, Barbara (1996) ‘Initiation of New Democratic Institutions in Eastern Europe and
Latin America’, in Arend Lijphart and Carlos H. Waisman (eds) Institutional Design in New
Democracies. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Huber, John D. and Ronald Inglehart (1995) ‘Expert Interpretations of Party Space and Party
Locations in 42 Societies’, Party Politics 1(1): 73–111.
Knutsen, Oddbjørn (1998) ‘Expert Judgements of the Left–Right Location of Political Parties:
A Comparative Longitudinal Study’, West European Politics 2(2): 63–94.
Laver, Michael and W. Ben Hunt (1992) Policy and Party Competition. New York: Routledge.
Lijphart, Arend (1992) ‘Democratization and Constitutional Choices in Czecho-Slovakia,
Hungary and Poland 1989–91’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 4(2): 207–23.
Lijphart, Arend (1994) Electoral Systems and Party Systems. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lijphart, Arend (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-
Six Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Linz, Juan J. and Arturo Valenzuela (eds) (1994) The Failure of Presidential Democracy.
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Mainwaring, Scott and Matthew S. Shugart (eds) (1997) Presidentialism and Democracy in
Latin America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Miller, Nicholas R. (1983) ‘Pluralism and Social Choice’, American Political Science Review 21:
769–803.
Nagel, Stuart S. (ed.) (1983) Encyclopedia of Policy Studies. New York and Basel: Marcel
Dekker.
North, Douglass C. (1990a) ‘A Transaction Cost Theory of Politics’, Journal of Theoretical Poli-
tics 2(4): 355–67.
North, Douglass C. (1990b) Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
North, Douglass C. and Robert P. Thomas (1973) The Rise of the Western World: A New Econ-
omic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pierson, Paul (2000) ‘Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics’, Ameri-
can Political Science Review 94(2): 251–68.
Power, Timothy J. and Mark J. Gasiorowski (1997) ‘Institutional Design and Democratic Con-
solidation in the Third World’, Comparative Political Studies 30(2): 123–55.
Przeworski, Adam (1991) Democracy and the Market. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
01colomer 25/6/01 11:15 am Page 247

COLOMER: INTRODUCTION 247

Przeworski, Adam, Mike Alvarez, José Antonio Cheibub and Fernando Limogi (2000) Democ-
racy and Development. Political Institutions and Material Well-being in the World,
1950–1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Riker, William H. (1980) ‘Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study
of Institutions’, American Political Science Review 74: 432–46.
Riker, William H. (1982) Liberalism Against Populism. A Confrontation Between the Theory
of Democracy and the Theory of Social Choice. San Francisco, CA: Freeman.
Riker, William H. (1983) ‘Political Theory and the Art of Heresthetics’, in Ada Finifter (ed.)
Political Science: The State of the Discipline, pp. 47–67. Washington: American Political
Science Association.
Riker, William H. (1986) The Art of Political Manipulation. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Riker, William H. (ed.) (1993) Agenda Formation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Riker, William H. (1996) The Strategy of Rhetoric: Campaigning for the American Constitution,
ed. Randall L. Calvert, John Mueller, and Rick K. Wilson. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Shepsle, Kenneth A. (1979) ‘Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional
Voting Models’, American Journal of Political Science 23: 27–59.
Shepsle, Kenneth A. (1986) ‘Institutional Equilibrium and Equilibrium Institutions’, in
Herbert Weisberg (ed.) Political Science: The Science of Politics, pp. 51–81. New York:
Agathon,
Shepsle, Kenneth A. (1989) ‘Studying Institutions: Some Lessons from the Rational Choice
Approach’, Journal of Theoretical Politics 1: 131–49.

JOSEP M. COLOMER is a research professor at the Higher Council of

Scientific Research (CSIC), in Barcelona. His most recent books in English
are Political Institutions: Democracy and Social Choice (Oxford University
Press, 2001) and Strategic Transitions: Game Theory and Democratization
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). ADDRESS: Universitat Pompeu
Fabra, Department of Economics, Ramon Trias Fargas 25, Barcelona 08005,
Spain. [e-mail: josep.colomer@econ.upf.es]