Convenors

Sonia Alonso,
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB)
Email: alonso@wz-berlin.de
Tel: +49 (0) 30 25491-266
Fax: +49 (0) 30 25491-345

Rubén Ruiz-Rufino
Institute of Public Goods and Policies (IPP), CSIC, Spain
Email: rruiz@ceacs.march.es
Tel: +34-914354240 ext. 226
Fax: +34 -914315135

What are the areas covered by this new standing-group?

The new standing group "Comparative Political Institutions" focuses on two analytically distinct research areas: the origins and the effects of political institutions. Institutional design thus is both a dependent and an independent variable, and we include in this distinction analyses showing how policies and outcomes channelled initially by institutions may feed back on these institutions – the call in many countries for institutional reform to accommodate problems of responsiveness and legitimacy speaks to this cyclic perspective. While much existing work presented as ‘comparative’ actually focuses on single countries or cases, this standing group aims to be a venue for explicit cross-national comparative studies of political institutions.

The origins and changes of political institutions, as grand designs, or as outcomes of civic and political conflict are a key subject of research, employing concepts such as democracy versus dictatorship, declining or emerging regimes, federalism versus unitarism, presidential versus parliamentary systems, single-party versus multi-party government, etc. Some normative but mostly empirical theories using these distinctions for studying the making and breaking of all types of institutional arrangements are at the heart of comparative politics. Consider for example electoral systems. Shaping and reshaping institutional arrangements for democratic elections is a salient research topic within and outside Europe, where new democracies emerged in the third wave of democratization in the past decades. New democracies such as Poland, South Korea and El Salvador have radically changed their electoral system, while others (Spain, Uruguay, Latvia) made minor adaptations or left their electoral system completely unaltered. How can we explain these differences? The academic literature suggests several reasons. Rokkan (1971) argued that more proportional electoral systems were adopted at the beginning of the past century to incorporate ethnic minorities in the decision-making process and, more importantly, to resist the boost in voting support that labour parties were expected to receive after adopting universal suffrage. The strategic coordination between the old existing parties to contain the increasing push of labour parties at the beginning of the last century is mentioned also by Boix (1999). Rogowski (1987) argued that more proportional electoral systems were adopted in closed trade-dependent countries to ensure the stability of the state. Are these explanations used for the rise of electoral systems at the beginning of the 20th century still valid for understanding changes in electoral systems in new democracies in more recent times?

Shifting the analytical perspective to effects of institutions, research focuses on how regimes and governments function, on the output of political and administrative machinery, on their efficiency, accountability, and responsiveness, and on the ways political agendas for dealing with policy problems are set. Electoral systems for example are not only an outcome but also an explanatory variable; they have been used to explain the number of competing parties (Cox 1997) and the rise of different party systems (Lijphart 1994). Electoral systems also may influence political economy issues such as the allocation of public spending (Milesi-Ferreti et al. 2002, Pearson and Tabellini 2005) and account for variation in levels of corruption (Kunickova Rose-Ackerman 2005). Beyond electoral institutions, the policy agendas of governments are set in arenas that may vary and connect in different ways across countries. Political institutions vary in their veto potential (Tsebelis, 2002) and in the level of friction they involve when claims and initiatives are processed and governments set priorities about which problems to address – and which to ignore (Baumgartner and Jones, 1993; Jones and Baumgartner, 2005). Different institutional arrangements between countries may produce different policies. They may be designed to do this, but it may also be that they have unforeseen consequences.

These are just some examples of research areas and themes that we think fit within the scope of the new standing group. We particularly seek to encourage cross-national comparisons, but we also like to integrate the work of comparativists with that of area specialists and promote scholarly debate about how to combine aggregate data and individual level data. The common ground in this standing group is explicit and systematic comparative research, and we seek to bridge and combine approaches of quantitative and qualitative analysis. Likewise, we are open to any theoretical perspective used to study causes and effects of political institutions comparatively. We strongly believe that comparative research can benefit enormously from methodological and theoretical cross-fertilization.

Why are these research areas important for the ECPR?

Within the ECPR, there is no standing group with such an explicit emphasis on comparative analysis of political institutions as results of political processes or driving them. We are aware of the fact that the ECPR’s traditional focus on Europe has privileged some institutional topics (federalism and the role of parliaments, for example) while others have received much less attention (origins of political regimes). Certain institutional topics have been dealt with widely as part of the study of other phenomena, such as political parties, or as part of the study of particular geographical areas, such as the EU, Eastern Europe and Latin America. Existing standing groups take such a geographical focus or deal with specific research objects and themes, such as participation, parties, parliaments, party manifestoes, extremism, and organized crime. Further, we see our standing group as complementary to the one on Political Methodology, in that we share its orientation to methodological dialogue, but our standing group is more focused on substantive research on political institutions studied comparatively.

The establishment of this standing group within the ECPR would have two immediate effects. First, the traditional focus on Europe and European issues would be expanded, since the group’s main interest lies in political institutions all over the world. The expansion into regions of the world that have been under explored within the ECPR will also increase the variety of issues and problems to be analyzed: differing levels of democratic performance and government responsiveness in cultural, regional and economic contexts that vary; it will shed more light on the institutional handling of failed states and on the use of democratic institutions to maintain undemocratic regimes; there will be more attention for the use of institutional crafting and innovation in new and fragile democracies, and for the study of ethnic violence and civil wars, etc. Second, this Standing Group seeks to promote studies focusing on the agenda and policy consequences of institutional arrangements. Such studies may be both empirical and normative.

Goals and Activities

The main goal of this new standing group is the creation of a permanent network of scholars in order to promote the comparative, especially cross-national, study of political regimes, institutions and governments. Within this network, a permanent exchange of ideas, research and discussion of current issues of the discipline is expected to take place

More concrete activities could be the following:
1 - Endorse at least one workshop in both the Joint and General Conferences of the ECPR. We think that the endorsement of workshops is the best possible way to maintain a constant contact of those scholars working on areas related to the standing-group. These workshops could also be ideal scenarios to set up a research agenda in one of the areas covered by the standing-group.
2 - Permanent discussion and exchange of ideas using some electronic tools like a web-page.
3 - Publication of a Newsletter with information about comparative datasets, new publications, teaching resources, conferences and seminars, access to working papers, etc.
4 - If consolidated, the standing-group could organise periodic summer schools to graduate students interested in the field of comparative political institutions.

Prospective Members

We believe that this standing group would be of great interest to all those scholars working in the area of comparative politics and, more concretely, comparative institutions. We would like to attract senior and well established scholars together with young researchers and PhD students.