A Critical Note on “Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies”
Jørgen Møller
European University Institute
Political and Social Sciences Department
M. Steven Fish on the blessing of stronger legislatures in the post-communist world
M. Steven Fish has, together with a colleague, created a Parliamentary Power Index,
according to which a country receives a relatively high score if relatively high levels of
constitutional power are vested in the parliament and a relatively low score if the opposite
is the case. In the article “Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies,”1 he tests this
claim in the context of 25 post-communist countries.
A proponent of parliamentarism, Fish’s theoretical expectation is that a high degree of
parliamentary power (and hence a weak presidency) should make for democracy whereas
a low degree of parliamentary power (and hence a strong presidency) should make for
autocracy. And, lo and behold, this is exactly what he finds. To quote his
uncompromising claim: “The evidence shows that the presence of a powerful legislature
is an unmixed blessing for democratization.”2
Fish has no reason to play down this statement. The statistical correlation between the
Parliamentary Power Index and the average Freedom House ratings from 2003 to 2005 (a
proxy of democracy) finds expression in a Pearson’s R of no less than -.92; the
independent variable thus accounts for an astonishing 85 per cent of the variation on the
dependent.
Furthermore, Fish is quick to check if the correlation is spurious. Perhaps, he
speculates, the Parliamentary Power Index reflects the democratic achievements at the
time of the inauguration of the respective constitutions, “the constitutional moment?”3
The answer turns out not to be in the affirmative. Or, better, “the constitutional moment”
explanation only accounts for a very modest part of the variation; which leaves Fish free
to conclude that
“. . . the power of legislatures, as established in constitutions adopted between the late
1980s and mid-1990s, predicts political openness in the mid-2000s more accurately
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than political openness at the time of the adoption of constitutions predict the power
of legislatures.”4
Spuriousness and regional effects
It is laudable that Fish checks for spuriousness—and he generally does a good job,
too. He thus acknowledges that spuriousness could stem from other sources than initial
open politics. Consequently, he also checks for structural variables such as economic
development, pointing out that, “[w]hat is more, the effect of the PPI score on change in
FH scores holds up well in statistical analyses that control for other variables that might
affect democratization, such as economic development.”5 In other words, he considers
whether the institutional choice may be endogenous to prior structural constraints—and
rejects this potential objection.
Yet one, very noteworthy speculation does not enter into his account: that regional
effects may be relevant. This is somewhat surprising. The fact of the matter is that the
values on both his independent and his dependent variable are very systematically
dispersed across the space of the former communist world. A few illustrations should
suffice to make this point. In figure 1 and figure 2, I have turned Fish’s indexes covering
the independent variable and the dependent variable6 into two classifications each
yielding three respective classes.7
The figures demonstrate that the intra-regional similarities (within regional clusters)
and inter-regional differences (between regional clusters) on both the independent and the
dependent variable are strikingly clear-cut. In Central and Eastern Europe we encounter
all free countries and all parliamentary systems save Mongolia. In Caucasus and Central
Asia we encounter all not free countries and all presidential systems save Belarus and
Russia (the latter only an outlier on the constitutional variable). And in-between, we find
most of the intermediary cases, i.e. the partly free countries and hybrid constitutional
systems.
2
Figure 1: The geographical distribution of post-communist constitutional systems
Figure 1: The geographical distribution of post-communist political regimes, 2003
In a nutshell, out of no less than 25 countries only Belarus and Mongolia are genuinely
able to break the regional logic. This is interesting. When we meet geographically
differences such as these, then the explanation is itself likely to be geographical. That is
almost a truism. And this leads us to the doorstep of regional effects.
3
Diffusion under post-communism
According to Fish, the post-communist countries have chosen constitutional systems
in a more or less voluntaristic way—and the institutional constraints have then kicked in
over the latest decade. But why is it, one cannot help wonder, that Mongolia was the only
country outside of Central and Eastern Europe that opted for parliamentarism after the
breakdown of communism? And, conversely, why is it that no country in Central and
Eastern Europe opted for presidentialism pure and simple?
Regional effects such as diffusion present a clear answer to this riddle. Crudely put,
maybe Kazakhstan opted for a strong president (and hence a weak parliament) in January
1993 because neighboring Uzbekistan had done so the month before? And maybe
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan simply followed suit when they chose their constitutional
arrangement within the subsequent twelve months? Likewise, maybe Lithuania opted for
a strong parliament (and hence a weak president) in October 1992 because Estonia had
just done so in June the same year? And so on and so forth with Central Europe;
Southeastern Europe; Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus; and the Caucasian countries8.
This is an intriguing notion. Once put in place, constitutional systems become (more
or less) lasting constraints on actions. The arrangements “freeze”; they become
institutions and they then shape the arena in which the actors operate. But if the initial
constitutional choice is merely the result of diffusion, then it is this factor—and not the
institutional choice per se—that accounts for the variation on the dependent variable of
the political regime form. In other words, the constitutional variable is, at most,
intervening in this case.
Interestingly, this claim is very seldomly voiced in the literature—and it is practically
never tested. In Timothy Frye’s9 oft-cited attempt to account for the rise of presidential
systems in the post-communist setting, a large number of competing cultural, economic,
political, and societal approaches are discussed. But Frye does not even mention diffusion
in his overview of theories of constitutional choice.
This is all the more strange as the diffusion argument seems plausible enough to
require disconfirmation, at least with regard to the constitutional explanation of
democracy in the post-communist setting. How else can we explain that Fish’s
constitutional variable—and Frye’s for that matter—varies so very systematically from a
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geographical point of view? The only other alternative that comes to mind is that the
intra-regional similarities should be traced to antecedent structural factors10—and Fish
claims to have checked for those.
Put differently, as a proximate cause, the constitutional variable definitely holds its
own in Fish analysis. But the puzzle here is why the members of each geographical
cluster should move in a uniform direction at the outset of the period. And here diffusion
may indeed have been the root cause. The proponents of institutional explanations need,
at the very least, to refute this objection.
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Appendix 1. The Parliamentary Powers Index and the Freedom House Score 2003
Country
Parliamentary Powers Index
Freedom House Score 2003
Albania
.75 (PAR)
3.0 (PF)
Armenia
.53 (HYB)
4.0 (PF)
Azerbaijan
.44 (PRE)
5.5 (NF)
Belarus
.28 (PRE)
6.0 (NF)
Bulgaria
.78 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Croatia
.72 (PAR)
2.0 (F)
Czech Republic
.78 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Estonia
.75 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Georgia
.59 (HYB)
4.0 (PF)
Hungary
.69 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Kazakhstan
.31 (PRE)
5.5 (NF)
Kyrgyzstan
.41 (PRE)
5.5 (NF)
Latvia
.84 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Lithuania
.72 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Macedonia
.78 (PAR)
3.0 (PF)
Moldova
.72 (PAR)
3.5 (PF)
Mongolia
.81 (PAR)
2.0 (F)
Poland
.66 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Romania
.72 (PAR)
2.0 (F)
Russia
.44 (PRE)
5.0 (PF)
Slovakia
.72 (PAR)
1.5 (F)
Slovenia
.78 (PAR)
1.0 (F)
Tajikistan
.41 (PRE)
5.5 (NF)
Ukraine
.50 (HYB)
4.0 (PF)
Uzbekistan
.28 (PRE)
6.5 (NF)
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Notes and references
1
M. Steven Fish, ”Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies”, Journal of Democracy 17 (January,
2006), 5–20
2
Fish, ”Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies,” 5.
3
Fish, ”Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies,” 9.
4
Fish, ”Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies,” 11.
5
Fish, ”Stronger Legislatures, Stronger Democracies,” 12.
6
Note that the dependent variable is only measured in 2003 here whereas Fish employs the average of the
period 2003-2005.
7
On the dependent variable of the political regime form, I have simply relied on Freedom House’s
tripartition between ‘free’, ‘partly free’, and ‘not free’ states. On the independent variable, matters are
somewhat more complicated as Fish does not establish any thresholds. He does indicate, however, that a
score below 0.5 is a sufficient condition for remaining authoritarian. Hence, I have employed this threshold
to capture the seemingly pernicious class of ‘presidential systems’. To delimit its opposite number – i.e. a
‘parliamentary system’ – I have chosen the threshold of 0.65. Everything in-between falls into the class of
‘hybrid systems’.
8
The causal mechanisms underlying the regional effects normally pointed to under the headline of
‘diffusion’ are, first, dissemination of norms and ideas and, second, the stance of international actors such
as the EU. See Scott Mainwaring & Anibal Perez-Linan, ”Why Regions of the World are Important.
Regional Specificities and Region-Wide Diffusion of Democracy”, Paper 9/12/05 (2005).
9
Timothy Frye, “A Politics of Institutional Choice: Post-Communist Presidencies”, Comparative Political
Studies (October 1997).
10
See, for example, Herbert Kitschelt, ”Accounting for Postcommunist Regime Diversity. What Counts as
a Good Cause?” in Grzegorz Ekiert & Stephen E. Hanson, eds., Capitalism and Democracy in Central and
Eastern Europe. Assessing the Legacy of Communist Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
for this argument.
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