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The Politics of Institutional Choice

Author: S Bastian and R Luckham
Date: 2003
Size: 321 pages

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Summary

Can democracy be designed? Or are political constitutions always dependent on accident and force? This study looks at the situation in South Africa, Ghana, Uganda, Boznia-Herzogovina, Sri Lanka and Fiji and suggests that there are no easy answers to these questions.

All the above countries have passed through periods when their politics have been dominated by 'accident and force'. In all constitution makers and citizens have had the onerous task of rebuilding good government on the basis of reflection and choice. These countries represent a wide range of historical experiences some passing from soviet ideology, planned economy and authoritarian rule to market economy and liberal democracy. Others are multi-ethnic states that emerged into statehood after British colonial rule.

It is clear that democratic constitutions do not guarantee democracy, nor do they necessarily reduce conflict. Nevertheless, there is sometimes no alternative to designing or redesigning democratic institutions. The question in such cases is not whether democracy can be designed, but how it can be reinvented, by whom and with what prospect of success.

• The design of institutions needs to be based on a proper understanding of shifting power relations and societal transformations. For this, a historical perspective is needed - to offset democracy triumphalism and to counter pessimism over conflict and state failure.
• A great deal depends on how the decision-makers use the political opportunities and spaces open to them at critical junctures in their history, especially at moments of crisis or transition.
• Institutional choices are never made in a political and economic vacuum; they are often tailored to suit the political and economic agendas of those making them.
• Even though institutional choices emerge from shifting power relations, they also reconfigure and transform those relations.
• The political and economic forces pressing for reform - and the reforms themselves - may pull in contradictory directions.
• Even incomplete or politically loaded institutional choices may sometimes create political openings that can be used to expand democratic opportunities or resolve conflicts.

Institutional reform for conflict resolution is necessarily an open-ended process. The impact on democracy or on conflict management of particular institutions, such as electoral systems, cannot be separated from that of others, such as the structure of the executive, the party system or human rights protection. A holistic approach across the entire spectrum of institutions is essential:

• It is always important to look at the small print: the specific technical details of grand documents such as constitutions, legislation and judicial decisions that feature in the design of political systems, together with the latent agendas of those responsible for them.
• The reform process can often be (at least) as critical as the final constitutional or institutional blueprints.
• 'Collapsed' states might seem to provide opportunities to start afresh and to redesign institutions from scratch; yet post-conflict situations also have their own particular dangers and constraints.
• Strategies to neutralise non-democratic politics are almost as essential as strategies to foster democratic politics.
• Spaces need to be kept open for institutional innovation through democratic politics and through responsiveness to civil and political society.

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Source: Bastian, S. and Luckham, R., 2003, ‘Conclusion: the Politics of Institutional Choice’ in Can Democracy Be Designed?, Zed Books, London.
Author: Robin Luckham , r.luckham@ids.ac.uk