Institutional Design and Democracy in Post-Communist Countries.

I present a theory about the institutional determinants of democratic performance. Parliamentary systems and party list proportional representation are more conducive to a strong party system with competitive, programmatic and institutionalized political parties, and consequently to a better democratic quality. To show this, I take a closer look at a subset of post-Communist polities, those with a majority Orthodox population, thus controlling for the effect of culture or religion. When we look at the relationship between economic development (another important explanatory variable) and democracy, we see that in this group the relationship is actually negative. I offer an institutional explanation for this paradox: less economically developed Orthodox polities have made better institutional choices than more economically developed Orthodox polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]