The Evolution of Parliamentarism and its Political Consequences

The number of democracies in the world today is higher than in any other time. The majority of these democracies adopt a parliamentary constitution, that is, one that is based on assembly confidence. Assembly confidence regimes are those in which governments, in order to come to and stay in power, must be at least tolerated by a legislative majority. They can be divided into positive and negative parliamentarism. The aim of the workshop is to examine the origins and consequences of the mechanisms of positive and negative parliamentarism. In positive parliamentarism, a majority is required to explicitly express its support for the government; in negative parliamentarism such an explicit expression of majority support is not required. Positive parliamentarism is characterized by a variety of instruments, related to both the making and breaking of governments and their governing capacity (investiture rules, confidence vote, package vote, exclusive government initiative, etc.). We believe the distinction between the two regimes is crucial for understanding the way they operate. Yet, what we know about them is surprisingly sparse and rudimentary. Given that most democracies in the world have adopted some form of parliamentary institutions, understanding the consequences of variation in parliamentarism is both theoretically and practically important. We invite papers that: (1) develop conceptually the distinction between types of parliamentary systems; (2) provide an historical account of the emergence of parliamentary institutions, (3) examine the impact of types of parliamentarism on political outcomes such as government type, stability and the ability to respond to economic and political crisis.