Institutional Challenges for Democratisation

Abstract

This panel brings together five papers that examine the effects of institutions in the context of new democracies by combining comparative and single-case studies. The study of institutional effects in this setting has clearly lagged behind largely due to lack of data. Are the theories traditionally employed to analyze the effect of institutions in old democracies useful to understand the impact of institutions in recently democratized countries? The evidence provided in the papers suggest that it is necessary to generate new theories that take into account not only the type of democratic transition but also the peculiarities of the previous autocratic regime