Legal Institutions and the Democratic Order

Abstract

Do legal institutions that limit governmental power promote order in democracies? The worldwide rule of law project is predicated on knowing the answer to this question; however, there is no systematic empirical test of the relationship between legal institutions that constrain arbitrary state power and democratic order. Indeed, the mainstream literature on democratic survival simply ignores the influence of effective legal institutions, focusing instead on sociocultural and macro-economic factors that render individuals vulnerable to government predation on financial assets and violations of physical integrity. Following North, Summerhill and Weingast (2000) we suggest that ensuring the democratic order requires the resolution of a variety of commitment problems over rights, and one way of doing so is through the construction of (or at least the emergence of) legal institutions that constrain state power. Indeed, such institutions should be most useful when states are most at risk to breakdown as a result of unfortunate macro-economic or sociocultural conditions. We find that effective legal institutions are positively associated with democratic survival and negatively associated with violent political events, two central measures of democratic order. We also find that the effect of effective legal institutions on survival is strongest in socioculturally diverse states.

Keywords: rule of law, democracy, democratic survival, credible commitment