Does institutional design matter? Constitutional regime types and party system closure in Asia

Constitutional regime types matter for democratic consolidation. However, how these institutional factors shape party system development has been rarely studied. Applying Casal Bértoa and Enyedi (2016, 2021) conceptualization and operationalization of party system institutionalization (PSI) – party system closure – as consequences, and using a mixed-methods approach, we provide the mechanisms of why institutional characteristics denoting presidential regimes have a detrimental impact on PSI. Our analysis of an original dataset of all Asian party systems, which spans more than 70 years from the aftermath of the World War II to the end of 2020, shows that (1) direct presidential elections, compared to regimes with no such elections, (2) presidentialism vis-à-vis parliamentary and semi-presidential regimes, and (3) a cabinet’s collective responsibility to the president, as opposed to such responsibility solely to the legislature, all have statistically significant and negative effects on PSI. Our case-study of Indonesia, which changed from parliamentarism to presidentialism in 2004, confirms all these three points. Given the greater chance of the rise of populist outsiders in presidential and president-parliamentary semi-presidential regimes, our findings that party systems are more inchoate and parties may become weaker in properly playing a gatekeeping role in these regimes are particularly concerning.