IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gigawp/105.html

The Effects of Electoral Institutions in Rwanda: Why Proportional Representation Supports the Authoritarian Regime

Author

Listed:
  • Stroh, Alexander

Abstract

While much has been written about the special design of Rwanda's judiciary in order to handle the aftermath of the genocide in 1994, other institutional actions resulting from the 2003 constitution have rarely been addressed in research. However, the second (partial) par-liamentary elections in September 2008 revealed some of the implications which the care-fully designed electoral system has for Rwanda's political development. As a starting point, the paper emphasises the need to link the debates on institutional design in divided societies with elections in authoritarian regimes. Under different regime types, 'institutional engineers' may pursue different goals. The paper concludes that in the case of Rwanda propor-tional representation (PR) has been implemented to support undemocratic goals. PR limits the local accountability of politicians in a political environment in which the government is not controlled by a democratic opposition. Thus, Rwanda's current PR system facilitates the maintenance of authoritarian power in the country, whereas small constituencies would es-tablish closer links between the local populations and their representatives.

Suggested Citation

  • Stroh, Alexander, 2009. "The Effects of Electoral Institutions in Rwanda: Why Proportional Representation Supports the Authoritarian Regime," GIGA Working Papers 105, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/47759/1/610641794.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stroh, Alexander, 2007. "Crafting Political Institutions in Africa. Electoral Systems and Systems of Government in Rwanda and Zambia Compared," GIGA Working Papers 43, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    2. Shugart,Matthew Soberg & Carey,John M., 1992. "Presidents and Assemblies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521419628.
    3. Rafti, Marina, 2008. "A perilous path to democracy: political transition and authoritarian consolidation in Rwanda," IOB Discussion Papers 2008.03, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    4. repec:gig:afjour:v:37:y:2002:i:3:p:311-333 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Basedau, Matthias & Stroh, Alexander, 2008. "Measuring Party Institutionalization in Developing Countries: A New Research Instrument Applied to 28 African Political Parties," GIGA Working Papers 69, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    6. Rafti, Marina, 2004. "The Rwandan political opposition in exile: a valid interlocutor vis-�-vis Kigali?," IOB Discussion Papers 2004.01, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    7. Mozaffar, Shaheen & Scarritt, James R. & Galaich, Glen, 2003. "Electoral Institutions, Ethnopolitical Cleavages, and Party Systems in Africa's Emerging Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 97(3), pages 379-390, August.
    8. Stroh, Alexander, 2009. "The Power of Proximity: Strategic Decisions in African Party Politics," GIGA Working Papers 96, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    9. Shugart,Matthew Soberg & Carey,John M., 1992. "Presidents and Assemblies," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521429900.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, 2013. "Politics, political settlements and social change in post-colonial Rwanda," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-024-13, GDI, The University of Manchester.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, 2016. "Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa? How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics," WIDER Working Paper Series 104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Josep Colomer, 2014. "Equilibrium institutions: the federal-proportional trade-off," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(3), pages 559-576, March.
    3. Jeffrey Conroy-Krutz, 2016. "Competing cleavages in sub-Saharan Africa?: How economic distance affects ethnic bloc politics," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-104, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    5. Torsten Persson & Guido Tabellini, "undated". "Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes: What are the Stylized Facts?," Working Papers 189, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    6. Gary Goertz & Tony Hak & Jan Dul, 2013. "Ceilings and Floors," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 42(1), pages 3-40, February.
    7. Daniel Diermeier & Pohan Fong, 2011. "Bargaining over the budget," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(3), pages 565-589, April.
    8. Resnik, Danielle & Okumo, Austen, "undated". "Institutional Limits To Land Governance Reform: Federal-State Dynamics In Nigeria," Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research Papers 259578, Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security (FSP).
    9. Pablo T. Spiller, 2003. "The Institutional Foundations of Public Policy: A Transactions Approach with Application to Argentina," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(2), pages 281-306, October.
    10. Bartolini, David & Santolini, Raffaella, 2017. "Political institutions behind good governance," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 68-85.
    11. repec:ers:journl:v:vi:y:2018:i:3:p:98-114 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Roger B. Myerson, 2004. "Political Economics and the Weimar Disaster," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 160(2), pages 187-209, June.
    13. Christl, Michael & Köppl-Turyna, Monika & Kucsera, Dénes, 2018. "Public sector efficiency in Europe: Long-run trends, recent developments and determinants," Working Papers 14, Agenda Austria.
    14. Murillo, Maria Victoria & Foulon, Carmen Le, 2006. "Crisis and policymaking in Latin America: The case of Chile's 1998-99 electricity crisis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(9), pages 1580-1596, September.
    15. Lee, Don S. & Casal Bértoa, Fernando, 2026. "Does institutional design matter? Constitutional regime types and party system closure in Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    16. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 1999. "The size and scope of government:: Comparative politics with rational politicians," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(4-6), pages 699-735, April.
    17. Mariano Tommasi & Valeria Palanza & Carlos Scartascini, 2013. "A Tale of Two Latin American Congresses. Towards a Comparative Study of Institutionalization and Effectiveness," Working Papers 111, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Jun 2013.
    18. Steffen Ganghof, 2019. "Designing Democratic Constitutions: The Search for Optimality," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(4), pages 243-253.
    19. André Kaiser, 1997. "Types of Democracy," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(4), pages 419-444, October.
    20. Kawanaka, Takeshi, 2015. "The stakes of politics and electoral administration : a comparative study of Southeast Asian democracies," IDE Discussion Papers 536, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    21. Manuel Palma-Rangel, 2006. "Institutions and development in Mexico. Are formal economic reforms enough?," Revista de Analisis Economico – Economic Analysis Review, Universidad Alberto Hurtado/School of Economics and Business, vol. 21(2), pages 83-103, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:105. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.