REGIME TYPE: DOES IT REALLY MATTER? On the Perils of Semi-Presidentialism for Party System Institutionalization in Post-communist Eastern Europe

Among political scientists the debate about the relative virtues/vices of the different regime types has constituted one of the most incandescent fields of inquiry. Yet few studies address the impact of semi-presidentialism on the prospects for party system institutionalization, otherwise a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the consolidation of democracy (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995; Morlino, 1998). Seeking to begin to fill this gap in the literature, and departing from a new operationalization of the party system institutionalization (Casal Bértoa and Enyedi, 2010), this paper constitutes an attempt to analyse the effects parliamentarism and/or semi-presidentialism produce on the level of systemic institutionalization in new 17 post-communist Eastern European democracies. Examining differences in these cases, to which an in-depth analysis of four representative case-studies is added, the paper finds substantial evidence that, in clear contrast to parliamentarism, semi-presidentialism is detrimental to the process of institutionalization in young party systems.