Introduction

As the universe of democratic regimes has expanded considerably since 1989 we face greater institutional variation in the constitutional organization of democracies. The political institutions vary not only in terms of Montesquieu's trias politica, but also in terms of other institutional arrangements such as electoral systems (and related formulae), the state format, the nature of the constitution (codified or not) as well as the position of independent public bodies. The new institutional approach tends to describe merely all the similarities and differences between democratic institutions, but theorizing this cross-national variety in the ‘new’ Europe is an even greater challenge.

If the old institutionalism was chiefly descriptive, parochial and legalistic, then the new institutionalism should do ...