Institutional engineering in W estem Europe concerns four democratic institutions: the constitution as a whole, the discovery of the semi-presidential system, the search for a new elecwrai law which renders efficient majorities, the use of plebiscitarian instryments to overcome the crisis of the representative system. [...] Corporatist revolutions tended to amend the constitution if it contained enough provisions to please the bourgeois elements in the coWl try, as was the case in the constitutions of the 1950s in Eastern Europe. [...] The culture of preambles even in modern Iaicist cultures has a threefold function: to sketch in a ceremonial language the basic principles of the system, to integr<~te the citizens and to mention the hopes for the future. [...] This was much in the tradition of the Bulgarization of Turkish names in the 1980s which did not stop at the cemeteries of the Muslims in Bulgaria. [...] Venerable truisms of insight were revitalized: electoral formulas create the desired function of stabilizing party systems only when the develqpmenta! differences in the country are not too alarming (Nohlen 1990: 127) In spite of an equalizing 'social imperialism' of the Communist federations the collapse of the systems of planned economy left the budding ,., ...
- Pages
- 388
- Published in
- Italy
