In recent years renewed attention has been directed to the importance of the role of institutional design in democratic politics. Particular interest has concerned constitutional design and the relative merits of parliamentary versus presidential systems. In this book, the authors systematically assess the strengths and weaknesses of various forms of presidential systems, drawing on recent developments in the theoretical literature about institutional design and electoral rules. They develop a typology of democratic regimes structured around the separation of powers principle, including two hybrid forms, the premier-presidential and president-parliamentary systems, and they evaluate a number of alternative ways of balancing powers between the branches within these basic frameworks. They also demonstrate that electoral rules are critically important in determining how political authority is exercised.

In the experiments, each candidate was described using eight characteristics: name, partisanship, positions on policies toward taxation and racial discrimination, and four positions reflecting democratic values. The characteristics of the candidates were randomly generated from the following sets of alternatives:• Name (gender and race/ethnicity): Each candidate was assigned a name from a list of 123 names designed to signal both gender (man or woman) and race/ethnicity (either white, black, or Hispanic) (see Butler and Homola 2017). • Partisanship: Democrat or Republican. • Policy positions: The surveys included two attributes reflecting salient party differences over policy-one on taxation, the other on racial discrimination (see Bartels 2018). -Taxation * Wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. * Wants to lower taxes on everyone, including the wealthy. -Racial discrimination * Believes the government should do more to prevent discrimination against racial minorities. * Believes discrimination against racial minorities is less of a problem now than in the past. • Democratic values: The surveys included four attributes related to core democratic values. -Judicial deference * Said elected officials must obey the courts even when they think that the decisions are wrong. * Said elected officials should not be bound by court decisions they regard as politicized. -Impartial investigations * Said law enforcement investigations of politicians and their associates should be free of partisan influence. * Said elected officials should supervise law enforcement investigations of politicians and their associates. -Compromise * Promises to work for compromise across party lines. * Promises to stand up to the other party.A-1 * Opposes new legislation to require voters to show state-issued ID at the polls. * Supports new legislation to require voters to show state-issued ID at the polls.

Is American democracy under threat? The question is more prominent in political debate now than at any time in recent memory. However, it is also too blunt; there is widespread recognition that democracy is multifaceted and that backsliding, when it occurs, tends to be piecemeal. To address these concerns, we provide original data from surveys of political science experts and the public measuring the perceived importance and performance of U.S. democracy on a number of dimensions during the first year-and-a-half of the Trump presidency. We draw on a theory of how politicians may transgress limits on their authority and the conditions under which constraints are self-enforcing. We connect this theory to our survey data in an effort to identify potential areas of agreement—bright lines—among experts and the public about the most important democratic principles and whether they have been violated. Public and expert perceptions often differ on the importance of specific democratic principles. In addition, though our experts perceive substantial democratic erosion, particularly in areas related to checks and balances, polarization between Trump supporters and opponents undermines any social consensus recognizing these violations.

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.

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