Rethinking Varieties of Executive Institutions: A New Dataset on Constitutional Executive–Legislative Relations, 1946–2020

Abstract

The formal aspects of executive institutions (i.e., executive-legislative relations) are important not only in democracy but also in authoritarianism. However, attempts to classify authoritarian regimes have tended to focus only on their actual aspects (i.e., the organizational basis of the ruling elites). Therefore, this article seeks to fill this gap and capture the formal aspects across regimes by presenting a new dataset: “Constitutional Executive-Legislative Relations” (CELR). First, this article illustrates a set of institutional criteria for determining political regimes, a typology of executive–legislative relations based on the effectiveness and duality of the executive and a series of variables of constitutional authorities based on the different paths through which political actors exercise their authorities. Next, it proposes several ways in which CELR can be applied: in particular, to extend and limit the scope of relevant cases by using specific types of executive-legislative relations and specific variables of constitutional authorities, and to combine CELR’s constitutional data and V-Dem’s customary data to identify the extent to which the design and the practice of powers that can be exercised by political actors diverge. Finally, it concludes by discussing how the data of CELR can be extended in two respects.