Managing Diversity through Institutional Design

N. Jorgensen
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Abstract

The idea that political institutions can be deliberately shaped or “engineered” in order to achieve desired political outcomes is hardly new-the authors of the Constitution of the United States, for example, vigorously debated various configurations of rules, constraints, and incentives that might simultaneously disperse political power over a wide range of actors, while at the same time providing sufficient resources to the central government to provide for national defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure domestic tranquility. Engineering, a theory-driven or deductively-based process, assumes that political institutions can be designed a priori and set in place in order to achieve a particular set of desiderata: representation, fairness, stability, or prosperity, to name but a few. The ability of governments to achieve those and other goals is in part a function of the rule structures that shape and are shaped by political action. Institutional performance is particularly critical to democratic governments, since those rules and constraints mediate between the preferences and aspirations of the electorate, on the one hand, and candidates and governments, on the other. Benjamin Reilly’s latest book, Democracy and Diversity: Political Engineering in the Asia-Pacific, is a welcome addition to the small but growing body of literature that applies what has been learned about political engineering in other regional and historical contexts (e.g., Western Europe during the era of mass enfranchisement and rapid industrialization, and Eastern and Central Europe during the breakup of the Soviet bloc) to a region that has seen too little attention paid to actual rules and conduct of political action. Much of the literature on the politics of the region has either focused on structural or cultural variables or has been confined to single-country monographs that have given short shrift to comparative analysis. Furthermore, the comparative democratization literature has so far paid less attention to the Asia-Pacific region than it has to the more extensively studied regions of Eastern and
通过制度设计管理多样性
政治制度可以被刻意塑造或“设计”以达到预期的政治结果,这一观点并不新鲜——例如,美国宪法的起草者们就各种规则、约束和激励的配置进行了激烈的辩论,这些规则、约束和激励可能同时将政治权力分散到广泛的行动者身上,同时为中央政府提供足够的资源来提供国防。促进全民福利,保障家庭安宁。工程学是一个理论驱动的或基于演绎的过程,它假设政治制度可以被先验地设计和设置,以实现一组特定的愿望:代表性、公平、稳定或繁荣,等等。政府实现这些目标和其他目标的能力在一定程度上取决于影响政治行动的规则结构。制度绩效对民主政府尤其重要,因为这些规则和约束在选民的偏好和愿望与候选人和政府之间进行调解。本杰明·赖利的新书《民主与多样性》:《亚太地区的政治工程》是一本受欢迎的新著作,它将在其他地区和历史背景下(例如,大规模选举权和快速工业化时代的西欧,以及苏联集团解体期间的东欧和中欧)所学到的政治工程知识应用于一个对实际规则和政治行动关注太少的地区。关于该地区政治的许多文献要么集中于结构或文化变量,要么局限于单一国家的专著,对比较分析缺乏重视。此外,迄今为止,比较民主化的文献对亚太地区的关注少于对更广泛研究的东欧和东欧地区的关注
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