International Political Science Review 2015, Vol. 36(1) 60–77 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0192512113503929 ips.sagepub.com Constitutional choices: Uncertainty and institutional design in democratising nations Jai Kwan Jung Korea University, South Korea Christopher J. Deering George Washington University, USA Abstract Why do democratising nations make the constitutional choices they do? Conceiving democratic transition as a critical juncture, we propose a theory of constitutional choice. We place the degree of uncertainty at the centre of our theorising efforts to explain the relationship between constitutional bargains among competing political groups and the type of executive–legislative relations adopted during democratisation. We posit that parliamentarism is more likely to be adopted under high-uncertainty conditions, while presidentialism is more likely under low-uncertainty conditions. Identifying four factors that affect the level of uncertainty in the transition process, we examine how the choices of executive–legislative relations are made under strong influences of historical and geographic factors. Keywords Constitutional choices, critical juncture, democratisation, parliamentarism, presidentialism Introduction Democratic transitions and constitution making often coincide. About two-thirds of new democra- cies wrote a new constitution or seriously revised a pre-existing constitution during regime transi- tions in the post-World War II period. The other third simply restored a previous constitutional order. But reviving a previous constitutional framework also is an important political decision because it reflects the preferences of competing parties and elites at transition. Corresponding author: Jai Kwan Jung, Department of Political Science and International Relations, Korea University, Anam-Dong, Seongbuk-Gu, Seoul, 136-701, South Korea. Email: jkjung@korea.ac.kr 503929IPS 36 1 10.1177/0192512113503929International Political Science ReviewJung and Deering 13 Article at Korea University on January 6, 2015 ips.sagepub.com Downloaded from