Legal Institutions and Democratic Survival

Do institutions designed to limit arbitrary government promote the survival of democratic regimes? Although the international effort to build the rule of law is predicated on a belief that they do, mainstream research on democratic survival typically treats institutions as epiphenomenal. We argue that institutions encourage regime survival by addressing problems of monitoring and social coordination that complicate democratic compromise. We find that property-rights institutions generally, and judicial institutions specifically, encourage survival, especially when macroeconomic conditions favor inter-class compromise.