modernization. Parties—frequently discriminated as unpleasant extra-constitu-
tional and anomic institutions under the label of ‘‘factions’’—only in modern
times became the basic element which coordinated all the institutions of the state.
An exception to the ‘‘nothing-new-under-the-sun approach’’ to institutions was
the success story ofconstitutional courts. This institution was new only if we exclude
the functional equivalent of the American Supreme Court which developed—
not completely in tune with the ideas of most founding fathers of the constitution
—judicial review of legislative acts from its seminal decisionMarburyvs.Madison
in 1803. In the light of former colonial history, the USA did not accept special
courts because the American states were afraid of a continuation of the ‘‘Star
chamber proceedings’’ of the British Crown. Not even a special constitutional
court was feasible. Therefore the drafters of the American constitution deliberately
did not accept ‘‘abstract judicial review.’’ The Supreme Court was the least demo-
cratic decision-making body and it was meant by the Federalists to serve—like the
Senate—as another check on volatile democratic decisions in an elitist deliberating
institution with no direct access for the people.
It is an exaggeration that judicial review after 1945 was accepted ‘‘at the point of
a gun’’ (Martin Shapiro). Only Japan followed the American model. In Europe
the ‘‘Austrian model’’ was accepted, developed by Hans Kelsen in 1920 – 1. Kelsen
( 1922 , 55 ) was inspired by the ‘‘Imperial Court’’ of the ‘‘German Confederation’’
and its revolutionary constitution of 1849 which envisaged already the ‘‘constitu-
tional complaint’’ (§ 126 f, g). This type of judicial review became prominent in the
European model, which largely followed the German example. A variation of a
constitutional court sprang up even in political cultures such as France in the
‘‘conseil constitutionnel’’—a country which originally was hostile to the very idea
of ‘‘judicial review’’ against laws and acts of ‘‘the state’’ because it contradicted the
French republican tradition of popular sovereignty.
Some institutions spread from one area to others, such as theombudsman. This
oYce was not really new. Ombudsmen were even remainders of pre-democratic
enlightened absolute rule as a safety valve for individual complaints. New institu-
tions such asplanning authoritieswere developed in an era of a rational optimism
that society can be shaped by the state. But they withered away in the wave of
neoliberalism, which followed the collapse of Communist systems and the high
days of the welfare state. New institutions with a political impact were also
developed to guarantee a balance between the economic institutions. Anational
bankandcommittees for the control over monopoliesgained inXuence. The market
system no longer looked for democratic socialist institutional schemes but tried
indirectly to steer the economy by independent institutions.
Institutional theories always developed in cycles after revolutions ( 1789 , 1830 ,
1848 , 1871 , 1918 , 1945 ). Never did so many regimes break down at one time as in
1989. Never were so many regimes transformed from one fairly uniform Com-
munist institutional type to another fairly uniform type of Western democracy.
political institutions—old and new 745