We study changes in the form of government as an example of endogenously determined constitutions. For a sample of 202 countries over the period 1950-2006, we find that most changes are relatively small and roughly equally likely to be either in the direction of more parliamentarian or more...

A country's form of government has important economic and political consequences, but the determinants that lead societies to choose either parliamentary or presidential systems are largely unexplored. This paper studies this choice by analyzing the factors that make countries switch from...

De jure judicial independence (JI) is the single most important predictor of de facto JI. In this paper, we describe under what conditions countries are likely to include JI in their constitutions. We describe and analyze both their original choice in this regard as well as change over time...