INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN – THE MOST POPULAR BRANCH OF CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL SCIENCE

Sa？etak The author gives an account of the evolution of the theories of institutional design or constitutional engineering in political science in the last twenty years. This is a special branch of political science that looks into how political institutions may serve as the means of conflict management in divided societies and whether they may be constructed in such a way as to contribute to the conflict resolution, democratization and the democratic stability of societies in general. Their rise was theoretically enabled by new institutionalism and historically by the third wave of democratization of autocratic political regimes since the 1970s and particularly since the 1990s. Using several seminal works to illustrate her point, the author shows how the theories of institutional design overlap with the theories of democratic transformation, consociational democracy, liberal democracy, and others