Institutional arrangements in democratic systems do not magically materialize from an ethereal haze. Instead, they generally emerge from hotly contested debates among individuals who often will play a part in choosing future public policies. But why do political decisionmakers often exhibit such a deep interest in what often seem like trivial details of political rules and procedures? How do individuals who choose decision rules develop beliefs about the impact of specific rules on behavior? Are there systematic elements that underlie explanations of the choice of rules, or must any such ‘explanation’ be idiosyncratic and historically contingent?

This chapter addresses these questions by examining the choice of institutional arrangements through two quite different lenses. The first fixes on formal models of majority rule, and in particular on the contributions these models make toward establishing a general framework for thinking about the adoption of democratic institutions. The second lens fixes on the historical events in France in 1958 that led to the inclusion of the package vote and the confidence vote procedure in the Fifth Republic Constitution.

My goal is to create a dialog in two directions. On one hand, examining the specific events in France aims, not only to provide new historical details about the process that led to the choice of particular procedures in 1958, but also to highlight issues that are relevant to building general theories of endogenous institutions.