ground condition that is conducive to democracy is correlated with parliamentarism, then the superior record of parliamentarism may be more a product of the back ground condition than the regime type.
Table 4 shows twentyfour additional countries that had been continuously demo
cratic by the same criteria used in Table 1, only for a shorter time period (at least ten years). Together, Tables 1 and 4 give us a complete look at contemporary democra cies that have lasted at least ten years.
There are three striking facts about the additional countries in Table 4. First, they
include a large number of microstates that became independent from Britain in the
1970s and 1980s, and all of them are parliamentary. All seven presidential democ racies but only three of the sixteen parliamentary democracies are in medium to large countries (see Table 5). All sixteen of the democracies listed in Tables 1 and 4 with populations under onehalf million (mostly island nations) are parliamentary, as are eight of ten democracies with populations between onehalf and five million. In contrast, no presidential systems are in microstates, and many are in exception ally large countries, such as Argentina, Brazil, and the United States.
Second, with Table 4 the number of presidential democracies increases substan
tially. Most are in the lower and lower middle income categories, and all are in Latin America. Table 6 summarizes the income status of the newer democracies listed in Table 4. Clearly, not all of parliamentarism's advantage stems from the advanced industrial states. Even in the lower to upper middle income categories, there are more parliamentary systems (twentyone if we combine Tables 1 and 4, compared to eleven presidential systems). However, every one of the parliamentary democra cies outside of the high income category is a former British colony. The only other democracies in these income categories are presidential, and all but Cyprus are in Latin America.
Thus, if the obstacles of lower income ( or other factors not considered here) in Latin America continue to cause problems for the consolidation of democracy, the number of presidential breakdowns could be large once again in the future. More optimistically, if Latin American democracies achieve greater success in consoli dating themselves this time around, the number of long established presidential democracies will grow substantially in the future.