French Electoral Series in Perspective

RUNNING HEAD Name of the student
0
Stable Governance in France and USA

Name of the student
1
This paper is been written on the topic whether formal institutions such as, constitutions,
formal guidelines and electoral systems or structural factors such as, social, economic and
cultural factors, are more important to ensure stable governance. The United States of America
(USA) and France are the two chosen countries, since both the countries are developed
democracies. The paper highlights the formal institutions and social factors of each country with
a comparative study. The formal institutions consists of electoral system, formal rules by the
government, mandatory guidelines and the constitution system. Whereas, the structural or the
social factors includes the values, beliefs, economic factors, cultural factors, social factors, and
health factors.
Formal institutions constitutes of the legal text written or the constitution, which contains
formal guidelines. Formal institutions involves official and formal enforcement system, as a
consequences of the violation of rules the individual is punishable under the law. Formal
institutions such as, business regulations, form of government, mandatory guidelines by
government, property rights and legal system that impacts the development and stability of a
country. For example, it is formally written in the books of law that, murder is a crime and any
person who does, such an act, is punishable under the law. This means that it is formally
mentioned in the constitution and laws, therefore, if any citizen of the country violates this law,
cannot be saved in any situation.
However, life and human behavior cannot be constrained only by the formal institutions.
Therefore, some cultural and social factors such as traditions, morals, code of conduct and values
also influence the behavior of a human and democratic stability of a country. In Informal
institutions rules are not written formally or it may be unwritten code of conduct. For example, in
a football match, a player intentionally injures the key player, from the opposing team, having an

Name of the student
2
intention to win the game by cheating and hurting another person to throw him out of the game.
A player may win the game by hurting his opposing player, but winning the game using
unethical tactics is immoral and unfair (Desipio, 2019).
A democratic society practices individual freedom, equality and liberty. USA is a
developed country, having strong democracies. USA is among a country which performs free
and fair elections, freedom of speech and executive power (Hannah-Jones, 2019). Formal
institution of USA contains legal system which states guideline which are mandatory to be
followed by the public, violation of which may be punishable under the law. Some of the laws
practiced in USA such as, it is mandatory for driving vehicle on the right side of the street,
violation of which is penalized, Dollars are legally used of money and a person manufacturing
fake and illegal dollar currency will be punishable under the law. The laws of formal institution
is mentioned in the rule books, and the consequences of violation are also mentioned. Any
individual who violates any law in formal institution, are generally aware about the laws in
formal institution and their consequences, in most of the cases, but intentionally tries to violate
the rule, assuming that they may not be caught (Hannah-Jones, 2019). For example, a citizen in
America knows about the law of driving the car on the right side of street. But still knowingly
the person drives on the wrong side of road, to rush at workplace. But the person knows the
consequences of breaking such a rule, he is aware that he will be punished and penalized if
cached by authorized police (Hannah-Jones, 2019).
Whereas, France is also considered as a developed democracy. France also practices
equal political and civil rights for all the citizens (Kesselman, 2009). France provides its citizens
right to work, right to vote, right to speech and equal rights for men and women. Same as USA,
France also enforces penalty and punishment for violation of the laws given by formal institution