Russia’s Constitutional Dictatorship: A Brief History

Why is the word impeachment so terrible? After all, if the Congress passed such a motion it would have no legal force. A popularly elected president could not be removed from power by the Congress, especially this Congress, which had long ago lost the people’s trust.

Duverger, semi-presidentialism and the supposed French archetype

The concept of semi-presidentialism was first operationalised by Maurice Duverger. There are now 17 countries with semi-presidential constitutions in Europe. Within this set of countries France is usually considered to be the archetypal example of semi-presidentialism. This article maps the main institutional and political features of European semi-presidentialism on the basis of Duverger’s original three-fold schema. The most striking feature is the diversity of practice within this set of countries. This means that semi-presidentialism should not be operationalised as a discrete explanatory variable. However, there are ways of systematically capturing the variation within semi-presidentialism to allow cross-national comparisons. This diversity also means that France should not be considered as the archetypal semi-presidential country. At best, France is an archetypal example of a particular type of semi-presidentialism. Overall, Duverger’s main contribution to the study of semi-presidentialism was the original identification of the concept and his implicit insight that there are different types of semi-presidentialism. In the future, the study of semi-presidentialism would benefit from the development of theory-driven comparative work that avoids a reliance on France as the supposed semi-presidential archetype

Three waves of semi-presidential studies

This article reviews the scholarship on semi-presidentialism since the early 1990s. We identify three waves of semi-presidential studies. The first wave focused on the concept of semi-presidentialism, how it should be defined, and what countries should be classified as semi-presidential. The second wave examined the effect of semi-presidential institutions on newly democratized countries. Does semi-presidentialism help or hinder the process of democratic consolidation? The third wave examines the effect of semi-presidential institutions on both recent and consolidated democracies. Third-wave studies have been characterized by three questions: to what extent does the direct election of the president make a difference to outcomes; to what extent does variation in presidential power make a difference; and what other factors interact with presidential power to help to bring about differential outcomes? The article argues that the concept of semi-presidentialism remains taxonomically valid, but that the empirical scholarship on countries with semi-presidential institutions needs to respond to broader developments within the discipline if it is to remain relevant

Apathy Revisited

Contemporary world events, characterized by violence and extremism, force us to revisit the potential uses and abuses of political apathy in democracy. This article unravels the concept of apathy, placing it within its semantic field, qualifying it with respect to different political contexts, and making it relative to its possible conceptual opposites. In so doing, this article clarifies both the potential harms, and the probably values, of apathy \u2013 and of its alternatives \u2013 in contemporary democratic theory and practice. The article argues that the dividing line between a hundred percent participation, extremism, and violence is increasingly fragile in the divided societies that characterize contemporary democracies. In so doing, the article offers a defense of apathy, not as an inherently \u2018good\u2019 element of a democracy; but rather, as the least damaging to democracy in comparison with its real and potential opposites

Russia’s Constitutional Dictatorship: A Brief History

Why is the word impeachment so terrible? After all, if the Congress passed such a motion it would have no legal force. A popularly elected president could not be removed from power by the Congress, especially this Congress, which had long ago lost the people’s trust.

Constitutional Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy

Many emerging democracies across the globe are scrambling to craft new constitutions. The modal constitution being chosen in this most recent wave of democratization is a rather unknown, and under-theorized, type: semi-presidentialism. This article brings semi-presidentialism back to comparative constitutional theory, distinguishing it from presidentialism and parliamentarism, and guarding against its hasty export to new democracies. This article details when, and why, semi-presidentialism can be problematic from the standpoints of democracy, constitutionalism, and the protection of fundamental rights; and the conditions under which it can be supportive of them. After establishing the analytical framework, this article compares developments in two important historical cases of regime change under semi-presidentialism, cases which have also been among the most influential countries for European politics in the twentieth century: the French Fifth Republic and Weimar Germany. The concluding section draws the evidence together. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2005separation of powers, semi-presidential, presidential, parliamentary, K10, K42, N14, N44, N94,