Explaining the onset of cohabitation under semi-presidentialism

Semi-presidentialism – where the constitution provides for both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet collectively responsible to the legislature – is an increasingly common form of government. For many observers cohabitation is the Achilles heel of semi-presidentialism. This article aims to identify the conditions that are associated with the onset of cohabitation.We specify a number of hypotheses that predict the conditions under which cohabitation should occur.We then test our hypotheses on the basis of a new data set that records every case of cohabitation in all semi-presidential electoral democracies from 1989 to 2008 inclusive.We confirm that cohabi- tation is more likely to occur in countries with a premier-presidential form of semi-presidentialism and show that it is more likely to follow an election that occurs midway through a parliamentary or presidential term, and that when cohabitation follows a presidential election, it is likely to do so in a country where there is only a very weak president. Overall, we find that the conditions under which cohabitation is most likely to occur are also the ones where it is most easily managed. Thus, our findings imply that cohabitation is not likely to be as problematic as the existing literature would suggest

La délégation à l'aménagement du territoire et à l'action régionale : contribution à l'étude des organismes de coordination interministérielle

163 p., ref. bib. : 4 p.1/2Préoccupation nouvelle, l'action régionale ne s'identifie à aucune des disciplines traditionnelles qu'elle met en cause : économie, géographie, droit, urbanisme, sociologie. Aussi les instruments bibliographiques élaborés depuis fort longtemps pour chacune de ces spécialités ne sauraient satisfaire pleinement les organismes qui étudient ou tentent de résoudre les problèmes d'aménagement. C'est pourquoi la D.A.T.A.R. et le Centre d'étude ont jugé utile de mettre en place un service documentaire couvrant toutes les disciplines concourant à l'aménagement du territoire. Ce Service repose sur le repérage systématique de tous les ouvrages, documents officiels et articles de périodiques (à l'exception des quotidiens et hebdomadaires) paraissant en France et traitant des problèmes relatifs à l'aménagement territorial et à l'action régionale. Il comporte, en outre, le dépistage des principales études du même type publiées à l'étranger, principalement en Europe et en Amérique du Nord. Il résulte de cette prospection un choix mensuel d'environ 500 études, ce qui représente, à l'année, quelque 6000 ouvrages et articles mis sur fiches. Pour ordonner cette masse documentaire, un CODE DOCUMENTAIRE DE L'ACTION REGIONALE a été mis au point. Il comprend deux parties : l'une qui correspond à un classement géographique des études (selon que celles-ci portent sur une région, un département, une ville, etc.) et l'autre qui les répartit par matières selon une liste de descripteurs ou mots-clés

Mapping EU Studies: The Evolution from Boutique to Boom Field 1960-2001

This article employs original data sets to map the development of EU studies since its inception and to assess that development within the broader context of trends in west European studies. Dissertation and article data are used to chart the contours of three eras of EC/EU studies that have unfolded since 1960. The article addresses the extent to which the transformation of EU studies from boutique to boom field since the 1990s has entailed diversification as well as expansion of the EU scholarly community - a geographic diffusion of expertise and training (accelerated on both sides of the Atlantic by substantial increases in funding for EU research), an increase in attention to EU issues by comparative politics specialists drawn to the study of'an ever closer union', a proliferation of new topical subfields, an increase in the number of journals publishing significant articles on the EU, and a reshaping of the relationship between American and European scholars specializing in EU studies. Copyright 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.