The perils of semi-presidentialism. Are they exaggerated?

There is a standard academic consensus that semi-presidentialism is perilous for new democracies. In particular, this is because semi-presidential countries run the risk of experiencing difficult periods of ‘cohabitation’ between a president and a prime minister who are opposed to each other, and because they may also experience periods of divided minority government that encourage the president to rule by decree and subvert the rule of law. This article examines the evidence to support these two arguments. We find very few cases of cohabitation in young democracies and only one case where cohabitation has directly led to democratic collapse. By contrast, we find more cases of divided minority government and more cases where it has been associated with democratic failure. However, we also find that young democracies have survived divided minority government. We conclude that, to date, there is insufficient evidence to support the long-standing and highly intuitive argument that cohabitation is dangerous for new democracies. There is more evidence to support the much newer argument about the dangers of divided minority government. Even so, more work is needed in this area before we can conclude that semi-presidentialism is inherently perilous

Varieties of semi-presidentialism and their impact on nascent democracies

Semi-presidentialism is the situation where the constitution identifies both a directly elected president and a prime minister responsible to the legislature. There are now some 58 countries in the world with a semi-presidential constitution. However, the academic wisdom is resolutely opposed to the adoption of semi-presidentialism and nascent democracies are advised to avoid this form of government. This paper examines the performance of semi-presidentialism. Particular attention is paid to the effect of various forms of semi-presidentialism. Different forms of semi-presidentialism are expected to have different effects. To this end, all the countries with a semi-presidential constitution that have embarked on the process of democratic transition are identified. To what extent was semi-presidentialism a factor in the cases when the transition process was successful? When the transition process failed, to what extent was semi-presidentialism responsible for this failure? What was the effect of different forms of semi-presidentialism on the process of democratisation? The findings suggest that there is inconclusive evidence to support some of the major problems commonly associated with semi-presidentialism. The performance of semi-presidentialism seems strongly influenced by non-institutional factors. However, there is a difference between the performance of the two main types of semi-presidentialism that are identified. Overall, the findings do not provide grounds to recommend for or against the adoption of semi-presidentialism as opposed to parliamentarism or presidentialism, but if constitution-makers decide to adopt a semi-presidential constitution, then the findings suggest that they should adopt a premier-presidential form of semi-presidentialism

Divided executives and democratisation

This article examines the effect of a divided executive on democratisation in mixed systems where presidents are directly elected and prime ministers are responsible to the legislature. A divided executive is where the president and prime minister are not from the same party. The importance of a divided executive is hypothesised to vary according to the relative powers of the president and prime minister. In mixed systems where either the president or the prime minister is the dominant actor, then a divided executive will not affect democratisation. However, where both the president and prime minister have significant independent powers, then a divided executive should have a negative impact on democratisation because of the potential for destabilising intraexecutive conflict. Using an ordinal logit model, the results show that mixed systems with a dual executive do not perform significantly worse than mixed systems where there is one dominant actor. This suggests that the standard wisdom about the impact of a divided executive in a mixed system is misplaced

The impact of semi-presidentialism on governance in the Palestinian authority

In 2003, the Basic Law of the Palestinian Authority (PA) was amended and a semi-presidential form of government was established. In January 2006, the legislative election resulted in a period of ‘cohabitation’ between the Hamas government and President Mahmoud Abbas from Fatah. In 2007, following the civil war between the two forces, governance structures in the PA all but collapsed. This article examines the extent to which cohabitation contributed to the problems of governance in the PA. We conclude that cohabitation did not determine the outbreak of conflict, but that it did contribute to the timing of the confrontation between the two actors

Presidentialisation: One Term, Two Uses – Between Deductive Exercise and Grand Historical Narrative

This article focuses on the two main contributions to the contemporary academic debate about the term ‘presidentialisation’, namely the books by Samuels and Shugart and Poguntke and Webb. The aim is not to rehearse critiques that have already been made about this term or to add another to the list. Instead, the aim is to distinguish between two different ways in which the same term has been applied in the two studies. Both sets of authors are concerned with the same term, but each operationalises it in a different way. Acknowledging these differences allows us to focus on a specific aspect of Poguntke and Webb’s account that is absent from Samuels and Shugart’s, namely the construction of a grand historical narrative

Core executive studies two decades on

The concept of the ‘core executive’ was introduced by Dunleavy and Rhodes in 1990. Two decades on, what is the state of core executive studies? This article argues that the language of the study of central government has been transformed. In addition, there is now a much broader consideration of the central government space, incorporating ministers, civil servants, and so on. Within core executive studies, the resource-dependency approach has become dominant. Arguably, though, with its insistence on a structural element to power and its focus on prime ministerial predominance, much of this work collapses back into an interpretation that is close to the conclusions of the pre- 1990 debate. Currently, only the interpretive, ethnographic approach proposed by Rhodes and his co-authors challenges the new orthodoxy. This article suggests that a resolutely positivist account of the core executive would provide a similar challenge and spark a lively and very welcome debate

Why do governments delegate authority to quasi-autonomous agencies? The case of independent administrative authorities in France.

In recent years, there has been a considerable degree of delegation from governments to quasi-autonomous agencies. Various reasons have been put forward to explain why governments decide to delegate authority in this way (Thatcher 2002, 129-139). Some reasons are based on a transactions cost approach, such as credible commitments. Other reasons are more contextual. For instance, governments may be responding to a process of cross-national policy transfer. In the literature on delegation some hypotheses have already been tested. Specifically, Gilardi (2002) has found evidence to suggest that governments create agencies to credibly commit to particular policy choices. However, other hypotheses, particularly ones based on contextual explanations, have proved much more difficult to operationalise. This article aims to help fill this gap. It does so by focusing on the creation of Independent Administrative Authorities (Autorités administratives indépendantes - AAIs) in France. We examine the reasons for their creation. Why have successive governments created so many AAIs in the last couple of decades? Does the qualitative evidence in this particular case corroborate the quantitative studies that have been undertaken elsewhere? What does the French example tell us about the more general literature on delegation

Executive leadership in semi-presidential systems

Relative to presidentialism and parliamentarism, the study of semi-presidentialism is still in its infancy. The term was coined in 1970 and, apart from the pioneering work of Maurice Duverger, systematic study began only in the 1990s. Previously, the definition of semi-presidentialism was the subject of much debate. Now, most scholars agree that semi-presidentialism is where there is both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet that are collectively responsible to the legislature. The key contribution of recent scholarship is that semi-presidentialism is not a unimodal category. Instead, there is a tremendous variety of executive politics in countries with a semi-presidential constitution. This work has identified the effects of such variation on topics such as democratic performance and both government formation and termination. Given so many countries now have semi-presidential constitutions, the study of this topic is likely to remain salient. In the future, there should be more comparative studies of semi-presidential countries and more systematic comparisons of semi-presidentialism with presidentialism and parliamentarism

France: stacking the deck

This chapter examines the two-ballot electoral system in France. The main focus is on the system used for elections to the lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly. These elections are contested on the basis of a specific type of two-ballot system, namely a single-member, semi-closed, majority-plurality system. At the same time, France has a rather unusual political system in which the President of the Republic is a major political actor. Therefore, this chapter also refers in passing to the system used for presidential elections. This is a variant of the above system. There are four parts to the chapter. The first part identifies the origins of the two electoral systems. The second part outlines the mechanics of the French two-ballot system. The third part discusses the political consequences of the system. The fourth part addresses the seemingly perennial issue of electoral reform. There is a brief conclusion