Executive Leadership in Semi-Presidential Systems

Abstract

Relative to presidentialism and parliamentarism, the study of semipresidentialism 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 semipresidential 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. KeywordsSemi-presidentialism, executive politics, president, prime minister, leadership Compared with the study of presidentialism and parliamentarism, the study of semi-presidentialism is still in its infancy. While the concept was first operationalized at the beginning of the 1970s, work in this area only became part of the mainstream political science research agenda at the beginning of the 1990s.Over the course of the last 20 years our understanding of semi-presidentialism has been transformed. The key point to take away from the recent scholarship is that semi-presidentialism is not a unimodal category. Previously, the folk wisdom understood semi-presidentialism as the situation where there was a dual authority structure with a president and prime minister battling for control of the executive. Recent scholarship has demonstrated that there is a tremendous variety of executive politics under semi-presidentialism and has identified some of the effects of this variety. This chapter places the study of executive politics under semi-presidentialism in context, identifies some of the major scholarly

Presidential Term Limit Contravention: Abolish, Extend, Fail, or Respect?

“…a. She or he is an elected 10 head of state in a presidential or semi-presidential system, as classified by Elgie (2013, 2016);…”

A Troubled Marriage? Divided Minority Government, Cohabitation, Presidential Powers, President-Parliamentarism and Semi-Presidentialism

“…Thus, cases in which they come from the same party or coalition, or where one comes from a party but the other is an independent, or both are independents, are not considered as cohabitation. I rely on ‘The Semi-Presidential One’ (Elgie 2013) to identify cases of cohabitation. This is a dummy variable set to 1 for cohabitation and 0 for no cohabitation.…”

Conditionality, factors and indicators of heterogeneity and typologization of semi-presidential system of government

“…Accordingly, as J. Cheibub argues, it was initially obvious that definition of semi-presidentialism (at least as a political rather than a constitutional type) is not always sufficient, as it is not always able to satisfactorily and comprehensively characterize the functioning of this system of government 15 . On the one hand, semi-presidential systems are considered to be valid and functional if presidents, whose positions are interpreted as desirable and determined by the competitive nature of political process 16 , have effective (constitutional or political) powers in the process of governmental cabinets' formation and resignation/termination, actively participate in governance and public administration and are at least partially considered to be responsible for the nature, features and consequences of politics (as in Azerbaijan, Belarus, France, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, etc.).…”