Government survival in semi‐presidential regimes

Abstract

As semi‐presidentialism has become increasingly common in European democracies, so have the debates about the consequences of several of its political and institutional features. In particular, in those regimes, cohabitation between presidents and cabinets of different parties and cabinet dismissal powers on the part of presidents are thought to be a source of inter‐branch conflict and government instability. However, so far, most empirical work on government survival has failed to confirm any of these expectations. This article addresses this disjuncture between theory and empirical results by making a twofold contribution. First, it takes into account the internal diversity within semi‐presidentialism, modeling the implications for government survival of different configurations between presidential powers’ of cabinet dismissal, parliament dissolution and cohabitation in European semi‐presidential systems. Second, it reconsiders traditional government survival using the competing risks framework by adding a distinction between two different types of non‐electoral replacement: those where replacements imply a change in the party of the prime minister and those where they do not. Once such an approach is adopted, that presidential powers of parliamentary dissolution and cabinet dismissal indeed emerge as highly relevant for explaining government survival in these regimes.

Portuguese Ministers as Political Survivors: an empirical analysis of the first 20 Constitutional Governments

“…Finally, we are going to observe each individual (/Minister) in two types of duration already identified. The first type relates to his/her duration within each form of ministerial tenure, a standard measure (Fernandes and Magalhaes, 2015). However, we realize that there are those cases which are metaphorically called "political animals", i.e., ministers who, after ending one tenure (without being dismissed or due to the normal duration of their term), return to new ministerial functions (some years later).…”

Presidents Shaping Public Opinion in Parliamentary Democracies: A Survey Experiment in Turkey

“…5 See, e.g., Fernandes and Magalhães (2016); Roper (2002); Shugart and Carey (1992); Strøm and Swindle (2002).…”

“…The role of partisanship in the relationship between issue statements by presidents in parliamentary democracies and public opinion is far from straightforward, however. From one perspective, one might expect such statements to evoke partisan reactions from voters, because in many cases presidents were major partisan figures as party members or leaders before assuming the presidency (Fernandes and Magalhães 2016;Kang 2009). The current Turkish President Erdogan, for example, was the founder and long-time leader of AKP and served as prime minister from 2003 to 2014.…”

“…The role of the presidents in parliamentary democracies and their relationships with prime ministers, governments, and assemblies has attracted considerable interest. Scholars have explored the structural determinants of cooperation and conflict among these actors (Baylis 1996;Shugart and Carey 1992;Tavits 2008), implications for democratic performance (Elgie 1999;Kim 2015), and president's role in cabinet formation and termination (Amorim Neto and Strøm 2006;Fernandes and Magalhães 2016;Protsyk 2005;Schleiter and Morgan-Jones 2009). Yet the questions of whether and how presidents can shape public opinion and the role of partisanship in this respect have hitherto been unexplored.…”

Bicameralism and government formation: does bicameral incongruence affect bargaining delays?

“…Moreover, it has been underlined that only a few inter-electoral replacements involve a real change of the political status quo represented by the incumbent cabinet. Most of the time, inter-electoral replacements can be classified as continuity replacements meaning that almost nothing has changed in comparison to the incumbent cabinet (Fernandes and Magalhães, 2016). For all of these reasons, Model 4 includes only postelection cabinets to check the robustness of our results.…”