Measuring presidential powers: Some pitfalls of aggregate measurement

Abstract

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Recent debates and advances in the scholarly examination of presidential institutions

“…2 For an overview of the discussion, particularly on the perks and perils of semi-presidentialism, see, for example, Elgie and Moestrup (2008); Schleiter and Morgan-Jones (2009) and section 'The Trends of Coalition Government under Different Party Constellations' of this article. 3 What they raise as a critical side note in this article is, however, important for research on presidential institutions from a comparative perspective: the problems of operationalization and aggregation of presidential power measures, an observation shared by others such as Cheibub and Chernykh (2008); Fortin (2013);Fruhstorfer (2015). 4 This is enriched by the resourceful conceptualization of party genetics with a clear link to Panebianco's (1988) work, see Passarelli (2015a, p. 11).…”

Cohabitation and Conflicting Politics in French Policymaking

“…Siaroff also finds the French president to be the most powerful of this subset (even though some presidents included in his study like the president of Mozambique). However, none of these studies differentiate between political contexts (on this issue, see Fortin 2012). If the practice of the French constitution often increased the institutional powers of the president under unified government (for example, the right to dismiss the prime minister or the right to initiate a referendum has been practiced but is not constitutionally granted), cohabitation reduces these powers.…”

Measuring Presidential Dominance over Cabinets in Presidential Systems: Constitutional Design and Power Sharing

“…The requirement of a ministerial counter-signature for executive decisions indicates a collegial character between the cabinet and the president, Argentina ( The second measurement strategy highlighted by Fortin (2013) has its origin in Duverger (1980), and consists of potential formal powers that can be attributed to presidents. From this measurement strategy, scholars have created indices of presidential powers, most commonly comprised of binary variables that are coded on the existence (or nonexistence) of the above powers.…”

“…Another justification is its homogeneity, because all the categories considered in this index are related to the power sharing between the president and the members of the executive cabinet. Thus, this index avoids the criticism of Fortin (2013), who argues against existing indices that include legislative powers and non-legislative powers in the same index.…”