Presidentialization and the politics of coalition: lessons from Germany and Britain

Abstract

IntroduzioneIn this article, we seek to re-consider the ‘presidentialization of politics’ argument in the light of recent developments in Germany and the United Kingdom. The experiences of coalition government suggest prima facie grounds for the erosion of the presidentialization process in each country. Germany has operated with a Grand Coalition in which domination of the executive by the Chancellor would seem less likely, whereas the long history of single-party governments in the United Kingdom gave way to a rare experiment in coalitional power sharing between 2010 and 2015, circumstances which should limit prime ministerial power. However, it is our contention that the presidentialization thesis retains its purchase in these two countries. German Chancellors and British prime ministers have been increasingly able to mobilize power resources, which allow them to govern more independently of their own parties and their coalition partners, and this seems to hold across a variety of political circumstances.

The personal party: an analytical framework

“…One important step towards bridging the gap between the institutional, the electoral and the party faces of personalization is offered by Poguntke and Webb's (2005) seminal study on the presidentialization of democratic regimes. The RISP present issue offers an unprecedented contribution to understanding how party leadership has deeply affected the transformation of political parties (Musella, 2015a;Poguntke and Webb, 2015). In this article, I shall try to go one step further, by presenting a systematic overview of the most extreme case of party personalization, consisting in the full control by an individual leader of a party he has himself created.…”

Recent debates and advances in the scholarly examination of presidential institutions

“…In addition, charisma did not play a role during the initial phase of the parties' formation (with some exception for the Christian Democratic Union of Germany), and we can observe only small changes in the organizational construction of and power distribution within the parties (Lee, 2015). The same applies for another parliamentary system, namely, that of Italy, for which Massari (2015, p. 232) even identifies a party resistance against presidentialization, which is completely contrary to other assessments (Calise, 2005;Poguntke and Webb, 2015).…”

Prime Ministers unchained? Explaining Prime Minister Policy Autonomy in coalition governments

“…This does not necessarily mean that all parliamentary parties have become irrelevant tout court , but rather that there has been an increased distancing between them and their executive leaders (Webb et al ., 2012; Webb and Poguntke, 2013; Dowding, 2013a). Consequently, these executive leaders ‘become more pre-eminent within executives and more independent of their followers in parliament and party’ (Poguntke and Webb, 2015: 251). Moreover, the seminal contribution by Dowding and Dumont (2009) underlines that PMs have gained more autonomy in selecting the ministers: a typical example is the rising presence of technocratic ministers, directly chosen by the PM because of their competences (Verzichelli, 2009), therefore reducing the partyness (Katz, 1987) of the government.…”

“…On the other hand, the PM’s policy-related autonomy has been rarely addressed. Indeed, Poguntke and Webb (2015) have highlighted an increased PM autonomy in decision-making and agenda-setting tasks. Nonetheless, research has mainly focussed on other aspects not connected to the policy-related autonomy of the PM, like the effect of policy positioning on coalition bargaining (Schofield, 1993).…”