Semi-Presidential System Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Semi-presidential government systems were first defined in contemporary academia by the contributions of Maur ice Duverger (1974, 1978, 1980), which were dedicated to the French Fifth Republic. Duverger identified a “dual authority structure, [ . . . ] a diarchy between a president who is head of state, and a prime minister who heads the government,” as described by Giovanni Sartor i in 1994. Indeed, as the most relevant variation on the theme of presidential regimes, semi-presidentialism may be defined by three basic features: a president who is popularly elected; the office of the president has de jure and de facto considerable constitutional authority; and there exists also a prime minister and cabinet, subject to the confidence of the assembly majority.

Consequently, actual working patterns in semi-presidential systems are directly dependent upon the presence or absence of political congruence between the president and parliamentary majority. It can be conceived also as an “alternation of phases” that depends on the contingent political composition of the assembly. In fact, in such systems of government, an elected president who is supported by a cohesive and disciplined majority in parliament will acquire predominance in governmental decision-making. On the contrary, when the opposite case occurs, and the two heads of government are an expression of rival parties, the way is paved for periods of socalled cohabitation. As a result, divergent majorities grant the prime minister a primary role in most legislative arenas, with the general exception of foreign policy.

Despite its complex constitutional architecture, a diffusion of semi-presidential models has proliferated recently, especially in new democracies. According to Matthew Shugart’s observations in 2007, twelve of fourteen countries among the postcommunist states that are now democracies are semipresidential in some form. An additional twelve African cases also can be classified as semi-presidential. Only countries in the Americas seem to privilege pure presidentialism.

In Western countries the prestige of the semi-presidential constitutional model is increasing. The mixed regime format is not universally accepted, however, with scholars such as Juan Linz arguing that “in view of some of the experiences with this type of system it seems dubious to argue that in and by itself it can generate democratic stability” (1994, 55).

The debate on the best form of government is still unsettled. Academic controversy over ideal institutional formats for government has been shaped by the lack of agreement on classificatory criteria and by the varied forms of semipresidentialism. Matthew Shugart and John Carey in 1992 proposed a further division of the concept into premierpresidential and president-parliamentary subtypes: Under premierpresidentialism, the prime minister and cabinet are exclusively accountable to the parliamentary majority, while under president-parliamentarism, the prime minister and cabinet are accountable to both the president and parliamentary majority. Other approaches are more dynamic in that the three most diffused forms of representative government—parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential—are not viewed as mutually exclusive categories. Among adherents of this perspective, Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb (2005) have provided a flexible analytical framework for the study of varieties among and within semi-presidentialisms.

Bibliography:

Duverger, Maurice. Échec au roi. Paris: Albin Michel, 1978.
La monarchie républicaine, ou comment les démocraties se donnent des rois. Paris: Robert Laffont, 1974.
“A New Political System Model: Semi-presidential Government.” European Journal of Political Research 8, no. 2 (1980): 165–187.
Elgie, Robert. “Semi-presidentialism: Concepts, Consequences, and Contesting Explanations.” Political Studies Review 2 (2004): 314–330.
Linz, Juan J. “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?” In The Failure of Presidential Democracy, edited by Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, 3–87. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
Poguntke,Thomas, and Paul Webb. The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Sartori, Giovanni Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives, and Outcomes. New York: New York University Press, 1994.
Shugart, Matthew S. “Comparative Executive–legislative Relations.” In Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, edited by R. A.W. Rhodes, Sarah A. Binder, and Bert A. Rockman, 344–365. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Shugart, Matthew S., and John M. Carey. Presidents and Assemblies: Constitutional Design and Electoral Dynamics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

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