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The Perils of Semi-Presidentialism. Are They Exaggerated?

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13510340701768125

1743-890X

Robert Elgie,

Electoral Systems and Political Participation

Abstract There is a standard academic consensus that semi-presidentialism is perilous for new democracies. In particular, this is because semi-presidential countries run the risk of experiencing difficult periods of 'cohabitation' between a president and a prime minister who are opposed to each other, and because they may also experience periods of divided minority government that encourage the president to rule by decree and subvert the rule of law. This article examines the evidence to support these two arguments. It finds very few cases of cohabitation in young democracies and only one case where cohabitation has led directly to democratic collapse. By contrast, it finds more cases of divided minority government and more cases where divided minority government has been associated with democratic failure. However, the article also finds that young democracies have survived divided minority government. The conclusion is that, to date, there is insufficient evidence to support the long-standing and highly intuitive argument that cohabitation is dangerous for new democracies. There is more evidence to support the much newer argument about the dangers of divided minority government. Even so, more work is needed in this area before we can conclude that semi-presidentialism is inherently perilous. Keywords: semi-presidentialismpolitical institutionscohabitationminority government Acknowledgment The author would like to thank Cindy Skach for her interest in the paper on which this article is based. Notes 1. Juan J. Linz, 'Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does it Make a Difference?', in Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela (eds), The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), p. 55. 2. Arend Lijphart, 'Constitutional Design for Divided Societies', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2004), p. 102. 3. Ibid. 4. Arturo Valenzuela, 'Latin American Presidencies Interrupted', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 15, No. 4 (2004), p. 17. 5. See, for example, François Frison-Roche, Le 'modèle semi-présidentiel' comme instrument de la transition en Europe post-communiste. Bulgarie, Lituanie, Macédoine, Pologne, Roumanie et Slovénie (Brussels: Bruylant, 2005). 6. Maurice Duverger, 'A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 8, No. 2 (1980), p. 166. 7. Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach, 'Constitutional Frameworks and Democratic Consolidation. Parliamentarism versus Presidentialism', World Politics, Vol. 46, No. 1 (1993), p. 9. 8. Matthew Søberg Shugart, 'Semi-Presidential Systems: Dual Executive and Mixed Authority Patterns', French Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3 (2005), pp. 323–351. 9. See the definitions in Oleh Protsyk, 'Politics of Intraexecutive Conflict in Semipresidential Regimes in Eastern Europe', East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 1–20; Alan Siaroff, 'Comparative Presidencies: The Inadequacy of the Presidential, Semi-Presidential and Parliamentary Distinction', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 42, No. 3 (2003), pp. 287–312; Cindy Skach, Borrowing Constitutional Designs: Constitutional Law in Weimar Germany and the French Fifth Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 13. 10. Robert Elgie, 'Semi-Presidentialism: Concepts, Consequences and Contesting Explanations', Political Studies Review, Vol. 2, No. 3 (2004), pp. 314–30. 11. The most consistent proponent of semi-presidentialism is Gianfranco Pasquino, for example, 'Semi-Presidentialism: A Political Model at Work', European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 31 (1997), pp. 128–37. The other person usually quoted as a supporter of semi-presidentialism is Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering. An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes (2nd ed.) (London: Macmillan, 1997), but his support is lukewarm at best, see p. 135. 12. See the summary of the standard arguments against presidentialism by Scott Mainwaring and Matthew S. Shugart, 'Juan Linz, Presidentialism, and Democracy: A Critical Appraisal', Comparative Politics, Vol. 29, No. 4 (1997), pp. 449–71. 13. Lijphart (note 2), p. 102. 14. Linz (note 1), p. 52. 15. Roy Pierce, 'The Executive Divided Against Itself: Cohabitation in France, 1986–1988', Governance, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1991), pp. 270–94. 16. Linz (note 1), p. 55. 17. Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Transition and Consolidation. Southern Europe, South America, and Post-Communist Europe (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), p. 286. 18. Alfred Stepan and Ezra N. Suleiman, 'The French Fifth Republic: A Model for Import? Reflections on Poland and Brazil', in H. E. Cheibub and Alfred Stepan (eds), Politics, Society, and Democracies. A Comparative Study (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 412. 19. Cindy Skach (note 9), p. 17. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., pp. 17–18. 22. Ibid., p. 18. 23. Timothy J. Colton and Cindy Skach, 'The Russian Predicament', Journal of Democracy, Vol. 16, No. 3 (2005), pp. 124–5. 24. Strangely, Skach (note 9) classes the 1958-1962 period in France as an example of divided minority government. Yet, France was not semi-presidential, according to her definition, until the constitutional amendment of 1962 and the first presidential election was not until 1965. 25. This assumption is consistent with other studies that have used Polity scores as indicators of democracy and was suggested as an option by Monty G. Marshall, the Polity IV and Armed Conflict and Intervention Projects, Research Director, School of Public Policy, George Mason University. 26. This assumption is also consistent with existing studies that have used Polity. 27. We also exclude Iceland, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe, none of which is included in the Polity IV dataset, although as a parliamentary-like system Iceland would also have been excluded on those grounds as well. 28. Available at http://econ.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTDEC/EXTRESEARCH/0,,contentMDK:20699744∼pagePK:64214825∼piPK:64214943∼theSitePK:469382,00.html 29. In 2000, Peru was given a coding of -88, corresponding to a period of transition. We include this as an example of breakdown. It corresponds to the end of the controversial Fujimori presidency. 30. Bulgaria, Lithuania, Mongolia, Peru (2001-), Portugal, and Senegal. 31. Note that two countries with scores of 8 did collapse: Austria in 1933 and Peru in 1992. 32. Leonardo A. Villalón and Abdourahmane Idrissa, 'Repetitive Breakdowns and a Decade of Experimentation. Institutional Choices and Unstable Democracy in Niger', in Leonardo A. Villalón and Peter VonDoepp (eds), The Fate of Africa's Democratic Experiments. Elites and Institutions (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005), p. 38. 33. Sophia Moestrup, 'Semi-Presidentialism in Niger: Gridlock and Democratic Breakdown – Learning From Past Mistakes', in Robert Elgie and Sophia Moestrup (eds), Semi-Presidentialism Outside Europe (London: Taylor and Francis, 2007). 34. See Skach (note 9), p. 51. 35. In the dataset here, our unit is the full year. So, we classify countries on the basis of the type of government that existed for the majority of the year. 36. Weimar is also one of a number of cases where a judgment call has to be made as to when a semi-presidential system was actually installed. The first president, Friedrich Ebert, was elected by the Reichstag on 11 February 1919. This is consistent with a parliamentary system of government. The Weimar Constitution came into force on 11 August 1919. Article 41 of the Weimar constitution stated that 'The Reich President is elected by the entire German nation'. This is consistent with a semi-presidential form of government. The constitution was then amended in 1922 to state that the first president would remain in office until 1925 and the first direct election was held in that year. See http://www.zum.de/psm/weimar/weimar_vve.php. Thus, was Weimar semi-presidential from 1919, even though the incumbent president was indirectly elected, or 1925, when the first direct election was held? We assume the former because we define semi-presidentialism on the basis of the constitution, However, if we assume that the perils of semi-presidentialism only kick in when the president is directly elected as the standard literature assumes, then this would exclude the first two periods of cohabitation cited above and weaken further the association between cohabitation and the collapse of democracy. 37. See Neil DeVotta, 'Sri Lanka in 2003. Seeking to Consolidate Peace', Asian Survey, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2004), p. 53. 38. It might also be noted that São Tomé e Príncipe experienced cohabitation five years after democratization, using Freedom House's measure of Free as a proxy equivalent to Polity's measure of a full democracy. By contrast, Polity classes France as having been a full democracy for 17 years when it experienced its first much-talked about period of cohabitation in 1986. 39. Richard Pomfret, 'Transition and Democracy in Mongolia', Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 52, No. 1 (2000), p. 150. 40. M. Steven Fish, 'The Inner Asian Anomaly: Mongolia's Democratization in Comparative Perspective', Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Vol. 34 (2001), pp. 323–38. 41. See Andrei Arkadyev, 'Belarus', in Robert Elgie and Sophia Moestrup (eds), Semi-Presidentialism in Central and Eastern Europe (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). 42. Polity IV's classification of Russia as a partial democracy in 2003 is contentious. For example, Freedom House classifies Russia as moving from Partly Free in 2003 to Not Free in 2004. However, given Polity IV is used as the basis of the study here and given we only have scores up to 2003, then we have to go by the Polity IV scores as they stand. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, we classify Russia as a democracy that by 2003 had not collapsed. A similar point can be made about Ukraine where, arguably, democracy broke down in 1999. That said, again Polity IV continue to classify Ukraine as a partial democracy after that time and we have to take their classification. 43. DPI records Sri Lanka as having a minority government in the period 2002-2004. I have classed this period as a period of cohabitation on the basis of secondary sources. Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobert ElgieRobert Elgie is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International Studies, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Ireland.