Presidential Informal Politics: Becoming Influential Despite the Constitution

Abstract

When it comes to study the power of the Presidents most of the existing literature has focused on formal powers, that is to say on powers that can be derived from constitutions or laws. In particular, many scholars succeeded in listing and evaluating presidential formal powers by relying on specific checklists and score systems (Shugart & Carey 1992; Frye 1997, Metcalf 2000; Siaroff 2003; Tavits 2009 and Doyle & Elgie 2016). However, the informal powers of the Presidents remain under-investigated especially in Western European Democracies. This gap might hamper our full understanding of how Presidents ultimately behave and act in different forms of government. The aim of this panel is to shed light on presidential informal powers by developing an analytical framework for the study of President’s informal politics, which can follow at least two strategies. On the one hand, Presidents’ informal powers can involve other institutional actors, such as the PM, ministers, the administrative staff (Raunio & Sedelius 2019), party leaders in parliament etc. In short, all inter-institutional relations that are not codified by formal rules or stemmed from Constitutions. On the other hand, Presidents’ informal powers can involve the media, societal or political actors, groups of citizens etc. (Kernell 1997, Gherghina 2013), or all those relations that are not strictly a priori determined by law but can leave room of maneuver to individual Presidents, especially in a context of increasing personalization (McAllister 2007) and mediatization of politics (Esser, J Strömbäck 2014). We are looking for papers that can contribute both theoretically and empirically to this theme, by providing definitions (what are Presidents’ informal powers?) and taxonomies (what do informal powers do? To what extent do they differ from formal powers?) of informal powers and by providing some interpretations on possible exogenous (such as Economic instability; International crisis; EU pressure; Institutional crisis) and endogenous drivers (such as Presidents’ personality, Presidents’ political experience/career; Presidents’ popularity) of Presidents’ informal politics. We welcome papers which use both qualitative and quantitative methods as well as comparative or case studies that investigate the use of informal powers by Presidents in parliamentary, semi-presidential and presidential systems.

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