Presidents, Governments, and Policymaking

Contemporary democracy is marked by the rise of directly elected presidents, and there is increasing scholarly focus on the concentration of power in single executive leaders (Elgie 2018). Presidential systems can entail significant risks, particularly in less stable countries where political movements often revolve around individual leaders. Democracies have collapsed as presidents have usurped powers, and even in ‘Western’ countries, heads of state have challenged constitutional rules. In such constitutional battles, presidents have, almost without exception, leaned on their popular mandate as the head of state: enjoying higher approval rates than ‘party politicians’, presidents have questioned the legitimacy of key political institutions and portrayed themselves as guardians of national interests. Semi-presidentialism, where a directly elected president shares executive powers with a prime minister accountable to the legislature, is the most common regime type in Europe. The regime type is also found outside Europe, although in smaller numbers (Anckar 2022). Research on semi-presidentialism has made great strides ever since the concept was originally coined by Duverger (1980). This research has focused primarily on regime stability and how presidential powers and divided government affect democratic performance (Åberg & Sedelius 2020). However, presidents remain a neglected topic in European political science, despite the literature showing how even constitutionally weaker presidents wield considerable influence through a variety of avenues – intervening in government formation, having links with political parties and interest groups, or through ‘going public’ strategies such as public speeches or social media (Kernell 2007). Indeed, previous research has confirmed that semi-presidentialism has built-in potential for executive conflict, particularly under cohabitation (Sedelius & Mashtaler 2013; Yan 2021). Yet, the strong focus on intra-executive conflict has resulted in scholars paying much less attention to other aspects of presidents. Existing research consists mainly of constitutional and historical accounts of the individual semi-presidential regimes. Comparative empirical publications have either examined one particular aspect of presidential behaviour, such as vetoes (Köker 2017), or the constraining effect of intra-executive coordination mechanisms (Raunio & Sedelius 2020). References Anckar, Carsten (2022): Presidents, Monarchs, and Prime Ministers: Executive Power Sharing in the World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Duverger, Maurice (1980): A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government. European Journal of Political Research 8:2, 165-187. Elgie, Robert (2018): Political Leadership: A Pragmatic Institutionalist Approach. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Kernell, Samuel (2007): Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership. 4th edn. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Köker, Philipp (2017): Presidential Activism and Veto Power in Central and Eastern Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Raunio, Tapio & Thomas Sedelius (2020): Semi-presidential policy-making in Europe: Executive coordination and political leadership. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sedelius, Thomas & Olga Mashtaler (2013): Two decades of semi-presidentialism: Issues of intra-executive conflict in Central and Eastern Europe 1991–2011. East European Politics 29:2, 109–134. Yan, H-T (2021): Prime ministerial autonomy and intra-executive conflict under semi-presidentialism. European Political Science Review 13:3, 285-306. Åberg, Jenny & Thomas Sedelius (2020): Review Article: A Structured Review of Semi-Presidential Studies: Debates, Results and Missing Pieces. British Journal of Political Science 50:3, 1111-1136.