Non-partisan Presidents in Representative Democracies

Abstract

Despite the crucial representation, coordination, and recruitment roles political parties fulfill in representative democracies, the election of non-partisan presidents is far from a rare phenomenon in presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary systems alike. That said, preliminary research indicates that the election of a non-partisan president is a relatively rare phenomenon outside Europe, where more than a quarter of the elected presidents are indeed non-partisan (Beuman 2014). We invite panel and paper proposals addressing the conditions that provide incentives for the election of non-partisan presidents, such as the extent of the president’s formal and informal powers, constitutional powers and the traditional roles played by heads of state, and the way in which the election of non-partisan presidents may affect important matters of democratic representation and executive decision-making.