Dual Executive and the Reserved Domain: Foreign Policy under French Cohabitation

The dual executive of semi-presidential systems often leads to a blurring of responsibilities between the president and prime minister. This is especially the case in periods of cohabitation, where each executive actor can attempt to use the ambiguity of constitutional statutes to expand its powers vis a vis the other. Some anecdotic evidence tend to support this idea. For example, at the beginning of the period of cohabitation between French President Mitterrand and Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, the prime minister insisted on participating to international meetings (particularly the G7 Tokyo summit), a function traditionally reserved to the president. This contribution seeks to explore changes in the control of foreign policy under unified government and cohabitation under the French Fifth Republic. Based on data from the Comparative Agendas project for the period 1974-2013, I analyze whether there are substantial variations in the number of governmental bills and government communications on foreign policy issues between unified and divided government.