Are Popularly Elected Presidents more Powerful? A Historical Assessment of Semi-presidentialism

The popular election of the president is often regarded as a defining characteristic of semi-presidentialism. However, a number of countries meet, or have sometimes met, all criteria of semi-presidentialism except for the fact that the president has been elected by parliament. Furthermore, in a number of semi-presidential countries, notably Finland, presidents have come to power by very different means of (s)election. The present study sets out to test the assumption that the popular election of the president affects the balance of power between the president and the prime minister. Popularly elected presidents are assumed to be more powerful than presidents elected by the legislature. Empirically, the study makes use of the V-dem dataset, which contains a number of indicators reflecting the power distribution between the president and the prime minister. The study is extensive in time and space, as it includes all cases of semi-presidentialism during the time period 1900-2014.