What are Presidents’ Informal Powers?

Informal powers of the Presidents remain under-investigated especially in Western European Democracies. This gap might hamper the full understanding of how Presidents ultimately behave and act. The paper is a first reflection which aims at answering the following questions: What are the informal powers of the President? How can they be used? For what purpose? At what level (inside or outside the political community)? The aim of this paper is threefold. First it aims at adopting a definition of Presidents ’informal powers and to what extent they are different to Presidents’ formal powers. Secondly, the paper aims at providing a first classification of informal powers by taking into account the subjects involved in the power relation with the President. This means that, Presidents’ informal powers can involve other institutional actors, (such as the PM, ministers, the administrative staff (Raunio & Sedelius 2019), party leaders in parliament etc. ) as well as the media, societal or political actors, groups of citizens etc. Namely, informal powers can affect inter-institutional relations as well as political public relations. Thirdly, the paper aims at providing some empirical examples of the use of informal powers by Presidents in Western Europe.