INSTITUTIONALIZATION MATTERS: HOW ESTABLISHED POLICY NETWORKS CURB ‘SOLOING’ AND CONFLICTS WITHIN DUAL EXECUTIVES?

Semi-presidential constitution shares executive power between separately elected government and president and it thus bears significant potential for ‘soloing’ and conflicts within dual executives. Its practical relevance relates to its popularity in the internally dividing European Union: it has been the Union’s most common regime type after its 2004 expansion to Central Eastern Europe. Recent research has shown that coordinative institutions at sub-constitutional level can curb intra-executive conflicts, but it remains largely unknown why these institutions emerge and how they condition the strategic agency of policymakers. To advance this objective, this study expands the institutional perspective of semi-presidential studies with the more dynamic core executive theory to develop a more nuanced and comparable model of intra-executive politics. First, it theoretically posits presidents into policy networks where president’s capacities are conditioned by other, also non-constitutional actors that possess significant governing resources (governments, legislatures, public administration, political parties, etc.). Then, utilizing rich qualitative data (official documents, in-depth interviews of highest-ranking policymakers, etc.) the paper presents an in-depth case study of Finland that expands and enriches the theoretical categories. Finally, the categories are summarized into a dynamic model that provides various solutions for producing stability to constitutionally turbulent systems.