Success of Presidential Activism and Amendatory Veto Power under Semi-Presidentialism

Power to veto legislation and return it to parliament is one of the most prominent presidential powers and a major source of presidential activism. Seminal studies on the presidential activism in semi-presidential and parliamentary republics of Europe until now focused on the explanation of frequency – how often the presidents use veto power. Major determinant is the mode of presidential elections: popularly elected presidents are more independent and thus more active, returning the legislation parliament more often (Köker 2017). Relationship between the president and government (cohabitation) also plays an important role in the explanation of formal presidential activism. However, current state of research leaves important questions on the presidential use of veto in semi-presidential republics unexplored. First, the power of veto varies. As there are important differences between the partial, package and amendatory vetoes, we could expect different types of presidential behavior under the different constitutions. For example, cohabitation may incentivize the president with only the package veto to act more in a confrontational manner and to use the veto power more often. However, a president that has an amendatory veto and strives to introduce her own amendments to the legislation could be more careful in navigating the relationship with governing majority. Second, we still know quite little about the determinants of veto success under the semi-presidential republics: presidents may use the power of veto more often under the specific circumstances, but do the same factors explain the final success of vetoes? Some explanations, such as popularity of presidents, cohabitation and seat share of government in the parliament could apply. However, we argue that a categorization of vetoes (and corresponding amendments under the amendatory veto) according to their policy-related content introduces an important and previously neglected factor in the research on presidential activism. We propose a classification of technical (veto based on purely technical grounds, such as internal incoherencies inside the proposed bill), constitutional (veto of legislation that is possibly at odds with constitution) and substantial (policy-oriented) vetoes. We believe that presidents in semi-presidential republics will be more successful when returning legislation (and proposing amendments) on technical and constitutional grounds, as the presidential institution is seen as a moderating power and a guardian of constitution. Presidents on average will be less successful when vetoing laws on grounds of policy disagreements with the governing majority. However, foreign and defense policy could be an exception for this expectation: as semi-presidential presidents usually have a central role in foreign policy and thus may be more successful when vetoing laws regarding this area. We explore these arguments employing the case of Lithuania that is convenient for our purposes because of two major reasons. First, Lithuanian presidents have the power of amendatory veto and they usually include their own propositions when returning the legislation to parliament. Second, as presidents in Lithuania veto the legislation rather frequently, we have a sufficient data set of around 246 vetoes that covers terms of five different presidents.