Executive Powers

Choices and consequences

Driving Democracy 2

StructureI. Recap last class:

Electoral systems: key points and clarifying mixed systems

Consequences of electoral systemsII. Debate about the choice of types of executives

Are presidential executives inherently less stable? Juan Linz, Arend Lijphart v. Shugart and Carey, Cheibub

III. Classifying types of executives Presidential, semi-presidential, and parliamentary

executives (Lijphart, Duverger, Siaroff, Norris)IV. Evidence about the consequences

For democratization and stability ‘Big men’ executives in Sub-Saharan Africa

V. Conclusions What types of executive would you recommend for post-

conflict peace–settlements such as in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Driving Democracy 3

Resources

Siaroff, Alan. 2003. ‘Comparative presidencies: The inadequacy of the presidential, semi-presidential and parliamentary distinction .’ European Journal of Political Research 42: 287.

Van Cranenburgh, Oda. 2008. ‘'Big Men' Rule: Presidential Power, Regime Type and Democracy in 30 African Countries.’ Democratization 15(5): 952-973.

Pippa Norris. 2008. Driving Democracy: Do Power-Sharing

Institutions Work? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ch 6.

Driving Democracy 4

Plan Assignment #1 - Paper. 20%. Institutional Choices. 1,500 word essay.

5 March. Pick one of the following topics.1. Compare any two countries emerging from conflict and

outline the primary advantages and disadvantages of the choice of alternative electoral systems for each state.

2. Does decentralization strengthen or weaken good governance?

3. Do participatory processes encourage more sustainable and democratic constitutional choices? Discuss by comparing and contrasting any two contemporary cases of constitution writing.

4. “Presidential executives generate inherently more unstable regimes.” Evaluate and discuss.

I. Recap

Types of electoral systems

Driving Democracy 6

Figure 5.2: Classification of contemporary electoral systems, worldwide 2004

Notes: FPTP First Past the Post; 2nd Ballot; Block Vote; AV Alternative Vote; SNTV Single Non-Transferable Vote; STV Single Transferable Vote. Systems are classified in May 1997 based on Appendix A in Andrew Reynolds and Ben Reilly. Eds. The International IDEA Handbook of Electoral System Design. Stockholm: International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. For more details see http://www.aceproject.org/and Pippa Norris. 2004. Electoral Engineering. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Nation States

191

Majoritarian 75

Combined 39

PR 68

No direct elections

9

Majority 26

Plurality 49

AV 4

2nd Ballot

22

FPTP 36

Bloc Vote

9

SNTV 4

Independent 30

Dependent 9

STV 2

Party List 66

Closed 35

Open 31

Adversarial Democracy and Government Accountability

Consensual democracy and Parliamentary Inclusiveness

Recap: Types of electoral systems

Driving Democracy 7

Recap: Mixed systems ‘Combined’, ‘dual’, ‘hybrid’ systems

Combined dependent eg Germany, NZ Distribution of seats depend upon the 2nd party

list PR vote ‘Top up’ for smaller parties

Combined independent eg Ukraine, Taiwan Two electoral formulae used independently in the

same election to the same body

Driving Democracy 8

E.g. 2009 German Bundestag election results

Parties Constituency Party list Total seatsVotes  % Seats Votes  % Seats Seats  %

Christian Democratic Union[A]

13,852,743 32.0 173 11,824,794 27.3 21 194 31.2

Christian Social Union of Bavaria[A]

3,190,950 7.4 45 2,830,210 6.5 0 45 7.2

Social Democratic Party

12,077,437 27.9 64 9,988,843 23.0 82 146 23.5

Free Democratic Party 4,075,115 9.4 0 6,313,023 14.6 93 93 15.0The Left 4,790,007 11.1 16 5,153,884 11.9 60 76 12.2Alliance '90/The Greens

3,974,803 9.2 1 4,641,197 10.7 67 68 10.9Threshold

Pirate Party 46,750 0.1 0 845,904 2.0 0 0 0National Democratic Party

768,175 1.8 0 635,437 1.5 0 0 0

Human Environment Animal Welfare

16,881 0.0 0 230,572 0.5 0 0 0

The Republicans 30,045 0.1 0 193,473 0.4 0 0 0

Ecological Democratic Party

105,276 0.2 0 132,395 0.3 0 0 0

Family Party 17,837 0.0 0 120,716 0.3 0 0 0Others 289,798 0.7 0 447,094 1.0 0 0 0

Totals 43,235,817 100.0 299 43,357,542 100 323 622 ±0

II. Executives

Consequences of types of executives for political stability, governance, and democratization

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Juan Linz’s critique: Presidential executives are inherently less stable

Elections are a zero-sum game: one winner raises stakes Weaker partisan links with legislature, fewer coalition

incentives, less cooperation, more potential gridlock Exacerbated in fragmented party systems with PR elections

for the legislature Rival sources of legitimacy: legislature and executive Difficulties of removing unpopular, incapacitated, or

corrupt leaders and lack of smooth executive succession Depends upon the qualities of an individual leader – a

risky course More breakdown of democratic states in presidential

regimes (especially in Latin America) Ref: Juan Linz 1990. “The perils of presidentialism.’ Jnl of

Democracy 1/1: 51-69.

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Juan Linz “While parliamentarism imparts flexibility to the

political process, presidentialism makes it rather rigid.”

Tensions between desire for strong leader and need for constraints

“Presidentialism is ineluctably problematic because it operates according to the rule of ‘winner-take-all’..a zero sum game, with all the potential for conflict such games portend.”

Agree or disagree? Ref: Juan Linz 1990. “The perils of presidentialism.’ Jnl of Democracy 1/1:

51-69.

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Challenges to Linz’s claims Matthew Shugart and John Carey. 1992.

Presidents and Assemblies CUP. Problem is not presidential executives per se but strong

presidential powers Compares breakdown of democratic regimes in

developing societies in 20th C and finds that more parliamentary regimes have broken down (59%) rather than presidential regimes (52%)

“We find no justification for the claim of Linz and others that presidentialism is inherently prone to breakdown.” p42.

Presidential systems also allow direct accountability to electorate

Driving Democracy 13

Challenges to Linz’s claims Jose Cheibub 2007. ‘Presidentialism,

Parliamentarism and Democracy.’ CUP. Presidential executives more likely to arise in

states with history of military coups and in larger countries

Instability and democratic breakdown is due to these historical developments and authoritarian legacy, not type of executives per se

Once the authoritarian legacy is held constant, presidential and parliamentary democracies have relatively equal chances of surviving (p.22)

Driving Democracy 14

Political importance of issue Afghanistan: strong presidential

system Direct 2nd ballot elections, Head of Gov and head

of state, two term limit, appoints Cabinet) Yet weak legislature, weak parties, few effective

checks and balances, no obvious successor Yet Iraq, parliamentary executive,

Presidency council: President, two vice presidents, and a prime minister

President elected by 2/3rd House of Representatives

PM from largest party Elections in 2010 yet stalemate in forming new

government

Driving Democracy 15

E.g. Iraq election results 7 March 2010

Summary of the 2010 election for Council of Representatives of Iraq

Alliances and parties Votes % Seats +/–Iraqi National Movement former Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi

2,849,612 24.72% 91 +54

State of Law Coalition incumbent PM Nouri al-Maliki

2,792,083 24.22% 89 +64

National Iraqi Alliance  Shi'ite parties

2,092,066 18.15% 70 –35

Kurdistan Alliance 1,681,714 14.59% 43 –10

Movement for Change  476,478 4.13% 8 +8

Unity Alliance of Iraq 306,647 2.66% 4 +4

Iraqi Accord Front  298,226 2.59% 6 –38

Kurdistan Islamic Union 243,720 2.12% 4 –1

Islamic Group of Kurdistan 152,530 1.32% 2 +1

Minorities 61,153 - 8 +6Total (turnout 62.4 %) 11,526,412 100% 325 +50

III. Types of Executives

Classifying and defining types

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Defining heads of government (Lijphart 1999 Patterns of Democracy) Presidential

Elected for a fixed term of office

Popular (direct) election

Non-collegial one-person executive with subordinate cabinet

Parliamentary Prime Minister is

subject to a vote of no confidence and thus accountable to parliament

PM leads largest party

Cabinet executive with collective responsibilityProblems with this classification?

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Semi-presidential category Maurice Duverger – 5th French

Republic President elected by popular vote Head of state shares executive power

with PM President is independent of

parliament PM and cabinet are dependent on

parliament Mutual autonomy, cohabitation E.g. Finland, Austria, Ireland, Portugal

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Siaroff’s classification

Driving Democracy 20

Table 6.1: Classification criteria for types of executives Military states Ruling

monarchies Presidential

republics Mixed

republics Parliamentary monarchies

Unified or dual executive

There is a unified executive: the head of state is also head of the government

There is a unified executive: the head of state and the head of government are fused in a single monarchical office

There is a unified executive: the head of state and the head of government are fused in a single presidential office

There is a dual executive: the president and the prime minister are separate posts; either office may be predominant.

There is a dual executive: the monarch is a ceremonial head of state and the prime minister leads the government.

Accession process

Usually a coup d’etat. The ruler who seizes power is a senior officer or group of officers from the military or a figure-head leader strongly backed by the armed forces.

The monarch is a hereditary ruler for life, following conventional rules of succession. The monarch appoints the head of government and the monarch may also appoint ministers and legislators.

The president is a non-hereditary fixed-term office. Presidents enter office through non-elective routes, indirect election, or direct election.

The posts of the president and prime minister are filled by various forms of indirect election, direct election, and appointment.

The leader of the party with an absolute parliamentary majority forms the government. Where no party has an absolute majority, conventionally the leader of the largest parliamentary party seeks to form a governing coalition.

Tenure in office

For as long as the military exert control.

The monarch cannot be removed from office except through retirement and succession, or through extra-constitutional means (a coup d’etat).

The president serves for a fixed term of office, unless removed by an exceptional process of impeachment or through extra constitutional means (a coup d’etat).

There are varied forms of tenure; some prime ministers can be replaced by the president, others are directly elected.

The monarch cannot be removed from office except through retirement and succession. The government (including the prime minister and members of cabinet) can fall by defeat at a general election or by a non-confidence motion passed by a majority of the legislature.

Power within the executive

There may be a military council of senior officers, or a separate civilian group of advisers

Cabinet structures are highly hierarchical; the cabinet (and parliament) act in an advisory capacity to serve the monarch.

Cabinet structures are usually hierarchical with the president at the apex, members are appointed to serve the leader, cabinet

Cabinet structures may be hierarchical (following the model described for presidential republics) or collegial (following the

Cabinet organization is usually collegial and composed of senior policymakers. The prime minister is conventionally regarded as

Norris

Driving Democracy 21

Classification of executivesFigure 6.1: Types of executives (with the number of contemporary states falling into each category)

Unified executive (71)

Dual executive (123)

Military state (3)

Ruling monarchy (13)

Non-elective president (6)

Indirectly-elected president (10)

Directly-elected president (29)

Mixed republic (92) (President + prime minister)

Parliamentary monarchy (31) (Monarch + Prime minister)

Presidential republic (45)

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Type of executives by region

Table 6.3: Classification of type of executives by region, 2003

Parliamentary

MonarchyPresidential

republicMixed

republicMonarchy Military

stateOther Total

Sub-Saharan Africa 1 17 27 1 1 2 49

Asia-Pacific 10 8 14 4 1 0 37

Central & Eastern Europe

0 0 26 0 0 1 27

Middle East 0 1 8 7 1 2 19

North America 1 2 0 0 0 0 3

Central and South America

9 16 7 0 0 0 32

Scandinavia 3 0 2 0 0 0 5

Western Europe 7 1 8 1 0 2 19

Total 31 45 92 13 3 7 191

Note: The number of states falling into each category in 2003. Source: Coded from Arthur S. Banks Cross-national Time-series Data Archive.

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Trends in types of executive

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2002

Num

ber o

f sta

tes

wor

ldw

ide

Parliamentary Monarchies Presidential republics Mixed republicsRuling Monarchies Military states

Note: Coded from Arthur S. Banks Cross-national Time-series Data Archive.

Mixed

Presidential

Driving Democracy 24

Parliamentary powers by type of executive

Driving Democracy 25

Types and parliamentary powers

Parliamentary Powers Index: (PPI)

The aggregate strength of the national legislature (0-1 scale) (Fish-Kroenig 2009).

Classification of executive types (Norris Driving Democracy)-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mean N Std. DeviationPPI

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 Parliamentary Monarchy .65 18 .119962 Mixed executive.50 81 .210223 Presidential republic .47 39 .110544 Monarchy .23 9 .083375 Military state .19 3 .22605

Total .49 152 .19684

IV. Evidence for consequences

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Liberal democracy Constitutional democracy Freedom House Polity IV

b (pcse) p b (pcse) p INSTITUTIONAL RULES Presidential republics -5.79 .873 *** -9.80 1.38 *** Mixed republics -10.77 .803 *** -14.25 1.26 *** Ruling monarchies -15.13 1.43 *** -44.50 2.31 *** Military states -24.19 1.37 *** -34.12 2.06 *** CONTROLS Log GDP/Capita 12.91 .589 *** 10.1 .886 *** Ex-British colony 9.35 .616 *** 10.7 .968 *** Middle East -7.57 1.19 *** -2.69 1.79 Regional diffusion .556 .020 *** .582 .020 *** Ethnic fractionalization -7.91 1.14 *** -1.86 1.80 Population size .000 .000 *** .000 .000 *** Area size .001 .000 *** .002 .000 *** PR electoral system for lower house

2.71 .596 *** 6.32 .886 ***

Constant -6.70 5.17 N. observations 4766 3939 Adjusted R2 .620 .585

Table 6.4: Types of executive and democracy, all societies worldwide

Note: The default (comparison) is Parliamentary Monarchies. Entries for Liberal Democracy, Constitutional Democracy and Participatory Democracy 100-point scales are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients (with their panel corrected standard errors) and the significance (p) of the coefficients for the pooled time-series cross-national analysis obtained using Stata’s xtpcse command. The entries for Contested Democracy are logistic regression. For the measures of democracy, see Chapter 2. For the classification of the type of executives, see Figure 6.1. For details of all the variables, see Technical Appendix A. Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, and *** the 0.01 level.

Driving Democracy 28

Political crisis by types of executives

0.48

0.91

1.77

2.02

2.71

0.00 0.50 1.00 1.50 2.00 2.50 3.00

Monarchy

Parliamentary Monarchy

Mixed republic

Presidential republic

Military state

Note: The political crisis scale is constructed from events recorded in the Banks dataset including the number of coups d’etat, major constitutional changes, political assassinations, general strikes, cases of guerrilla warfare, government crisis, purges of opposition, riots, revolutions, and anti-government demonstrations. The measure is constructed for every regime-year as a simple additive scale without any weighting.Source: Coded from Arthur S. Banks Cross-national Time-series Data Archive 1972-2003.

Driving Democracy 29

Executives and political stability

Driving Democracy 30

Executives and crisisTable 6.5: Types of executive and the indicators of political crisis, all societies worldwide

Political crisis scale Freedom House

b (pcse) p INSTITUTIONAL RULES Presidential republics .656 .174 *** Mixed republics .246 .160 N/s Ruling monarchies -616 .286 * Military states 1.67 .272 *** CONTROLS Log GDP/Capita -.289 .098 *** Ex-British colony -.321 .124 *** Middle East .731 .215 *** Ethnic fractionalization -.793 .222 *** Population size .000 .000 *** Area size .000 .000 *** PR electoral system for lower house .606 .119 *** Constant 2.04 N. observations 4719 Adjusted R2 .114 Note: The default (comparison) is Parliamentary Monarchies. Entries are unstandardized OLS regression coefficients (with their panel corrected standard errors) and the significance (p) of the coefficients for the pooled time-series cross-national analysis obtained using Stata’s xtpcse command. For the classification of the type of executives, see Figure 6.1. For details of all the variables, including the political crisis scale, see Technical Appendix A. Significant at * the 0.10 level, ** the 0.05 level, and *** the 0.01 level.

Driving Democracy 31

Van Craneburgh: African states

Type 1: Countries with a single head of state and government selected by popular election, but accountable to the legislature

Type 2: (Presidential republics) Countries with a single popularly elected head of state and government, not accountable to the legislature. E.g. Ghana

Type 3: Countries with a single head of state and government not selected by popular election, but accountable to the legislature. E.g. South Africa

Type 4: Countries with a single head of state and government selected in some capacity by the legislature, but thereafter not accountable to it.

Type 5: (Mixed republics) Countries with a popularly elected head of state and a separate head of government (prime minister (PM)), with the latter accountable to the legislature eg Namibia

Type 6: Countries with a popularly elected head of state and a separate head of government not accountable to the legislature.

Type 7: (Mixed republic) Countries with a head of state selected in some capacity by the legislature and a separate head of government (PM), with the latter accountable to the legislature. Eg Mauritius

Type 8: Countries with a head of state not popularly elected and a separate head of government not accountable to the legislature

Driving Democracy 32

Driving Democracy 33

Van Craneburgh’s conclusions Presidential powers vary

considerably among African states Varied performance of ‘presidential’

and ‘semi-presidential’ systems

V. Conclusions

Driving Democracy 35

Conclusions1. Classification of executive types far from

straightforward2. Institutional choices matter

Parliamentarism is associated with consolidation of democracy

Robust effect for different countries and time periods Robust effect for different measures of democracy Cases illustrate historical processes underlying relationship

3. Yet among younger democracies, parliamentary regimes are far less common than mixed executives

4. Policy implications for constitutional choices..Sudan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq…

Next class: Federalism and Decentralization