Semipresidentialism

Semipresidentialism as a Mixed Regime

The concept of semipresidential government was coined during the 1970s by the French political scientist Maurice Duverger in an attempt to investigate and appraise the constitutional uniqueness of the French Fifth Republic. In 1980, in what is by now a classic article, Duverger introduced his model to the greater international public and defined semipresidentialism as a combination of three elements: (1) the president is elected by universal suffrage, (2) the president possesses considerable powers, and (3) the president has opposite him or her a prime minister and ministers who possess executive and governmental power and can stay in office only if the parliament is not in opposition to them. Applying this definition, Duverger identified seven semipresidential regimes, in Austria, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, and the Weimar Republic in Germany (1919–1933). More recent identifications come up with much larger numbers, and a 2008 survey by Robert Elgie lists no less than 54 semipresidential regimes in existence. To mention just a handful of cases in addition to those identified by Duverger, the list includes countries such as Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Egypt, Guinea-Bissau, Mongolia, Sao Tomé and Prí;ncipe, Senegal, Tajikistan, and Timor-Leste. Several of these more than 50 countries have nondemocratic regimes being run under the cloak of semipresidentialism, but a good 30 or so are partial or full democracies.

The remarkable increase in the number of such regimes reflects two partly intertwined circumstances. First, this type of regime has gained much ground in recent years. For instance, the dualistic logic of semipresidentialism having much in common with the previous communist system of government, varieties of semipresidentialism have frequently been adopted in constitutional developments following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR. Second, the increase also reflects deviations by authors and analysts from the criteria laid down by Duverger, which are, admittedly, contestable and anything but transparent. For example, the criterion that the president is elected by universal suffrage is interpreted by some to mean a direct election and by others to mean election by a popular vote, either direct or indirect. While the first interpretation excludes elections in an electoral college, the second does not. To give another example, when and if the criterion is that the president must possess considerable powers, authors may differ in their view of what set of powers is to be regarded sufficient to satisfy this criterion. Also, how the powers are divided between president and prime minister vary greatly between countries, and this variation carries problems of classification and interpretation in its wake.

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