Divided executives and democratisation in semi-presidential regimes
Abstract
This article examines the effect of a divided executive on democratisation in semi-presidential regimes. A divided executive is where the president and prime minister are not from the same party. The importance of a divided executive is hypothesised to vary according to the relative powers of the president and prime minister. In semi-presidential regimes where either the president or the prime minister is the dominant actor, then a divided executive will not affect democratisation. However, where both the president and prime minister have significant independent powers, then a divided executive should have a negative impact on democratisation because of the potential for destabilising intra-executive conflict. Using an ordinal logit model, the results show that semi-presidential regimes with a dual executive do not perform significantly worse than semi-presidential regimes where there is one dominant actor. This suggests that the standard wisdom about the impact of a divided executive in semi-presidential regimes is misplaced.
About the Authors
Robert Elgie
Университет Дублина (Ирландия)
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
Iain Mcmenamin
Университет Дублина (Ирландия)
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
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