TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen A1 - Eppner, Sebastian A1 - Pörschke, Alexander T1 - Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarism BT - patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies JF - Australian Journal of Political Science N2 - The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system – a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government – which we call ‘semi-parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two-dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015. KW - Executive-legislative relations KW - bicameralism KW - parliamentary government KW - presidential government KW - visions of democracy Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2018.1451487 SN - 1036-1146 SN - 1363-030X VL - 53 IS - 2 SP - 211 EP - 233 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ganghof, Steffen A1 - Eppner, Sebastian A1 - Pörschke, Alexander T1 - Australian bicameralism as semi-parliamentarism BT - patterns of majority formation in 29 democracies T2 - Australian Journal of Political Science N2 - The article analyses the type of bicameralism we find in Australia as a distinct executive-legislative system – a hybrid between parliamentary and presidential government – which we call ‘semi- parliamentary government’. We argue that this hybrid presents an important and underappreciated alternative to pure parliamentary government as well as presidential forms of the power-separation, and that it can achieve a certain balance between competing models or visions of democracy. We specify theoretically how the semi-parliamentary separation of powers contributes to the balancing of democratic visions and propose a conceptual framework for comparing democratic visions. We use this framework to locate the Australian Commonwealth, all Australian states and 22 advanced democratic nation-states on a two- dimensional empirical map of democratic patterns for the period from 1995 to 2015. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 95 KW - executive-legislative relations KW - bicameralism KW - parliamentary government KW - presidential government KW - visions of democracy Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-412984 ER - TY - GEN A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Reconciling representation and accountability BT - three visions of democracy compared T2 - Government and Opposition N2 - An egalitarian approach to the fair representation of voters specifies three main institutional requirements: proportional representation, legislative majority rule and a parliamentary system of government. This approach faces two challenges: the under-determination of the resulting democratic process and the idea of a trade-off between equal voter representation and government accountability. Linking conceptual with comparative analysis, the article argues that we can distinguish three ideal-typical varieties of the egalitarian vision of democracy, based on the stages at which majorities are formed. These varieties do not put different relative normative weight onto equality and accountability, but have different conceptions of both values and their reconciliation. The view that accountability is necessarily linked to clarity of responsibility', widespread in the comparative literature, is questioned - as is the idea of a general trade-off between representation and accountability. Depending on the vision of democracy, the two values need not be in conflict. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Reihe - 96 KW - visions of democracy KW - political equality KW - accountability Y1 - 2018 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-413456 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen A1 - Eppner, Sebastian A1 - Pörschke, Alexander T1 - Semi-parliamentary government in perspective BT - concepts, values, and designs JF - Australian Journal of Political Science N2 - The article responds to four commentaries on the concept of semi-parliamentary government and its application to Australian bicameralism. It highlights four main points: (1) Our preferred typology is not more ‘normative’ than existing approaches, but applies the criterion of ‘direct election’ equally to executive and legislature; (2) While the evolution of semi-parliamentary government had contingent elements, it plausibly also reflects the ‘equilibrium’ nature of certain institutional configurations; (3) The idea that a pure parliamentary system with pure proportional representation has absolute normative priority over ‘instrumentalist’ concerns about cabinet stability, identifiability and responsibility is questionable; and (4) The reforms we discuss may be unlikely to occur in Australia, but deserve consideration by scholars and institutional reformers in other democratic systems. KW - Executive-legislative relations KW - bicameralism KW - visions of democracy KW - parliamentary government KW - presidential government Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2018.1451488 SN - 1036-1146 SN - 1363-030X VL - 53 IS - 2 SP - 264 EP - 269 PB - Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group CY - Abingdon ER -