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 - 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 - TY - JOUR A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Designing Democratic Constitutions BT - The Search for Optimality JF - Politics and Governance N2 - This article analyses salient trade-offs in the design of democracy. It grounds this analysis in a distinction between two basic models of democracy: simple and complex majoritarianism. These models differ not only in their electoral and party systems, but also in the style of coalition-building. Simple majoritarianism concentrates executive power in a single majority party; complex majoritarianism envisions the formation of shifting, issue-specific coalitions among multiple parties whose programs differ across multiple conflict dimensions. The latter pattern of coalition formation is very difficult to create and sustain under pure parliamentary government. A separation of powers between executive and legislature can facilitate such a pattern, while also achieving central goals of simple majoritarianism: identifiable cabinet alternatives before the election and stable cabinets afterward. The separation of powers can thus balance simple and complex majoritarianism in ways that are unavailable under parliamentarism. The article also compares the presidential and semi-parliamentary versions of the separation of powers. It argues that the latter has important advantages, e.g., when it comes to resolving inter-branch deadlock, as it avoids the concentration of executive power in a single human being. KW - electoral systems KW - parliamentary government KW - presidential government KW - semi-parliamentary government Y1 - 2019 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.v7i4.2239 SN - 2183-2463 VL - 7 IS - 4 SP - 243 EP - 253 PB - Cogitatio Press CY - Lisbon ER - TY - BOOK A1 - Ganghof, Steffen T1 - Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism BT - Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers N2 - In a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not. The book defends this thesis and explores ‘semi-parliamentary government’ as an alternative to presidential government. Semi-parliamentarism avoids power concentration in one person by shifting the separation of powers into the democratic assembly. The executive becomes fused with only one part of the assembly, even though the other part has at least equal democratic legitimacy and robust veto power on ordinary legislation. The book identifies the Australian Commonwealth and Japan, as well as the Australian states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, as semi-parliamentary systems. Using data from 23 countries and 6 Australian states, it maps how parliamentary and semi-parliamentary systems balance competing visions of democracy; it analyzes patterns of electoral and party systems, cabinet formation, legislative coalition-building, and constitutional reforms; it systematically compares the semi-parliamentary and presidential separation of powers; and it develops new and innovative semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require two separate chambers. KW - presidential government KW - parliamentary government KW - semi-parliamentary government KW - separation of powers KW - executive personalism KW - bicameralism KW - constitutional design KW - democratic theory KW - patterns of democracy KW - Australia Y1 - 2021 SN - 978-0-19-289714-5 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192897145.001.0001 SP - 1 EP - 199 PB - Oxford University Press CY - Oxford ER -