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This article responds to critical reflections on my Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism by Sarah Birch, Kevin J. Elliott, Claudia Landwehr and James L. Wilson. It discusses how different types of representative democracy, especially different forms of government (presidential, parliamentary or hybrid), can be justified. It clarifies, among other things, the distinction between procedural and process equality, the strengths of semi-parliamentary government, the potential instability of constitutional designs, and the difference that theories can make in actual processes of constitutional reform.
Review symposium
(2023)
Steffen Ganghof’s Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism: Democratic Design and the Separation of Powers (Oxford University Press, 2021) posits that “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” (Ganghof, 2021). To consider, examine and theorise about this, Ganghof urges engagement with semi-parliamentarism. As explained by Ganghof, legislative power is shared between two democratically legitimate sections of parliament in a semi-parliamentary system, but only one of those sections selects the government and can remove it in a no-confidence vote. Consequently, power is dispersed and not concentrated in the hands of any one person, which, Ganghof argues, can lead to an enhanced form of parliamentary democracy. In this book review symposium, George Tsebelis, Michael Thies, José Antonio Cheibub, Rosalind Dixon and Daniel Bogéa review Steffen Ganghof’s book and engage with the author about aspects of research design, case selection and theoretical argument. This symposium arose from an engaging and constructive discussion of the book at a seminar hosted by Texas A&M University in 2022. We thank Prof José Cheibub (Texas A&M) for organising that seminar and Dr Anna Fruhstorfer (University of Potsdam) for initiating this book review symposium.
Der Beitrag widmet sich zwei überaus fruchtbaren theoretischen Ansätzen in der Policy-Forschung und darüber hinaus: der Vetospielertheorie und Vetopunkt-Ansätzen. Neben den Grundzügen beider Ansätze stellen wir grundlegende Entwicklungslinien und Probleme dieser Literaturen anhand beispielhafter Studien dar. Es zeigt sich, dass beide Ansätze teils kontroverse Annahmen treffen, zu denen es plausible Alternativen gibt. Zum Beispiel kann das Verhalten von Koalitionsparteien im Policy-Prozess anders als von der Vetospielertheorie angenommen modelliert werden. Die kausalen Effekte bestimmter Institutionen oder Vetopunkte können zudem je nach Kontext variieren. Diesem Kontext sollte größere Beachtung geschenkt werden.
Typen von Forschungsdesigns
(2022)
Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsdesigns umfassen alle wesentlichen Entscheidungen, die im Forschungsprozess getroffen werden müssen. Der Beitrag unterscheidet drei rundlegende Typen von Forschungsdesigns: x-zentriert, y-zentriert und kontrastiv. Das x-zentrierte Design versucht einen theoretisch spezifizierten kausalen Effekt zu identifizieren und dessen Größe möglichst genau und ohne Verzerrungen zu schätzen. Das y-zentrierte Design versucht mehrere komplementäre Theorien über kausale Effekte so zu kombinieren, dass bestimmte Phänomene möglichst gut erklärt werden. Das kontrastive Design vergleicht die Erklärungskraft von zwei oder mehr konkurrierenden Theorien. Die Unterscheidung der drei Typen ist für qualitative Fallstudien ebenso relevant wie für Experimente oder statistische Studien mit Beobachtungsdaten. Der Beitrag grenzt die drei Typen voneinander ab, erklärt ihre jeweiligen Annahmen und diskutiert ihre Vor- und Nachteile sowie die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen ihrer Kombination. Daneben diskutiert er den Unterschied zwischen Modellen und Theorien sowie die Bedeutung des Sparsamkeitsprinzips bei der Entwicklung und Bewertung wissenschaftlicher Theorien und Erklärungen.
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.
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.
A new political system model
(2018)
Semi-parliamentary government is a distinct executive-legislative system that mirrors semi-presidentialism. It exists when the legislature is divided into two equally legitimate parts, only one of which can dismiss the prime minister in a no-confidence vote. This system has distinct advantages over pure parliamentary and presidential systems: it establishes a branch-based separation of powers and can balance the ‘majoritarian’ and ‘proportional’ visions of democracy without concentrating executive power in a single individual. This article analyses bicameral versions of semi-parliamentary government in Australia and Japan, and compares empirical patterns of democracy in the Australian Commonwealth as well as New South Wales to 20 advanced parliamentary and semi-presidential systems. It discusses new semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require formal bicameralism, and pays special attention to semi-parliamentary options for democratising the European Union.
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.
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.
Are potential cabinets more likely to form when they control institutional veto players such as symmetric second chambers or minority vetoes? Existing evidence for a causal effect of veto control has been weak. This article presents evidence for this effect on the basis of conditional and mixed logit analyses of government formations in 21 parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies between 1955 and 2012. It also shows that the size of the effect varies systematically across political-institutional contexts. The estimated causal effect was greater in countries that eventually abolished the relevant veto institutions. It is suggested that the incidence of constitutional reform is a proxy for context-specific factors that increased the incentives for veto control and simultaneously provided a stimulus for the weakening of institutional veto power.