Presidents, Parties, and Prime Ministers: How the Separation of Powers Affects Party Organization and Behavior

by David J. Samuels, Matthew S. Shugart

This book provides a framework for analyzing the impact of the separation of powers on party politics. Conventional political science wisdom assumes that democracy is impossible without political parties, because parties fulfill all the key functions of democratic governance. They nominate candidates, coordinate campaigns, aggregate interests, formulate and implement policy, and manage government power. When scholars first asserted the essential connection between parties and democracy, most of the world’s democracies were parliamentary. Yet by the dawn of the twenty-first century, most democracies had directly elected presidents. Given this, if parties are truly critical to democracy, then a systematic understanding of how the separation of powers shapes parties is long overdue. David J. Samuels and Matthew S. Shugart provide a theoretical framework for analyzing variation in the relationships among presidents, parties, and prime ministers across the world’s democracies, revealing the important ways that the separation of powers alters party organization and behavior – thereby changing the nature of democratic representation and accountability.

Genres: Politics

310 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2010

Reviews

[J.R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The authors are interested in how political parties behave in relation to institutional structures of different regime types. Specifically, they examine how having a presidential, semi-presidential (hybrid), or parliamentary system changes the way parties behave and structure themselves.

They found that regimes, with separately elected presidents that the legislative branch can not remove, force parties to evolve in interesting ways. The goal of winning the president's office causes parties to broaden voting appeal and weaken policy strictness in order to attract a national voting base. It also weakens party discipline by exacerbating the principle-agent problems between party and elected officials. Once elected, the president can not be removed from office by his/her party bosses.

I appreciated the further categorization of semi-presidential systems into two subcategories: 1) president-parliamentary systems in which the president has the ability to remove a prime minister and in some cases dismiss the national assembly 2) premire-presidential systems in which the prime minister services only at the pleasures of the legislative majority, or coalition. Depending on these institutional distinctions, the way parties behave are also affected.

It's clear the authors prefer premire-presidential systems if a regime chooses to be hybrid systems. The authors assume parties are a necessary and important feature of modern democratic systems and therefore reducing the moral hazard and agent selection issues that parties have to deal with in presidential systems is concluded to be a good thing. Empowering party bosses ("experts") and mitigating the power of populace appeals ("laymen") is a common theme amongst many political scientists. Make sure to take suggestions of "better systems" with a grain of salt.

[Steven Lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are many different kinds of representative democracies in the world. While it is possible to divide them between presidential and parliamentary systems the truth is that a significant amount of middle ground exists between both forms of government. The growth and development of semi-presidential systems is a key signifier of that. I purchased this book to better understand the relationship between parties and presidents and I definitely got that and then some.

The conclusions that David J. Samuels and Matthew S. Shugart come to might be terribly surprising. The authors argue that empowering the executive ultimately concentrates authority within that political party and government with the executive. Other branches of government and internal party mechanisms become increasing deferential to the executive and constraining the executive or holding it to account becomes increasingly difficult. In parliamentary systems many times simple mechanisms are in place to ensure loyalty, uniformity and accountability. The parliament and the prime minister cannot be opposed to each other, not really.

Presidentialism erodes the fundamental assumptions in republican government, which is deeply problematic. The authors provide many case studies from around the world and different political regimes, and the correlation is there, as well as the logic. In a republic that president is going to be the most prominent and visible representative of a given political party, even if the constitutional powers he/she possesses are less significant. As a result presidents have a great deal of power in setting their parties' policies and agenda, even if it goes against the expressed will of other politicians within their party. Samuels and Shugart point to Brazil in particular for this phenomenon. The party gets defined by the presidents.

Presidents also tend to have a source of power separate from the rest of the party - usually direction election. As a result it is perilous for frustrated party members to hold their presidents in check. Impeachment is a big step and is only likely to hurt the party in general. As a result presidents tend to benefit from their parties rallying around them despite controversy.

Many of the elections in the last few years and the ensuing politics have borne out the theories and case studies discussed in this book. It has given me an insight into presidential politics that I lacked before. The book also provides useful references for further reading on this topic for those who wish to explore it further. It is an academic work and may be challenging for those not familiar with political science.