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VARIATION IN THE DURABILITY OF SEMI-PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRACIES

ROBERT ELGIE AND PETRA SCHLEITER

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the variation in the durability of semi-presidential

democracies, a constitutional type neglected by traditional work on democratic

survival although it accounts for nearly a quarter of the worlds democracies. We

synthesise the existing literature on these regimes and extract a series of

expectations about the factors that shape why some semi-presidential democracies

survive while others fail. Using an original dataset that covers all of the

democratic episodes experienced by semi-presidential regimes from 1919 to 2004,

we find that the survival prospects of these democracies decline when the

constitution tilts the balance of power too far in favour of the president. This

result has implications for the study of semi-presidentialism, comparative work on

the durability of democracies, and the normative literature on constitutional

engineering.

Robert Elgie - School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland

Tel: + 353 1 700 5895, e-mail: robert.elgie@dcu.ie

Petra Schleiter - Department of Politics and International Relations and St. Hildas College,

University of Oxford, UK

e-mail: petra.schleiter@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

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VARIATION IN THE DURABILITY OF SEMI-PRESIDENTIAL DEMOCRACIES

This paper examines why some semi-presidential democracies survive while others fail. The

scale of suffering and loss of opportunity that followed the failure of some of these

democracies remains staggering even at a historical distance: the death and destruction caused

by the Nazi dictatorship in the aftermath of the Weimar Republics collapse, the squandering of

resources that followed the collapse of democracy in Armenia in 1996, which allowed a small

elite to benefit from economic growth while leaving an estimated 54 per cent of Armenians

struggling below the poverty level, and the havoc of civil war in Guinea-Bissau after the

overthrow of democracy in 1998. While the consequences of the failure of semi-presidential

democracies have often been devastating, the factors that enhance or reduce the durability of

these democracies remain, as yet, poorly understood.

The variation in the survival of semi-presidential democracies is striking. While some

of these regimes, such as Finland, count amongst the longest-lived democracies in the world,

others such as Haiti and Niger, slide back to dictatorship after a few brief years of democracy.

Why? To date there are no answers to this question. Although scholars have suggested a range

of political and institutional factors that may enhance or detract from the survivability of semi-

presidential democracies (Linz 1994; Linz and Stepan 1996; Duverger 1997; Pasquino 1997;

Skach 2005), none of these potential explanations have yet been analysed in a controlled

comparative setting. This paper addresses that gap.

While there is a large and sophisticated comparative literature on the survival of

democracies, this literature has overwhelmingly focussed on the comparison between different

democratic regime types presidentialism, parliamentarism and semi-presidentialism and

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their impact on the durability of democracy (Gasiorowski 1995; Przeworski, Alvarez et al.

2000; Bernhard, Nordstrom et al. 2001; Bernhard, Reenock et al. 2004). Where they

distinguish semi-presidential from parliamentary and presidential regimes, these studies find

that there is no difference in the probability with which semi-presidential and parliamentary

democracies consolidate or revert to authoritarianism (Svolik 2008: 162-3). As Cheibub and

Chernykh put it [p]lausible as it may sound, the notion that democracies with a mixed

constitution are more likely to become dictatorships [than parliamentary democracies] finds no

support in the data (Cheibub and Chernykh forthcoming). These are important findings, but

they leave the question what accounts for the substantial, and in human terms deeply

consequential, variation in survival among semi-presidential democracies unaddressed.

Semi-presidential democracies are characterized by the combination of a fixed-term

popularly elected president with a prime minister and government who are responsible to the

assembly (Elgie 1999: 13), and work on this class of democracies has engaged extensively with

the question which factors enhance or reduce their survival prospects. Scholars have identified

political factors that shape the relationship of the president to the assembly and government,

and constitutional design as the critical influences on democratic survival, and much valuable

work has been done in this field through case studies (Roper 2002; Schleiter 2003; Morgan-

Jones and Schleiter 2004; Elgie and Moestrup 2007), regional studies (Protsyk 2005), and

comparative work on the quality of democracy (Moestrup 2007; Elgie and McMenamin

forthcoming). But to date there is no controlled comparative study that examines the factors

that condition the probability of survival among this class of democracies.

This is no minor lacuna. The democratic transitions of the late 1980s and early 1990s

turned semi-presidentialism into the constitutional format of choice for many new democracies

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(Shugart 2005: 344). By 2002, 22 per cent of the worlds democracies were semi-presidential

(Cheibub and Chernykh forthcoming). The third wave of democratization brought semi-

presidential regimes to regions around the world including Central and Eastern Europe (for

instance Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland and Romania), the Caucasus, Central Asia and Asia

(examples are Armenia, Mongolia, Taiwan), sub-Saharan Africa (for example Mali, Niger and

Senegal), and Latin America (for instance Peru). Given the growing popularity of semi-

presidentialism among democratizing countries, there is a pressing need for a better

understanding of the conditions under which this type of democracy is more (or less) likely to

survive. Our aim in this paper is to address this gap.

We do so by synthesizing the diverse elements of existing theory about the institutional

and political conditions that affect the survival of semi-presidential regimes. The resulting

expectations are tested using survival analysis and an original dataset covering all of the 611

country-years and 45 episodes experienced by semi-presidential democracies from 1919 to

2004. In so doing we link two literatures that have rarely intersected: the literature on semi-

presidentialism and the quantitatively oriented comparative literature on democratic survival.

Our results demonstrate that political conditions pale in significance as determinants of the

survival of these democracies when compared to constitutional design. Constitutional design

has a major impact, and semi-presidential regimes which feature powerful presidents

significantly lower the probability that democracy will survive.

SEMI-PRESIDENTIALISM: DEFINITION, LITERATURE AND HYPOTHESES

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We adopt Elgies definition of semi-presidential regimes as characterized by the existence of

a popularly elected, fixed term president alongside a prime minister and cabinet who are

responsible to parliament (Elgie 1999: 13), which has considerable advantages over

Duvergers ambiguous classical definition. Duvergers classical definition additionally requires

that a president possess quite considerable powers (Duverger 1980: 161). This criterion has

engendered extensive debates as to which powers count as quite considerable, and whether

regimes should be classified according to the behaviour or constitutional powers of presidents,

resulting in the subjective and inconsistent classification of a range of countries. Elgies

minimal institutional definition suffers from none of these problems and has for this reason

become the preferred way to conceptualise semi-presidentialism in nearly all of the recent

work in the field.

In countries that adopt such constitutions, politics is predicated on a degree of power-

sharing between the president and two other constitutional actors, the assembly and the

government. This is because, given their direct election, presidents in semi-presidential

democracies have a representative function, which they share with the separately elected

assembly. Moreover, given the dual executive, the president and the government (which is

responsible to the assembly) share executive functions to a greater or lesser degree. Analysts

see the potential strength of these democracies in their flexibility to rely on the assembly

majority or the president for support of the government and policy direction (Pasquino 1997;

Sartori 1997), and their weakness in the potential for institutional conflict and gridlock

between the president on the one hand, and the assembly and government on the other (Linz

1994; Linz and Stepan 1996; Skach 2005). The question that arises is under what conditions

those weaknesses or strengths are accentuated so as to have effects on the survival of semi-

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presidential democracies? In the literature on semi-presidentialism there are two sets of

approaches to this question, one focuses on constitutional design, the other on political

circumstances. In this section we draw from these two perspectives a set of testable

expectations.

Clearly, there are other factors, too, that are likely to affect the survival of

semipresidential democracies, such as the economic situation, social structure, historical

heritage, and region the country is located in. These will feature as controls in our analysis, but

for now we focus on those variables which the literature on semi-presidentialism has identified

as relevant in conditioning the success of power-sharing and survival of democracy under this

type of democratic regime.

Constitutional Design Semi-presidential democracies feature much greater

constitutional heterogeneity than parliamentary or presidential democracies (Siaroff 2003), and

there is a broad consensus that variations in the constitutional design of these regimes have

consequences for their survival prospects (Shugart and Carey 1992; Schleiter 2003; Protsyk

2005; Elgie and Moestrup 2007; Moestrup 2007: 41). Broadly there is agreement that power-

sharing in semi-presidential constitutions, which tilt the balance of power decidedly in favour

of the president, is less likely to be successful but the specific arguments take two distinct

forms:

Shugart and Carey (1992) first argued that the critical distinction among semi-

presidential regimes lies in whether they make governments accountable to both president and

assembly or to the assembly alone. Their argument is that semi-presidential regimes are likely

to function well when control of the government is clearly assigned. This, they propose, is the

case under premier-presidentialism, the constitutional sub-type of semi-presidentialism, in

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which the government is exclusively accountable to the legislature. By contrast, under

president-parliamentary constitutions, which allow both the president and the legislature to

dismiss the government, the dual control of the government is likely to generate institutional

conflict between the president and the assembly, which may trigger potential crises of

governability and eventually endanger democracy. Shugart and Carey argue that such

symmetry in [government] removal powers contributed to interbranch conflict in Portugal

(1976-82), and to chronic cabinet instability in Germanys Weimar Republic as well. [and

encouraged] conflict and instability of the sort that led to the coup in Peru in 1968 (Shugart

and Carey 1992: 118). There is significant preliminary support for Shugart and Careys

analysis. Moestrups descriptive analysis of 83 young semi-presidential democracies suggests

that on average premier-presidential regimes have better FH [Freedom House] scores (3.0

versus 3.9) and better chances of democratic survival (Moestrup 2007: 41). The first

hypothesis that can be derived from work on the constitutional variation among semi-

presidential regimes is therefore (all hypotheses are formulated subject to ceteris paribus

conditions):

H1: The probability that semi-presidential democracies collapse is increased by

president-parliamentary forms of semi-presidentialism.

A second view is that a presidents legislative powers may be the decisive aspect of

constitutional variation. Semi-presidential constitutions may grant presidents powers in a range

of areas beyond government termination, most notably legislative powers such as the power to

issue legislation by decree, veto powers, budgetary powers, powers to call referenda, and

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exclusive powers to introduce certain types of legislation (Shugart and Carey 1992: 150). The

argument here is that presidents who enjoy extensive legislative powers may be less inclined to

power-share. Instead they may be able to rely on their constitutional prerogatives to

marginalise the prime minister and the assembly (Colton and Skach 2005). In addition,

extensive legislative (particularly decree) powers may enhance a presidents opportunities to

subvert the rule of law, and should they do so, they may be more difficult to check (Schleiter

and Morgan-Jones 2008). This potential is at the heart of Linzs (1994: 48) fear that semi-

presidentialism can come to resemble a constitutional dictatorship. As the constitutional

powers of a president rise, therefore, the risks which presidents pose to the survival of

democracy are thought to become more pronounced. The second hypothesis that can be

derived from work that focuses on constitutional variation within these regimes, then, is:

H2: The probability that semi-presidential democracies collapse increases with

presidential legislative power.

In practice hypotheses 1 and 2 are likely to be more related than it would appear at first

glance because president-parliamentary constitutions, which give the president the power to

dismiss the government, also tend to envisage a generally more dominant role for the president

in governance, including legislation, than premier-presidential constitutions. The empirical

evidence available to date suggests that semi-presidential systems which feature high aggregate

levels of presidential power are associated with poorer democratic performance (Elgie and

McMenamin 2008).

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Political circumstances A second set of scholars focuses on political

circumstances rather than constitutional design as the decisive factor, which may render the

power-sharing features of semi-presidential constitutions problematic. The arguments here

concentrate on two types of politically complex situations, cohabitation and divided minority

government, which are thought to make power-sharing particularly difficult.

The first argument is that semi-presidentialism can give rise to a uniquely difficult

political situation in which the president and prime minister have divergent policy preferences,

so that the executive is divided against itself (Pierce 1991). This is most likely to be the case

under cohabitation, the situation where the president and prime minister belong to opposing

parties and where the presidents party is not represented in government. Under cohabitation,

the president is isolated within the executive. While presidents who find themselves in that

situation may choose to accept the will of the legislature and coexist with a political opponent,

they may seek to obstruct the government, creating a gridlock situation in which neither the

president nor the prime minister is willing to compromise. Decision-making may then be

impeded by intra-executive conflict and legislative immobilism (Linz 1994: 55). Alternatively,

if the constitution allows, the president may defy the legislature and dismiss the government in

the knowledge that the legislature may oppose subsequent attempts to form a more pro-

presidential government, which holds out the prospect of government instability until the next

presidential or parliamentary elections. Via both types of outcomes, cohabitation is thought to

raise the risk of democratic collapse. Thus, the proposition that can be derived from this work

that comments on cohabitation is that:

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H3: The probability that semi-presidential democracies collapse increases during

periods of cohabitation.

It is evident, though, that presidents with extensive legislative or government related

powers should be more able than constitutionally weak presidents to cause the deleterious

outcomes, which writers who comment on cohabitation fear. Simply put, a president who lacks

the veto powers to obstruct a governments legislative programme cannot cause legislative

gridlock. Similarly, a president who lacks the power to dismiss the government cannot cause

government instability. It is therefore not surprising that the empirical evidence with respect to

cohabitation is contradictory. While Kirschkes study of sub-Saharan Africa suggests that

semi-presidential regimes working under divided executives have been more prone to collapse

(Kirschke 2007: 1390), Elgies analysis of the link between cohabitation and democratic

breakdowns around the world concludes that there is insufficient evidence to make the claim

that cohabitation is perilous under semi-presidentialism Niger is the only country where

cohabitation has ever been directly responsible for the collapse of democracy (Elgie 2008:

63). Similarly Elgie and McMenamin, provide a controlled comparative study of the effect of

cohabitation and other forms of divided government on the quality of semi-presidential

democracies as measured by Polity ratings, and conclude that the theory that divided

executives undermine democracy is unproven (Elgie and McMenamin forthcoming).

The second type of politically complex situation that is thought to undermine the

prospects for democratic survival is divided minority government, which is defined as a

situation where neither the president nor the prime minister, nor any party or coalition, enjoys

a substantive majority in the legislature (Skach 2005: 15). The combination of a minority

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president with a minority government is thought to undermine effective governance by either

part of the dual executive. As Skach puts it divided minority government is, in effect, the

combination of the potentially most problematic kind of presidentialism divided government

with the potentially most problematic kind of parliamentarism minority government

(Skach 2007: 104-5). Divided minority government, it is argued, can predictably lead to an

unstable scenario, characterized by shifting legislative coalitions and government reshuffles, on

the one hand, and continuous presidential intervention and use of reserved powers, on the

other (Skach 2005: 17-18). It is thought to undermine effective power-sharing, and to

encourage the decline and subversion of the rule of law as presidents feel the need to take

matters into their own hands. The fourth hypothesis, then, can be derived from Skachs work:

H4: The probability that semi-presidential democracies collapse increases during

periods of divided minority government

Again, though, it is presidents with extensive powers, not the constitutionally weaker

presidents who have the option of taking matters into their own hands by relying on

presidential reserve powers, and it is not surprising, that with respect to divided minority

government alone, the evidence is contradictory: While Skach (2005) has provided a case

study evidence to suggests that divided minority government was instrumental in the collapse

of the Weimar Republic, comparative work by Cheibub and Chernykh (2008), suggests that

this situation occurs too rarely to afford a basis for any certain conclusions, and Elgie (2008)

finds no clear link between divided minority government and democratic collapse.

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In sum, the literature on semi-presidentialism identifies variation in the constitutional

design of these regimes and politically complex situations as the factors that are likely to shape

the probability of failures in power-sharing under semi-presidential constitutions. There is

general consensus that failed power-sharing in semi-presidential regimes can engender a range

of potential governance crises, including institutional conflict between the president and prime

minister or the president and assembly, legislative immobilism, and government instability.

Moreover, there is an underlying concern that when power-sharing fails, the checks and

balances inherent in some or all of these constitutions may not be strong enough to restrain

presidents who - by design, or as a result of frustrating crises of governance - decide to abuse

their powers and to subvert the rule of law. In the sections that follow, we assess the

hypotheses outlined above.

DATA AND VARIABLES

In order to probe the propositions set out above, we examine the survival of all semi-

presidential democracies from 1919, the year when the first constitution of this sort was

adopted by both Finland and Weimar Germany, through to the end of 2004. While some of

semi-presidential democracies clearly are among the older, established democracies, semi-

presidentialism as a constitutional choice remained relatively rare until the third wave of

democratization, during which it became the constitutional form of choice for many new

democracies in particular during the 1990s. The vast majority of semi-presidential democracies

around the world are therefore third wave democracies, and in choosing what data to work

with, our decisions are driven by the nature of the regimes that third wave transitions present us

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with. As Epstein et al. note, the third wave of democratization peopled the globe with partial

democracies, and a good number of those are semi-presidential (Epstein, Bates et al. 2006).

Epstein et al. define partial democracies as democracies in which the chief executive is elected,

but may face weak constrains, and his or her selection may not result from open and organized

competition, but rather from lobbying by powerful political interests. Alternatively, the

election itself could be manipulated or competition might lack effectiveness because political

parties are highly factionalized. In studying democratic survival, partial democracies are

arguably some of the most interesting democracies to understand: they are over four times less

stable than full democracies, and movements in and out of the category of partial democracies

account for the majority of transitions to and out of democracy globally (Epstein, Bates et al.

2006: 555). We therefore choose among the range of possible definitions and measures of the

democracy the Polity IV data, which scales political regimes from -10 (fully authoritarian) to

+10 (fully democratic), and gives us the flexibility to include full and partial democracies. We

apply the threshold of a polity score of +1 to identify our universe of cases. If a countrys score

drops below this level we record the collapse of democracy. This yields a dataset that covers

611 country-years and 45 episodes of democracy that semi-presidential democracies around the

world have experienced. Table 1 gives an overview of the data.

[Table 1 about here]

As Table 1 makes clear, most of our cases have been continuously democratic, such as

Finland since 1919, France since 1962, Croatia since 1999 and Senegal since 2000, but a

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number of the countries in our sample experienced multiple episodes of democracy; examples

are the Comoros Islands, Austria, Armenia and Peru.

Dependent and Explanatory Variables

Our dependent variable is the duration and outcome (failure or survival) of each democratic

episode measured in years. For the first Austrian episode of democracy from 1929 to 1933, for

example, our dataset records a duration of 4 years and the collapse of democracy. For the

second Austrian episode of democracy from 1945 to 2004 we record a duration of 59 years and

the survival of democracy (see Table 1 above).

Our discussion above identifies four variables that are thought to have potentially

powerful effects on the survival prospects of semi-presidential democracies: president-

parliamentarism, presidential legislative power, cohabitation, and divided minority

government. All of these except presidential power are recorded as indicator variables (1 if the

characteristic is present, 0 otherwise). We follow Shugart and Careys definition of the two

regime sub-types and record president-parliamentarism if the government can be unilaterally

dismissed by the president and is therefore dually responsible to both the president and the

legislature. To measure the level of presidential legislative power we rely on those aspects of

Siaroffs nine-part index of presidential power, which record legislative powers (Siaroff 2003).

Higher index scores indicate higher levels of presidential power. We record cohabitation when

a president from one party holds power at the same time as a prime minister from a different

party and when the presidents party is not represented in the cabinet. Therefore, cohabitation

records situations in which the president is isolated within the executive. If the president was

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classed as non-partisan but the prime minister had a party affiliation, we did not count this

situation as a case of cohabitation. To record divided minority government, we trace all periods

of minority government and identify which of these were also periods of divided government,

or cohabitation, so that the minority government was confronted with a president whose party

was not included in cabinet.

Control Variables

Our choice of control variables is informed by the comparative literature on democratic

survival and includes domestic political, economic, social, historical and international political

factors.

The domestic political context in which constitutions operate, and in particular the

nature of the party system, is widely thought to have an impact on the governability and thus

the survival prospects of democracies. In general, two party and moderate multiparty systems

are perceived as less problematic than the combination of high party system fragmentation with

popularly elected presidents (Mainwaring 1993). To capture the effects of different levels of

party system fragmentation, we use the effective number of parliamentary parties (the Laakso-

Taagepera index), divided into quartiles to generate three dummy variables. The dummies

capture moderate multi-partyism (ENP 2.47-3.06), high levels of multi-partyism (ENP 3.07-

4.37) and severe party system fragmentation (ENP 4.37-15.33). Because the least fragmented

party systems (up to ENP 2.46) are thought to be least problematic, we choose to make this our

omitted category. Higher levels of party system fragmentation should therefore raise the risk of

democratic collapse relative to this category.

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Turning to the economy, there is an extensive literature on the effect of economic

development in promoting the survival of democracies (Przeworski and Limongi 1997;

Przeworski, Alvarez et al. 2000; Boix and Stokes 2003; Robinson 2006). To control for the

effect of wealth on democratic survival we include GDP per capita in 1990 International

Geary-Khamis dollars and take the log of this variable since wealth is likely to have a

diminishing marginal effect on the survival prospects of democracy. In addition economic

growth has also been associated with the survival of democracy, while economic stagnation

and contraction are thought to increase the probability of democratic breakdown (Gasiorowski

1995; Przeworski and Limongi 1997; Svolik 2008). We therefore control for growth,

calculated on the basis of our annual GDP figures.

Since the work of Dahl the nature of society has been thought to influence the chances

that democracy will survive (Dahl 1971: 108). Notably, democracies with more homogenous

populations are thought to have better chances of survival (Diamond, Linz et al. 1995: 42-43;

Bernhard, Nordstrom et al. 2001). For this reason we control for ethnic fragmentation as

measured by Alesina et al.s index of ethnic fractionalisation (Alesina, Devleeschauwer et al.

2002). This index ranges from 0 to 1 and higher values indicate greater levels of fragmentation.

This takes us to a countrys historical legacies. A number of the countries in our sample

are former colonies. The vast majority of studies on the subject argue that the effects of

colonialism on the prospects of democratic stability are negative because it encouraged export

dependent economic development, the drawing of political boundaries without regard for

social structure and history, and the politicization of ethnicity (Bernhard, Reenock et al. 2004).

To capture any effect of former colonial status on the survival of democracy after

independence, we include a dummy variable that records former colonial status (1, otherwise

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0). Several of our countries feature a second type of historical legacy that is thought to affect

the chances of democratic survival - the experience of previous episodes of democracy. The

effect of this legacy on the survival of democracy is difficult to gauge. On the one hand, elites

and the populace in such countries have been introduced to the basic rules of democracy and

this experience may aid the survival of subsequently established democratic systems, in

particular if it was of significant duration. On the other hand, the previous experience was often

one of democratic malfunction and failure, which, especially if it was prolonged, may serve to

undermine support for democracy. To control for either type of effect we include the number

of years spent under democracy during previous episodes.

Finally, we consider international influences on the survival of democracy. The

literature on democratic diffusion effects suggests that they operate most powerfully at the

regional level (Starr and Lindborg 2003). If this literature were correct, then young

democracies in regions that already feature a high proportion of democracies, such as Europe,

would stand a better chance of survival than democracies in other parts of the world. To

capture this effect we calculated the percentage of countries in the region that were

democracies (e.g. had a Polity IV score of +1). We based our calculation on the following

regions: Asia; Central Asia and the Caucasus; Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia);

the North Africa and the Middle East (including Turkey); Sub-Saharan Africa; and Western

Europe. Our data include no cases in Australasia.

EMPIRICAL DESIGN

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Our model choice is guided by three considerations. First, because our aim is to examine the

impact of a set of variables on the length of time for which a semi-presidential democracy

survives before it breaks down, we employ survival analysis. Models within this statistical

family make it possible to analyse the effect of covariates on the hazard rate, or the rate at

which semi-presidential democracies fail at a particular time, given that they have survived up

to that point.

Second, given the long-running scholarly debate about democratic consolidation, a

honeymoon effect for young democracies, and other time-dependent features of the hazard that

democracies may face (Huntington 1991; Gasiorowski and Power 1998; Bernhard, Reenock et

al. 2003; Svolik 2008), we choose not to model the time dependency exhibited by our data

directly, but instead opt for a Cox Proportional Hazards Model. The Cox Model is a semi-

parametric model, which has the virtue of enabling us to obtain estimates of the covariates of

interest, while leaving the underlying distribution of failure times among semi-presidential

democracies unspecified (Box-Steffensmeier and Jones 2004).

Third, we take account of the possibility that democracy in some countries, say Peru

(which has experienced three episodes of democracy to date), is inherently less stable than in

others, such as Finland (which has been continuously democratic and semi-presidential since

1919), by estimating country-clustered standard errors.

Of the 45 episodes of democracy that we observe, 16 ended in collapse, the remainder

either ended for other reasons (for instance the transition to parliamentarism in Moldova) or

were continuing to function as democracies when we ceased to observe them in 2004. Had it

not been for the end of our study or the transition of these regimes to some other system of

government, we would probably have observed these latter semi-presidential democracies to

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last longer. In the analysis that follows, the terminations of these democracies are therefore

treated as unobserved, or censored in the language of survival analysis.

RESULTS

Table 2 presents the results of two models.1 Model 1 includes our full set of explanatory and

control variables, while model 2 is a reduced model, which excludes those variables that do not

reach statistical significance and fail to make a statistically significant contribution to the

explanatory power of the model. The reduced model 2 therefore is our final model, which best

fits the data.

We report hazard ratios (which are the exponentiated coefficients) in table 2 because of

their intuitive interpretation. The hazard ratio gives the multiplicative effect that a one-unit

change in a covariate has on the baseline hazard. If a covariate produces a hazard ratio smaller

than 1, it lowers the failure rate of semi-presidential democracies, a hazard ratio bigger than 1

indicates that a covariate raises the failure rate, and a hazard ratio of 1 indicates a coefficient

equal to 0. The z-values report the statistical significance of the effects and are included in

brackets below each hazard ratio. Statistically significant results are starred.

Preliminary analysis reveals that there is no variation in outcome with respect to one

variable: divided minority government, or the situation in which there is a minority

government that does not include the presidents party. Not a single semi-presidential regime

ever collapsed during a period of divided minority government. This is not to say that countries

that suffered democratic collapse never experienced divided minority government. Germanys 1 All statistical analyses were performed using STATA (version 9.0).

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Weimar Republic did, though not during the year of its collapse. It is therefore clear that

hypothesis 4 receives no support in the data although the effect of divided minority

government on democratic survival cannot technically be estimated. However, to give the

reasoning that underlies the argument the fullest possible assessment, we explore whether the

lack of a government majority in the assembly is perhaps the real cause of the detrimental

effect that Skach has attributed to divided minority government. Instead of divided minority

government, the analyses that follow therefore include a variable that simply records minority

government, or the situation in which the government has the support of less than a majority

(50%+1) of the legislators.

[Table 2 about here]

The full and reduced models show that constitutional variation among semi-presidential

regimes has, as expected, powerful effects on democratic survival. Specifically, the scope of a

presidents power over the government, as shaped by whether or not a president has the power

to dismiss the cabinet (H1), strongly and significantly influences democratic survival. Those

constitutions which are president-parliamentary and make the government dually accountable

to the assembly and the president powerfully reduce the durability of democracy, raising the

risk of democratic breakdown by a factor of 5.24 compared to semi-presidential constitutions

which make the governments accountable only to the assembly. Models 1 and 2 also

demonstrate that controlling for the accountability of the cabinet, the level of presidential

legislative power (H2) has no further effect on the durability of semi-presidential democracies,

which is not surprising given that presidents who have the power to dismiss governments tend

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to be invested with significant legislative powers too. Neither cohabitation (H3), nor minority

government (H4), have an effect on democratic survival. That is controlling for the manner in

which the constitutional framework shapes and enforces power-sharing, political complexity

has no further significant effect on the survival of semi-presidential democracies, and both

variables drop out of our final model 2. These are our central results, and we discuss them in

more detail below.

Turning to the control variables, moderate and fairly high levels of party system

fragmentation have the expected effect of increasing the hazard of democratic collapse

powerfully, by factors of 4.18 and 5.84 (model 2) respectively, when compared to situations of

low party system fragmentation. Note though, that the situation in which semi-presidentialism

is thought to be most vulnerable, extreme party system fragmentation, does not appear to be

problematic.

As is consistent with the results of other controlled comparative work wealth and

economic growth have very significant effects in reducing the risk of collapse for semi-

presidential democracies. Each additional percentage point of growth, for instance, reduces the

risk of authoritarian reversal by 3% (model 2). A series of further control variables have no

effect on the survival of democracy in semi-presidential regimes. These include historical

status as a former colony, previous experience of democracy, ethnic fragmentation and

international context in terms of the percentage of democracies in the region. Turning first to

the impact of former status as a colony, it is possible that this variable has no overall effect in

our analysis because different colonial powers left varying legacies in their former

dependencies (Bernhard, Reenock et. al. 2004). Notably, Britain, is often found to have had a

less detrimental effect on its colonies then some of the other colonial powers. Former British

22

dependencies, which feature no democratic breakdowns in our data, account for roughly a third

of the country-years that we observe in former colonies, and balance out the destabilizing

effects of colonialism in some of the former French and Portuguese colonies, which feature 8

collapses in our data. The coefficient for ethnic fragmentation too, fails to reach statistical

significance. Again, this is not implausible since we would expect politically relevant features

of social structure to be reflected in the effective number of political parties. Controlling for

parliamentary fragmentation, ethnic fragmentation has no further effect. Nor has previous

experience of democracy. As we noted above this may be the case because the effects of

valuable experience with democracy are counterbalanced by the detrimental effects of having

experienced previous democratic failure. Finally, the proportion of democracies in a region,

perhaps unsurprisingly, has no effect on survival of democracy once we control for wealth.

We examine the specification of the models and the robustness of our central results in

a number of different ways. To probe model specification, we test for non-linearity in the

regressors by including the square of the risk score as a regressor in models 1 and 2. We also

test for violations of the proportional hazards assumption, on which the Cox model is based,

using Schoenfeld residuals. The results of both tests are reported at the bottom of table 2. None

of the tests give reason to reject either model, nor is collinearity (tests not reported) a problem.

To scrutinize the robustness of our central results from model 2 further we adopt a dual

strategy: First, we examine to what extent our results are robust to the listwise exclusion of

each country individually because the regime classification and constitutional scope of

presidential power is disputed for some semi-presidential regimes such as Austria, Iceland and

Ireland (Duverger 1980; Shugart and Carey 1992). Second, we re-estimate our model, using a

Weibull instead of a Cox proportional hazards specification, to examine to what extent our

23

estimates are affected by model choice. Our central result from model 2, that premier-

presidential democracies face a very significantly reduced risk of collapse when compared to

president-parliamentary regimes, is completely robust under all of these specifications and

never drops below the 90% confidence level.

DISCUSSION

Having examined the mechanisms that are believed to play a role in destabilizing semi-

presidential democracies, we find support for the view that constitutional variation within

semi-presidential regimes has a powerful effect on democratic survival. The critical decision in

the design of semi-presidential constitutions appears to be how far to tilt the balance of power

in favour of the president. Our results suggest that giving a president extensive influence over

the government through the power to dismiss it unilaterally significantly increases the risk of

democratic collapse. This is not surprising given that the vast majority of semi-presidential

democracies are young, third wave democracies, and that our data includes some partial

democracies: appropriate constraints on the executive in these settings appear to be of

overriding importance. The scope of presidential legislative powers appears to have no

additional impact on the survival of semi-presidential regimes. We suspect that this is because

the regime sub-type distinction already absorbs some of the variation in legislative powers:

president-parliamentarism correlates with higher levels of legislative power than premier-

presidentialism. Finally, politically complex situations in and of themselves do not appear to

raise the risk of democratic failure. Once we account for the presidents constitutional position,

the complexities that cohabitation or divided minority government entail do not appear to have

24

any further influence on the risk of democratic collapse. In this section we interpret our central

finding in more detail.

President-parliamentary constitutions, whose distinguishing feature is that they grant

the power to dismiss governments to both the assembly and the president, very significantly

and powerfully reduce the durability of democracy. As Shugart and Carey (1992) point out,

these constitutions undermine power-sharing because they enable the president and the

assembly to replace the government at will. Since neither side is forced to compromise, the

successful resolution of conflicts between legislators and the president over policy and control

of the government is likely to be harder to achieve. In addition, these regimes typically give

presidents generally greater powers (over legislation, the government, the army, the wider

executive) than premier-presidential constitutions. Consequently, presidents who develop a

preference for methods of governing that undermine the rule of law, accountability, and

democracy - perhaps through enhanced control oft the media, interference with elections, and

the use of repression - have on average a wider panoply of constitutional powers available to

pursue their aims. Put simply, president-parliamentary regimes are more likely than premier-

presidential regimes to lack sufficiently powerful checks on the president.

Premier-presidential constitutions, by contrast seem to induce more successful power-

sharing, and seem to be able to process political conflict more successfully. The reason for this

as Shugart and Carey (1992) argue, that these constitutions typically require a president who

disagrees with an assembly majority to compromise. Because governments depend on the

confidence of the assembly alone presidents cannot effect government change without

assembly support, nor can they hope to keep a pro-presidential government in power against

the will of a governing majority. As a result, premier-presidential constitutions appear to be

25

more likely to pre-empt the escalation of political conflicts to the point where they prompt

democratic breakdown. Moreover, for presidents with a preference for authoritarian methods of

governing, the path to control of the governmental centre of power to the ministry of the

interior, the police, control of the media and media policy, and to the ministry of defence can

only lead via building assembly support. This appears to be on average a potent and effective

check on a presidents opportunities to use censorship, the manipulation of elections, violence

or repression to subvert the rule of law.

CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have shown that constitutional variation within semi-presidential regimes has

powerful effects on their survival, as the literature on semi-presidentialism had long suspected,

but never yet demonstrated in controlled comparative work. Our results suggest that the

survival prospects of the two sub-types of semi-presidential democracies, president-

parliamentary and premier-presidential regimes, differ significantly, which has a bearing on the

understanding of semi-presidentialism as a regime type, the study of democratic survival, and

the normative literature on constitutional engineering. This section outlines what we see as the

main implications of our work for each of these areas.

Turning first to the literature on semi-presidentialism we provide a large-n controlled

analysis of the expectations that scholars have generated about the factors that condition the

survival of these democracies. Our work suggests that political conditions such as cohabitation

and divided minority government have been overrated as causes of democratic collapse in

much of the literature. By contrast, how the constitution structures incentives to power-share,

26

appears to have overriding importance. Once sufficiently powerful institutional incentives to

power-share are in place, semi-presidential regimes appear to navigate politically difficult

situations without endangering democracy. But where the institutional incentives to power-

share are weak semi-presidential regimes appear to fail under a variety of political conditions,

which may or may not coincide with periods of cohabitation or minority government.

With respect to the comparative literature on the survival of democracies our work

makes progress with integrating semi-presidential regimes into the mainstream comparative

literature on democratic survival. Our results suggest that in order to understand the effects of

this most heterogeneous of the main democratic regime types, analysts should pay attention to

the constitutional variations among semi-presidential regimes. Thus future work on democratic

stability should not just take account of the proliferation of semi-presidential regimes during

the third wave of democratization it should also take account of the constitutional distinction

between premier-presidential and president-parliamentary regimes in order to adequately

capture the influence that the constitutions of 22% of the worlds democracies have on the

durability of democratic rule.

Turning to the normative literature on constitutional design, there seem to be two

reasons for constitution drafters to choose semi-presidentialism: a desire for constitutional

rules that require power-sharing, and the desire for flexibility through presidential action. Our

results suggest that constitution drafters ought to be wary of leaning too far in the direction of

investing the presidency with extensive powers in order to achieve flexibility, because

powerful presidents appear to have a price in terms of democratic survival. Presidents who, by

virtue of their authority over the government, have opportunities to assert control over the

governmental centre of power while flouting the checks and balances and the type of power-

27

sharing that semi-presidential constitutions envisage raise the risk of democratic collapse. The

critical question in designing semi-presidential constitutions is what price to pay in the risk of

democratic breakdown for the promise of more decisive presidential governance that

enhancing a presidents authority over the cabinet appears to hold out. Our results suggest that

the price of giving presidents the power to dismiss the cabinet is a 5.24 fold increase of the risk

of democratic collapse. This should give pause for thought.

28

Table 1: Duration and Outcome of Democratic Episodes in Semi-Presidential Regimes Country-Episode Period Country Years Failure of Democracy Armenia 1 1991 - 1996 5 Yes Armenia 2 1998 - 2004 6 - Austria 1 1929 - 1933 4 Yes Austria 2 1945 - 2004 59 - Belarus 1994 - 1995 1 Yes Bulgaria 1992 - 2004 12 - Burkina Faso 1978 - 1980 2 Yes Central African Republic 1993 - 2003 10 Yes Comoros 1 1992 - 1995 3 Yes Comoros 2 1996 - 1999 3 Yes Congo Brazzaville 1992 - 1997 5 Yes Croatia 1999 - 2004 5 - Cuba 1940 - 1952 12 Yes East Timor 2002 - 2004 2 - Finland 1919 - 2004 85 - France 1963 - 2004 41 - Germany 1919 - 1933 14 Yes Guinea-Bissau 1 1994 - 1998 4 Yes Guinea-Bissau 2 1999 - 2003 4 Yes Haiti 1994 - 2000 6 Yes Ireland 1937 - 2004 67 - Lithuania 1992 - 2004 12 - Macedonia 1992 - 2004 12 - Madagascar 1992 - 2004 12 - Mali 1992 - 2004 12 - Moldova 1991 - 2000 9 - Mongolia 1992 - 2004 12 - Mozambique 1994 - 2004 10 - Namibia 1990 - 2004 14 - Niger 1 1993 - 1996 3 Yes Niger 2 1999 - 2004 5 - Peru 1 1980 - 1992 12 Yes Peru 2 1993 - 2000 7 Yes Peru 3 2002 - 2004 2 - Poland 1990 - 2004 14 - Portugal 1976 - 2004 28 - Romania 1991 - 2004 13 - Russia 1992 - 2004 12 - Senegal 2000 - 2004 4 - Slovakia 1999 - 2004 5 - Slovenia 1992 - 2004 12 - Sri Lanka 1978 - 2004 26 - Taiwan 1996 - 2004 8 - Tanzania 2000 - 2004 4 - Ukraine 1991 - 2004 13 - Totals 611 16

29

Table 2: The Survival of Semi-Presidential Democracies (Cox Proportional Hazards Model) Model 1 2

Hazard Ratio

Hazard Ratio

(z-value) (z-value)

Dependent Variable: Survival/Failure Time

of Democracy H1 President-Parliamentarism 5.24*** 5.24*** (-2.63) (-2.67) H2 Presidential Power (Legislative) 0.89 (-0.40) H3 Cohabitation 1.00 (-0.00) H4 Minority Government 2.07 (0.86) Effective Number of Parties (2.47-3.06) 2.38 4.18** (1.31) (2.20) Effective Number of Parties (3.07-4.37) 4.79** 5.84*** (2.29) (2.81) Effective Number of Parties (4.38-15.33) 0.40 (-0.95) log GDP (real per capita) 0.23*** 0.38*** (-2.46) (-3.64) Growth 0.96*** 0.97** (-2.59) (-1.96) Ethnic Fragmentation 0.16 (-1.58) Former Colony 0.85 (-0.26) Number Years Spent under 1.02 Previous Democratic Episodes (1.16) Proportion of Democracies in Region 0.99 (-.36)

30

Log (partial) likelihood -39.17 -41.34 Number of Regimes 45 Number of Years at Risk 610 611 Number of Failures 16 Linktest hat(2) -0.04 -0.09 p=(0.760) p=(0.589)

Test of Proportional Hazards Assumption 14.85 (13df) 2.58 (5df)

Global Test chi(2) p=(0.317) p=(0.765)

Note: ***Statistically significant at the .01 level, **statistically significant at the .05 level, *statistically significant at the .10 level, based on country-clustered standard errors

31

APPENDIX: DATA SOURCES

Duration of Democratic Episodes, Number of Years Spent under Previous Democratic

Episodes, and Proportion of Democracies in Region. These variables are based on Polity IV

data (Marshall, Jaggers et al. accessed April 2008).

President-Parliamentarism. The sub-type of semi-presidentialism is recorded on the

basis of the constitution of each country.

Presidential Legislative Power. Measures the extent of a presidents legislative power

based on Siaroffs (2003) index.

Cohabitation. Party affiliation of the president and government participation of the

presidents party: www.worldstatesmen.org, and secondary sources: Africa Research Bulletin,

Data Issue of the European Journal of Political Research and (Mller and Strm 2000).

Minority Government. World Bank Database of Political Institutions (majority

variable) for the period 1975-2004 (Beck, Clarke et al. 2001). For data prior to that time, we

use secondary sources (Nousiainen 1971; Kolb 1990; Mller and Strm 2000).

GDP and Growth. GDP per capita in constant 1990 International Geary-Khamis dollars

and growth are based on Angus Maddisons data http://www.ggdc.net/Maddison/. For Timor-

Leste and Iceland (not covered by Maddison) we employ data from the United Nations

Statistics Division and http://www2.stjr.is/frr/thst/rit/sogulegt/english.htm#10 respectively.

Ethnic Fragmentation. This variable is based on Alesina et al.s (2002) index. For Sao

Tome (not covered by the ethnic fragmentation index) we substitute Alesina et al.s linguistic

fragmentation index.

Former Colony. We record status as a former colony at any point after 1918.

32

Effective Number of Parliamentary Parties. This variable is drawn from Gallagher

(http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/staff/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/) supplemented by

figures for early Central and East European elections from (Birch 2003). Missing data were

calculated using http://africanelections.tripod.com/ and http://psephos.adam-carr.net/.

33

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