Suchergebnisse

The article attempts to follow up the fate of the concept Maurice Duverger created to explain the regime of the French Fifth Republic: semi-presidential government. Duverger expounded the concept in his fundamental book Echec au roi in 1978, trying to illustrate the fact that regimes of this type worked quite differently in the seven Western and Northern European countries that institutionalized it. 'Semi-presidentialism' is now widely, but very often controversially, used. The recent appearance of such regimes in newly democratizing states points to the fact that this form of government is often the preferred solution in times of transition. A critical review of Duverger's concept seems expedient as the diversification of these regimes raises new and perhaps intriguing questions. Due to the rejection of Duverger's concept or its ignorance in parts of the European scientific community, it is necessary to defend it as an important tool for political analysis. Moreover, it opens the opportunity for the examination of fundamental problems in political science. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)

Partial contents: The historic dual executive in Finland; A Comparative view of the presidential office in Finland; The growing policy direction role of the government.

Perdebatan mengenai tipologi dan stabilitas institusi demokrasi telah berlangsung selama lebih dari 2 dekade. Perdebatan tersebut mendiskusikan dampak dari tipologi institusi demokrasi terhadap proses politik, output kebijakan, dan kinerja ekonomi. Artikel ini menganalisa kekuatan dan kelemahan demokrasi parlementer, demokrasi presidensial, dan demokrasi semi-presidensial dalam kaitannya dengan isu-isu tersebut. Artikel ini berargumen bahwa demokrasi semi-presidensial merupakan pilihan yang paling sesuai guna mencapai berbagai tujuan dari pemerintahan, yang demokratis.

This article seeks to explain variations in presidential activism in semi-presidential countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is one of the continents where semi-presidentialism is most prevalent, but the dynamics of intra-executive relations are severely understudied. The four case studies discussed here—the Democratic Republic of Congo, Niger, Cabo Verde, and São Tomé e Príncipe—belong to the premier-presidential subtype. In this exploratory study, we aim to examine how institutional dimensions of premier-presidentialism interact with contextual factors to explain variations in presidential activism among Sub-Saharan African countries. In addition to fundamental contextual differences among the two pairs of countries, francophone and lusophone, there are specific institutional factors associated with the design and operation of premier-presidentialism that contribute to greater presidential activism in the two francophone cases. Taken together, these contextual and institutional factors skew effective executive power heavily toward the president in our francophone countries. We also find that the degree of political institutionalization matters for the impact of presidential activism on intra-executive conflict and government policymaking capacity. The article increases our understanding of the operation of semi-presidentialism in this understudied region, underscoring the importance of both contextual and constitutional factors for explaining variations in presidential activism in Africa.

AbstractIn 1946 there were three democracies in the world with constitutions that, on the one hand, required the government to obtain the support of a legislative majority in order to come to and remain in power and, on the other hand, established a popularly elected president. In 2002, this number had grown to 25. Constitutions with this feature are often considered to be problematic, and, given the number of new democracies that have adopted them, have received considerable attention from political scientists. The primary concern has to do with the potential for conflict between the assembly supported government and the popularly elected president, which may lead to unstable governments, policy paralysis, and the eventual undermining of the democratic regime. Concern has also been raised regarding the negative role a popularly elected president may have on party development and the 'chain of delegation' that in a pure parliamentary democracy runs from voters to government through political parties. In this paper, we examine the effect the combination of assembly confidence with a popularly elected president has on government instability, accountability, legislative effectiveness, and democratic survival. We also examine the impact on these outcomes of different combinations of presidential powers. We find that the introduction of a popularly elected president in parliamentary constitutions is of little significant impact and that the preoccupation with the specific powers of the president is mostly overblown.

The efficient market hypothesis suggests that stock markets
are "informationally efficient". That is, any new information relevant
to the market is spontaneously reflected in the stock prices. A
consequence of this hypothesis is that past prices cannot have any
predictive power for future prices once the current prices have been
used as an explanatory variable. In other words the change in future
prices depends only on arrival of new information that was unpredictable
today hence it is based on surprise information. Another consequence of
this hypothesis is that arbitrage opportunities are wiped out
instantaneously. Empirical tests of the efficient market hypothesis
actually test for these consequences in various ways. Some of them have
been summarised in earlier chapters. These tests generally could not
conclusively accept the random-walk hypothesis of stock returns even
when GARCH effects were accounted for. Many studies have found empirical
regularities that are contrary to the efficient market hypothesis. For
example, the monthly, weekly and daily returns on stocks tend to exhibit
discernable patterns, such as seasonal affects, month of the year
affect, day of the week affect, hourly affect etc. In case of Pakistan's
stock markets too such affects are identified. Such as the Ramadan
affect [see Hussain and Uppal (1999)], seasonal effects and day of the
week affect. Further, the wide spread use of "technical analysis" among
stock traders and their ability to predict to some extent the direction
of movements in the prices of individual stocks over medium term
testifies to the existence of patterns and seasonal trends.

This article examines transitions between presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential systems in democracies. Using two major datasets, it identifies nine such transitions in eight different countries: Brazil 1961, France 1962, Sri Lanka 1977, Slovakia 1999, Moldova 2000, Turkey 2007, Kenya 2008, Kenya 2010, and the Czech Republic 2012. Findings from a close examination of these cases include the following: most transitions involve the semi-presidential regime type; serious crises precede the transitions in nearly all the cases and change is often used as a means of solving these crises; electoral volatility and turnover in government precede most transitions; change serves different functions in different political contexts, ranging from facilitating acceptance of anti-establishment executives to implementing power-sharing deals; and once achieved, regime change becomes an almost permanent fixture on the political agenda, with debates escalating rather than dying down.