Suchergebnisse

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Who are weak Presidents? Presidents' characteristics and pathways to power -- Chapter 3: Election and Term of Weak Presidents -- Chapter 4: Constitutional Strength and the Use of Formal Powers -- Chapter 5: Presidential informal powers and their use -- Chapter 6: Informal Activism in practice: the Individual presidents' experiences -- Chapter 7: When presidents go public. An analysis of presidential major speeches.

Presidents' informal powers remain under-investigated especially in Western European democracies. This gap might hamper the full understanding of how presidents ultimately behave and act. The objective of this article is twofold. First, it aims at adopting a definition of presidents' informal powers by distinguishing them from formal ones and from informal institutions. Second, it distinguishes among different kind of informal powers by focusing on why presidents use them. To this end, a typology based on the following two criteria is proposed: (1) the existence of formal powers at disposal of the president in a specific sphere and (2) the evaluation of public support each individual president thinks to enjoy should they act or refrain. Four types of informal powers can be derived from these dimensions: substitutive informal powers, parallel informal powers, risk-taking informal powers and subverting informal powers.

Adapted from the source document.