Suchergebnisse

Mali and Niger, two neighbouring countries in Francophone West Africa, offer a good opportunity for identifying key factors favouring the survival of a young democracy. While democracy has so far survived, just about, in Mali, it ended in Niger with a coup d'état in January 1996. Given comparable levels of poor economic development and similar troubled modern political histories, economic and societal preconditions do not provide clues to the different experiences of the two countries. Instead, the answer must be sought in the institutional choices made in the interaction between key players during the democratic transition. An electoral system with proportional representation resulted in political instability in Niger, while a majoritarian system ensured a stable political majority in Mali. Political crisis in Niamey provided an opportunity for the army to retake power. While the military had been alienated from the Nigerien national conference, it had participated actively in and supervised the Malian conference. Mali and Niger provide tentative lessons for other "late democratizers". (Democratization - www.frankcass.com/DÜI)

1. Semi-presidentialism in Democracies, Quasi-democracies, and Autocracies -- 2. From Patronal First Secretary to Patronal President: Post Soviet Political Regimes in Context -- 3. Semi-presidentialism in Armenia -- 4. Semi-presidentialism in Azerbaijan -- 5. Semi-presidentialism in Georgia -- 6. Constitutional Development of Independent Kazakhastan -- 7. Semi-presidentialism in Kyrgyzstan -- 8. Weaker Presidents, Better Semi-presidentialism?

This edited collection examines the politics of semi-presidential countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Semi-presidentialism is the situation where there is both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet that are collectively responsible for the legislature. There are four countries with a semi-presidential constitution in this region - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. The authors introduce the concept of semi-presidentialism, place the countries in a general post-Soviet context, and compare them with Kazakhstan. They investigate the relationship between semi-presidentialism in the formal constitution and the verticality of power in reality, explore the extent to which semi-presidentialism has been responsible for the relative performance of democracy in each country, and chart the relationship within the executive both between the president, prime minister and ministers, and between the executive and the legislature. <.

What is semi-presidentialism and where is it found? / Robert Elgie -- The advantages and disadvantages of semi-presidentialism : a West-European perspective / Gianfranco Pasquino -- Semi-presidentialism in young democracies : help or hindrance? / Sophia Moestrup -- Semi-presidentialism in a post-communist context / François Frison-Roche -- Semi-presidentialism in a Francophone context / Gérard Conac -- Semi-presidentialism in Madagascar / Charles Cadoux -- Semi-presidentialism in Niger : gridlock and democratic breakdown : learning from past mistakes / Sophia Moestrup -- Semi-presidentialism and the preservation of ambiguity in post-war Mozambique / Carrie Manning -- Semi-presidentialism in Guinea-Bissau : the lesser of two evils? / Elisabete Azevedo and Lia Nijzink -- Eurasian semi-presidentialism : the development of Kyrgyzstan's model of government / Eugene Huskey -- Semi-presidentialism in Mongolia : trade-offs between stability and governance / Sophia Moestrup and Gombosurengiin Ganzorig -- Semi-presidentialism : easy to choose, difficult to operate : the case of Taiwan / Yu-Shan Wu -- Timor-Leste : semi-presidentialism and the democratic transition in a new, small state / Dennis Shoesmith -- The choice of semi-presidentialism and its consequences / Sophia Moestrup

This is the first academic study of the impact of semi-presidentialism in emerging democracies outside of Europe.

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.

"This book explores the effect of semi-presidentialism on newly-democratising countries. In recent years semi-presidentialism -- the situation where a constitution makes provision for both a directly elected president and a prime minister who is responsible to the legislature -- has become the regime type of choice for many countries"--

"This book explores the effect of semi-presidentialism on newly-democratising countries. In recent years semi-presidentialism -- the situation where a constitution makes provision for both a directly elected president and a prime minister who is responsible to the legislature -- has become the regime type of choice for many countries"--