European Journal of Political Research, Volume 31, Issue 1-2, Page 125-146, Feb 1997,.pdf

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European Journal of Political Research 31: 125-146, 1997.

@ 1997 Kluwer Academic P ublishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

NOMINATIONS AND REFLECTIONS

A new political system

A new political system m odel: Semi-presidential governm ent

by Maurice Duverger, University of Paris I , Paris, France

EJPR 8 (1980): 165-187.

Abstract. This article aims at defining the concept of ‘semi-presidentialgov-ernment’ and detailing the diversity of its practices. There are in fact three

types of semi-presidential regimes: the president can be a mere figurehead,

or he may be all-powerful or again he can share his power with parliament.

Using four parameters- he content of the constitution, tradition and circum-

stances, the composition of the parliamentary majority and the position of the

president in relation to the majority- he author seeks to explain why similar

constitutionsare applied in a radically different manner.

Nomination:

Trichotomyor dichotomy?

AREND LUPHART

University of California, Sun Dieg o, USA

One of the principal topics that has interested both old and new institution-

alists is the question of parliamentary versus presidential government: whatdistinguishes these two types and what are their respective advantages and

disadvantages? The work of the old institutionalists (Bagehot 1867; Wil-

son 1884; Laski 1940)was already quite sophisticated, but tended to focus

exclusively on the two exemplar cases of Great Britain and the United States

and paid no attention to systems that were neither parliamentary nor pres-

idential. In his seminal work The analysis ofpoli t ical system, Douglas V.

Verney (1959) took an important step away from old-institutionalist analy-

sis by delineating the differences between the two types of government not

only much more systematically but also more inclusively: he emphasised that

the parliamentary type had two subtypes, ‘the British and the continental

[European]’, and that ‘a number of countries - all twenty [Latin] American

republics, Liberia, the Philippines, South Korea and South Vietnam - have



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followed the ex ample of the USA, though rarely with comparable success’

(1959: 18,42). But he then nevertheless proceeded to discuss the two types

mainly in terms of the British and American prototypes, and did not attempt

to go beyond the dichotomous parliamentary-presidential straitjacket (apart

from a brief d iscussion of the rare ‘convention’ type that is no longer found

among modem democracies).

Duverger and the new institutionalism

After having established him self as the first new institutionalist with regard

to the study of political parties and party systems as early as 1951 with Les

partis polit iques, Maurice Duverger also effected the crucial transition to

new institutionalism in the study of parliamentary and presidential govern-

ment with his innovative 1980 article on semi-presidential government in the

European Journal ofPolitical Research: he solved the puzzle of systems that

were neither clearly presidential nor clearly parliamentary by creating the new

model of semi-presidentialism. Moreover, he treated not just the best-known

case of semi-presidentialism - he prototype of the French Fifth Republic -but also six other systems (Austria, Finland, the German Weimar Republic,

Icelan d, Ireland, and Portugal). He also showed conclusively that four sets of

independent variables - onstitutional rules, political traditions and circum -stances, the political composition of the majority in the legislature, and the

relationship between the president and this majority- determine the particular

subtyp e that semi-presidential governm ent assum es. And, m ore generally, he

demonstrated the power of empirical generalisation based on the systematic

analysis of both form al-legal and informal political and social variables.

Duverger’s 1980 analysis provided strong inspiration for the next major

theoretical advance: Matthew S. Shugart’s& John M . Carey’s Presidents and

assemblies (1992). They prefer the term ‘premier-presidential’ to Duverg-

er’s ‘semi-presidential’, because they feel that the latter carries the mis-leading implication of ‘a regime type that is located midway along some

continuum running from presidential to parliamentary’ (1 992: 23 ); but they

accept and build onto his definition. As I shall argue at greater length below,

Duverger’s concept of sem i-presidential government is multi-faceted and does

not entail any intermediate distance between presidentialism and parliamen-

tarism. ‘Semi-presidential’ has continued to be the term used m ost frequently

by most other scholars, including the authors of the most significant works that

followed on the heels of Shugart’s& Carey’sbook, by Alfred Stepan& Cindy

Skach (1993), Juan J. Linz & Arturo Valenzuela (1994), and Adam Przewors-

ki and his collaborators (1 996). One of the outstanding characteristics of this

recent literature is the clear conclusion that the authors reach concerning

the relative merits of parliamentary and presidential forms of government:



127

Stepan-Skach and the Przeworski team demonstrate, on the basis of massive

empirical evidence, that parliamentarism is the stronger and safer form for

democracies. Rarely have political scientists been able to give unequivocal

advice on a question of such fundamental importance’ - which does not

mean , of course, that political practitioners and constitutional engineers will

necessarily heed their advice ....The strength of Duverger’s 1980 analysis is also shown by its predic-

tive ability. He argued that the logic inherent in semi-presidential govern-

ment, especially in the French case, dictates not a half-presidential and half-

parliamentary form but alternating presidential and parliamentary phases:

presidentialism as long as the presidency and the parliamentary majority

belong to the same party or coalition, and parliamentarism when they arein the hands of opposing parties or coalitions (1980: 185-186). He formu-

lated this logic in 1980, well before the 1986-1988 and 1993-1995 periods

of cohabitation between a socialist president and a conservative National

Assem bly. Exactly as he had predicated, however, cohabitation turned out tospell an essentially parliamentary form of government.

A dichotomouspattern after all?

Finally, I would argue that- n spite of the fact that Duverger proposed semi-presidential government as a ‘new political system model’ in addition to the

parliamentary and presidential models (1 980: 165)- the logical implication of

his division of the model into several subtypes is that most systems that app ear

semi-presidential can be classified either as mainly presidential or as mainly

parliamentary; hence the semi-presidential category becomes a nearly empty

cell. Duverger explicitly argues that Austria, Ireland, and Iceland - despite

their popularly elected presidents and constitutionally sanctioned presidentialprerogatives- ave ‘figurehead presidencies’ and that their ‘political practice

is parliamentary’ (1980: 167). The French Fifth Republic, as discussed above,

’My own preference for consensus over majoritarian forms of democracy appears to deviatefrom this scholarly agreement, because the separation-of-powers rule of presidential govern-ment creates a balanced power relationship between executive and legislature - one of thekey characteristics of consensus democracy (Lijphart 1984: 24-25, 78-79). However, whileseparation of powers does spell executive-legislative equilibrium in some cases, like the USAand Costa Rica, it does not necessarily and always do so. In some Latin American countries,presidents predominate to such an extent that these systems can be called ‘delegative democra-

cies’ (O’Donnell 1994). Moreover, presidential government, even of the balanced k ind, tendsto make democracy more majoritarian in other respects: ( 1 ) it entails a high degree of con-centration o f executive power; (2) the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections helps thelarger parties and reduces multipartism; (3) reducing the number of parties tends to reducethe number of issue dimensions represented in the party system; and (4) presidential electionstend to yield highly disproportional results (see Lijphart 1994: 95-99).



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has had both presidential and parliamentary phases, but presidentialism has

been the dominant tendency - n all but four of the almost forty years since

1958; it can therefore be called mainly presidential. Weimar Germany was

characterised by similar alternating phases but without a dominant tendency.

Duverger writes that ‘the powers of the Weimar president were used at a

somewhat irregular rhythm. They were used in the difficult moments when

they were necessary. They stayed in the ice-box for the rest of the time’ (1980:

174).

The post-World War I1 Finnish system has caused a lot of classificatory dis-

agreement: parliamentary (Powell 1982: 5&57), semi-presidential (Duverger

1980: 174-176), or presidential (L ijphart 1984: 70-7 1). Duverger’s discus-

sion of the two alternating phases in the Fifth Republic helps to solve theproblem, because Finland has the closest resemblance to the Fifth Republic

in its rare parliamen tary ph ases, in which the prime minister is the real head of

government but the president retains considerable power in the realm of for-

eign policy - which means that I now agree with Powell that Finland should

be classified as mainly parliamentary. Portugal started out in 1976 with a

semi-presidential system that had the same potential of developing alternat-

ing presidential and parliamentary phases a s Fran ce, but after the president’s

powers were constitutionally curbed in 1982, it reverted to a kind of parlia-

mentarism somew here in between Finland’s mainly and Austria’s, Iceland’s,and Ireland’s almost entirely parliamentary forms of government.

In short, I believe that with Duverger’s 1980 article the study of parlia-

mentary and presidential government has come full circle. Partly explicitly

and partly implicitly, Duverger confirms the hunch of the old institutionalists

that the basic forms of democratic government follow an essentially dichoto-

mous pattern - ut he does so on the basis of vastly superior, and strongly

persuasive, theoretical arguments and empirical evidence.

Nomination:

Semi-presidentialism: A political model at work

GIANFRANCO PASQUINO

University of Bologna Italy and

Bologna Center of the John Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy

Premise

Institutions matter. Institutional differences make a difference. Up to recent

times, political scientists have been rather uninterested in the nature, func-

tioning, and transformation of institutional structures. Following the many



129

processes of transition and democratization in Southern Europe, Latin Amer-ica, and, especially, East and Central Europe, there has been a revival ofjustified attention to/and emphasis on the type of institutional structures and

arrangementsmore conductive to stable and effective government. Among theinstitutional options available to the institution-makers there is ‘the politicalsystem model: semi-presidential government’. It was clearly identified andperceptively analyzed by Maurice Duverger sixteen years ago, when studies

of this kind were not at all in fashion (Duverger 1980).Maurice Duverger’s article has two significant merits: first, the identifica-

tion of a new political, or better institutional, model; second, the construction

of a dynamic typology of the possible relationships between the President of

the Republic and the parliamentary majority. In this article, I will discuss theoverall configuration given by Duverger to his model Next, I will compare

Duverger’s analysis with other recent attempts to specify the main features

of semi-presidential systems. Finally, I will offer my own considerationsconcerning the strengths and weaknesses of semi-presidentialism.

The distinctiveness of semi-presidential systems

Duverger’s article is important, above all, because it identifies semi-presiden-

tial governments or, better, systems, as made up of a specific set of mech-anisms and institutions, clearly differentiated from both parliamentary and,

more importantly, presidential systems. Semi-presidential systems are not

just considered institutional systems located mid-way in a continuum going

from parliamentary to presidential systems. They possess their ow n specific,

appropriately devised institutional features. They cannot be created just by

strengthening some features of parliamentary systems, for instance, by direct-

ly electing the President of the Republic. Nor can they be created be relaxingsome features of presidential systems, for instance, by distributing execu-

tive power to two different leaders. Presidential systems cannot simply, soto speak, lapse into semi-presidential systems nor can parliamentary systems

jump into semi-presidential systems. What is required for the construction of

semi-presidential Systems is an explicit, purposive, and well designed act of

institutional and constitutional engineering.

For the history of political ideas and the sociology of political science(and scientists), it may be interesting to remark that Duverger was adamantlyopposed to the Gaullist solution designed for the French Fifth Republic (as

was FranGois Mitterrand). At the time, he advocated a very different solution:

the direct popular election ofthe Prime Minister, fixed terms for both the Prime

Minister and Parliament, and the simultaneous dissolutionofParliament and

new election of the Prime Minister in cases of insoluble contrasts between

them, that is, a vote of no-confidence by Parliament against the Prime Minister



130

and the proved inability of the Prime M inister to have Parliament approve and

enac t his governmental programme (Duverger 1968: 39) The principle ‘simul

stabunt, simul cadent’ would have produced a reinforced parliamentary sys-

tem, the government of the P rime M inister, perhaps to be called, according toShugart & Carey ‘president-parliamentary’ (1 992: 24). The new institutional

solution devised and recen tly implemented in Israel, the popular election of

the Prime Minister, com es close to Duverger’s proposal of the early 1960s. In

any case, Duverger has since reconciled himself to semi-presidentialism (as

did Mitterrand). He has recognized that semi-presidentialism offers a viable

solution to the prob lems of governability, that I interpret a s political stability

plus decision-making effectiveness.

Which are, then, the main, distinguishing. and indispensable features ofsemi-presidentialism? According to Duverger (1980: 166), a regime is con-

sidered semi-presidential if: ‘(1) the president of the republic is elected by

universal suffrage, (2) he possesses quite considerable powers; (3) he has

opposite him, however, a prime m inister and m inisters who possess executive

and governm ental power and can stay in office only if the parliament d oes not

show its Opposition to them’. This definition has been criticized and chal-

lenged by some authors (Shugart & Carey, 1992: 23 -2 4, 54 75 ; and Sartori,

1994: 121-140). Shugart & Carey say that they accept Duverger’s definition.

How ever, they redefine the model by calling it premier-presidentialism, alsoin order to distinguish it from their president-parliamentarism, and proceed

to assigning different countries to the category of premier-presidentialism.

As to Sartori, he offers a different definition of semi-presidentialism, more

specifically focused on the relationship between the President and the Prime

Minister. He also convincingly criticizes Shugart & Carey because their two

models - remier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism - an both

be applied to different phases of the French sem i-presidential system. Taking

into account these criticisms and distinctions, it is now possible and use-

ful to refine Duverger’s starting form ulation by stressing the three m ain and

exclusive features of semi-presidentialism.

M y opinion is that a system must be considered sem i-presidential if (1) the

president of the Republic is directly or indirectly elected by a popular vote;

(2) the president of the Republic has the power to appoint a Prime Minister

and, within limits, to dissolve Parliament; (3) the Prime Minister is subject to

an im plicit or explicit confidence vote by Parliament. Sodefined, or redefined,

a semi-presidential regime designs a dual authority structure (Sartori 1994).

Th is assessment and the corresponding label are preferable to the assessmentmade and to the label utilized by Shugart& Carey, that is com petitive dyarchy,

for one important reason. In semi-presidential Systems there will always be

a dual au thority structu re because, by definition, the President and the Prime



131

Minister have different powers. On the o ther hand, there will be a competitive

dyarchy only exceptionally and temporarily, that is when the President andthe Prime Minister do not belong to the same political majority. Therefore,

a competitive dyarchy is not an essential and unavoidable feature of semi-

presidential system s. Still, the institutional and political relationships between

the President and the Prime Minister represent an issue worthy of specific

consideration.

Elements f o r institutional comparisons

In order to assess whether the dual authority structure constitutes an elemen t

of strength or an element o f weakness of semi-presidential systems, one must

resort to tw o distinct operations. The first one is to compare semi-presidential

systems with parliamentary and presidential systems. The second one is to

analyze the performance of semi-presidential system s with specific reference

to the configuration o f the various institutional and political factors impinging

upon them. The comparison between semi-presidential and parliamentary

systems is complicated by the existence of a wide variety of parliamentary

system s. Incidentally, this is one reason why the criticisms addressed aga inst

a not well-defined ‘parliamentarism’ are often m isplaced and unconvincing.

Since there are different types of parliamentary systems, before criticizing thevices o f parliamentarism or extolling its virtues, scholars and politicians alike

ought to proceed to the necessary distinction and qualifications (this article

is, unfortunately, not the place to perform such a useful and indispensable

operation).

Here, it will suffice to underline that, for instance, the direct election of

the President of the republic may exist even in political systems, witness the

case of A ustria, that remain solidly parliamentary. In Austria, there is no dual

authority structure, nor a competitive dyarchy. Hence it would be m isleading

to analyze the case of Austria as a semi-presidential system only because thereexists the d irect election of the President of the Republic whose powers are

very limited and rather clearly circumscribed. The major, fundamental dif-

ference between all semi-presidential systems and all parliamentary system sis that in the latter, the President of the Republic does not possess executive

powers. In fact, his powers are largely ceremonial. Therefore, the transition

from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system will not be achieved just

by the direct popular election of the President of the Republic. It will require

a revision of the Constitution to give som e executive powers to the President.Th e comparison between semi-presidential and presidential systems appears

som ewhat less complicated. The major difference lies in the fact that in pres-

idential systems the President of the republic is the exclusive chief executive.

There is absolutely no dual authority structure. The President pays, so to



132

speak, a price for being the only chief executive. He/she cannot dissolve

Parliament/Congress. Therefore, if a situation of divided government aris-

es, he/she is obliged to accept it until new elections will eliminate it. In a

semi-presidential system, the President of the republic may decide to live

with a situation of divided government, defined as ‘cohabitation’. Alterna-

tively, he/she may attempt to obtain a favorable parliamentary majority by

dissolving Parliament. In the French Fifth Republic, this attempt was per-

formed successfully by D e Gaulle in 1968 and by Mitterrand in 198 1 and,

with slightly less success, in 1988. In the first two instances the Presidents

obtained a sizable majority for’ their parliamentary coalitions, and in the third

instance, Mitterrand obtained a w orking parliamentary m ajority.

Since semi-presidential systems are often criticized exactly because theirdual authority structure may give birth to a competitive dyarchy easily trans-

formed into a confrontational dyarchy, the point is well worth exploring. I

will argue that, all things considered, semi-presidentialism appears superior

to presidentialism because cohabitation is different from divided government.

In a situation of divided government, neither the President nor C ongress can

effectively govern. Moreover, the electorate will not be in a position clearly

to eva luate political accountability and assign political responsibilities. In the

words of Shugart & Carey, divided government creates considerable con-

fusion for the voters as to the requirement of identifiability. In fact, whendivided government characterizes the working of a presidential system, then

a more or less prolonged and recurring stalemate is the most plausible out-

come . W hile the opposing majority in Congress has only the possibility of

obstructing presidential government, the President may attempt to break the

stalemate in two ways. He/she may resort to patronage methods in order

to acquire the votes of some representatives and senators or may utilize his

rhetorical qu alities in order to (te1e)convince public opinion and the vo ters to

put pressu res on their representatives so that, at least on selected issues, they

support the President.

Cohabitation: Risks and opportunities

Semi-presidential systems appear more flexible than presidential systems.

Before exploring why and how, it may be useful to identify the several pos-

sible relationships between the President and the parliamentary majority. I

will take a different approach from the one presented by Duverger in his

transformational grid. As I see them, the relationships between the President

and Parliament in a sem i-presidential system are characterized by four main

instances. T he first has so far been the dom inant one in the French case. The

President has been elected by the same political majority that controls the

majority of seats in Parliamen t and is the leader of the m ajority party. Barring



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unpredictable political circum stances, the President is the e ffective leader of

the political-parliamentary majority and in a position to enjoy as much and

as m any executive powers as he desires. This unproblematic instance was

enjoyed by Charles De Gaulle (1962-1969), by George Pom pidou (1969-1974), and by FranGois Mitterrand (1 98 1-1 986 , and again, though to a lesser

extent, 1988-1983). The second instance materializes itself when the Presi-

dent has been elected by the same political forces enjoying a parliamentary

majority. However, he is not the leader of the majority party making up thewinning coalition, but of the (or a) minor party. This was the case of Valery

Giscard d’Estaing (1 974-198 1). The expected political consequence is that

of some decision-making contrasts between the President and the official

leader of the m ajority party of the winn ing coalition, especially if the latter isappointed Prime Minister.

The third instance presents itself when the President has been elected by

a political majority while Parliament is controlled by a completely different

majority. The President is politically obliged to appoint as Prime M inisterthe person indicated by that parliamentary majority. It is very likely that that

person will be the leader of the majority party in parliament. This will be apure case of cohabitation. Of course, whenever possible the President will

react by dissolving Parliament in order to obtain a different and favorable

parliamentary majority. Shugart & Carey imaginatively elaborate the topicof honeymoon elections, that is those immediately following the presidential

victory. If not even honeymoon elections deliver the President the desired

parliamentary majority, he will simply abide by the results of the elections.

This is exactly what M itterrand did in 1986 by appointing Jacques Chirac as

Prime M inister and in 1993 by appointing Raymond Balladur. In the fourth

hypothetical instance, only if there is no visible leader of a major party and

the parliamentary majority is made of several parties, the President may

have som e discretion. He m ay appo int the political personality less likely to

challenge his actual role and to becom e the presidential challenger in the next

elections. Or he m ay want to test the capabilities of a potential opponent inthe next presidential elections in a close institutional competition.

Elsewhere, with specific reference to the F rench case, Duverger (1987) has

written of two possible contrasting outcom es. The first one is the product ofthe perfect coincidence between the presidential and the parliamentary major-

ity. In this instance, semi-presidentialism gives birth to a duet. The P residentand the Prime M inister will sing the same song. This coincidence does not, of

course, preclude the em ergence of differences of opinion, tensions, and con-flicts. They are easily solved by the President d ismissing the Prim e Minister:

De Gaulle dismissed two, Pompidou one, Giscard one, Mitterrand one in his

first term and two in his second term (E lgie&Machin 1991). It is worth noting



134

that the appointment and the dismissal of Prime Ministers serve several vital

functions: to produce circulation of political personnel, to change policies,

and to re-acquire political and decision-making dynamism.

The second outcome is the pure instance of cohabitation: the President is

the leader of a political majority and the Prime Minister is the leader of the

parliamentary majority entirely made of parties opposing the President. In

this instance, according to the imaginative definition by Duverger cohabita-

tion produces a veritable duel. This kind of duels has taken place in France

from 1986 to 1988 and in Portugal from 1987 to 1991 . In France, it was the

Socialist Mitterrand against the Gaullist Chirac; in Portugal, it was the Social-

ist Soares against the Socialdemocrat Cavaco Silva. Contrary to widespread

expectations, the duels have not disrupted the political system. This was due ,to some extent, to the willingness of the two major actors not to resort to a

kind of institutional brinkmanship, that is not to exercise their, perceived or

concrete, constitutional powers up to their, in all likelihood, ill-defined limits.

This preoccupation is entertained by Shugart & Carey when they write of

the need for the constitution to be textually clear or executive responsibilities.

More precisely, ‘it appears that a primary challenge of constitutional design

must be to establish a clear division between the authorities of head of state

and head of government, and to make clear within the constitution that the

formal distinction between the two roles will be recognized upon the loss ofthe presidential majority in the assembly’ (1992: 56) .They add that ‘the most

likely source of cohabitation crisis is the claim by either the president or the

assembly majority that a recent election imparts a more legitimate mandate

for exclusive control of the executive than that of the opposing actor’ (1992:

58). Apparently, not so. The claim for a full and unchallenged mandate has

not been raised by the two competing actors in the cases of cohabitation that

have so far occurred in France and Portugal. In any case, it has not been

retrospectively, that is on the results of the more recent elections. It has been

played, so to speak, prospectively. That is, cohabitation crises have been

mitigated and postponed thanks to and on the basis of the future political

expectations of the two executive leaders and their respective coalitions.

The self-restraint shown by Mitterrand and Chirac between 1986 and 1988

cannot be explained purely in terms of their devotion to the commonweal

of the French political system. In those two years, Mitterrand harbored the

intention to run for re-election. He was, therefore, politically well advised to

show to those citizens who had voted for the Gaullists and the Giscardiens

that he could indeed live with a contrary parliamentary m ajority and its leader.On his turn, in order not to scare his past and future voters, Chirac had to

prove that he could play the role of a responsible political leader, capable

of moderation, that he could be a dignified presidential candidate. As to



135

Mario Soares and Anibal Cavaco Silva, even though their cohabitation lasted

for a longer period, or exactly because of the fact that it was bound to last

longer, similar considerations apply. Soares wanted to run for re-election

to the Presidency in 1991 which he did. Cavaco Silva wanted to govern

utilizing his sizable majority and avoiding all possible confrontations with

a nationally and internationally popular leader, also because he entertained

his own presidential ambitions (frustrated in 1996).Their cohabitation was

so successful that Cavaco Silva decided not to run any center-right candida te

against Soares in 1991.

Due to the lack of cohesive parliamentary majorities, it is difficult to ana-

lyze the Polish case in terms of cohabitation. Even though President Lech

Walesa never enjoyed the support of a favorable parliamentary majority, hedid not have to duel with a Prime Minister representing an alternative and

competing majority. Perhaps, Alexander Kwasniewski’s victory will create

the cond itions for a more clear-cut confrontation or cooperation betw een the

President and the Prime Minister. In any case, one m ust stress that the Polish

semi-presidential system has not produced conflicts or tensions damaging for

the transition to a consolidated democracy . On the contrary.

The major point of this brief discussion of potential duels originating in

periods of cohabitation is that personal ambitions and motivations were effec-

tively shaped and constrained by the institutional mechanisms and the elec-toral expectations of the semi-presidential system. The taming of political

ambitions and their orientation towards the achievement of system ic goa ls is

possib ly the best evidence of the effectiveness of institutional arrangements.

There can be few doubts that semi-presidential systems have succeeded in

translating personal am bitions into systemic goals. So much so that the price

of political stability has not been paid, even during the periods of cohabitation,

by less decision-making effectiveness, that is, the postponement of dec isions

and/or the confusion of responsibilities and protracted bargaining, but only

by a slowed down decision-making process meant to take into account thedifferent positions of the President and the Prime Minister when th is was the

case. However, the Presidents have usually deferred, when necessary, to the

will of the Prime M inisters.

Perh aps, a final point deserves som e attention. In his semina l article Duverg-

er did not deal specifically with the role played by the type of electoral for-

mula used in semi-presidential systems. It is a reasonable expectation that

different formulae used for the election of parliamentary assemblies in sem i-

presidential systems would have a differential impact on the likelihood ofproducing, or not, more or less cohesive parliamentary majorities arid, as a

consequence, more or less powerful Prime Ministers. The run-off majority

system used in France has given birth to what has been called a quadrille bipo-



136

laire, allowing the clear-cut confrontation of two different alignments. It has

beautifully complemented the direct election of the President of the Republic.

Proportional representation formulae, as those used in Portugal and Poland,

have produced different outcomes. In the former case, an absolute parlia-

mentary majority has emerged capable of putting a lot of constraints on the

behavior of the President. In the latter case, the constraints on the behavior of

the President derive Paradoxically from the lack of a powerful parliamen tary

counterpart capable either of fully supporting or of consistently opposing the

President. In France, power has oscillated from the President to the Prime

Minister and back. In Portugal, it has shifted from the Prime Minister to

the President. In Poland, power is still fluctuating though when parliament

is fragmented and leaderless, the President may have the upper hand. Still,he remains weaker than where the President and the Prime Minister belong

to the same political and electoral majority. It would seem that an electoral

formula limiting o r reducing the fragmentation of the party system would be

more appropr iate to a semi-presidential system both when there are coinciding

majorities and when there are instances of cohabitation.

By way of conclusion

Loo king to the historical experience, semi-presidential systems have accom -panied the successful transition from a democratic regime to another demo-

cratic regime, that is from the Fourth French Republic to the Fifth. They

have accompanied the transition from a classic authoritarian regime to a

democratic regime in Portugal and from a Communist authoritarian regime

to a democratic regime in Poland (M ichta 1993). One reason why they have

had success is that they avoid the classic degeneration of parliamentary sy s-

tems into assem bly-type systems. Because of this perceived success, recently

French-style sem i-presidentialism has been seriously considered as a possible

solution for the Italian political and institutional transition (Ceccanti, Massari& Pasquino 1996). After a ll, the Italian Republic is the most similar political

system to the French Fourth Republic, exhibiting most of the same functional

problems.

On the basis of the available evidence, semi-presidential systems have

offered several satisfactory solutions to the problem s of the creation of polit-

ical leadership and of the personalization of politics combined with politi-

cal responsibility. They have given birth to a stable and functioning politi-

cal system in France much better than the preceding parliamentary system(Suleiman 1994) and have consolidated the democratic transitions in Portugal

and P oland. Th ey seem more capable of producing governmental effectiveness

than parliamentary regimes and of avoiding political stalemate than presiden-

tial systems. They donot degenerate into plebiscitary democracy as ispossible



137

for presidential systems nor into assembly government as occurs in parlia-

mentary system s. On the whole, unde r most circumstances, semi-presidential

systems appear endowed with both more governmental capabilities and m ore

institutional flexibility than parliamentary and presidential systems respec-

tively. We owe it to Maurice Duverger if we are now in a position fully to

appreciate the existence and the importance of semi-presidential system s and

to analyze them in depth and with appropriate tools.

Reflections:

The political system of the European Union*

MAURICE DUVERGER

Emeritus Professol; University of Paris I , Paris, France

A twenty-five year o ld professor in the Faculty of Law in Bordeau x, starting

teaching in 1880, rather than in 1942 as I did, would have never put for-

ward ‘sociological laws’ on the relationship between electoral systems and

party systems. Neither would he have conceived of semi-parliamentarism

as this applies nowadays in Israel; nor would he have suggested the semi-presidentialism set up in France by Gene ral de Gaulle, a system w hich has

now become the most effective means of transition from dictatorship towards

dem ocracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. On the other hand,

in 1930,Atistide Briand’s idea of Europe would have aroused his passions.

To label its institutions, he would have used the vocabulary o f the com mu nity

(EU ) itself, created by Alexis Leger, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Pans

and a n admirable poet under the nom-de-plume of Saint-John Perse. This sets

the other reforms mentioned above in context, and underlines the enduring

nature of the project that Jean Monnet set in motion after Briand. Whetherwe like it or not, European integration has been the fundamental problem of

the twentieth century, and will be all the more so for the twen ty-first century.

Looked at in this way, there is no difference between research on the

reinforcement and modernisation the EC and later the European Union, on

the one hand and, on the other hand, the drawing up of sociological laws

concerning the relationship between electoral systems and party systems,

the creation of a semi-parliamentarian regime as in Israel, the development

of semi-presidentialism in France, and all of the other suggestions about

ways to improve the effectiveness and dem ocracy of W estern parliamentary

systems. It is true that the collapse of the French Third Republic, whose

* Translated by Laure Augier and Michael Laver.



138

governments lasted no more than nine months on average, and that of the

Fourth Republic, where the average duration of governments fell to six months

between 1946 and 1958, are good reasons for attempts to design a new

political architecture. Nonetheless, I have always considered similar work to

be an important element in the construction of a united Europe

Fundam ental to the work of the Bordeaux group led by Rev. Father Maydieu- ne of the principal figures in the Catholic Resistance - was the desire to

rebuild the nation. Their work led to ‘Duverger’s Laws’, published for the

first time in November 1946 in La Vie Zntellectuelle, a periodical edited by

Maydieu. A similar approach was adopted when, in early 1950, I was asked

by Jean Monnet to work on the reform of the Constitution. At the same

time Monnet was elaborating his project on the European Coal and SteelCom munity, while the Federal R epublic of Germany had an efficient political

regime and a limited proportional rep resentation electoral system. However,

the Father of Europe as we know it today stated explicitly that his project

would require states that were solidly organised, particularly in the two big

countries, between which military reconciliation and political co-ordination

would be essential.

For all territories, peop le and cu ltures- rom Ireland to Oder-N eisse, from

the North C ape to Malta- the twentieth century is ending a s it started: with the

difficult birth o f a co llective organisation drawing together states, regions, andcom mu nities. Leaving aside the Parliamen t of Strasbourg, the Commission in

Brussels and their associated institutions, the informal European ‘concert’ of

1900-1 9 14 had a world-wide influence that was m ore effective and important

than the European Union in 1996. Th is is because a Europe defined and

described in this way enjoyed at that time the collective hegemony that the

USA is now inheriting as a result of the quasi-suicide of Europed uring the two

world wars. In 19 1 3 ,4 9 percent of world industrial production derived from

the states of the present European Union, as opposed to only 38 percent from

the USA. European commerce represented 79 percent of maritime traffic,

and its capital represented m ore than 90 percent of the total invested on this

planet. A similar task has now been taken on by the European Union of 1996,

ensuring the strength and influence of nations through community action,

rather than rivalries between them. More precisely, it has transferred these

rivalries to the economic and cultural spheres, instead of keeping them bogged

down in m ilitary co nquests. In other words, international relations have been

broadened to allow nations to substitute such competition for armed conflict

between tribes, cities, provinces, principalities, even mafias.



139

The new destiny of a United Europe

Such a perspective is crucial to an understanding of the real meaning of the

half-century of European integration of which the European Journal of Polit-ical Research,now celebrating its 25th year, has been a n important observer.

This process must be seen not only as a consequen ce of the 1939-1945 W ar,

which obviously dominates today’s collective and personal memories. It is

important also to keep in mind that the fundamental ideas and vocabulary

of the community, elaborated by Jean Monnet under the aegis of Robert

Schumann, relate to the project conceived 25 years earlier by Alexis Leger,

unde r the aegis of Aristide Briand. The half-century 1946-1996 must not

be separated from the one that preceded it. The Europe that is being built

today is more than a hundred years old. Beyond this, it is linked to its more

fundam ental roots, w hich appeared more than two milleniums ago- etween

Athens, Rome and Jerusalem - n the thought, the philosophy, the law and

the cultures which define its civilisation.

At the sam e time, the Europe which is being built today is more than Euro-

pean. It ha s always seen itself as being closely tied to the whole world, feel-

ing that it was bringing to others an obviously superior civilisation. Greeks

and Romans deemed other cultures to be barbarian, while Judaism hardly

questions the superiority of the chosen people. This does not m ean that allEuropean civilisations have the same value and that the obvious barbarity o f

som e of them m ust be tolerated. Neither does it justify the clear conscience

of those European states which colonised African and Asian countries from

the end of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Nor does

it justify the clear conscience of American citizens - most of them Euro-

pean immigrants - when their cou ntry reduced m any to slavery and almost

com pletely annihilated the native Am erican people.

Since the First World War, the progressive substitution of the USA for

European states as a hegemonic power introduces another dimension to con -temporary European integration. This includes a fundamental contradiction

in the permanent necessity for a close solidarity between the US A and the

European Union. A second contradiction is developing as a result of another

permanent necessity for the European Union- to keep close relationships with

the indepen dent states emerging from the former Soviet Union, as well a s the

emerging states of the Near- and Middle-East and North Africa. These contra-

dictions blend ineluctably with those others confronting the great European

nations, concerning deg rees of alliance or competition.

The fundamental core of the European Union will always be formed by

the Community of Six established by Jean Monnet almost half a century

ago, around Conrad Adenauer, Alcide de Gasperi and Charles de Gaulle,

embodying the three continental great pow ers, for which Bene lux should have



140

served as a model of progressive integration, emphasising the importance for

each of comm unity solidarity, as opposed to gradual disintegration combined

with sporadic lapses into pro-American fundamentalism.

Barely established, this Community of Six was quickly disorientated by

the Cold War. In various ways, European governments more or less shared

the antisovietism of the USA, who saw in Europe an objective of conquest

by, an d the battlefield for, a USSR equipped with an efficient nuclear force.

Moscow judged the impossibility of using this force against Washington,

which came to essentially the same conclusion. Thus, the two super-powers

sought the limits of a territorial compromise involving the allocation of the

popular democracies between the East and West. The USA, on their side,

thought that a Soviet invasion across the Atlantic would be stopped by theOcean, without the need to risk using atomic weapons. Meanwhile, the two

hegemonic powers and the western great powers continued a ‘politics of

protectorates’ dating from the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the

twentieth century. As a result, the most advanced cou ntries of South-Eastem

Asia, of the Middle- an d Near-East, of North Africa and of Latin Am erica

had to find a compromise between their traditional historic rivalries, on the

one hand, and the pressure of their godfathers from North America, western

Europe and the Soviet Un ion, on the other, while aw aiting the arrival of those

from Japan, India, Brazil, South Afnca and Australia.The development of French nuclear power opened the possibility of the

European Union raising itself to a level close to that of the superpowers,

provided that Lo ndon would form a close military association with Paris. The

rallying o f Grea t Britain to Washington’s nuclear authority explains Charles

de Gaulle’s refusal to allow the B ritish to en ter the Com munity, after which

the refusal of London to participate in a European Defence Com munity led to

its rejection by the Pierre Mendes-France government; the latter being in this

regard the Saint Jean-Baptiste of a General who refused Am erican tutelage

Widened to nine members with the membership of Britain, which caught

the m oving train in the hope of derailing it, the future Union was strengthened

by the action of Spain, at first hesitant but finally committed to Europe by

Felipe Gonzales, and by that of a Portugal delivered by its intelligent and

innovative soldiers from one of the last European regimes that resembled

fascism. Blinded by their simplistic antisovietism, Washington, on the con-

trary provoked a military coup d’etat that established an archaic and bloody

dictatorship in Greece , a country which had heroically fought against Nazism .

The collapse of Stalinist comm unism in the USSR and the popular dem oc-racies opens a radically new perspective at the end of the twentieth century.

Th e military power o f Moscow has not been destroyed. Even if the Red Army

is in dec line, Russian nuclear fo rces are still the second most pow edu l in the



141

world and those of the Ukraine are third, each being at the m ercy of adven-

turers. At the same time, the G ermany of Chancellor Kohl is no longer thepolitical dwarf which doubles as an economic giant -the ex-Scandinavian and

Central European democracies are open m ore than ever to its influence. But

the present Chancellor of Bonn (tomorrow of Berlin) is still convinced that an

alliance with France is essential to Europe. He wants to cement this while the

generations who knew Hitlerism are still alive - worse may always happenif the job is left until later. The European Gaullism of Frangois Mitterand

was replaced the neo-gaullism of President Chirac, openly converted to the

single currency since June 1996, while Spain and Italy finally go with the

flow. Furthermore, the new French head of State is developing an innovative

military politics, both in his own country and in his relationship with GreatBritain, which values the necessity of powerful armies and an efficient arms

industry in E urope. What remains is to give the Union a set of institutions that

allow it to exist on its own by becoming simply what it is: the second pow er

in the world. Indeed it should by rights become the first power once again,as it was in 1913, taking into account levels of cultural, political, scientific,

economic and moral development and the fact that it has twice the population

of America, once it has reaffirmed its historical borders, from Ireland to the

mouth of the Danube.

Europe will only be able to become what it is, however, by providinginstitutions that give its leaders the ability to take quick and daring deci-

sions. This presumes that its leaders have a collective legitimacy that justifies

the sacrifices they impose on their citizens in exchange for the advantages

they provide them with. This is not the case today, because the framework

elaborated by Jean Monnet almost half a century ago has become incom-

prehensible and pow erless. Rem arkably well-organised at first, the European

Coal and Steel Comm unity (ECSC) became progressively dislocated as it was

enlarged. Planned o riginally to control the production and commercialisation

of the two principal energy sources at the beginning of the 1950s, by assur-

ing collaboration between the World War I1 victors (France and Benelux)

and vanquished (Germany and Italy), as well as the equitable distribution

of the A merican financial aid provided by the Marshall Plan, the EC SC had

to take the decisions that were more administrative than political, decisionsincreasing the well-being of the populations involved without asking them

for anything important in return. Acting in an area that was both sem i-privateand semi-public, without raising great passions, it did not visibly threaten

the sovereignty of states which had agreed to put at its head a genuine HighAuthority.



142

The institutionsof a UnitedEurope

Enlarging from six m embers to nine, then to twelve and fifteen, and above all

broadening its scope from the limited sector of coal and steel to the econom yas a whole as well as extending beyond this into the political arena, the

nature of the Com munity has hn dam en tally changed. It is no longer a narrow

organisation managing a part of energy production. Europe is in the process of

constructing a new type of global collectivity, gathering together states which

themselves had gathered cities, provinces, principalities to form nation-states

during the nineteenth century. There is no longer any sense in sterile debates

on the ‘supranationality’ or ‘internationality’ of com munity institutions, or on

their federal or confederal character, deba tes which have poisoned discussion

on European integration since Churchill’s famous speech of 1946. A United

Europe will not be built on the lines of the US model of 1787, a model

which included less than three million inhabitants spread between thirteen

colonies, among which none was an internationally recognised state. The

European U nion will never be a super-state made up of regions detached from

the present member states. No member would accept such a weakening of

patriotisms so deep-rooted in history, to which people are so deeply attached.

The d istinctiveness of each, and their collective diversity, are what m ake our

civilisation so rich. The union of nation-states will have nothing in com monwith the image of the ultra-federalists or the ultra-nationalists. Its institutions

will need to combine two legitimacies whose effects are equally felt by its

citizens. First, there is the legitimacy that derives from the member states’

sovereignty. This represents the diversity of the people thus united, all of

whom have a culture deep-rooted in memory, language, ideals, art, thought

and behaviour. Second, there is a legitimacy based on those very same people’s

will to combine their actions collectively so as to m ake these actions more

effective for eac h one o f them.

The C oal and Steel Comm unity on the on e hand, and the American Consti-tution on the other, provide two starting points for us to think about European

Union institutions of the twenty-first century, incorporating m ore than thirty

states and more than 500 million inhabitants. The former showed the diffi-

culties of an effective and permanent association between states which are

deeply established. The second has opened pathway s to collective decisions

in which each of the participants is deeply attached to its independence. In1797,the constituent sta tes on the other side of the A tlantic solved the prob-

lem by com bining two expressions of universal suffrage.On the one hand, in

order to have a democratic parliament, they thought of the brilliant device of

having simultaneous elections for two cham bers of Congress. The sam e num-

ber of senato rs is chosen by each member state, regardless of its population,

while representatives a re elected in proportion to the population of each state.



143

Therefore, the Senate is a guarantee to the smaller states that they will not becrushed by the larger ones, but at the same time the House of Representatives

is there to make sure that the bigger states will not be paralysed by the smaller

ones. On the other hand, the unity of the whole is provided by the election ofthe President by universal suffrage, during which citizens express their global

attachment to the USA, in contrast to their votes for Congress, which are an

expression of patriotism towards their local states.Because theseUS member states were not real states, but rather ex-British

coloniesjust freed from their mother country with little chance of international

recognition, the USA was in a strict sense founded only at the federal level.

Consequently, the twin votes for the Houses of Congress applied only at the

level of a legislative parliament while direct presidential election applied atthe level of the head of the Executive. In a Community of European States,

the Union is not strong enough to make such an arrangement possible. The

member states are not ready to place their legislative power in the hands of

the European Parliament. The Council formed by the heads of State or thePrime Ministers remains the supreme decision-making body, under the control

of the various national parliaments of each state. The European Parliament

claims a co-decisional power, which will be progressively accorded to it.But it can use this only by embodying the unity of Europe. As a result of a

series of compromises, it is made up of representatives from each member-state, taking their populations into account to a certain extent: the smaller are

over-represented and the bigger under-represented within acceptable limits.The council formed by the national governments also plays the role of a

second chamber, quite similar to that of the Bundesrut in the German Federal

Republic, composed as this is of representatives of the Lander governments.While the legislative function is divided between the European Parlia-

ment, the Council representing the national governments, and the Commis-

sion which has the responsibility for initiating the texts, the governmentalfunction is much more dispersed. At least three quarters of the authoritybelongs to the Council. However, the crucial decisions- such as reform of

the institutions and the establishment of new public contributions- equire

unanimity, which is paralysing. In many other sectors, a qualified majori-ty is required, and the workings of this are incomprehensible for European

citizens. Unless otherwise specified, a relative majority is sufficient, whichfavours the bigger states over the smaller ones. One must never forget that

there are only six of the Member States located between Ireland and the

‘Mouth of the Danube’, between the North Cape and Crete, with a populationof over 35 million inhabitants - hese are Germany, France, Great Britain,

Italy, Spain and Poland. The first five represent more than 290 million inhab-

itants, and there are 330 million if we include Poland. On the other hand,



144

there are twelve medium-sized states (ten of these have between 7 and 10.5

million inhabitants, the Netherlands has 15 million inhabitants and Romania

approximately 23 million) which gather together around 130 million inhab-

itants. There are about ten small states (between 1.5 and 5 million) which

between them comp rise about 40 m illion, and five micro-states w hich have a

combined population o f less than 2 m illion. In a united Europe of the twenty-

first century, the six big states on their own will represent two-thirds of the

population, while the last third will be spread am ong about thirty states.

The problem is to create within a Council that is a quite tightly defined

and necessarily indivisible, one formed by a collection of governments, a

voting system in which equity is as incontestable as it was in the procedures

designed by the A merican constituent states of 1787. To date, no new solutionhas been submitted since a proposal made in an article in LeMond, (29 January

1993) suggesting that the Council should adopt a simple logical principle:

each one of its decisions would require both a majority of the states and the

majority of the population of the Union. Six months later, in a note on ‘The

institutional implications of widening’, Jean Bourlanges, coordinator of the

institutional commission for the European Popular Party, recommended ‘the

Duverger proposal, which seems at the same time relatively simple, strictly

well-balanced and democratically unchallengeable’. This was ratified by the

draft of the Union Constitution adopted by the European Parliament on 10February 1994 , in its Article 20, which refines the proposal by modulating it

acco rding to the importance of the decisions involved.

At least as important is the problem of the President of the Union. There

have always been two of them - one of the Council and one of the Com-

mission. In theory, the former dominates the latter. At the head of both the

European Council, the supreme institution, and the Council of the Union

which concentrates governmental power and 80 percent of the legislative

power, the President of the Council embodies the Union in the same way

as President Ch irac, Prime Minister John M ajor or Chancellor Kohl embody

their own states. In practice the President of the Council is less important

than the president of the Com mission, who has the advantage of a strongly

legitimated nomination and of a full-time position in office. The Comm ission

President is elec ted by the Council and the Parliament, but the President of the

European Council and of the Union Council is instead appointed according

to the alphabetical order of member states, for a term of only six months, a

term during which European h nc ti on s remain quite seconda ry to those in his

or her own country. The role is filled by the President or the Prime Ministerof the country concerned for the European Councils and by a relevant cabinet

minister for the Union Councils - hese governmental representatives being

more absorbed in their national roles than in their occasional sorties to Brus-



145

sels. One day, the President of the U nion will be elected by universal suffrage.

Meanw hile, a so lution might be that this person would be e lected for a fewyears by the Council, using the double majority system suggested above, and

would no t be allow ed to hold any other public or private functions, so as tobe able to focus exclusively on Europe.

Additionally, it m ight be desirable to organise a sortof collective presidency

around this person. The present six months nomination procedure based onthe alphabetical order of the countries could be kept for a collective Council

presidency that sat as a legislature on the m odel of the Bundesrat. None of the

countries should combine two presidencies, whether they are of the Council,

of the Com mission, of the European Parliament or of the Regional Council.

The m eeting of such a presidium at least once a month would permit a betterorientation of Union politics. Many other solutions are conceivable and may

be preferable. What is essential is to elaborate models that correspond to thenew destiny of Europe. In a way, the situation is quite similar to that of the

1950s, where there were French, German and Italian statesmen who felt the

need for com munity structures, in response to which was the Monnet project.Today, politicians such as Jacques Chirac, Helmut Kohl, Felipe G onzales,

Rom ano Pradi and many o thers have understood that the twenty-first century

will be the century of Europe. But their hopes need ideas before these can be

focused , because they will suffocate within the 1952 framework. Inventorshave never been lack ing, however, when a need for invention has been felt.

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Documents

European Journal of Political Research, Volume 31, Issue 1-2, Page 125-146, Feb 1997,.pdf