European Journal of Political Research 31: 125-146, 1997. @ 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

NOMINATIONS AND REFLECTIONS

A new political system

A new political system model: Semi-presidential government by Maurice Duverger, University o f Paris I , Paris, France EJPR 8 (1980): 165-187. Abstract. This article aims at defining the concept of semi-presidentialgovernment 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 - the content of the constitution, tradition and circumstances, the composition of the parliamentary majority and the position of the president in relation to the majority - the author seeks to explain why similar constitutions are applied in a radically different manner.

Nomination: Trichotomy or dichotomy?

AREND LUPHART University of California, Sun Diego, USA One of the principal topics that has interested both old and new institutionalists is the question of parliamentary versus presidential government: what distinguishes these two types and what are their respective advantages and disadvantages? The work of the old institutionalists (Bagehot 1867; Wilson 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 presidential. In his seminal work The analysis ofpolitical s y s t e m , Douglas V. Verney (1959) took an important step away from old-institutionalist analysis by delineating the differences between the two types of government not only much more systematicallybut 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

126 followed the example 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 discussion of the rare convention type that is no longer found among modem democracies).

Duverger and the new institutionalism

After having established himself as the first new institutionalist with regard to the study of political parties and party systems as early as 1951 with Les partis politiques, Maurice Duverger also effected the crucial transition to new institutionalism in the study of parliamentary and presidential government with his innovative 1980 article on semi-presidential government in the European Journal o f Political 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 - the prototype of the French Fifth Republic but also six other systems (Austria, Finland, the German Weimar Republic, Iceland, Ireland, and Portugal). He also showed conclusively that four sets of independent variables - constitutional rules, political traditions and circumstances, the political composition of the majority in the legislature, and the relationship between the president and this majority- determine the particular subtype that semi-presidential government assumes. And, more generally, he demonstrated the power of empirical generalisation based on the systematic analysis of both formal-legal and informal political and social variables. Duvergers 1980 analysis provided strong inspiration for the next major theoretical advance: Matthew S. Shugarts & John M. Careys Presidents and assemblies (1992). They prefer the term premier-presidential to Duvergers semi-presidential, because they feel that the latter carries the misleading 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, Duvergers concept of semi-presidential government is multi-faceted and does not entail any intermediate distance between presidentialism and parliamentarism. Semi-presidential has continued to be the term used most frequently by most other scholars, including the authors of the most significant works that followed on the heels of Shugarts & Careys book, by Alfred Stepan & Cindy Skach (1 993), Juan J. Linz & Arturo Valenzuela (1 994), and Adam Przeworski and his collaborators (1996). 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 Duvergers 1980 analysis is also shown by its predictive ability. He argued that the logic inherent in semi-presidential government, especially in the French case, dictates not a half-presidential and halfparliamentary 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 are in the hands of opposing parties or coalitions (1980: 185-186). He formulated this logic in 1980, well before the 1986-1988 and 1993-1995 periods of cohabitation between a socialist president and a conservative National Assembly. Exactly as he had predicated, however, cohabitation turned out to spell an essentially parliamentary form of government. A dichotomouspattern after all? Finally, I would argue that - in spite of the fact that Duverger proposed semipresidential 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 appear 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 presidential prerogatives - have figureheadpresidencies 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 deviate from this scholarly agreement, because the separation-of-powers rule of presidential government creates a balanced power relationship between executive and legislature - one of the key characteristics of consensus democracy (Lijphart 1984: 24-25, 78-79). However, while separation of powers does spell executive-legislative equilibrium in some cases, like the USA and 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 democracies (ODonnell 1994). Moreover, presidential government, even of the balanced kind, tends to make democracy more majoritarian in other respects: (1) it entails a high degree of concentration of executive power; (2) the winner-take-all nature of presidential elections helps the larger parties and reduces multipartism; (3) reducing the number of parties tends to reduce the number of issue dimensions represented in the party system; and (4) presidential elections tend to yield highly disproportional results (see Lijphart 1994: 95-99).

128 has had both presidential and parliamentary phases, but presidentialism has been the dominant tendency - in 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 disagreement: parliamentary (Powell 1982: 5&57), semi-presidential (Duverger 1980: 174-176), or presidential (Lijphart 1984: 70-7 1). Duvergers discussion of the two alternating phases in the Fifth Republic helps to solve the problem, because Finland has the closest resemblance to the Fifth Republic in its rare parliamentary phases, in which the prime minister is the real head of government but the president retains considerable power in the realm of foreign 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 alternating presidential and parliamentary phases as France, but after the presidents powers were constitutionally curbed in 1982, it reverted to a kind of parliamentarism somewhere in between Finlands mainly and Austrias, Icelands, and Irelands almost entirely parliamentary forms of government. In short, I believe that with Duvergers 1980 article the study of parliamentary 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 dichotomous pattern - but 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, functioning, and transformation of institutional structures. Following the many

129 processes of transition and democratization in Southern Europe, Latin America, and, especially, East and Central Europe, there has been a revival of justified attention to/and emphasis on the type of institutional structures and arrangementsmore conductive to stable and effectivegovernment. Among the institutional options available to the institution-makers there is the political system model: semi-presidential government. It was clearly identified and perceptively analyzed by Maurice Duverger sixteen years ago, when studies of this kind were not at all in fashion (Duverger 1980). Maurice Duvergers article has two significant merits: first, the identification 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 the overall configuration given by Duverger to his model Next, I will compare Duvergers analysis with other recent attempts to specify the main features of semi-presidential systems. Finally, I will offer my own considerations concerning the strengths and weaknesses of semi-presidentialism. The distinctiveness of semi-presidential systems Duvergers article is important, above all, because it identifies semi-presidential governments or, better, systems, as made up of a specific set of mechanisms 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 own specific, appropriately devised institutional features. They cannot be created just by strengtheningsome features of parliamentary systems, for instance, by directly electing the President of the Republic. Nor can they be created be relaxing some features of presidential systems, for instance, by distributing executive power to two different leaders. Presidential systems cannot simply, so to 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 adamantly opposed 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 dissolution of Parliament and new election of the Prime Minister in cases of insoluble contrasts between them, that is, a vote of no-confidenceby Parliament against the Prime Minister

130 and the proved inability of the Prime Minister to have Parliament approve and enact his governmental programme (Duverger 1968: 39) The principle simul stabunt, simul cadent would have produced a reinforced parliamentary system, the government of the Prime Minister, perhaps to be called, according to Shugart & Carey president-parliamentary (1992: 24). The new institutional solution devised and recently implemented in Israel, the popular election of the Prime Minister, comes close to Duvergers 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 problems of governability, that I interpret as political stability plus decision-making effectiveness. Which are, then, the main, distinguishing. and indispensable features of semi-presidentialism? According to Duverger (1980: 166), a regime is considered 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 minister and ministers who possess executive and governmental power and can stay in office only if the parliament does not show its Opposition to them. This definition has been criticized and challenged by some authors (Shugart & Carey, 1992: 23-24,5475; and Sartori, 1994: 121-140). Shugart & Carey say that they accept Duvergers definition. However, they redefine the model by calling it premier-presidentialism, also in 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 - premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism - can both be applied to different phases of the French semi-presidential system. Taking into account these criticisms and distinctions, it is now possible and useful to refine Duvergers starting formulation by stressing the three main and exclusive features of semi-presidentialism. My opinion is that a system must be considered semi-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 implicit or explicit confidence vote by Parliament. So defined, or redefined, a semi-presidential regime designs a dual authority structure (Sartori 1994). This assessment and the corresponding label are preferable to the assessment made and to the label utilized by Shugart & Carey, that is competitive dyarchy, for one important reason. In semi-presidential Systems there will always be a dual authority structure because, by definition, the President and the Prime

131 Minister have different powers. On the other hand, there will be a competitive dyarchy only exceptionally and temporarily, that is when the President and the Prime Minister do not belong to the same political majority. Therefore, a competitive dyarchy is not an essential and unavoidable feature of semipresidential systems. Still, the institutional and political relationships between the President and the Prime Minister represent an issue worthy of specific consideration.

Elements for institutional comparisons

In order to assess whether the dual authority structure constitutes an element of strength or an element of weakness of semi-presidential systems, one must resort to two 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 systems with specific reference to the configuration of 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 systems. Incidentally, this is one reason why the criticisms addressed against a not well-defined parliamentarism are often misplaced and unconvincing. Since there are different types of parliamentary systems, before criticizing the vices of 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 Austria, that remain solidly parliamentary. In Austria, there is no dual authority structure, nor a competitive dyarchy. Hence it would be misleading to analyze the case of Austria as a semi-presidential system only because there exists the direct election of the President of the Republic whose powers are very limited and rather clearly circumscribed. The major, fundamental difference between all semi-presidential systems and all parliamentary systems is 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 some executive powers to the President. The comparison between semi-presidential and presidential systems appears somewhat less complicated. The major difference lies in the fact that in presidential systems the President of the republic is the exclusive chief executive. There is absolutely no dual authority structure. The President pays, so to

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speak, a price for being the only chief executive. He/she cannot dissolve Parliament/Congress. Therefore, if a situation of divided government arises, 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. Alternatively, he/she may attempt to obtain a favorable parliamentary majority by dissolving Parliament. In the French Fifth Republic, this attempt was performed successfully by De Gaulle in 1968 and by Mitterrand in 1981 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 working parliamentary majority. Since semi-presidential systems are often criticized exactly because their dual authority structure may give birth to a competitive dyarchy easily transformed 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 Congress can effectively govern. Moreover, the electorate will not be in a position clearly to evaluate political accountability and assign political responsibilities. In the words of Shugart & Carey, divided government creates considerable confusion for the voters as to the requirement of identifiability. In fact, when divided government characterizes the working of a presidential system, then a more or less prolonged and recurring stalemate is the most plausible outcome. While 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 qualities in order to (te1e)convince public opinion and the voters to put pressures 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 possible 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 semi-presidential system are characterized by four main instances. The first has so far been the dominant one in the French case. The President has been elected by the same political majority that controls the majority of seats in Parliament and is the leader of the majority party. Barring

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unpredictable political circumstances, the President is the effective leader of the political-parliamentary majority and in a position to enjoy as much and as many executive powers as he desires. This unproblematic instance was enjoyed by Charles De Gaulle (1962-1969), by George Pompidou (19691974), and by FranGois Mitterrand (198 1-1 986, and again, though to a lesser extent, 1988-1983). The second instance materializes itself when the President has been elected by the same political forces enjoying a parliamentary majority. However, he is not the leader of the majority party making up the winning coalition, but of the (or a) minor party. This was the case of Valery Giscard dEstaing (1 974-198 1). The expected political consequence is that of some decision-making contrasts between the President and the official leader of the majority party of the winning coalition, especially if the latter is appointed 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 Minister the 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 a pure 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 topic of 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 Mitterrand did in 1986 by appointing Jacques Chirac as Prime Minister 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 some discretion. He may appoint the political personality less likely to challenge his actual role and to become the presidential challenger in the next elections. Or he may want to test the capabilities of a potential opponent in the next presidential elections in a close institutional competition. Elsewhere, with specific reference to the French case, Duverger (1 987) has written of two possible contrasting outcomes. The first one is the product of the perfect coincidence between the presidential and the parliamentary majority. In this instance, semi-presidentialism gives birth to a duet. The President and the Prime Minister will sing the same song. This coincidence does not, of course, preclude the emergence of differences of opinion, tensions, and conflicts. They are easily solved by the President dismissing the Prime Minister: De Gaulle dismissed two, Pompidou one, Giscard one, Mitterrand one in his first term and two in his second term (Elgie & 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 cohabitation 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 Socialist 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 of the 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 majority 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

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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 candidate against Soares in 1991. Due to the lack of cohesive parliamentary majorities, it is difficult to analyze the Polish case in terms of cohabitation. Even though President Lech Walesa never enjoyed the support of a favorable parliamentary majority, he did not have to duel with a Prime Minister representing an alternative and competing majority. Perhaps, Alexander Kwasniewskis victory will create the conditions for a more clear-cut confrontation or cooperation between the President and the Prime Minister. In any case, one must 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 effectively shaped and constrained by the institutional mechanisms and the electoral expectations of the semi-presidential system. The taming of political ambitions and their orientation towards the achievement of systemic goals is possibly the best evidence of the effectiveness of institutional arrangements. There can be few doubts that semi-presidential systems have succeeded in translating personal ambitions 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 decisions and/or the confusion of responsibilities and protracted bargaining, but only by a slowed down decision-making process meant to take into account the different positions of the President and the Prime Minister when this was the case. However, the Presidents have usually deferred, when necessary, to the will of the Prime Ministers. Perhaps, a final point deserves some attention. In his seminal article Duverger did not deal specifically with the role played by the type of electoral formula used in semi-presidential systems. It is a reasonable expectation that different formulae used for the election of parliamentary assemblies in semipresidential systems would have a differential impact on the likelihood of producing, 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-

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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 parliamentary 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 parliamentary 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 or reducing the fragmentation of the party system would be more appropriate to a semi-presidential system both when there are coinciding majorities and when there are instances of cohabitation. By way of conclusion
Looking to the historical experience, semi-presidential systems have accompanied the successful transition from a democratic regime to another democratic 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 (Michta 1993). One reason why they have had success is that they avoid the classic degeneration of parliamentary systems into assembly-type systems. Because of this perceived success, recently French-style semi-presidentialism has been seriously considered as a possible solution for the Italian political and institutional transition (Ceccanti, Massari & Pasquino 1996). After all, 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 problems of the creation of political leadership and of the personalization of politics combined with political responsibility. They have given birth to a stable and functioning political system in France much better than the preceding parliamentary system (Suleiman 1994) and have consolidated the democratic transitions in Portugal and Poland. They seem more capable of producing governmental effectiveness than parliamentary regimes and of avoiding political stalemate than presidential systems. They do not degenerate into plebiscitary democracy as is possible

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for presidential systems nor into assembly government as occurs in parliamentary systems. On the whole, under most circumstances, semi-presidential systems appear endowed with both more governmental capabilities and more institutional flexibility than parliamentary and presidential systems respectively. We owe it to Maurice Duverger if we are now in a position fully to appreciate the existence and the importance of semi-presidential systems 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 old professor in the Faculty of Law in Bordeaux, starting teaching in 1880, rather than in 1942 as I did, would have never put forward 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 semipresidentialism set up in France by General de Gaulle, a system which has now become the most effective means of transition from dictatorship towards democracy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. On the other hand, in 1930, Atistide Briands idea of Europe would have aroused his passions. To label its institutions, he would have used the vocabulary of the community (EU) itself, created by Alexis Leger, then Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Pans and an 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. Whether we like it or not, European integration has been the fundamental problem of the twentieth century, and will be all the more so for the twenty-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 democracy of Western 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 Fundamental to the work of the Bordeaux group led by Rev. Father Maydieu - one of the principal figures in the Catholic Resistance - was the desire to rebuild the nation. Their work led to Duvergers 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 Steel Community, while the Federal Republic of Germany had an efficient political regime and a limited proportional representation 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, people and cultures - from Ireland to Oder-Neisse, from the North Cape to Malta- the twentieth century is ending as it started: with the difficult birth of a collective organisation drawing together states, regions, and communities. Leaving aside the Parliament 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 more effective and important than the European Union in 1996. This 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 Europeduring the two world wars. In 1913,49 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 more 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 military conquests. 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.

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The new destiny of a United Europe

Such a perspective is crucial to an understanding of the real meaning of the f Polithalf-century of European integration of which the European Journal o ical Research, now celebrating its 25th year, has been an important observer. This process must be seen not only as a consequence of the 1939- 1945 War, which obviously dominates todays 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, under 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 fundamental roots, which appeared more than two milleniums ago -between Athens, Rome and Jerusalem - in the thought, the philosophy, the law and the cultures which define its civilisation. At the same time, the Europe which is being built today is more than European. It has always seen itself as being closely tied to the whole world, feeling 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 mean that all European civilisations have the same value and that the obvious barbarity of some of them must 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 European immigrants - when their country reduced many to slavery and almost completely annihilated the native American people. Since the First World War, the progressive substitution of the USA for European states as a hegemonic power introduces another dimension to contemporary European integration. This includes a fundamental contradiction in the permanent necessity for a close solidarity between the USA 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 independent states emerging from the former Soviet Union, as well as the emerging states of the Near- and Middle-East and North Africa. These contradictions blend ineluctably with those others confronting the great European nations, concerning degrees 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 powers, for which Benelux should have

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served as a model of progressive integration, emphasising the importance for each of community 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, and 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 the Ocean, 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 countries of South-Eastem Asia, of the Middle- and Near-East, of North Africa and of Latin America 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 Union, on the other, while awaiting 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 London would form a close military association with Paris. The rallying of Great Britain to Washingtons nuclear authority explains Charles de Gaulles refusal to allow the British to enter the Community, after which the refusal of London to participate in a European Defence Community 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 American tutelage Widened to nine members with the membership of Britain, which caught the moving 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 contrary provoked a military coup detat that established an archaic and bloody dictatorship in Greece, a country which had heroically fought against Nazism. The collapse of Stalinist communism in the USSR and the popular democracies opens a radically new perspective at the end of the twentieth century. The military power of Moscow has not been destroyed. Even if the Red Army is in decline, Russian nuclear forces are still the second most powedul in the

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world and those of the Ukraine are third, each being at the mercy of adventurers. At the same time, the Germany of Chancellor Kohl is no longer the political dwarf which doubles as an economic giant -the ex-Scandinavian and Central European democracies are open more 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 happen if 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 Great Britain, which values the necessity of powerful armies and an efficient arms industry in Europe. 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 power 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 providing institutions that give its leaders the ability to take quick and daring decisions. 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 incomprehensible and powerless. Remarkably well-organised at first, the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) became progressively dislocated as it was enlarged. Planned originally to control the production and commercialisation of the two principal energy sources at the beginning of the 1950s, by assuring collaboration between the World War I1 victors (France and Benelux) and vanquished (Germany and Italy), as well as the equitable distribution of the American financial aid provided by the Marshall Plan, the ECSC had to take the decisions that were more administrative than political, decisions increasing the well-being of the populations involved without asking them for anything important in return. Acting in an area that was both semi-private and 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 High Authority.

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The institutions of a United Europe

Enlarging from six members to nine, then to twelve and fifteen, and above all broadening its scope from the limited sector of coal and steel to the economy as a whole as well as extending beyond this into the political arena, the nature of the Community has hndamentally 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 community institutions, or on their federal or confederal character, debates which have poisoned discussion on European integration since Churchills 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 Union 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 distinctiveness of each, and their collective diversity, are what make our civilisation so rich. The union of nation-states will have nothing in common with 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 peoples will to combine their actions collectively so as to make these actions more effective for each one of them. The Coal and Steel Community on the one hand, and the American Constitution on the other, provide two starting points for us to think about European Union institutions of the twenty-first century, incorporating more than thirty states and more than 500 million inhabitants. The former showed the difficulties of an effective and permanent association between states which are deeply established. The second has opened pathways to collective decisions in which each of the participants is deeply attached to its independence. In 1797, the constituent states on the other side of the Atlantic solved the problem by combining 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 chambers of Congress. The same number of senators is chosen by each member state, regardless of its population, while representatives are elected in proportion to the population of each state.

143 Therefore, the Senate is a guarantee to the smaller states that they will not be crushed 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 of the 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 these US 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 at the 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 the Prime Ministers remains the supreme decision-makingbody, 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 memberstate, 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 Parliament, the Council representing the national governments, and the Commission which has the responsibility for initiating the texts, the governmental function is much more dispersed. At least three quarters of the authority belongs to the Council. However, the crucial decisions - such as reform of the institutions and the establishment of new public contributions - require unanimity, which is paralysing. In many other sectors, a qualified majority is required, and the workings of this are incomprehensible for European citizens. Unless otherwise specified, a relative majority is sufficient, which favours 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 population of over 35 million inhabitants - these are Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Poland. The first five represent more than 290 million inhabitants, 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 inhabitants. There are about ten small states (between 1.5 and 5 million) which between them comprise about 40 million, and five micro-states which have a combined population of less than 2 million. In a united Europe of the twentyfirst century, the six big states on their own will represent two-thirds of the population, while the last third will be spread among 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 American constituent states of 1787. To date, no new solution has 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 10 February 1994, in its Article 20, which refines the proposal by modulating it according 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 Commission. 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 Chirac, Prime Minister John Major or Chancellor Kohl embody their own states. In practice the President of the Council is less important than the president of the Commission, who has the advantage of a strongly legitimated nomination and of a full-time position in office. The Commission President is elected 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 hnctions remain quite secondary to those in his or her own country. The role is filled by the President or the Prime Minister of the country concerned for the European Councils and by a relevant cabinet minister for the Union Councils - these governmental representatives being more absorbed in their national roles than in their occasional sorties to Brus-

145 sels. One day, the President of the Union will be elected by universal suffrage. Meanwhile, a solution might be that this person would be elected for a few years by the Council, using the double majority system suggested above, and would not be allowed to hold any other public or private functions, so as to be able to focus exclusively on Europe. Additionally, it might be desirableto organise a sort of collective presidency around this person. The present six months nomination procedure based on the alphabetical order of the countries could be kept for a collective Council presidency that sat as a legislature on the model of the Bundesrat. None of the countries should combine two presidencies, whether they are of the Council, of the Commission, of the European Parliament or of the Regional Council. The meeting of such a presidium at least once a month would permit a better orientation of Union politics. Many other solutions are conceivable and may be preferable. What is essential is to elaborate models that correspond to the new 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 community structures, in response to which was the Monnet project. Today, politicians such as Jacques Chirac, Helmut Kohl, Felipe Gonzales, Romano Pradi and many others 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. Inventors have never been lacking, however, when a need for invention has been felt.

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