Presidentialization of Politics

In recent decades, Western democracies have witnessed substantial changes in the role played by political leaders. In particular, prime ministers have benefited from increasing decision-making autonomy in both the cabinet and the party, to the detriment of party organizations. In this context, Germany represents a deviant case, when compared to other West European democracies: if, on the one hand, the personalization of politics has provided the chancellor with further visibility in the media, on the other hand strong political parties and a complex system of institutional veto points have remained significant sources of limitation to monocratic government. Nevertheless, the policy autonomy of the head of government has increased in many fields: how has this been possible? This chapter investigates how German chancellors have used domestic and international crises as windows of opportunity to find new room for maneuver and promoting crucial policy turns, often in opposition to their parties. The analysis focuses on two chancellors: Gerard Schröder and Angela Merkel, whose governments are contextualized within the executive history of the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949. Particular attention is paid to Merkel’s management of the Covid-19 crisis and the institutional constraints on her action. Findings show that a relative informal strengthening process of the figure of the chancellor has not been paired by relevant changes in chancellor’s normative powers. From a comparative perspective, this result is interpreted as a signal of continuity in the ability of German political institutions to work as counterweights vis-à-vis more personal forms of leadership.

While the study of presidentialisation is often combined with the concept of personalisation, Gianluca Passarelli decides to make a clear conceptual distinction between the two, focussing on the already highly debated study of the presidentialisation of politics. By starting with the premise that under certain circumstances presidentialisation is also possible in non-presidential systems, this book takes a closer look at the presidentialisation of political parties in the world, advocating that the presidentialisation of politics stems from the behaviour of political parties.

Wenn Jugendliche sich von ihren Eltern emanzipieren und allein ihren Alltag meistern wollen, nennt man dies die Pubertät. Zwischen dem Leader eines politischen Systems und den dazugehörigen Parteien kann es zu einer ähnlichen Entwicklung kommen. Allerdings spricht man dann in der Politikwissenschaft von der Präsidentialisierung. Dieser Artikel zeichnet die Grundzüge dieser politikwissenschaftlichen Theorie nach, zeigt Schwächen auf und versucht neue Ansätze aufzuzeigen.

When adolescents want to emancipate themselves from their parents and try to master life on their own, this is called puberty. A comparable development may occur between the leader of a political system and the parties that belong to it. However, this is called presidentialization in political science. This article traces the main features of this political science theory, reveals weaknesses and attempts to point out new approaches.

This chapter analyzes the decision-making process in Italian political executives and highlights affecting factors. After presenting constraints and opportunities of Italian cabinets, the chapter provides an overview of the years 1948-1994, characterized by the presence of a pivotal party and weak prime ministers. Subsequently, the focus moves to the period of government alternation (1994-2011) and the return of proportional logics, yet under political personalization (2011-2018). The most recent developments are finally assessed from a long-term perspective

Executive Background Institutions – Part II  – The Hungarian Prime Minister's Office 1990-2003

The study examines the Prime Minister’s Office, an institution of central importance in the Hungarian political system, from comparative and analytical aspects. The first part of the study, published in the previous issue, included a general introduction and an international comparative chapter on the main Western models of the background institutions of the head of the executive branch. It examined the German Federal Chancellery, the British Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet Office, and the American Executive Office of the President and the White House Staff.

The second part of the study, appearing in the present issue, drives the point home by giving a detailed introduction and analysis of the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office. The author first briefly presents the evolution of this institution from its roots in Hungarian history and from its predecessor office during the years of a declining Communist system. He then gives detailed accounts of the Office’s development and its political roles during the different administrations since 1990: the cabinets of Prime Ministers József Antall, Péter Boross, Gyula Horn, Viktor Orbán and the present PM Péter Medgyessy.
The Office, during the respective cabinets, is examined from a host of various aspects: its leadership, its role in governmental communication, coordination, decision- and policy-making, its effect on political innovation, its influence and place in the public policy architecture as well as its scandals, fiascoes and successes. Through the analysis of the Office from these aspects, the author intends to draw conclusions about the overall efficiency of the Office under the respective cabinets and in the different areas. Finally, it is suggested that the Hungarian Prime Minister’s Office shows many similarities to the Western models not only in its institutional structure and mode of functioning but also in its evolving central nature within the whole political system.

Technocracy is one of the main issues in contemporary social sciences scholarship. While many authors have written on, among others themes, the rise of technocracy, the concept and definition of technocracy, or the typologies of technocratic governments, the specific question of the relation between technocracy (and technocrats) and state transformations has been less explored. Through the study of the Italian case, we analyze the role of technocrats in three critical junctures (since the early 1980s to the present), and in light of the intertwined process of state transformation and neoliberalization. The paper thus provides for a long-term analysis of technocracy and the state, asking when, how, and in what conditions technocrats not only came to hold top-government positions, but also concurred to redefine intra-state institutional relations especially as regards the strengthening of executive power.

Today, Ukraine has a coalitional-presidentialist political system that can best be categorized as a semi-managed democracy. This model has four main features: consolidation of power by President Petro Poroshenko, formation of a pro-presidential coalition in parliament, integration of former president Viktor Yanukovych’s oligarchic representatives, and a rise in the importance of sub-national politics. This political system confirms the end of the post-Euromaidan era of political diversity, even though a consolidation of presidential power remains uncertain and the regime will probably face new tests in the coming months.

Combining literatures on the presidentialization of politics and political crisis leadership, this article analyzes the way in which the German Chancellor Angela Merkel managed the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Moreover, it investigates the impact, if any, of the crisis on the ‘monocratization’ of German executive politics. The findings show that Merkel was successful in personalizing crisis management. In particular, she took advantage of a process (albeit relative) of monocratization, which had been characterizing Germany for some years. The outcome has been the enhancement of the informal policy-making power of the chief executive.

(co-authored with Fortunato Musella) The figure of the Italian President of the Council (i.e., the prime minister) – as well as the broader form of government – is constitutionally underdefined. As a consequence, the prime ministerial role has been particularly subjected to party and party system changes. In the first fifty years of the republic, the prime minister worked as the connection center for coalition parties; both his political leadership capacities and his supporting administrative staff were inadequate to reach any prominence within the executive. In fact, governmental policy was jointly defined by external party leaders and ministers, who were poorly coordinated by the prime ministers who acted as arbitrators and primi inter pares. In the 1990s, the rise of personal parties strengthened the prime minister, who benefited from the new bipolar party competition and the direct relationship with citizens. However, while the parliamentary system was moving towards presidentialization, the relationship between the prime minister and his parliamentary majority remained controversial. The main reasons of this outcome were the diffusion of the personal party model and the resulting parliamentary fragmentation. The end of the bipolar party competition and the success of new populist parties have opened a phase of political-institutional instability in Italy, which has taken prime ministers back to a role of mediators with low capacities of political management. This chapter investigates the relationship between the President of the Council and political parties from 1996 to 2016 in two different arenas. First, we observe how cabinet composition and decision-making changed, in order to assess the intra-governmental role of the prime minister in the period under investigation. Second, we look at the evolution of the government’s law-making power; in particular, we ask whether the prime minister developed an own autonomous law-making field and what characteristics this field has had.

In the context of current debates about the presidentialization and personalization of politics, this review discusses the Americanization of presidential politics in France. Two specific areas are reviewed: the personalization of French presidential elections and the presidentialization of the executive decision-making process. The discussion focuses on a set of features that are usually associated with the US system, such as the relatively recent adoption of primary elections, the programmatic differences between presidential candidates and their parties, and their increasingly centrist policies. By contextualizing this analysis within the development of the Fifth Republic, we emphasize the endogenous roots of the apparently Americanized practices of the French executive and their full adaptation to the French institutional context.