By: Lizzie Furey,
on 9/26/2016
Russian politics has always been a fascinating subject around the globe. Exactly how politics works there, along with Putin's vision for the country and the world at large is the source of constant debate.
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By: Clare Hanson,
on 3/15/2015
The European Union’s legal system was created, so the story goes, by two astonishing decisions of the European Court of Justice (the ‘ECJ’) in the early 1960s. In the Van Gend en Loos decision of 1963, the European Court declared the ‘direct effect’ of European law [...]
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By: Clare Hanson,
on 2/15/2015
In his famous statement about the perils of presidentialism, Juan Linz argued that newly emerging democracies ought to avoid adopting a presidential form of government. One of Linz’s reasons had to do with the winner-take-all-nature of presidential elections. By definition, such elections are zero-sum games where the losing candidates have little to no prospect of sharing in executive power. By having a single indivisible and powerful executive office, presidential elections amplify the gap between winning and losing, and can contribute to creating and deepening political divisions, which is precisely what a new democracy ought to minimize.
At the same time, having the people elect the head of their state directly can strengthen the legitimacy of the democratic foundations of the new constitutional order. When conducted in a fair, free, and transparent manner observing the highest standards of electoral integrity, direct presidential elections can play an important role in aiding the development of civic and political values such as electoral participation, competitiveness, and accountability. If the population is not imbued by such values, the new democratic system may soon hollow out and become a procedural mechanism with no substantive values informing and guiding it.
An intermediate constitutional solution is the adoption of a semi-presidential system of government, which, according to scholars like Maurice Duverger and Robert Elgie, is characterized by a presidency that is elected directly by the people but that is also considerably weaker in power and authority than the chief executive of a presidential system of government. The relative weakness of the semi-presidential head of state is underscored by the fact that the office shares executive power with the prime minister who, as the head of government, is responsible to the legislature. Semi-presidentialism often becomes an attractive constitutional choice in new democracies precisely because it has the advantage of encouraging popular participation in the political system without concentrating too much power in a single executive office.
The experience of the ten post-communist democracies in Eastern and Central Europe is an excellent case in point. At the time of their transition to democracy in the early 1990s, only half of the ten states had a semi-presidential executive: Bulgaria, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, and Romania. The remaining five states (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, and Slovakia) remained parliamentary systems with both the prime minister and the president elected by the legislature. By 2015 Hungary, Estonia, and Latvia have remained the only three cases with indirectly elected heads of state. At first Slovakia, in 1998, and then the Czech Republic, in 2012, enacted constitutional changes to move from indirect to direct presidential elections. In both of these cases, the adoption of direct presidential elections was the result of repeated failures by parliament to ensure a smooth and efficient process. In Slovakia, the National Council was unable to elect a president after several unsuccessful rounds of balloting in 1998, whereas in the Czech Republic both the 2003 and the 2008 elections were characterized by legislative tumult leading to renewed calls for delegating the choice of president to the people.
What can constitutional designers and engineers learn from the history of presidential elections in the post-communist region? Insofar as political stability and legitimacy are concerned, there are three important lessons:
In short, the post-communist cases suggest that the ideal form of choosing the president of a new democracy may be either direct election by the people or indirect election by parliament using efficient, result-oriented rules and procedures. While presidentialism as a constitutional system may be perilous for the stability of a new democracy, as Juan Linz argued, there is also a great danger in adopting parliamentary processes of presidential election which can themselves become the source of political instability.
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By: Kirsty,
on 5/22/2014
At the end of May, 400 million EU citizens will be called to participate in the second-largest direct election in the world (the first being held in India). Since they last went to the polls to elect their parliament, in 2009, Europe has gone through an acute crisis that precipitated several countries deeper into recession than any peacetime shock they had suffered for a century. In several of the continent’s regions, more than a fourth of the labour force is unemployed. Over the last five years, the crisis has exposed many weaknesses in the design of the euro area and there has been no shortage of heated policy debates about the nature of the systemic reforms that were required. In the same vein, both the European Central Bank’s response and the pace of fiscal consolidation have been matters for ongoing controversies.
Against this background, one could expect political parties to offer clearly defined alternative choices for the future of Europe and citizens to participate to the elections en masse – even more so because the next parliament will have a say in the selection of the coming European Commission, the EU’s executive body. Expectations, however, are uniformly grim. Last time the election was held, turnout was 43% only. It is anticipated that it will be low again and that fringe national parties will be significant winners in the election. Throughout Europe, mainstream politicians are preparing for a setback. Some foresee a disaster.
There are three reasons for this paradox. First, citizens do not grasp what the European parliament is about. It is, in fact, an active and thorough legislator. Over the last five years, it has for example been an energetic player in the elaboration of a regulatory response to the global financial crisis and a staunch protector of European consumer. Recently it has played a major role in the creation of a banking union in the EU. But it is rarely the place where the debates that define the political agenda and capture the citizens’ attention are held.
Second, dividing lines within parliament are often national rather than political. On industrial policy, trade and regulation, as well as far as relationships with neighbours are concerned, which country you belong to matters as much as which camp you are from. Consequently, issues are often settled with a compromise that blurs the separation between left and right. As in addition virtually all the media are national and generally pitch the debate as opposing the national capital and ‘Brussels’ or another capital, voters have no perception of the sometimes very real differences between left and right.
Third, the fundamental European debate is of a constitutional nature and for this reason it cannot be settled by the parliament. This is true of the key issues that arose during the euro crisis: whether to rescue countries in trouble, whether to mutualise public debt, whether to change the decision rule for sanctions against excessive budget deficits, whether to go for a banking union. Each time the big question was, what do Germany, France and other Eurozone countries think? It was not what does the European parliament think, because almost by definition the parliament has always been in favour of more Europe.
These three obstacles to a pan-European political debate explain why fringe anti-EU parties like the UK Independence Party (UKIP), or the French National Front generally do well in the European parliament elections. Their simple message is that European integration is the wrong way to go and that national governments should repatriate powers from Brussels. As the scope for disagreement between the two main centre-right and centre-left parties is much narrower than the range of views amongst voters, voters who have sympathy for the anti-EU know why and for whom they should vote while those who are in favour of European integration do not have many reasons to vote, because the mainstream parties’ platforms are largely interchangeable.
To overcome the obstacle, a recent reform has stipulated that when appointing the European Commission’s president, the heads of state and government should take into account the result of the elections to the European parliament. In principle therefore, the next European Commission president will belong to the party holding the (relative) majority in the European parliament. Furthermore, the main parties have already nominated their candidates to the European Commission. This politicisation is meant to flag to the citizens that their vote matters and will result in determining the roadmap for the next five years. Unfortunately however, it is not clear whether mainstream parties will be able to formulate policy platforms that are defined enough to attract voters.
Does it matter? After all Europe’s situation is not unique. In the US participation rates in the mid-term elections (when the presidency is not in the ballot) are generally well below 50%. They are also rather low in other federations like India or Switzerland. As Tip O’Neill, the former speaker of the US House, used to say, “all politics is local” and this affects the voters’ behaviour. Europe, in a way, is awkward, but normal: the EU does the legislation, but politics is national.
This is however a too complacent reading of the reality. At a time when countries participating in the euro are confronted with major choices, the risk for Europe is to emerge from the elections with a weak legitimacy (because of the turnout) and a politically distorted parliament (because of the strong showing of the fringe parties). This would make governments wary of bold choices and could result in an unhealthy stalemate. It is not yet time for the EU to become boringly normal.
Jean Pisani-Ferry currently serves as the Commissioner-General for Policy Planning to the Prime Minister of France. He is also Professor of Economics and Public Management at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. Until May 2013 he was the director of Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank he contributed to founding in 2005. He is the author of The Euro Crisis and Its Aftermath.
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Image credit: The European Parliament, Brussels. Photo by Alina Zienowicz. CC-BY-SA-3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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