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Divided executives and democratisation

Elgie, Robert ORCID: 0000-0001-5334-4796 and McMenamin, Iain ORCID: 0000-0002-1704-390X (2006) Divided executives and democratisation. Working Papers in International Studies Series. (Paper No. 2006-2). Centre for International Studies, Dublin City University, Ireland.

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Abstract

This article examines the effect of a divided executive on democratisation in mixed systems where presidents are directly elected and prime ministers are responsible to the legislature. A divided executive is where the president and prime minister are not from the same party. The importance of a divided executive is hypothesised to vary according to the relative powers of the president and prime minister. In mixed systems where either the president or the prime minister is the dominant actor, then a divided executive will not affect democratisation. However, where both the president and prime minister have significant independent powers, then a divided executive should have a negative impact on democratisation because of the potential for destabilising intraexecutive conflict. Using an ordinal logit model, the results show that mixed systems with a dual executive do not perform significantly worse than mixed systems where there is one dominant actor. This suggests that the standard wisdom about the impact of a divided executive in a mixed system is misplaced.

Item Type:Working Paper (No. 2006-2)
Refereed:No
Uncontrolled Keywords:democratisation;
Subjects:Social Sciences > Political science
DCU Faculties and Centres:Research Initiatives and Centres > Centre for International Studies (CIS) > Working Papers in International Studies Series
DCU Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > School of Law and Government
Publisher:Centre for International Studies, Dublin City University
Use License:This item is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. View License
ID Code:2135
Deposited On:11 Nov 2008 16:23 by DORAS Administrator . Last Modified 05 Oct 2018 09:33

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