Political Institutions in East Timor

Semi-Presidentialism and Democratisation

Lydia Beuman, Lydia M. Beuman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138950337
• eBook ISBN: 9781317362111
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In 2002, East Timor became an independent state following a long conflict with Indonesia, and went on to adopt a semi-presidential form of government. In a semi-presidential system there is a directly elected fixed-term president, prime minister and government who are collectively responsible for the legislature. Over 50 countries in the world have adopted such a system.

This book examines the politics of semi-presidentialism in East Timor from 2002-2012 and post-2012 political developments. It analyses the impact of semi-presidentialism on the performance of East Timor's democracy, and looks at whether semi?presidentialism encourages power sharing between competing forces, or whether it provoke a power struggle that threatens democratic stability. Using East Timor as a case study, the author explains whether the adoption of semi-presidentialism helps or hinders the process of democratisation in new democracies.

It is of interest to researchers in the fields of Political Science, Conflict Resolution and Asian Studies, in particular Southeast Asian Politics.

1 Semi-presidentialism and democracy

DOI: 10.4324/9781315668772-1

Political institutions have rules and constraints that shape political interaction and as a consequence help to structure political behaviour. Hence the system of government at least partially conditions the extent of conflict among political actors. Ideally, political institutions should regulate conflict, not generate conflict. If institutions can regulate conflict, then, all else being equal, young democracies are likely to be more stable and less likely to collapse. Equally, if institutions fail to encourage political compromise and conflict does occur, nascent democracies, ceteris paribus, run a greater risk to collapse. To many scholars, pure parliamentary systems are more successful in promoting democratic stability than pure presidential systems. Yet, less academic consensus exists about the effect that semi-presidential institutions have on political behaviour and, by extension, democratic stability. Whereas some predict that a semi-presidential constitutional framework supports democratic stability, others maintain that such a system provokes a damaging power struggle between the president and the prime minister and, by extension, destabilises young democracies. This book tests the different arguments in East Timor,¹ a new semi-presidential democracy in a post-conflict setting. By doing so, this book aims to provide a better insight into the operation of semi-presidential systems in young democratic regimes.

Democracy and democratisation

The literature on why some young democracies succeed while others fail is vast. Much of this literature singles out explanatory variables that are exogenous to the government system. Academics consider structural factors like the level of economic development (Diamond, 1992; Gasiorowski, 1995; Huber et al., 1993; Huntington, 1991; Inglehart, 1997; Lipset, 1981; Moore, 1966; Przeworski et al., 2000), political culture (Almond and Verba, 1963; Muller and Seligson, 1994; Putnam, 2000; Tocqueville, 1945) and the geopolitical position of new states (Levitsky and Way, 2005; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Whitehead, 1996) as crucial to the success or failure of young democracies.

To many scholars the state of economic development crucially determines the fate of young democracies (Huber et al., 1993; Lipset, 1959, 1981; Moore, 1966; Przeworski et al., 2000). It was Seymour Lipset who first established the theoretical link between the level of economic development of a given country and its probability of being democratic: ‘the more well-to-do a nation, the greater chances that it will sustain a democracy’ (1959: 75). In a comparative study he was able to confirm the suspected correlation between economic development and democracy. More specifically, different elements of economic development, such as industrialisation, urbanisation, wealth and education foster values and attitudes that are friendly to democracy’s emergence and viability. ‘Only in a wealthy society can a situation exist in which the mass of the population could intelligently participate in politics and could develop the self-restraint necessary to avoid succumbing to the appeals of irresponsible demagogues’ (Lipset, 1981: 31). The positive relationship between economic development and democracy was supported by the work of, for instance, Larry Diamond (1992), Mark Gasiorowski, (1995) and Ronald Inglehart (1997). Scholars like Samuel Huntington (1991) refined Lipset’s hypothesis, arguing that economic development increases the likelihood that countries make a transition to democracy. Huntington found that democratic transitions are most likely in the countries at the middle levels of economic development; in poor and rich countries, he concluded, transitions to democracy are unlikely. Others have emphasised the relationship between the level of economic development and the sustainability of democracy. Adam Przeworski et al. (2000) explain that democratic transitions occur randomly, but once they have occurred, countries with higher levels of GDP per capita remain democratic. Thus to Przeworski et al., there is a positive correlation between the level of economic development and the durability of democracy. It is by now a truism, Diamond concludes, that the better the economic performance of a democratic regime, the more likely it is to endure (1999: 78).

In the literature on democracy and democratisation, scholars have also emphasised that political culture is likely to have a profound impact on the viability of democratic regimes (Almond and Verba, 1963; Diamond, 1999; Muller and Seligson, 1994). According to this line of thinking, the most important reason a country is able to sustain democracy is that the people believe in it. Both the elite and the mass must come to regard the democratic regime as ‘the only game in town’, better than any other realistic alternative they can imagine (Diamond, 1999: 65). This implies an unquestioned, deep and routinised commitment to democracy and its procedures, what Juan Linz calls ‘loyalty’ to a democratic regime (1978: 29–30). In this context, a strong and vibrant civil society enhances the legitimacy of the democratic system and therefore strengthens and deepens a democratic political culture (Putnam, 2000; de Tocqueville, 1945). A robust civil society allows individuals to express their interests and demands on government and to protect themselves from abuses of power by their political leaders.

The development of a democratic political culture may be problematic in deeply divided societies. Scholars like Donald Horowitz (1993) and Huntington (1996) found that societal cleavages may aggravate intergroup rivalries and political instability. However, Arend Lijphart (1969) explained that not all fragmented societies are politically unstable; consociational democracies like Lebanon, Switzerland and the Netherlands were able to manage intergroup conflict, as the model allowed for peaceful power sharing between different subcultures. Horowitz (2002) noted that these states are multipolar and insists that bipolar states, with a majority and a minority, are the more seriously conflicted. The key question is whether the inclusion of different political forces in the political decision-making process will reduce mutual tensions and strengthen political stability. As we will see later in this chapter, a similar debate exists with respect to the semi-presidential system, a government system that includes different, and sometimes opposing, political groups in the political process.

International influences are also considered to determine the fate of young democracies (Levitsky and Way, 2005; Linz and Stepan, 1996; Whitehead, 1996) and include foreign policies, ‘zeitgeist’ and diffusion effects. Foreign policies that seek to achieve regime change may encourage democratisation processes, as well as a so-called zeitgeist, which refers to cases in which a particular ideology becomes the spirit of the times. Finally, diffusion effects – the process by which democratic learning may take place – are particularly powerful in groups of countries that are tightly coupled, such as the EU. Notwithstanding the importance of international effects, Linz and Alfred Stepan (1996) point out that democratic consolidation is ultimately determined by domestic forces.

This book does not aim to examine the impact of factors that are exogenous to the political system. It is not concerned with the question of whether, for example, economic or cultural factors have undermined or reinforced democratic performance. This book does not dismiss the claim that these factors affect the performance of democracy; however, the focus of this book lies elsewhere. This book is concerned with political institutions, or, more precisely, the constitutional design of executive-legislative relations. It does not argue that executive-legislative relations have greater explanatory power than other factors on democratic performance. It wishes to test the effects of a certain system of government and, in particular, whether this system has the effect that people believe it has. This approach forms part of the so-called new institutionalism literature, which is premised upon the notion that the viability of democracy depends not only on economic and social conditions but also on the design of political institutions (March and Olsen, 1984). According to this line of thinking, institutional rules and procedures are believed to shape political behaviour; in so doing, they set out the parameters for the success or failure of democratic regimes. This book examines whether or not there is evidence to support the hypothesised effects of semi-presidential institutional structures on the level of political conflict within the executive and between the executive and the legislature.

Semi-presidential systems

Most scholars support the notion that parliamentary democracies live longer than their presidential counterparts (Lijphart, 2004: 102). This conclusion is based on the underlying assumption that presidential systems are more likely to generate institutional conflict but at the same time less capable to regulate it than parliamentary systems. But what about semi-presidentialism? Does a semi-presidential framework encourage political stability and strengthen a democratic system? This is an important theoretical question with high practical relevance. Almost one-third of the countries currently in existence operate under a semi-presidential system, and many of them have little or no democratic tradition (Elgie, 2007b: 1). Yet, there is no academic consensus as to whether a semi-presidential system makes or breaks a democratic regime. Most of the young semi-presidential democracies in central and eastern Europe, in Africa and in Asia have previously experienced nothing but non-democratic rule by the military, dictators or authoritarian leaders. These new and thus often fragile democracies therefore need a supportive institutional framework that provides incentives for efficient co-operation and effective governance. To what extent does semi-presidentialism generate such a framework?

When discussing semi-presidentialism, the first issue that arises is how to define semi-presidentialism and, thus, how to classify the set of semi-presidential countries. Maurice Duverger (1980: 166) defined the system in the following way: ‘A political regime is considered as semi-presidential if the constitution which established it combines three elements: (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.’ His definition has often been criticised for being vague (Bahro et al., 1998) or imprecise (Pasquino, 2005) and led other scholars to redefine the concept (Elgie, 1999, 2004; Sartori, 1994) or to specify semi-presidentialism by subdividing it into premier-presidential and president-parliamentarian systems (Shugart and Carey, 1992).

Essentially, some authors consider Duverger’s definition inadequate because it does not set boundaries with respect to presidential powers. Duverger’s second characteristic of semi-presidential systems, namely that the president ‘possesses quite considerable powers’, does not explain the scope of powers of a president. Additionally, David Samuels and Matthew Shugart (2010: 29) pointed out that the definition is vague about (1) the survival of the president, (2) the origin of the prime minister and the cabinet and (3) the sources of prime ministerial and cabinet survival. Thus, to whom is the president accountable? How are the prime minister and the cabinet selected and removed from office in semi-presidential systems? Moreover, some semi-presidential systems allow the president to select and deselect the prime minister and cabinet. So, the third property of Duverger’s concept of semi-presidentialism, namely that the prime minister and ministers can only stay in office if the parliament does not show its opposition to them, is therefore inadequate. The dubious validity of Duverger’s definition complicated the study into the effects of semi-presidentialism because scholars could not agree which countries should be classed as having semi-presidential regimes. For example, the system of government of Finland is according to Duverger (1980) semi-presidential and to Lijphart (1984) presidential whereas the regime type of Sri Lanka is classified by Duverger (1980) semi-presidential, by Shugart and Carey (1992) president-parliamentary and by Sartori (1994) parliamentary.

Giovanni Sartori (1994) redefined the concept, stating that a government was semi-presidential if the following properties or characteristics jointly apply:

• The head of state (president) is elected by popular vote – either directly or indirectly – for a fixed term of office.
• The head of state shares the executive power with a prime minister, thus entering a dual authority structure whose three defining criteria are:
  • The president is independent of parliament but is not entitled to govern alone or directly, and therefore his will must be conveyed and processed via his government.
  • Conversely, the prime minister and cabinet are independent of the president in that they are parliament dependent: they are subject to either parliamentary confidence or no-confidence (or both), and in either case need the support of a parliamentary majority.
  • The dual authority structure of semi-presidentialism allows for different balances and for shifting prevalences of power within the executive, under the strict condition that the ‘autonomy potential’ of each component unit of the executive does subsist (Sartori, 1994: 131–132).

Yet, Sartori’s definition has not been widely adopted. In order to distinguish semi-presidential regimes from their presiden...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Other
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Abbreviations
• 1 Semi-presidentialism and democracy
• 2 East Timor’s semi-presidential system
• 3 The road to independence and the adoption of a semi-presidential system
• 4 Cohabitation
• 5 Divided government
• 6 Unified majority government
• 7 Conclusion
• 8 Postscript
• Index