Presidents in Semi-Presidential Regimes

Moderating Power in Portugal and Timor-Leste

Rui Graça Feijó

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030531799
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030531805
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Asian Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a comparative perspective on the semi-presidential regimes of Portugal and Timor-Leste, suggesting that they both reserve a "moderating power" for presidents in line with what was theorized by Benjamin Constant. Historical legacies, political culture and short-term political considerations combined create an institutional design that has endured and produced incentives to power-sharing and inclusiveness. A critical element of this model finds roots in the electoral system facilitating the emergence of "independent" presidents with political platforms that tend to supersede those of political parties. Elected presidents dispose of an array of competences that do not overlap with those of prime ministers, but represent a category of its own. The vast array of presidential competences contributes to reinforcing a system of checks and balances, and to foster horizontal accountability. The book argues that this specific form of government with "moderating powers" and presidents who are largely "independent" from the party system contributed to the successful democratic transitions of Portugal and Timor-Leste.

© The Author(s) 2021

R. Graça FeijóPresidents in Semi-Presidential RegimesPalgrave Studies in Presidential Politicshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-53180-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Presidential Republics with “Moderating Power”

Rui Graça Feijó^{1, 2}

(1)

CES—Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

(2)

IHC—Institute for Contemporary History, NOVA University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book’s purpose: to discuss the emergence and performance of semi-presidential regimes with “moderating powers” vested in their presidents, and their contribution to democratic transitions and consolidation. The intellectual origins of “moderating power” are traced to Benjamin Constant, and the suggestion for its use in modern times to the work of Maurice Duverger. A justification for the choice of Portugal—a pioneer in the choice of semi-presidentialism in the Third Wave of Democratization—and Timor-Leste—a country that once was a Portuguese colony which emerged as an independent nation in the beginning of the twenty-first century—is presented, based on a discussion of the “diffusion model” of Lusophone constitutionalism. The chapter concludes with theoretical and methodological considerations that underpin this empirical study.

Keywords

Presidential republicsSemi-presidentialismModerating powerBenjamin ConstantMaurice DuvergerPortugalTimor-Leste

End Abstract

Modern Democratic Republics and Their Variation

Modern democratic republics all share the fact that their head of state is an elected president. As Jean Blondel has argued, “a little over two hundred years ago, in Philadelphia, an entirely new instrument of political leadership was invented: the leadership of a national president” (2015: viii). Henceforth, presidents play a critical role in the political landscape as they are bestowed with “universal visibility” which helps those regimes in their quest for legitimacy (Blondel 2015: 9). It is therefore justified to devote analytical efforts to elucidate the role discharged by presidents in the more than 130 countries which are, in one form or another, examples of “presidential republics”. Even though political regimes are more complex than the single issue of presidents, and require that relations between presidents and other actors be considered, singling out presidents as an analytical focus offers a privileged window through which to engage the intricacies of actual political models. Also, the requisite of democracy is relevant. Not all presidential republics are democratic polities, and those that fall outside this classification present specific problems that will not be addressed in this volume.¹

The status, functions, competences and powers of presidents vary enormously. Political scientists have devoted much effort to analysing this diversity, and attempting to categorize its main features by means of creating clusters around which some theoretical models gain substance. “No categorization is more influential than the tripartite distinction between presidentialism, parliamentarism and semi-presidentialism” (Cheibub et al. 2013: 2).

Presidentialism emerged with the independence of the USA and the promulgation of its constitution in 1789. It prescribes that presidents head the executive power. They are elected by popular vote for a fixed term in parallel to the term of the Congress vested with legislative powers. Both executive and legislative powers are independent of each other and discharge their mandates separately. The USA is the prototypical presidentialist example, which is widely emulated in Latin America.

Parliamentarian republics all have their presidents indirectly elected by the legislative chambers or by specially convened assemblies of officers whose legitimacy derives from the polls. This is the case of the German Federal Republic or Italy. Presidents do not normally exercise executive power, which is entrusted to a prime minister or chancellor responsible before the legislative branch. The legislative branch is the central element of the political system. Historically, several countries who adopted this system had previous experiences with liberal, constitutional monarchies, replacing the hereditary head of state by an elected ruler whose powers are predominantly ceremonial. It was the case, among others, of the French Third Republic (1870–1940) or the Portuguese First Republic (1910–1926).

Semi-presidentialism is a latecomer to the realm of democratic republics, emerging in Europe after the end of World War I (Germany’s Weimar Republic is regarded among the first examples alongside Finland). It is now generally considered that this political system exists “where there is a directly elected (or popularly elected) fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet who are collectively responsible to the legislature” which is also elected by direct polling (Elgie 2011: 22). However, the precise definition of semi-presidentialism was long a contentious issue.

Maurice Duverger was a pioneer in proposing the novel concept in the 1970s (Duverger 1978). In a seminal article published in English in 1980 he suggested that two objective criteria—the independent elections of the president and the parliament, and the dependence of the prime minister on the legislative—be accompanied by a third, subjective element: the powers of the president should be “considerable” (Duverger 1980). The inclusion of a highly subjective element made it difficult to operationalize the concept for the purposes of comparative politics. When Robert Elgie proposed that the definition be reduced to the two core, objective elements—a move widely accepted among his peers—the question of presidential powers did not evaporate: it returned in the form of sub-types of the semi-presidential system. Semi-presidentialism is thus a broad umbrella under which a variety of political solutions for the question of presidential powers and the relationships between presidents and prime ministers are possible.

Elgie’s proposal permitted the reconsideration of Shugart and Carey’s model (1992), admitting that premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism are two possible faces of the same general system. Under the initial vision of its authors, this was not clearly the case, as shown by Elgie in his “intelectual history” of these concepts (2020). However, advances in political science since the early 1990s have been considerable, and “[t]his is now the state of the art when it comes to identifying semi-presidential regimes” (Elgie 2020: 17). Although this distinction has met considerable applause, many scholars have ventured to propose a variety of other possibilities, many of which based on empirical features of extant regimes (e.g. Novais 2007, 2010), and discuss the variability that can be found under the global umbrella. Among them, Maurice Duverger once again made important suggestions.

Considering that in France the party system is organized around presidential candidates (Duverger 1996: 510)—a feature that is by no means a rule in other countries—Duverger admits that under semi-presidentialism there may occur one of three situations: (i) the president is the leader of the parliamentary majority; (ii) the president is the leader of the parliamentary opposition to the prime minister, generating a specific form of divided government that, in the case of semi-presidentialism, has been termed “cohabitation”; or (iii) the president “has no partisan majority” (Duverger 1996: 515–517).² The third possibility is compatible with what has been known as “independent presidents” who are present in several countries, and has important consequences for the ways in which the system operates. In another piece seldom quoted, Duverger suggests that the role of presidents may, in some instances, be framed by the notion of “moderating power that Benjamin Constant attributed to constitutional monarchs” (Duverger 1992: 903).

It seems possible to reconcile these two important ideas, and consider the possibility that under semi-presidentialism a cluster of cases may be formed around the idea of presidents entrusted with “moderating power” discharging their functions with a significant degree of independence towards parliamentary party politics. This book takes as its grounding hypothesis the idea that the realm of presidents may be distinct from the intervention of political parties in parliamentary life, and that presidents need not be associated with executive power when an alternative model can be put forward to render the specificity of their status.

Duverger’s ideas will be put to the test using the empirical cases of Portugal and Timor-Leste. Before justifying the choice of these two countries, this introduction will now offer a brief discussion of Constant’s concept of “moderating power”.

Retrieving Old Ideas: Benjamin Constant and the Notion of “Moderating Power”

Benjamin Constant was a Swiss-born French politician, philosopher and novelist. He is currently regarded as a major figure in the birth of French liberalism, prolific in the years between the end of the Ancien Régime and the 1830 Revolution (Holmes 1984). His political philosophy has been envisaged as “a synthesis and a transformation of the two deepest reflections of the French 18^th century, those of Montesquieu and Rousseau”. (Todorov 1997: 31). Outstanding for our purposes is his critique of Montesquieu theory of the separation of powers, which he believed was insufficient to meet the needs of a modern state. Whereas Montesquieu distinguished the three classical branches of government, Constant added what he termed “pouvoir preservateur”, “pouvoir moderateur” or “pouvoir neutre”. His most comprehensive treatment of the subject appeared in his Réflections sur les Constitutions of 1814 where he explained:

The three political powers, as they have been known so far, are three branches that must cooperate, each one in a distinctive manner, to the general movement. But when these branches cross paths, and produce shocks or try to break one another, a force is required that returns them to their rightful places. This force cannot issue from any one of those branches, because that would allow it to destroy the others. This force must be external to the three, and must be neutral in a way, so that its action can be applied wherever it is deemed necessary, an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Presidential Republics with “Moderating Power”
• 2. The Emergence of Presidential Republics in Portugal and Timor-Leste
• 3. Electing Presidents with “Moderating Power”
• 4. What Do Presidents Do with “Moderating Power”?
• 5. “Moderating Power” and Partisan Presidents: Two Empirical Cases
• 6. The “Moderating Power” of Presidents: Rex regnat sed non gubernat
• Back Matter