Contextual Determinants of Electoral System Choice - Ã bo Akademi

according to Lijphart’s definitions (1992b: 2-3), is that presidential heads ofgovernment are popularly elected and parliamentary heads of government areselected, in a variety of different ways, by the legislature. The third fundamentaldifference is that parliamentary regimes have collective or collegial executives,whereas presidential regimes have one-person, non-collegial executives. Incontrast to a relatively high degree of collegiality in parliamentary decisionmaking,the members of presidential cabinets are mere advisers and subordinatesof the president. Although some scholars argue that these are not sufficient criteriaof presidentialism and parliamentarism, most authors agree that these three criteriaare fundamental dimensions of the basic regime types (e.g. Sartori 1994: 83-84;Shugart and Carey 1992: 19; Verney 1959).A number of countries combine features of presidentialism and parliamentarism,thereby constituting hybrid, usually called semi-presidential forms of government.According to Sartori (1994: 131-132), a governmental system is semi-presidentialif the following characteristics apply. First, the president is elected directly orindirectly by popular vote for a fixed term of office. Second, the president sharesthe executive power with a prime minister. Third, the president worksindependently of the legislature but his not entitled to govern alone. Fourth, theprime minister and his cabinet are subjected to parliamentary confidence. Fifth, thedual authority structure allows for different balances and shifting prevalences ofpower within the executive. C. Anckar prefers a minimal definition, prescribingthat “there is a dual authority structure” and that “executive powers are shared bya president (…) and a prime minister, who is responsible to parliament” (2003: 4).Shugart and John M. Carey (1992: 23-25) have suggested a separation of semipresidentialsystems into two categories, premier-presidentialism and presidentparliamentarism,depending on the power balance between the prime minister andthe president. Sartori (1994: 133) rejects this proposal since the premierpresidentialcategory is very wide, leaving the president-parliamentary categorywith only a few, rather dubious cases. My classification of semi-presidentialregimes builds upon the definition by Sartori.These are the democratic forms of government. Authoritarian regimes cannot beclassified according to this categorization. The parliamentary, semi-presidentialand presidential models cannot work properly if basic democratic elements arelacking. In the Derbyshire (1999: 46) handbooks, one-party regimes are subdivided135