Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Executive government
This distinguishes parliamentary regimes from presidential systems, in which a
government cannot be dissolved with a legislative vote.
While prime ministers may be influential in the selection of ministers, they
may not enjoy an absolute right of appointment. Instead, appointments depend on
a combination of (1) convention, either within political regimes or parties, and/
or (2) raw numbers, such as when a coalition of parties forms government and
ministerial positions must be negotiated between partners. Finally, while the prime
minister is the leader of the government in parliament, she is not the head of state.
Hybrid systems
To make matters more confusing, the executive–legislative systems of some
countries are hybrids: either semi-presidential or semi-parliamentary systems. 2
Semi-presidential systems (e.g. France) are similar to presidential systems, but with
some parliamentary characteristics. The president and the legislature are separately
elected, and the parliament appoints the prime minister. In this model, presidents
and prime ministers share executive powers, and the actual practice of politics can
be significantly shaped by whether or not the president’s party has a majority in the
legislature.
Recently, some scholars have argued that we should recognise the existence of
semi-parliamentary systems. 3 Semi-parliamentary systems resemble parliamentary
systems,butthewaythelegislatureandtheexecutiverelatetoeachothermeans
that the upper and lower chambers can pursue different democratic aims. Put
another way, semi-parliamentary systems are executive–legislative systems where
the legislature is divided into two equally legitimate parts, but the survival of the
executive only depends upon the confidence of one part of the legislature. In
Australia, only the lower house must supply confidence for the Cabinet. The Senate,
which has near equal powers, can and does align itself to different democratic
aims. 4 This makes it different from parliamentary systems like the UK and Canada.
It also may go some way to explaining why conflicts between the House and the
Senate endlessly circle around whether or not the Senate’s use of its constitutional
powers is legitimate. It is! 5
In authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regimes, we may recognise the institutional
features of the democratic executive–legislative regimes described above,
but the essential practices, norms and beliefs that sustain them may be absent,
changing the nature of governance again.
2 Duverger 1980; Ganghof 2017.
3 Ganghof 2017.
4 Ganghof, Eppner and Pörschke 2018.
5 Taflaga 2018.
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