Thomas Sedelius

Two Decades of Semi-Presidentialism : Issues of Intra-Executive Conflict in Central and Eastern Europe 1991-2011

Semi-presidentialism has become an increasingly popular form of government worldwide and has emerged as the most common regime type in Central and Eastern Europe and among the post-Soviet states. An often identified – although rarely empirically addressed – peril of semi-presidentialism is the risk of intra-executive struggles between the president and the prime minister. This study analyses the trend and issues of intra-executive conflicts in eight semi-presidential (premier–presidential and president–parliamentary) countries in Central and Eastern Europe: Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. By utilising expert survey data as well as indicators derived from documentary and literature analysis, 76 instances of intra-executive (president–cabinet) pairs between 1991 and 2011 are examined. The results show that intra-executive conflict has been a frequently occurring phenomenon under both types of semi-presidentialism, and one that has persisted at similar levels throughout the post-communist era. In addition, we unexpectedly find that the character of conflicts have only slightly changed from being predominantly power struggles over formal rules and competences to being more issue-specific and policy-oriented.

Towards Presidential Rule in Ukraine: Hybrid Regime Dynamics Under Semi-Presidentialism

Towards Presidential Rule in Ukraine: Hybrid Regime Dynamics Under Semi-Presidentialism This article sets out to analyse recent regime developments in Ukraine in relation to semi-presidentialism. The article asks: to what extent and in what ways theoretical arguments against semi-presidentialism (premier-presidential and president-parliamentary systems) are relevant for understanding the changing directions of the Ukrainian regime since the 1990s? The article also reviews the by now overwhelming evidence suggesting that President Yanukovych is turning Ukraine into a more authoritarian hybrid regime and raises the question to what extent the president-parliamentary system might serve this end. The article argues that both kinds of semi-presidentialism have, in different ways, exacerbated rather than mitigated institutional conflict and political stalemate. The return to the president-parliamentary system in 2010 - the constitutional arrangement with the most dismal record of democratisation - was a step in the wrong direction. The premier-presidential regime was by no means ideal, but it had at least two advantages. It weakened the presidential dominance and it explicitly anchored the survival of the government in parliament. The return to the 1996 constitution ties in well with the notion that President Viktor Yanukovych has embarked on an outright authoritarian path.

Unravelling semi-presidentialism: democracy and government performance in four distinct regime types

ABSTRACT Do semi-presidential regimes perform worse than other regime types? Semi-presidentialism has become a preferred choice among constitution makers worldwide. The semi-presidential category contains anything but a coherent set of regimes, however. We need to separate between its two subtypes, premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism. Following Linz’s argument that presidentialism and semi-presidentialism are less conducive to democracy than parliamentarism a number of studies have empirically analysed the functioning and performance of semi-presidentialism. However, these studies have investigated the performance of semi-presidential subtypes in isolation from other constitutional regimes. By using indicators on regime performance and democracy, the aim of this study is to examine the performance of premier-presidential and president-parliamentary regimes in relation to parliamentarism and presidentialism. Premier-presidential regimes show performance records on a par with parliamentarism and on some measures even better. President-parliamentary regimes, on the contrary, perform worse than all other regime types on most of our included measures. The results of this novel study provide a strong call to constitution makers to stay away from president-parliamentarism as well as against the idea of thinking about semi-presidentialism as a single and coherent type of regime.

Inspection of social services in Sweden : a comparative analysis of the use and adjustment of standards

Abstract State supervision – based on different kinds of standard-setting components and sanctions – has increasingly been regarded as one of the most important safeguards for promoting the quality of, and public confidence in state-regulated activities. In several countries, there have been a number of organizational changes and changes in instrument design aiming to improve the effectiveness of supervision within the social service sector. However, little attention has been given to the impact of different standard designs on supervision. The aim of this study is to empirically contribute to a broadened understanding of how standards in supervision are designed, and what implications the design has on the effectiveness of social service supervision. In this study, we employ a systematic and comparative analysis of the content (in terms of input, process, output and outcome aspects) and precision (low, medium and high) of 186 standards used in completed state supervisory decisions within two different types of social work: Investigation, Assessment and Decision-Making (IAD); and Treatment Work (TW) in Sweden during 2012. Contrary to expectations based on a supervision system ideal, the findings show that outcome aspects, i.e. factors related to long-term client effects, are rarely used and not more so in TW than in IAD supervision. In addition, the analysis of standard precision indicates that supervision of TW cannot identify deficiencies related to complex and subjectively experienced aspects to any greater extent than IAD. The overall results indicate that the supervisory instrument is primarily adapted to IAD-supervision, but is less suited to optimally covering central aspects of TW.