The Presidentialization of Politics: A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies
Thomas Poguntke and Paul Webb
Abstract
Shows that the politics of democratic societies is moving towards a presidentialized working mode, even in the absence of formal institutional changes. These developments can be explained by a combination of long-term structural changes in modern politics and societies’ contingent factors that fluctuate over time. While these contingent, short-term factors relate to the personalities of office holders, the overall political agenda, and the majority situation in parliament, there are several structural factors that are relatively uniform across modern nations. First, the internationalization of ... More
Shows that the politics of democratic societies is moving towards a presidentialized working mode, even in the absence of formal institutional changes. These developments can be explained by a combination of long-term structural changes in modern politics and societies’ contingent factors that fluctuate over time. While these contingent, short-term factors relate to the personalities of office holders, the overall political agenda, and the majority situation in parliament, there are several structural factors that are relatively uniform across modern nations. First, the internationalization of modern politics (which is particularly pronounced within the European Union) has led to an ‘executive bias’ of the political process that has strengthened the role of political top elites vis-à-vis their parliamentary groups and/or their parties. Their predominance has been amplified further by the vastly expanded steering capacities of state machineries, which have severely reduced the scope of effective parliamentary control. At the same time, the declining stability of political alignments has increased the proportion of citizens whose voting decisions are not constrained by long-standing party loyalties. In conjunction with the mediatization of politics, this has increased the capacity of political leaders to bypass their party machines and to appeal directly to voters.
Keywords:
democratic societies,
democratic theory,
electoral process,
European Union,
governance,
internationalization,
leadership,
parliament,
political agenda,
presidentialization,
State machinery
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2005 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780199252015 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2005 |
DOI:10.1093/0199252017.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Thomas Poguntke, editor
Professor of Political Science, Keele University
Author Webpage
Paul Webb, editor
Professor of Politics, University of Sussex
Author Webpage
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