Perilous presidentialism or precarious power-sharing? Hybrid regime dynamics in Myanmar

ABSTRACT

Although Myanmar's transition from military rule has been thoroughly studied, research into the evolving presidential system is lacking. This article maps Myanmar's unique hybrid form of presidentialism and characterises executive-legislative relations between 2012 and 2017. It not only examines institutions themselves but also explores how actors within them have acted and shifted strategically. It is argued that elite-behaviour determines how institutions work. Myanmar's 2008 constitution imposed by the military established a hybrid presidential system with a formally powerful president. The first phase under President Thein Sein saw competitive yet cooperative executive-legislative relations between President Thein Sein and the ambitious House Speaker Shwe Mann, both members of the former military regime. However, this power-sharing arrangement of former members of the military regime became increasingly fragile with the rise of Aung San Suu Kyi and her attempt to change the 2008 constitution. After the election victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the passage of the state counsellor law, a de facto semi-presidential system was established – Burmese style. Since then, the frontline has been between the civilian and military parts of the administration.     

Institutions and the stabilization of party systems in the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe

Most explanations of party system stability focus on the strength of mass-elite linkages. We highlight the role of institutions, focusing on how electoral rules and elected institutions, especially the presidency, impact elites' incentives to coordinate on a stable set of parties or to form new parties, thus affecting electoral volatility. Using Central and Eastern European elections data, we find that directly elected presidents increase volatility and that presidential power magnifies this effect. Absent a directly elected president, high district magnitude is associated with increased volatility, but district magnitude dampens the impact of an elected president on volatility; hence, our findings underscore the interactive impact of institutions on party systems. We also find evidence that bicameralism and concurrence of presidential and parliamentary elections decrease electoral volatility. Our model not only explains persistently high electoral volatility in Eastern Europe, but the extreme stability of Western European party systems.     

The politics of vice-presidential selection in Latin America

It has become common for presidential candidates in Latin America to pick running-mates from outside of their own political parties in the form of political independents or politicians from other parties. As witnessed in several recent cases, this has added a new dynamic to Latin American presidentialism, not least in situations of political crisis. Drawing on a new database, the present paper enquires into the factors that may lead prospective presidents to select such “external vice-presidents”. The findings show that the logics behind selecting either a politician from another party or a political independent as running-mate differ. While the size of the presidential candidate's own party explains the decision to select vice-presidential candidate from another party, the choice of an independent is determined by the fragmentation of the party system. Furthermore, there is evidence that previous experiences of vicepresidential succession makes the selection of an independent running-mate more likely, possibly as a attempt to guard against challenges to the future presidency. Generally, presidential hopefuls tend to pick external running-mates who lack a strong political following, which also indicates that electoral logic is often mitigated by concern for the stability of the eventual presidency.     

Organizing to rule: structure,agent, and explaining presidential management styles in Africa

Recent studies of comparative presidentialism have emphasized the importance of informal relationships between presidents and other political actors in explaining how presidents build governing coalitions. What has generally been under-investigated in the literature is how the characteristics of “presidents as agents” impact how they interact with other political actors – in particular, how presidents relate to their cabinets in terms of turnover and inclusiveness. We hypothesize that presidents who were former rebel leaders will behave very differently from presidents that do not have such backgrounds. To test our hypotheses, we collected data from 36 countries that are classified either as presidential or semi-presidential systems in Africa with 93 individual presidential administrations from 1990 to 2009. We found that presidents who were former rebel leaders were less likely to have major cabinet turnovers than other presidents. However, former rebel leaders did not have less politically inclusive cabinets (at least in partisan terms) but did have less ethnically inclusive cabinets than presidents with other backgrounds. The results suggest that agent characteristics, that is, the previous experiences of the president as a decision maker, are as important as the structural constraints he or she faces.     

Which democracies prosper? Electoral rules, form of government and economic growth

Electoral rules and form of government have important economic effects, for example on taxation and public spending. However, there are no robust results in the literature when it comes to their effect on economic growth. This paper investigates whether electoral rules and form of government affects economic growth by applying panel data techniques on a very extensive dataset. There is no robust effect of presidentialism or parliamentarism on growth. However, there is very robust evidence for a positive, and quite substantial, effect of Proportional Representation (PR) electoral rules on economic growth. This is partly due to PR systems’ propensity to generate broad-interest policies, like universal education spending, property rights protection and free-trade, rather than special interest economic policies. Also semi-proportional systems seem to enhance growth relative to plural-majoritarian systems.     

Perilous presidentialism in Southeast Asia?

ABSTRACT

Regional patterns have long been crucial to debates about presidentialism starting with the Latin American cases in which presidential systems were seen to have contributed to political instability. This special issue examines four cases of presidentialism in Southeast Asia. Both the ‘first’ wave of the presidentialism literature which focuses on ‘pure’ cases of presidentialism, and the ‘second’ wave, which concentrates on a complex mixture of presidentialism and other institutions, are relevant to Southeast Asia. Among ‘pure’ presidential systems, the Philippines appears to provide support to ‘the perils of presidentialism’ thesis given the collapse of democracy there several decades ago and periodic instability since then. But Indonesia, despite ostensibly having the additional institutional perils of multipartism, has proved stable. Among the hybrid cases of presidentialism, both Myanmar and Timor Leste have forged elite accommodation through creating presidential-style institutions, including one considered particularly unpromising for achieving political stability in the literature. Because presidentialism has been associated both with elite accommodation and stability as well as political conflict and instability, the Southeast Asia cases do not clearly demonstrate the dangers of presidentialism. They point instead to the relative lack of explanatory power of this institutional arrangement in understanding political stability.     

An empirical test of presidentialism's effect on party competition

This article argues that party competition in legislative elections is partly a function of presidential elections. Previous research on spatial competition has assumed that parties are competing in parliamentary regimes, where the only election of concern for parties and voters is the legislative election. However, in presidential regimes, presidential elections lead to relatively centrist positioning of candidates, and coattail effects from the presidential elections help shape the legislative elections. Using data from the Comparative Manifestos Project, I show that the major parties of the left and right in legislative elections are ideologically closer to each other in presidential regimes than major parties in parliamentary regimes.     

Party presidentialization in post-Suharto Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Indonesia presents an extremely rare quasi-experimental research case: the constitutional reforms and the transition to full presidentialism have effected a presidentialization of political parties that is largely in line with the changes predicted by the model of Samuels and Shugart [2010. Presidents, parties and prime ministers: How separation of powers affects party organization and behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press]. Especially the rise of the new president and his difficult relationship with his own party are testimony to this. But a closer look reveals that the model has to be adapted to Indonesian politics. Presidents have tools to forge grand coalitions and to overcome the dualism to an extent. The size and history of political parties as well as wider socio-economic changes, that is an increasing oligarchization of party organization, have to be considered. Moreover, highly personalized vehicle parties serving the interests of a presidential candidate have emerged. It follows that institutional and structural incentives combined have produced a party system consisting of different party types.     

“必要而危险”的权力:民初宪政争衡中的行政专权

每个现代宪政体系都需要面对行政专权这种"必要而危险"的权力,对于新建的共和国来说,安置行政专权更是对其宪政建构的重要挑战。从民初一系列宪法及宪法草案文本来看,由于国际环境的压力,两大阵营的政治精英在应给予行政机关较大的外交自由裁量权上达成了一定共识,但对总统的赦免权力进行制约的程度不一,在紧急命令权与紧急财政处分权等问题上更是形成了尖锐对立,并最终导向了宪法秩序的瘫痪。造成这种对立的根本原因,在于1911-1912年的"大妥协"所造成的新旧势力共治结构的不稳定性。