Political scientists have long been concerned that a popularly elected presidency may destabilize competitive party systems. We develop and test a new theory holding that the impact is more immediate and severe than previously assumed. Coexisting legislative and presidential coalitions first and foremost impede the evolution of predictable party interactions at the executive level, which is the domain of the cabinet. This quality has become accessible for comparative research thanks to the concept of party system closure. Using a new dataset for all European democracies since 1848, we show that presidential elections undermine party system closure in two ways: (1) by confounding patterns of government formation (notably under powerful presidencies) and (2) by disturbing electoral/legislative politics, which in turn affect executive politics. The former, direct effect emerges as dominant from a series of panel analyses and case illustrations. These findings have important implications for current problems of constitutional design and institutional reform.

The role of the president varies between political systems, and so does public opinion on presidents. One of the most evident factors distinguishing presidents in different systems is the constitutional strength of the presidency, which should impact how presidents are perceived by the people. Public opinion on presidents has mainly been studied in the context of classical presidential regimes such as the USA and Latin American countries, and we lack systematic empirical research on presidential popularity in other regime types and in the context of the presidents’ constitutional powers. This article addresses this research gap by analysing whether the level of presidential powers explain variation in presidential popularity across different constitutional settings. Drawing on public opinion surveys and relevant contextual data from 15 countries, the results show that a higher level of presidential popularity is associated with weaker presidency and that the impact of the economy and electoral cycle is conditioned by the level of presidential powers.

This article contends that the interpretation of article 115 of the Constitution of Kenya as providing for amendatory recommendations as a form of presidential veto to legislative bills is a departure from the common negative veto to bills which was the form envisaged by the drafters of the Constitution. Moreover, it is argued that the interpretation that article 115 of the Constitution allows the president to make positive legislative recommendations which can only be overridden by two-thirds of members of the legislature has transformed the president into the most decisive player in the legislative process in Kenya. The overarching contention of this article is that allowing the president to make positive legislative recommendations that can only be overridden by two-thirds of members of the legislature goes against the goal of tempering presidential powers, which was one of the animating goals that informed the quest for constitutional change in Kenya.

This article proposes a novel theoretical framework to account for the combined effects of regime type and patterns of executive authority on legislative party unity. We argue that broad presidential legislative powers favour coordination between the president and legislative parties under pure presidentialism, whereas under semi-presidentialism, strong presidents increase the potential for intra-executive conflict, submitting parties to cross-cutting pressures. We expect higher levels of legislative authority to increase party unity under presidentialism but decrease under semi-presidentialism. Moreover, when presidents are endowed with limited legislative authority, semi-presidentialism produces higher levels of party unity than presidentialism, but for sufficiently high levels of legislative authority there should be no difference across regime types. Our analyses of 1,586 pooled observations for 72 democracies from all regions of the world using the V-Dem measure of party cohesion demonstrate that presidential legislative authority, in combination with regime type, is indeed a key predictor of party unity.

Influences of the Movimento das Forças Armadas, of earlier Portuguese and of foreign constitutions on Portuguese Constitution of 1976 — A semi-presidential system with originally four political powers: president, parliament, government and Revolutionary Council — Progressive ascendancy of the presidency in practice between 1976–1982 — Constitutional amendment of 1982: Revolutionary Council abrogated, parliamentary powers strengthened, presidential powers reduced — Presidential role in practice not declining, though depending on the political party power constellation — Influence of president as political moderator and institutional regulator at the lowest when political colours of president and parliamentary majority match — President not conducting, directly or indirectly, the country’s general policy.