St A nto n y ’ s l o o k s at t h e w o r l d
Of Presidents and Power A St Antony’s project uncovers the ‘Presidential toolkit’ Professor Nic Cheeseman, Associate Professor in African Politics, Professor Paul Chaisty, Associate Professor in Russian Government and Professor Timothy J Power, Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies
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ontrary to early predications, many new presidential On this basis, we would argue that the tendency of previous systems in countries such as Brazil, Benin and Russia research to focus on the impact of only one variable on president’s have remained fairly stable. A recent multinational ability to manage their coalitions has significantly limited our £750,000 research project led by a team featuring two understanding of coalitional presidentialism. Work on the project St Antony’s professors and a St Antony’s affiliate is so far also demonstrates the potential for cross-regional analysis trying to understand why. to refine existing theories that are largely based on the experience Six years ago, we started to discuss the relative stability of of a small number of countries, and to develop new theoretical presidential political systems. Early seminal work by Juan Linz had frameworks to advance debates within comparative politics. suggested that the combination of presidentialism and competitive The project’s findings have proved to be of considerable elections was likely to lead to presidential deadlock and, potentially, interest to academics and policy makers alike, demonstrating regime breakdown. Yet although presidential the value of colleges like St Antony’s where systems do breakdown slightly more frequently scholars from different disciplines and regional The choice of tools than parliamentary ones, the pattern identified specializations can come together to share ideas by Linz has failed to materialise - despite the and collaborate. Initial analysis was presented can create negative fact that in many countries presidents appear to audiences comprised of both researchers and to be vulnerable because they lack a majority practitioners in Kenya, Ukraine, Russia and consequences for the in the legislature. Over lunch at St Antony’s we five cities in Brazil. An early article entitled started to discuss was why this was the case. ‘Rethinking the Presidentialism Debate’ won wider political system This raised an interesting set of questions: the GIGA Award for the best paper published Could a theory that had been developed largely in Comparative Area Studies. More recently, on the basis of the Brazilian experience explain some of the project’s findings were summarised developments in very different contexts such as Kenya and Ukraine? in a piece that was carried by the Washington Post’s widely read What are the main strategies that presidents use to manage their Monkey Cage blog. The implications of these findings for politics coalitions, and how do these vary across countries? If building cross in Africa were subsequently discussed in a full-page article that party coalitions enables presidents to maintain political stability, appeared in Kenya popular Sunday Nation newspaper. What does this have any side effects for other important democratic remains is to write up a collaborative book manuscript, and at criteria, such as accountability? These questions are important not present we are currently putting the finishing touches to a volume just because they shine a new light on executive-legislative relations provisionally entitled Coalitional Presidentialism in Comparative around the world, but also for our understanding of the process Perspective: Minority Executives in Multiparty Systems, which is of democratisation more broadly. In the 1980s, half of the world’s under contract with Oxford University Press. democracies were parliamentary. Today, two-thirds feature directly Fu r t her updates on t he project c a n be fou nd at elected presidents, and more than half of these leaders cannot form www.area-studies.ox.ac.uk/presidentialism. a majority in the legislature in the absence of a coalition. So far, the ‘Coalitional Presidentialism Project’ (or CPP for short) has gone well. The Ukrainian parliament building Creative Commons Over 350 inter views were carried out with MP in six languages across nine countries (Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia, Ukraine). Matching data on the composition of ruling coalitions, and on legislative activity, was also collected for the same cases and time periods. Although the research is ongoing, the early data suggested a number of important findings. The main contribution of the project has been to move the debate on ‘coalitional presidentialism’ forwards by examining how presidents build legislative coalitions in different regional contexts. We have been able to demonstrate that presidents around the world deploy a combination of f ive tools to ma nage their coalitions: agenda power, budgetary authority, cabinet management, partisan powers, and the exchange of favours. 9