Acceso usuarios
Lee Savage
How and when do presidents inuence the government formation process in semi-presidentialsystems? Presidents have both a formal role and vested interest in the formation of the cabinet, yet theirinuence has been overlooked in studies of the duration of government formation. In this article, it is arguedthat the president’s inuence over government formation can be explained by his or her perceived legitimacyto act in the bargaining process and their partisanship. In this rst case, it is argued that the legitimacy to actderives from a president’s constitutional powers and more powerful presidents simplify cabinet bargaining,leading to shorter government formation periods. In the second case, it is proposed that presidents andtheir parties have overlapping preferences. Therefore, when the president’s party holds greater bargainingpower in government formation negotiations, the bargaining process is less uncertain and less complex.Thus, government formation processes will be shorter. Using survival models and data from 26 Europeandemocracies, both propositions are conrmed by the analysis. The results enhance our understanding ofthe dynamics of cabinet bargaining processes and contribute to the wider study of semi-presidentialismand executive-legislative relations. One broader implication of these results is that the president’s partyafliation is an important motivation for them as political actors; this contrasts with some previous studieswhich conceive of presidents as non-partisan actors.
