New Directions in Comparative Presidentialism: Cross-Regional Perspectives

An authentically comparative body of research on presidentialism did not emerge in political science until the 1990s, yet the past twenty years have produced remarkable advances in the literature. Various “perils of presidentialism”, particularly the idea that presidentialism is vulnerable in multiparty environments, have been questioned on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Numerous factors have been proposed to explain the surprising sustainability of presidentialism, particularly coalition formation and the constitutional powers of presidents. The debate is shifting toward new dependent variables, away from simple regime survival and toward the quality of democracy, especially horizontal and vertical accountability. Yet the more recent literature has often been univariate (looking at one institutional variable to the exclusion of others), has frequently been divorced from local context (ignoring national histories, cultures, and trajectories), has generally overlooked the role of informal institutions, and has occasionally staked generalizations on the experience of a single world region, typically Latin America. This workshop aims to redress these imbalances by inviting second-generation comparative studies of presidentialism in which the dependent variable is no longer regime breakdown and in which the theoretical content invites rich cross-regional comparisons. We are particularly interested in comparative studies of presidential leadership, coalitional politics in multiparty contexts, and the internal organization of the presidency itself. We encourage contributions on presidential democracy in Africa, Asia and postcommunist Europe. The workshop aims to move us forward to the next phase of theory building, in which we can interrogate the tradeoffs between governability and accountability in new presidential democracies.