The field of comparative presidentialism has evolved considerably over the years. Although early work focused on the “perils of presidentialism”, more recently scholars have noted the important role that presidents play in building workable parliamentary coalitions. Indeed, “coalitional presidentialism” is now seen as a solution to the perils pointed out by Linz (1990) and Mainwaring (1993). Interestingly, although this suggests that presidential management style (long a focus of scholars of US presidential politics—see Johnson, 1974; Barber 1985; Herman and Preston 1994; George and George 1998), should be an important consideration for studies of comparative presidentialism, this has not generally been the case. However, a president’s management style, or how the president organizes advisory systems (Herman and Preston 1994, 76), would have important implications for how presidents relate to others and how they in turn build coalitions in new democracies.
In this paper, we focus on developing an explanation for different presidential management styles in systems in transition in post communist politics and Africa. Building upon Johnson’s (1974) path breaking analysis of presidential management in the United States (where he identified three basic styles: Competitive, collegial, and formalistic systems) and the work of Herman and Preston (1994) that identifies four types (formal control/process focus; formal control/problem focus; informal control/process focus; informal control, problem focus) we first develop a theoretical framework to explain the development of different types of management styles, particularly whether management styles are the result of policy dilemmas and political contexts (Johnson 1974) or the result of the individual characteristics of the president’s themselves (George and George 1998). We then develop a comparative data set on presidential management styles of the chief executives across 45 presidential and semi presidential systems, particularly in the first administrations after the introduction of competitive elections, and test the theoretical framework we developed.
