Semi-Presidential Policy-Making in Europe

This book explores how power-sharing between the president and the prime minister works in semi-presidential regimes. In contrast to much of the existing comparative work on semi-presidentialism, the book emphasizes the role of institutional coordination at the most concrete level of executive policy-making, and asks how institutional coordination between the president and prime minister influences presidential activism and the balance of power within the executive. The authors develop a tentative framework embedded in institutionalism and based on four strands of research – semi-presidentialism, public administration, political leadership, and foreign policy analysis – which is subsequently applied to the cases of Lithuania, Romania and Finland. Given the political challenges facing many semi-presidential countries, the study ultimately seeks to identify institutional solutions that facilitate power-sharing and successful policy-making.

Tapio Raunio is Professor of Political Science at Tampere University, Finland. His research interests include legislatures and political parties, the Europeanization of domestic politics, semi-presidentialism, and the Finnish political system. He has published articles in many leading journals, including European Journal of Political Research , Journal of Common Market Studies , Party Politics , Scandinavian Political Studies , and West European Politics .

Thomas Sedelius is Professor of Political Science at Dalarna University, Sweden. His research focuses on political institutions in new democracies and transitional regimes. His previous work on semi-presidentialism has appeared in leading journals such as British Journal of Political Science , Democratization , and Government and Opposition . In 2015, his article with Olga Mashtaler “Two Decades of Semi-Presidentialism” received the East European Politics Prize.