Representation in Presidential Systems
Representation in Presidential Systems
Contesting elections, political parties and their candidates structure the competition in offering issue choices to voters thus providing ideological shortcuts and coordination among citizens with similar policy preferences. In other words, from a substantive perspective, the knowledge of the distribution of preferences among the actors involved is indispensible to fully understand this process itself and the possible effects on policy outcomes and public policy performance. In presidential systems, however, the democratic constitutional design defines two agents of the electorate: the executive and the legislative branch. Both actors are independently elected, serve fixed terms and do not depend on each other for survival in office. Although the president has a direct mandate, the representative role of a president as his voters' agent is barely explicitly discussed. Compared to political parties, it is less clear if and how presidential preferences are affected by the system's characteristics and what that implies for issue congruence between voters' positions and those of rulers. This raises the question of how rules of political competition and bargaining systematically affect representation and policy outcomes in presidential democracies, the central concern of this project.
Previous research has established that the neglect of the president as self-contained actor who takes up policy positions independently of their parties is not plausible (Wiesehomeier and Benoit 2009). In separation of power regimes, presidents and parties have institutional and strategic incentives to position themselves individually, i.e. when voters cast separate votes for the executive and the legislative branch. Building on this research that concentrated on policy differences between the president and his own party, our project will add the third part of the triangular model of policy positioning and representation by adding the citizens to this picture. A general theoretical hypothesis is that, as the only representative elected in a national district, the president is systematically drawn towards the national median voter and thus the national median party. We will need to take a closer look into the nature of the president's electorate compared to that of legislative agents since the electoral bases of the legislative and the executive branches are "not only separate but also often distinct" (Samuels and Shugart 2006a: 18). How do these differences play out in presidential positioning? Is issue congruence between the president and his voters achieved? What does that mean for linkage strategies of presidents vis-à-vis political parties? What does that mean for coalition building common in Latin American countries? What does it imply for the performance of presidential systems?
Contesting elections, political parties and their candidates structure the competition in offering issue choices to voters thus providing ideological shortcuts and coordination among citizens with similar policy preferences. In other words, from a substantive perspective, the knowledge of the distribution of preferences among the actors involved is indispensible to fully understand this process itself and the possible effects on policy outcomes and public policy performance. In presidential systems, however, the democratic constitutional design defines two agents of the electorate: the executive and the legislative branch. Both actors are independently elected, serve fixed terms and do not depend on each other for survival in office. Although the president has a direct mandate, the representative role of a president as his voters' agent is barely explicitly discussed. Compared to political parties, it is less clear if and how presidential preferences are affected by the system's characteristics and what that implies for issue congruence between voters' positions and those of rulers. This raises the question of how rules of political competition and bargaining systematically affect representation and policy outcomes in presidential democracies, the central concern of this project.
Previous research has established that the neglect of the president as self-contained actor who takes up policy positions independently of their parties is not plausible (Wiesehomeier and Benoit 2009). In separation of power regimes, presidents and parties have institutional and strategic incentives to position themselves individually, i.e. when voters cast separate votes for the executive and the legislative branch. Building on this research that concentrated on policy differences between the president and his own party, our project will add the third part of the triangular model of policy positioning and representation by adding the citizens to this picture. A general theoretical hypothesis is that, as the only representative elected in a national district, the president is systematically drawn towards the national median voter and thus the national median party. We will need to take a closer look into the nature of the president's electorate compared to that of legislative agents since the electoral bases of the legislative and the executive branches are "not only separate but also often distinct" (Samuels and Shugart 2006a: 18). How do these differences play out in presidential positioning? Is issue congruence between the president and his voters achieved? What does that mean for linkage strategies of presidents vis-à-vis political parties? What does that mean for coalition building common in Latin American countries? What does it imply for the performance of presidential systems?
