Original version
Political research quarterly. 2017, 70 (4), 803-817, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1065912917716334
Abstract
Government formation in parliamentary democracies is supposed to occur within the parliament. Yet, outside actors, such as the head of state, may formally or informally influence which party holds the position of Prime Minister. The expansion in the number of countries combining parliamentarism and popularly elected presidents raised the concern that the latter, endowed with their own source of democratic legitimacy, would interfere in government formation in particularly egregious ways. This paper investigates whether presidents in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies wield systematic influence on the PM party choice. Using data for 21 democracies since 1946, we show that they do, but only under very specific conditions: when they are popularly elected, when they are constitutionally allowed to select a prime minister designate and, fundamentally, when power in parliament is dispersed among a relatively large number of parties. Thus, certain presidents play a role in government formation only when multiple outcomes are more or less equally viable. For this reason, we argue, concerns about undue presidential interference in parliamentary democracies are unfounded.