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This chapter examines the theory and practice of the various approaches to the sharing and dividing of governing power in the Asia-Pacific. It first looks at the broad issues of executive structure and the distinction between presidential and parliamentary systems across the region, at the divergent approaches taken by Asian and Pacific states to both formal and informal practices of executive inclusion, and at the empirical relationship between these variables and broader goals of political stability. An ‘index of power-sharing’ is constructed to compare the horizontal sharing of powers over time. The experience of vertical power-sharing via measures such as federalism, devolution, and autonomy is then considered. Overall, the evidence suggests that while informal executive power-sharing practices have been relatively successful, formal requirements for inclusive cabinets have been dogged by problems.

This is a comparative introduction to elections and electoral systems in Africa. The first section is a historical overview, which points out that although elections have been an integral part of African politics since political independence, they take place with a wide range of frequencies and under very difficult political conditions. The second section discusses the types of electoral systems found: parliamentary and presidential (or semipresidential). The last section discusses the problem of compiling electoral statistics.

In Slovenia the power of the state is divided along classical lines into a legislature, an executive and a judiciary: legislative power is exercised by the parliament, comprising a National Assembly, which is the general representative house, and a National Council, which is a body representing various interests and has very limited powers; executive power is divided between the president and the government; judicial power is exercised by the ordinary courts and the Constitutional Court, which rules on the conformity of legal enactments with the constitution and the law and decides constitutional complaints and certain other matters. It is generally accepted that Slovenia has a parliamentary system in which the focus of political decision–making lies with the parliament and the government. As in most other Central and East European countries in transition, in Slovenia the formal powers of parliament remain very strong, but, unlike the pure parliamentarism that certain countries opted for, the Slovene arrangements belong more to a group that could be characterized as parliamentarism with a directly (popularly) elected (or semi‐presidential) president. The role of the president is relatively small, and is to act as the head of state, whose function or powers are mainly of a representative, initiative, and protocol nature. After an introduction discussing whether Slovenia has a parliamentary or semi‐presidential system, this chapter focuses on the actual nature and features of the position and role of the president in the context of the constitutional and political system of the Republic of Slovenia, in six further sections: National Independence and Establishment of the First President of the Republic, Parliament and Government; Historical Factors and the Events Surrounding the Formation of the Regime; The Constitutional Powers of the President, Prime Minister, and Parliament; The Nature of the Parliamentary Majority and the Relationship Between the President and the Majority; and Conclusion.

Substantial cross‐national variations have been demonstrated in political support/institutional confidence; the aim of this chapter is to investigate why these major differences between countries exist. It identifies at least three separate schools of thought seeking to explain this phenomenon: the role of cultural values, government performance, and political institutions. Comparisons are made among a broad range of political systems, drawing on the 1981–4, 1990–1 and 1995–7 World Values Surveys, the Latinobarometer and the Eurobarometer, and various support hypotheses are advanced (support for the party in government; dependence on level of democratization; differences between presidential and parliamentary systems (executive structure); variation with party system; differences between federal and unitary state structures; and variation with electoral system) and tested. The findings indicate that institutional confidence is most likely to be highest in parliamentary democracies characterized by plurality electoral systems, two‐party or moderate multi‐party systems, and unitary states, and that these relationships are confirmed even after controlling for differences in levels of economic development and post‐material values; social background and education are also related to institutional confidence, while the influence of socioeconomic status and gender are very modest. The results replicate one of the main theoretical principles of Anderson and Guillory (1997)—that winners express more confidence in the system than losers, and they also show that majoritarian institutions tend to produce greater institutional confidence than consociational arrangements.

Describes the process of institutional engineering and the consequences of the absence of a new constitution in Hungary. As a result of the amendments passed by the outgoing communist parliament following the decisions made at the Roundtable Talks, Hungary has a formally old but substantively new constitution. This evolutionary approach has been warped by the formation of a parliamentary super‐majority that can easily amend the Constitution further in order to suit its political goals. The chapter points out the shortcomings of the Hungarian Constitution, such as the lack of protection from majority tyranny and no real progress in the field of human rights protection. The chapter also emphasizes problems in the political environment in Hungary and how it affects the chances for success in adopting a formally new Constitution. Political parties in Hungary are unable to integrate, or even to convey and express the legitimate interests of non‐partisan organizations, movements, and groups.

Assembles cross‐national data to demonstrate the behavioural consequences of partisan dealignment. Without the reinforcement of habitual party ties, more voters are waiting longer to decide for whom they will vote, and in the countries where ticket splitting is possible, more are dividing their party choices. Candidate‐centred politics appears to be on the rise, although this is much more pronounced in presidential than parliamentary systems, and signifying the different style of dealignment politics, participation in campaigns and volunteer work for political parties is decreasing. In short, partisan dealignment is transforming the relationship between some voters and political parties—a relationship that was once seen as an essential element in the process of representative government.

Since the constitutional reform of 1929, Austria comes under the rubric of semi‐presidentialism as defined in this volume: alongside the chancellor (prime minister), who is fully responsible to parliament, there is a directly elected president, who appoints the government and can dismiss it, although in practical terms the president has very little accountability. Nevertheless, Austria is generally considered as a parliamentary system by leading comparativists, and indeed it is parliamentary elections rather than presidential elections that decide the distribution of power. This chapter concentrates on the post‐war period, although the interwar years are also important for understanding the gap between the large constitutional powers and limited role that presidents have actually played. It draws on the literature on the Austrian presidency, original archival work, and interviews with political actors. The different sections of the chapter are: The Historical Legacy of Introducing Semi‐Presidentialism; Constitutional Powers and Their Practical Relevance; The Presidency and Party Politics; and Conclusion.

This chapter presents a summary of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that parties are no longer central to mobilizing political participation in either established or new democracies. Parties are at their most feeble in those recently transitional democracies characterized by personalistic, candidate-centred forms of presidential politics. These countries are associated with weakly institutionalized party organizations, low levels of legislative cohesion, and undue executive encroachment on the media. Elsewhere in the recently transitional democracies, parties are showing signs of stability and institutionalization — especially, but not exclusively, in the parliamentary systems. In every case, parties make important contributions to the governance, recruitment, articulation, and aggregation functions, albeit not without challenges and constraints. To this extent, at least, it may be concluded that as in the established democracies, parties in some of the newer democracies can help facilitate a meaningful degree of popular choice and control.

In mid‐July, the revision committee turned its attention to the draft's language on the structure of government in Japan's new parliamentary system: the make‐up and powers of the Diet, the “highest organ of state power” (including the House of Representatives and House of Councillors), the executive (cabinet) and the judiciary; and explicit restrictions on the exercise of governmental power by the emperor. Ch. 15 traces the brilliant performance of Kanamori as interpreter and expositor of constitutional language.

This chapter surveys the analytical topography and introduces the conceptual framework that informs this study. Concepts from institutionalization theory and historical institutionalism are fused to create a unique lens through which to assess the process whereby Japan’s cabinet system evolved and the factors that molded its distinctive form and functions. It is posited that Japan’s cabinet system was transformed at seven critical junctures. In prewar times, significant changes followed the 1868 Meiji Restoration, the advent of party-led cabinets, and their violent demise with the “May 15th Incident.” In postwar times, American occupation planners orchestrated a dramatic reconfiguration, while significant changes followed the emergence of the “1955 system” that ushered in the Liberal Democratic Party’s protracted rule, the “shocks” of the early 1970s, the advent of coalition cabinets in 1993, and the emergence of “Twisted Diets” following the 2007 upper house elections. Consequently, Japan’s present system is the product of a developmental process that has resulted in the inability to establish a properly functioning system of cabinet government. A central lesson gleaned from this analysis is that growing democracy is not easy, and, in this regard, the Japanese case offers crucial lessons for understanding the challenges and disappointments that confront today’s developing countries.

This chapter summarizes the book’s central findings. The Kan cabinet and the governments that ruled during the “lost decades” were products of evolutionary change that resulted in a dysfunctional cabinet system. This explains the flawed response to the March 2011 disasters and the prolonged inability to right the economic ship. Japan’s inability to achieve parliamentary democracy in practice is reflected in its failure to institutionalize cabinet government. Indeed, the American military dictatorship, an activist bureaucracy, “policy tribes,” and “Twisted Diets” assured that the postwar cabinets did not perform their expected role. The distinctive organizational structures, roles, and relationships that constitute Japan’s cabinet system were forged in a matrix composed of laws, ordinances, structures, norms, and unwritten codes. Moreover, the postwar cabinet system inherited institutions, structures, personnel, and norms from an authoritarian prewar order. In sum, while postwar Japan has established a stable system of democratic governance, it has yet to produce the effective executive leadership that is needed to respond to the challenges of an advanced industrialized democracy. The evolution of Japan’s parliamentary system teaches that growing democracy is not easy and that would-be reformers must consider the institutional and historical context in which they seek to implant institutions.

This chapter considers the defence of the Duke of Buckingham. To find a ‘true cleering’, Buckingham had to make an ‘honorable satisfactory answer’ to the charges against him. The first twelve, while serious, were relatively easy to handle, but the thirteenth — his involvement in James' death — was decidedly more awkward. The duke undoubtedly held Eglisham's accusations beneath contempt, but while the Commons had avoided any direct mention of the scandalous tract, some had hinted that Buckingham might have poisoned James. Any response to the thirteenth charge would draw further attention to James' death and, inevitably, to The Forerunner. Yet because the regime desperately needed money, Buckingham had to answer the charges if the Crown were to have any hope of coaxing the parliamentary financial system back to life.

This chapter examines the forms of the constitutional conversation. The chapter argues here that various features of the European model help enhance the public visibility of constitutional courts, as well as their impact on political debates. In a parliamentary system, the legislative body is deemed to be the most representative political institution since its members are directly elected by the people, whereas the officials who occupy the other branches of government are not, as a general rule. Most Western European countries follow this pattern, though in some countries there is also a popularly elected president. France is an exception, however, because the most important figure in the country's executive branch is the prime minister supported by the parliament, not the president.

Using an experimental approach, this chapter tackles the endogeneity problem of leader effects and disentangles the relationship between political and apolitical factors in the formation of judgments on political leaders: to what extent are evaluations of leaders the product of political considerations and to what extent are they solely based on their character traits? A second objective of the chapter is to analyse the institutional effects of parliamentary and presidential elections on the influence of character assessments on vote choices. The results of three experiments conducted in France, Germany, and Sweden suggest that perceptions of character traits are heavily influenced by the political assessments of candidates. Supposedly apolitical evaluations of political leaders will then often have a political foundation. In addition, the experiments revealed an institutional effect indicating a stronger influence of leader traits in presidential elections than in parliamentary elections.