Who’s in Charge? Presidents, Assemblies, and the Political Control of Semipresidential Cabinets

Abstract

This article develops an account of who controls Europe’s semipresidential cabinets politically. The authors ask which actors negotiate cabinet composition and what shapes who is in charge of the cabinet—questions that have been the focus of key debates about the political consequences of this regime type since Duverger. This article proposes and tests a principal—agent account of semipresidential governments as controlled by the president and assembly parties whose constitutional and electoral authority and ability to act on behalf of the voters critically shapes their influence on the government. The authors test their argument using data on 218 cabinets in 13 Eastern and Western European semipresidential regimes (1945—2005).