Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: With the resurgence of democratization in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere since late 1970s, how to craft institutions to sustain democracy has been a primary concern for politicians and scholars (Di Palma 1990; Diamond 1997; Diamond and Gunther 2001; Lijphart and Waisman 1996; Mainwaring and Scully 1995). One of the keen topics is about regime type (parliamentary vs. presidential systems) and democratic continuity. While much of the scholarship blames presidentialism for policy-making gridlocks in the separation-of-power systems, which usually lead to political crises and instabilities in transforming societies (Burns 1963; Cox and Kernell 1991; Edwards et. al 1997; Shugart 1995; Sundquist 1986, 1992; Valenzuela and Linz 1994), some scholars link presidentialism with fragmented party systems, a main cause of democratic breakdowns (Mainwaring 1992-1993). That is, presidentialism's conduciveness to fragmented party systems makes the separation-of-power system more vulnerable than parliamentary systems to political crises in case of policy-making deadlocks. Much of the empirical scholarship of presidentialism and party systems, however, has concentrated on the impact of presidential elections on the number of parties. Basically, presidentialism is thought to help aggregate political parties because of the coattail effects of nationwide presidential campaigns and elections on legislative elections (Miller 1955; Press 1958). More recently, proximity (concurrence) between presidential and legislative elections is found to enhance the coattail effect of presidential elections and thus promote big parties (Cox 1997; Neto and Cox 1997; Mainwaring 1990, 1991, and 1992-1993; Shugart and Carey 1992). Also, plurality presidential election formulas are found to better serve the big parties than majority run-off rules (Jones 1994; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997). However, little empirical analysis has examined the relationship between presidential legislative powers and party systems although evidence has identified the political problems in the legislative processes in the separation-of-power systems. Moreover, case selection in conventional empirical studies is basically limited to advanced democracies and some Latin American countries. This paper thus tries to empirically analyze the relationship between presidentialism and party aggregation more systematically and with a focus on presidential power and party aggregation. First, including all democracies, the systems that have a positive Polity score (Gurr and Jagger 1998; Marshall 2002), in this analysis, this paper will re-evaluate the impact of regime type on the number of parties. Second, including all the presidential systems in both old and emerging democracies, this paper will re-test the relationship between presidential elections and the number of parties. Third and most important, this paper will empirically examine the consequences of presidential legislative powers for party systems, not only analyzing the relationship between levels of presidential legislative power and party aggregation but also providing an in-depth inspection of the impact of specific presidential powers including veto, partial veto, exclusive legislation, budgetary power, decree power, and referenda power on party aggregation. It begins by reviewing theoretical and empirical literature on presidentialism and the number of political parties. Next, it discusses the dataset, research design, and operationalization of variables, including measurement of presidential legislative powers. Last, it presents and analyzes regression results.

Publication Type: Proceeding
Abstract: In this paper, we explore which political institutions, besides the electoral formula, shape the presidential party system. We find that the relationship between horizontal centralization, operationalized as the powers of the president, and the presidential party system, operationalized as the effective number of presidential candidates, is significant but non-linear. Specifically, over a moderate range of presidential power, increasing presidential power is associated with fewer presidential candidates. Where presidents are extremely weak or extremely powerful, however, this relationship is reversed: in these circumstances, increasing presidential power actually produces a larger number of candidates. We further demonstrate that the substantive effect of horizontal centralization on the effective number of candidates is more than twice as large as the effect of the electoral formula—heretofore the most discussed determinant of the effective number of presidential candidates. Our findings with respect to vertical centralization are mixed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We argue that both presidential elections and house elections are a function of presidential campaign television advertising. Whereas the former may appear obvious, we contend that a Zalleresque theory/model of opinion formation suggests that presidential campaign advertising can effect the number and content of considerations associated with the major party labels, considerations which voters then sample when assessing house candidates. Using a relatively new dataset regarding the number of presidential television advertisements aired by Designated Market Area (DMA) during the 1996 presidential campaign, we present an aggregate level analysis of the effects of presidential campaign television advertising on presidential and house vote share. We find that ads do not effect vote share as predicted once we control for state level effects. We discuss possible reasons for these null results and future avenues of research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The aim of this paper is to study the
effects of the presidential
power on government formation process in semi-presidentialism.
Upon realizing that there exist two qualitatively different
institutional arrangements with regard to the government formation
in semi-presidentialism, I present two models of government
formation process in semi-presidentialism: premier-presidentialism
and president-parliamentarism. By comparing equilibrium results
drawn from two different models of semi-presidential regimes, I
show that there exist multiple equilibria under certain exogenous
conditions in which traditional bargaining theories, which do not
assume the existence of the president with some power to influence
on the bargaining process, predict a unique equilibrium; that
there exist an equilibrium outcome in which the presidential party
is systematically advantaged by the presidential power; and that
the institutional arrangements of president-parliamentary system
have negative implications on democracy in the sense that the
resulting governments' ideal policy positions are more distant from
the median party's ideal policy position under some exogenous
conditions that those in premier-presidential system. president can
defend his or her preferred ideal policy without
need of winning parliamentary confidence.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project specifies a model that reflects micro level processes to explain the surge and decline in approval. This project relies on nightly news coverage to test the effect of the media and its impact on presidential approval ratings.