Presidents, Prime Ministers, Parties, and Mandate-Representation: A Global Test

Abstract: How does presidentialism affect democratic representation, both in theory and in practice? In this paper, part of a larger book project, we build on our previous research (Samuels and Shugart 2003), which argued that all else equal, presidentialism impedes representation based on prospective government “mandates. ” Inspired by and building on research on Latin America by Susan Stokes (2001), here we empirically test the hypothesis that presidentialism works against prospective mandates by exploring the incidence of “policy-switching ” under different democratic constitutional formats: presidentialism, semi-presidentialism, and parliamentarism. We compare the campaign promises and enacted policies before and after every democratic election around the world between 1978 and 2002 (N=384), and we confirm our hypothesis: on this measure at least, mandate-representation is far less likely under presidentialism, in particular under minority government. We explore the implications of our findings for theories of democratic representation through political parties.