Democracy as a cause of semi-presidential regimes: On reverse causality between democracy and semi-presidential establishment

Abstract

This article re-examines the relationship between democracy and semi-presidential regimes. While numerous scholars have traced the effects of semi-presidential regimes on democracy, few have addressed the risk of reverse causality, namely, that democracy influences the establishment of semi-presidential regimes. This article uses statistical analyses to test whether the level of democracy in a country affects its choice of semi-presidential regime subtype: a premier–presidential or a president–parliamentary. Including all semi-presidential regimes from 1919 until 2015 and controlling for other conditions such as colonial legacy, the level of development and regime diffusion, our results confirm the hypothesis. The higher the level of democracy – the higher the probability of a premier–presidential regime. Our results underline that democracy is a highly influential cause of the type of semi-presidential regime chosen, a conclusion that places a question mark on the self-evident use of the semi-presidential subtypes as an independent variable.