Presidentialism and legislative fragmentation: Beyond coattail effects

Abstract

Using data from a nearly comprehensive set of the world’s electoral democracies, 1992–2014, this article empirically evaluates the impact of presidentialism upon legislative fragmentation. The analysis demonstrates that the impact is strong, consistent across a wide variety of political contexts, and conditioned by the type of presidential regime, the scope of presidential powers, electoral system effects, and essential party system properties. While much of the reasoning regarding the interplay between presidentialism and legislative fragmentation has been traditionally focused on short-term coattail effects of presidential elections, this study shows that these effects are real, but they are insufficient to make a significant impact upon the parameter of crucial importance for the functioning of presidential regimes: the number of parties in the legislature. The main impact of presidentialism is systemic, stemming from its tendency to restrict the number of parties to a limited set of viable competitors for the presidential prize.