Does the constitution matter? Semi-presidentialism and the origin of hegemonic personalist regimes

Abstract

This study examines hegemonic personalist regimes (HPRs) and argues that semi-presidential dictatorships are more likely to evolve into HPRs than parliamentary systems or presidential autocracies. In presidential autocracies, elites delegate power to dictators who control the military to eliminate threats from the opposition. In parliamentary systems, elites are more likely to build power-sharing parties through which parliamentary opposition can be defeated, often evolving into single-party regimes. In semi-presidential autocracies, elites delegate power to dictators in exchange for investments, support of their agendas, or defeat of the opposition, which can lead to personalist rule supported by a dominant party or HPR. This study verified this phenomenon using logistic regression. In addition, this study examined three possible challenges: unstable equilibrium, reverse causality and institutional variation within semi-presidentialism. In sum, the incentive structure inherent in semi-presidential systems paves the way for the rise of HPRs.

Keywords

Dictators hegemonic personalist regimes semi-presidentialism the opposition ruling elites

Introduction

Hegemonic personalist regimes (HPRs) are defined as an autocracy in which power is concentrated in the dictator and a few elites, and a party serves to maintain the hegemonic status and interests of the ruling elites. After 1991, this form of autocracy became very common, and the number of these regimes is still rising. This begs the question: what explains the rise of HPRs after the end of the Cold War and what factors account for their origins?

This paper proposes a comparative analytic framework of autocratic constitutional systems to explain why HPRs emerge.¹ Scholars argue that in a dictatorship the constitution may be a ‘façade’. Recent studies, however, indicate different types of executive-selection systems influence how much constitutional power resides in the elites versus the dictator and, thus, whether power sharing within the ruling camp occurs (Roberts, 2015). Based on this seminal work, this paper argues that an autocratic constitutional system may influence whether the power balance tilts towards the ruling elites or the dictator, and the extent to which the parliamentary opposition is empowered.²

Both the strength of the opposition and the power distribution between the dictator and elites are closely related to the emergence of HPRs – personalist rule supported by a dominant party. Personalist rule refers to a system under which the ruling elites delegate power to a dictator, while the dictator exploits the rest of the population for his own benefit (Hyden, 2013).³ This system, in all probability, forms when elites hold less power than the dictator, and thus prefer to exchange insignificant power for money and personal interests. However, the ruling elites need not only personal rents but also a dominant party to maintain their hegemonic status when the parliamentary opposition is empowered to some extent. To put it differently, the threat from the parliamentary opposition causes elites to delegate more power to the autocrat in exchange for this type of party to erode the opposition.

This study proposes that semi-presidential dictatorships are more likely to develop into HPRs than parliamentary and presidential autocracies. In semi-presidential systems, parliamentary opposition is somewhat empowered because the legislature, despite not posing a threat to the president’s survival, has the power to appoint and dismiss cabinet members. As a president, the autocrat can still veto legislative bills or threaten to dissolve the parliament in which the elites serve, causing the power balance to shift slightly towards the dictator. As a result, the elites delegate more power to the dictator in exchange for investments in the party to co-opt parliamentary opposition, constructing a personalist rule supported by a dominant party. Using data covering all autocracies between 1945 and 2010, and employing logistic regression with a robust standard error cluster on countries and instrumental variables (IV) analysis, this study verifies the hypothesis.

This research faces three challenges. First, HPRs derived from semi-presidential systems are transitional regimes and, thus, unstable. To confirm their stability, this study examined whether semi-presidential HPRs are more stable than non-HPRs using survival analysis. Second, there is the problem of reverse causality. In addition to ruling out cases with endogenous constitutional change, this paper developed an instrumental variable (IV). Third, confronting institutional variation within semi-presidentialism that biases outcomes, the paper identified subtypes and tested whether we need nuanced classification of semi-presidentialism to separate their theoretical effects or treat it just as a whole category.

This paper adds to the richness of existing scholarship on authoritarian regimes (Acemoglu et al., 2010; Geddes, 2008; Hyden, 2013; Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010; Smith, 2005) and autocratic constitutions (Albertus and Menaldo, 2014; Hale, 2015; Roberts, 2015) by using the analytic framework of comparative constitutional systems to explain why different forms of autocracies emerge. Further, this study adds to scholarship on democracy, implying semi-presidential systems create more limits for a ‘dictator’ than in winner takes all’s presidentialism. Third, this study argues that regimes developing without complying with the incentive structure embodied in different institutional settings are highly susceptible to collapse, contributing to comparative research on autocratic endurance (Gandhi and Przeworski, 2007; Levitsky and Way, 2012; Magaloni, 2008; Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010; Wright and Escribà-Folch, 2012). Fourth, this paper emphasises how constitutional design influences the origins and functions of a non-democratic legislature or party, contributing to existing literature on authoritarian power sharing tools (Boix and Svolik, 2013; Slater, 2010; Smith, 2005; Wright, 2008). Finally, this research explains why over-presidentialisation of some semi-presidential countries (Beliaev, 2006; Elgie, 2011; Kim, 2015) happens through power redistribution between dictators and elites.

The rise of HPRs

HPRs are defined as autocracies in which power is concentrated in the dictator and a few elites, but the dominant party is built to maintain the hegemonic status of the ruling elites. Like personalist regimes, the dictator and narrower coalitions totally control leader selection and policy-making. However, instead of a power-sharing party that controls policy-making and leadership selection as in single-party regimes (SPRs), the dominant party in HPRs is solely created to distribute rents and spoils. Moreover, HPRs are permitted to rule without elections and, hence, are not equivalent to hegemonic authoritarian regimes (HARs). In HARs, elections are minimally pluralist, competitive and open (Schedler, 2006: 3), but are manipulated to benefit the ruling party who often receives over 60% (Geddes, 1999) or 70% of the vote (Howard and Roessler, 2006; Levitsky and Way, 2010) at the expense of the opposition (Donno, 2013). In conclusion, an HPR is what Geddes (2003: 52) described as personalist rule supported by a dominant party.

Figure 1 shows, relative to the period between 1945 and 1990, the increasing number of HPRs after 1991.

Figure 1.

The number of HPRs between 1945 and 2010.

Furthermore, HPRs are the mostly likely form of autocratic rule to occur after 1991. Figure 2 shows that the proportion of HPRs to other dictatorships remains approximately constant at 1:1 between 1992 and 2010.

Figure 2.

The number of distinct nascent dictatorships between 1991 and 2010.

The origin of authoritarian regimes, power sharing and power distribution

Existing research has examined the origins of different forms of dictatorship (Acemoglu et al., 2010; Geddes, 2008; Hyden, 2013; Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010; Smith, 2005). When it comes to the surge in electoral authoritarianism from 1991 onwards, scholars have proposed that dictators hold elections due to external pressure and, thus, closed authoritarianism has transformed into a more open form.⁴ This viewpoint would be helpful in explaining the rise of HPRs after 1991, except that the international environment does not offer a persuasive explanation for why not all dictatorships develop into HPRs.

Reviewing relevant literature on two characteristics of HPRs may help us to understand their origins. One important characteristic of HPRs is a party built to maintain the hegemonic status of the elites. Examining the conditions that foster the creation of a ruling party in SPRs provides us with a better understanding of how HPRs emerge.

With respect to the origin of SPRs, Smith (2005: 430) proposed that elites who face a well-organised opposition will likely create an official party to counter any threats. Similarly, Geddes (2008) argued that military autocrats are more likely to set up a dominant party to mobilise the masses when confronted with a powerful opposition. Because HPRs are characterised by the establishment of a dominant party, it is possible that the dictators in this system also construct them in response to oppositional pressure.

However, SPRs differ from HPRs regarding the functions of parties, which mirror the extent to which power is shared between the dictator and elites. While parties are created in HPRs to maintain the hegemonic status of elites relative to the parliamentary opposition, they are created to choose leaders or enact policies in SPRs due to a higher level of power sharing within the ruling camp.⁵ A possible explanation is that a powerful opposition causes autocrats to share more power with elites and, hence, SPRs are formed. In contrast, HPRs are created in situations where autocrats share less power with elites due to a relatively weak opposition. Thus, the opposition must be empowered to some extent; otherwise, dictators are not motivated to share power and create such parties.

As for personalist rule, Hyden (2013: 100–101) studying cases in sub-Saharan Africa found that the other essential characteristic of HPRs was that the pre-independence period paved the way for autocratic rule after the colonial era. That is, the first generation of leaders relied on their charisma to unite people in the struggle against their colonisers and manipulated the system for the accumulation of power and wealth, a model inherited from the colonial age. For the subsequent generation of leaders who no longer possessed unquestionable authority, establishing extractive institutions (Acemoglu and Robinson, 2012) through which rents could be distributed to their followers was their preferred way of maintaining personalist rule.

However, Hyden’s ideas do not only apply to sub-Saharan Africa. Among 31 HPRs that have existed between 1945 and 2010, 11 are located in Eurasia and their politics have been influenced by their communist legacy. Different from the colonial system, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union institutionalised successors and collective leadership (Bialer, 1982). When this mechanism for leadership selection is used, the likelihood that personalist rulers could appoint their sons as their successors is reduced (Brownlee, 2007: 610–612). It is therefore hard to understand why those autocrats opted to embrace personalist rule after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In addition, Hyden’s seminal work pointed out the significance of power distribution between the dictator and elites in a personalist system. Under personalist rule, ruling elites delegate their power to the autocrat, expecting something (e.g. rents) in return for their loyalty. This explains why personalist dictatorships emerge: the payoff for elites is higher if they buttress a personalist system than hold power independently and refuse to delegate it. More precisely, if the ruling elites hold equal power to the dictator, or even more, they are uncertain whether they will receive higher payoffs when relegating it in exchange for returns. Conversely, elites tend to do so when they hold less power than the dictator, because it is preferable to exchange insignificant power for private goods. In this way, personalist regimes in all probability form when the power balance shifts towards the dictator.

To summarise, in an HPR, the opposition is not strong enough to prompt the autocrat to share power and establish an SPR. Thus, a dominant party results. In addition, dictators impose personalist rule when they hold relatively more power than the elites. HPRs are therefore likely to emerge under these circumstances. Nevertheless, we have yet to identify the reason why elites might initially hold much less power than autocrats. Further, what determines the strength of the opposition has not yet been identified either. This paper argues that a possible factor in the determination of both is constitutional design.

Constitutional design, power sharing and power distribution

Despite the often held assumption that autocratic constitutions are but meaningless pieces of paper, scholars have recently found that autocratic constitutions determine the extent to which power is shared between dictators and elites. Parliamentary systems encourage power sharing between ruling parties while presidential systems amplify the personal power of the president. Thus, relative to presidential systems, parliamentary systems reinforce the dependence of dictators on elites, encouraging mutual cooperation and power sharing to win elections (Roberts, 2015: 924–926).

This implies a power balance between dictators and elites. In a parliamentary system, the executive relies on the support of the legislature to hold office. As a chief executive, therefore, the dictator must cater to the elites who serve as members of parliament. In this way, the elites hold more power than the dictator, as he requires their support. In a presidential system, in contrast, the separation from the legislature enables the president to be independent of the members of parliament. As a result, the dictator relies less on the support of elites and instead uses personal appeal or discretion to enhance his power relative to the elites.

While Roberts’ (2015) seminal work brings to the forefront the importance of institutional design in explaining elite power sharing in the context of non-democracies, two points merit further discussion. First, Roberts did not consider the strength of the parliamentary opposition. Boix and Svolik (2013: 302) confirmed that the success of authoritarian power sharing depends on the credible threat of rebellion. If the threat no longer exists, power sharing is not necessary. Similarly, a credible threat from a powerful parliamentary opposition creates a more cooperative environment in the ruling camp. In contrast, facing a weak parliamentary opposition, the dictator is not motivated to make power-sharing deals with the elites, even if institutional design provides an incentive for cooperation. The strength of the parliamentary opposition therefore directly affects whether power sharing within the ruling camp occurs.

Furthermore, constitutional design determines the extent of the empowerment of the parliamentary opposition. In a parliamentary system, as the chief executive, the dictator’s survival rests on the support of members of parliament. The parliamentary opposition could, in all probability, increase their strength using legislation to consolidate support, and by persuading some elites to withdraw their support from the autocrat. Once the time is ripe, they could initiate a motion of no confidence to oust the dictator. In a presidential system, on the other hand, the presidential autocrat can bypass parliament and rule through decrees. In addition, because the separation of the executive and legislature in a presidential system can prevent the removal of the autocrat by parliament, their motivation as members of parliament is lower. Therefore, the power of the parliamentary opposition is greater in parliamentary systems.

Second, a dichotomous typology is likely to be too simplistic. Research on comparative political institutions, shows how political institutions are actually much more complex than the simple dichotomy of presidentialism and parliamentarism. For instance, Hale (2015: 80–81) argued that semi-presidentialism produces an alternative focal point (e.g. a prime minster) around which dissatisfied elites can coordinate. In contrast, presidentialism allows elites to survive only under the presidential umbrella. In this way, elites possess more bargaining power in a semi-presidential system than in a presidential system, because they are able to switch to the other camp. However, elites have much more power in parliamentarism than in semi-presidentialism because elites cannot only name new leaders but can also replace a dictator who is not aligned with their viewpoints or serving their interests.

A semi-presidential system, moreover, empowers parliamentary opposition to varying extents, as opposed to how presidentialism or parliamentarism works. Even if the president is popularly elected and his survival is independent of the legislature, parliament still enjoys partial policy-making and appointment (or censure) powers and, hence, this empowers parliamentary opposition to some extent. For instance, they can enact laws at the expense of their opponents or boycott the autocrat’s plan to appoint controversial figures as ministers; however, they are unable to oust leaders they do not support. Compared to a semi-presidential system, parliamentary opposition is more powerful in a parliamentary system because the autocrat needs the support of members of parliament to remain in power. In a presidential system, however, the opposition is relatively weak because the autocratic president has total control over policy-making and personnel appointment.

Based on these concerns, this paper argues that the three types of autocratic systems – parliamentary, presidential and semi-presidential – affect whether the power balance shifts towards the elites or the dictator and the extent of the opposition’s power, and are thus relevant in the creation of HPRs.

How do semi-presidential dictatorships foster HPRs?

This paper has thus far argued that a) HPRs are likely to occur when the opposition is empowered to some extent and a power balance between the dictator and the elite tilts towards the former, and b) both the extent to which the opposition is empowered and how much power resides in the elites or the dictator are determined by different types of autocratic systems. This section explores which type of constitutional design explains the creation of HPRs, and proposes that semi-presidential dictatorships are more likely to develop HPRs than parliamentary or presidential autocracies.

This analysis rests on three theoretical assumptions. First, the three principal political actors – the autocrat, the ruling elites and the opposition – are assumed to prefer to stay in power. Second, based on the power gained by parliament, the opposition will either launch anti-system actions as rebels or social revolutionaries, or work through parliament to depose the autocrat legally. In response to the choice of the opposition, elites take the power balance between themselves and the autocrat into account and develop different strategies such as building a power-sharing party, delegating more power to the executive in exchange for the establishment of a repressive state apparatus and private rents or investments in the political party, which is further determined by constitutional design. These strategies can explain the origins of the divergent forms of dictatorship.

The opposition regards the parliament as simply the rubber stamp in presidential autocracies and, thus, chooses to rebel. This is because in presidential autocracies, the separate origin and survival of legislative power causes the executive branch to be more independent and powerful than the parliament. That is, the dictator serving as the president could, for instance, enact decrees to nullify laws passed by parliament. Further, the dictator rewards loyalty by recruitment to the cabinet, which can be reshuffled with ease.

If faced with revolutionary threats from the opposition, to survive, the dictator and elites have no choice but to engage in suppression. All the dictator needs to do is maximise executive power by establishing a repressive state apparatus in favour of the ruling class, through which considerable rents can be extracted without checks and balances. For the dictator who wants to acquire more power, elites in a window-dressing parliament are likely to accept, because otherwise their preferred laws are likely to be changed arbitrarily by presidential decrees. Further, the dictator can buy off the military or, if they are members of the military, increase their capacity to quash revolutions, guaranteeing them a share of rents over the long run. As a consequence, a power balance tilting towards the executive side causes the dictator to impose a personalist military regime (PMR) where the dictator is supported by the military and accomplishes personalist rule with a less-developed party organisation (Roberts, 2015: 924; Samuels and Shugart, 2010: 13).

The military’s involvement in the government, however, can create moral hazards or initiate coups against the elites, and thus lead to the establishment of military dictatorships (Acemoglu et al., 2010). In sum, either PMRs or military dictatorships are likely to form under presidential systems.

In parliamentary autocracies, in contrast, the opposition is empowered because the executive branch is elected by parliament and its survival depends on it. They are therefore inclined to become members of parliament due to a higher expected payoff from legislative power. For example, the opposition could enact some laws to their advantage, cultivate the potential for social mobilisation using parliamentary resources, intensify cooperation, and divide the ruling elites in parliament to topple the incumbent.

Upon encountering threats from the parliamentary opposition, elites choose not to delegate power to a dictator who commits to rendering the opposition irrelevant. The more executive power a dictator holds, the harder it is for elites to enact their preferred policies; furthermore, it is not enough to deter the opposition from devaluing the parliament on which the dictator’s survival still depends in parliamentary autocracies.

The best strategy for elites is to establish a power-sharing party to solve collective action problems, integrate and distribute resources, co-opt important societal groups and reduce the power of the opposition. A power-sharing party is also used to institutionalise access-to-power positions and leadership succession by which the dictator’s discretionary power is constrained (Magaloni and Kricheli, 2010: 127). The dictator as chief executive accepts this power-sharing arrangement due to the elites’ credible threat – his or her survival depends on elites in the parliament. In other words, the ruling party is not only created to erode parliamentary opposition but also to put the dictator under their control. Therefore, autocratic parliamentary regimes are more likely to evolve into SPRs.

In semi-presidential dictatorships, even though the president is popularly elected and independent of the legislative branch, the parliament still enjoys partial policy-making and appointment (or censure) powers and, hence, the opposition is empowered. For instance, the key minority which the leftist opposition represented, played an important role in refusing to reapprove Valeriy Pustovoitenko as the prime minister nominated by Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma (D’Anieri, 2006: 88). In addition, the ‘Opposition Six’ in Croatia issued its own draft electoral law, committing themselves to form pre- and post-electoral coalitions that aimed to change the constitution and economic policy if they won the 2000 parliamentary election (Kasapović, 2003: 61).

It seems that elites in semi-presidential dictatorships, like their counterparts in parliamentary autocracies, often construct power-sharing parties to defeat the opposition. This argument, however, is problematic. In semi-presidential dictatorships, as a president, the dictator’s survival is independent of the elites who serve as members of parliament. In addition, the dictator is granted power by the constitution to intervene in politics. Chances are that a dictator who is not satisfied with this power-sharing arrangement can appoint ‘watchdogs’, veto a bill and dissolve parliament. Consequentially, the elites cannot concentrate all fire on the parliamentary opposition. In fact, this cohabitation exacerbates the difficulty of governance and vulnerability to regime failure (Elgie, 2008; Kirschke, 2007). In short, SPRs are not the final outcome.

Instead, elites delegate more power to the dictator in exchange for investments in the party to co-opt and erode parliamentary opposition. If that is the case, the dictator will resort to unchecked executive power to check parliamentary opposition. The dictatorial commitment not to exploit elites’ benefits will be ensured by this party that controls access to power positions, spoils and privileges, delivering rents to those who join the organisation (Magaloni, 2008: 723–724), inspecting parliamentary opposition and solving moral problems – those committed to joining the ruling class but stealthily employing parliamentary resources to empower themselves.

To sum up, a semi-presidential system provides incentives for elites to construct a personalist rule supported by a dominant party, in other words, an HPR. Table 1 summarises of the origins of divergent dictatorships.

Table 1.

The summary of the origin of divergent dictatorships.

	Parliamentarism	Presidentialism	Semi-presidentialism
Rule	The executive branch is elected by, and its survival depends on, the parliament	The executive branch is independent of the parliament in terms of its creation and survival	The president is independent of the parliament in terms of its origin and survival, but the government is responsible to parliament
Parliamentary power	Large	Small	Medium
The choice of the opposition	Remain in parliament	Launch anti-system actions	Remain in parliament
Power balance between the elites and dictator	Towards elites; dictatorial survival depends on elites who serve as members of parliament	Towards the dictator, the dictator marginalises parliament where elites remain	Slightly towards the dictator, elites in parliament possess appointment or censure powers but the dictator is granted the power to intervene in politics
Need to consider the dictator	No	Yes	Yes
Elites’ strategies	Elites build a power-sharing party to erode parliamentary opposition and control the dictator	Elites delegate power to the executive in exchange for repressive state apparatus and private rents	Elites delegate power to the executive in exchange for investment in the party to erode parliamentary opposition
Predicted dictatorships	Single party regimes	Personalist military regimes or military regimes	Hegemonic personalist regimes

Source: The author.

Before examining the hypotheses, I briefly examine if a trend, according to my theory emerges. That is, the number of dictatorships adopting semi-presidentialism as their constitutional design should increase after the end of the Cold War due to the rise of HPRs after 1991. Figure 3 shows, relative to the period between 1945 and 1990, the increasing number of semi-presidential autocracies after 1991.

Figure 3.

The number of semi-presidential autocracies between 1945 and 2010.

Moreover, semi-presidential constitutions should be the preferred choice of autocrats after 1991. Figure 4 shows that the proportion of semi-presidential autocracies to others remained approximately between 40% and 60% from 1992 to 2010.

Figure 4.

The number of distinct nascent dictatorships between 1991 and 2010.

Research design

The unit of analysis was ‘non-democratic regimes’ between 1945 and 2010. This paper identified non-democratic regimes as those with polity IV scores beneath 5 (≤ 5). In addition, only regimes without endogenous institutional changes implemented after 1945 were included in the study. Regimes were defined as the groups from which leaders could come from and which determined leadership choice and policy (Geddes et al., 2014: 314). Whenever a non-democratic regime started if a) an executive achieved power through undemocratic means, b) the government achieved power through democratic means but subsequently changed the formal or informal rules, or c) competitive elections were held to choose the government but one or more parties for which substantial numbers of citizens would be expected to vote were banned. A non-democratic regime ended when a) a competitive election was won by another person rather than the incumbent, b) the incumbent was ousted but replaced by a different regime, or c) the ruling party changed the basic rules of leader selection (Geddes et al., 2014: 317–318).

This study also explored the relationship between constitutional frameworks and the origins of divergent autocratic rules. The independent variable was constitutional design. Three types of constitutions were recognised: parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential. Presidential constitutions stipulate that a president must be popularly elected for a fixed term and cannot be dismissed by the legislature, and the government and the legislature serve fixed and independent terms. In contrast, an elected collective body or legislature elects the executive in a parliamentary constitution, and the executive can be dismissed by parliament (Sartori, 1994). Semi-presidential constitutions make provisions for both a directly elected fixed-term president and a prime minister and cabinet who are collectively responsible to the legislature (Elgie, 1999: 13).

The dependent variable was distinctly non-democratic regimes. Geddes et al. (2014: 318) classified authoritarian regimes into single-party dictatorships, military regimes, personalist dictatorships, monarchies, and hybrids of the first three.⁶ Personalist dictatorship was defined as a regime in which ‘control over policy, leadership selection, and the security apparatus is in the hands of a narrower group centred on an individual dictator’ (Geddes et al., 2014: 318). Further, elections are an important institutional feature that distinguishes authoritarian governments into no party, one party and limited multiparty regimes.⁷ In addition to one party regimes, this study further imposed two thresholds to check if a dominant party emerged in limited multiparty regimes. One was that the ruling party was the largest party in every national parliamentary election. The other was that at least 50% of seats were won by the ruling party in national parliamentary elections. Finally, HPRs were characterised by personalist dictatorships supported by dominant parties. A dummy variable was created, where 1 = HPRs if both definitions were met and 0 = otherwise. Appendix A contains the list of HPRs.

To test if semi-presidential dictatorships were more likely than parliamentary or presidential autocracies to evolve into HPRs, this study used logistic regression with a robust standard error cluster for countries.

This research, however, faced three challenges. The first was the problem of reverse causality, that is, ruling camps in dictatorships setting up their own preferred constitutions. In addition to excluding cases with endogenous constitutional change,⁸ this paper used IV analysis. Based on historical institutionalism, the choice of constitutional design depended on structural legacy. Wu (2008) analysed why semi-presidential regimes have been concentrated in the post-communist world and sub-Saharan Africa. In post-Leninist states, their existence can be attributed to the dual power structure of the party state; in other words, the general secretary/prime minister model was adopted while former French or Portuguese colonies in sub-Saharan Africa tended to borrow constitutional designs from their colonisers when confronted with the third wave of democratisation in the 1990s. These legacies, however, are not associated with the origin of HPRs because the antecedent authoritarian systems tended to be either personalist dictatorships or single-party regimes. This study therefore included colonial legacies from France or Portugal and communist legacies in its analysis of semi-presidential dictatorships.

The second challenge was that HPRs derived from semi-presidential systems tended to be transitional regimes and, thus, unstable.⁹ This study analysed if semi-presidential HPRs were more stable than their non-HPR counterparts, and if HPRs lowered the risk of collapse for semi-presidential dictatorships, the effect of which was reduced slightly or even reversed for presidential or parliamentary autocracies, by survival analysis.¹⁰ This study therefore added two interaction terms, ‘HPRs × presidentialism’ and ‘HPRs × semi-presidentialism’ to compare the lifespans of authoritarian regimes.

For survival analysis, this study employed the Cox proportional hazards (PH) model without specifying the baseline hazard function to estimate the hazard ratio (HR).¹¹ For robustness, change in the values of some control variables was derived from internal characteristics; for example, for GDP per capita and natural resource revenue, which were observed on a year-to-year basis. This paper therefore re-estimated HR by splitting the survival time into units of time as years. In addition, survival time was assumed to follow a specified distribution and, thus, parametric models were adopted. This study also considered the inclusion of frailty as an unobserved individual factor (e.g. culture). Further, regimes were more likely to encounter higher risks of collapse within some countries. The shared-frailty model to capture these common but unobserved characteristics was used. Lists of all variables and descriptive statistics are shown in Appendix B and C respectively.

The third challenge was that the institutional variation within the set of countries with a semi-presidential constitution was extreme and, thus, the origin of HPRs was highly relevant to one of sub-types of semi-presidentialism. The standard way of capturing institutional variation under semi-presidentialism was to distinguish between premier-presidentialism and president-parliamentarism (Shugart and Carey, 1992). Under president-parliamentarism, the president was granted more power, thus making it likely for the dictator as the president, through cabinet reshuffle or presidential decree, to render the parliament as a puppet of the president and behave like its counterpart under presidentialism. As a result, a presidential-parliamentary dictatorship was more likely to develop into PMRs or military dictatorships instead of HPRs, compared with its premier-presidential counterpart. It therefore allowed us to derive different expectations about the effect of each sub-type of semi-presidentialism on the interplay of the dictator, ruling elites and the opposition.

Whether premier-presidentialism or president-parliamentarism, they both belong to semi-presidentialism, which was characterised by (a) the separate origin and survival of both the president and the legislature and (b) the dependence of the government on parliamentary support. Compared to presidentialism or parliamentarism, this paper argued, it was the two basic features of semi-presidentialism, instead of other institutional factors that separated the two sub-types of semi-presidentialism (e.g. the president’s power), leading to different outcomes of the interplay of the three actors.

Under a premier-presidential regime, only the assembly had the power to dismiss members of the cabinet. Thus, a cabinet’s reliance on parliamentary confidence empowered parliamentary opposition, which caused elites to delegate more power to the dictator in exchange for investments in the party to co-opt and erode parliamentary opposition and, hence, HPRs formed. Under the president-parliamentary system, the president had dismissal powers, alongside possibly shared appointment powers, but the opposition could veto unwanted cabinet ministers who were close to the dictator as the president, terminate the cabinets, or block the passage of a bill, holding the government accountable. Thus, parliamentary opposition was still empowered, and the president’s survival independent of the parliament compels elites to accommodate the dictator’s preferences for greater power, thus making it likely for elites to exchange power for investments in the party to co-opt and defeat parliamentary opposition. HPRs, thus, were the ultimate outcome of this strategic interaction.

In sum, compared with its presidential and parliamentary equivalents, chances were that HPRs emerge in semi-presidential systems, either in premier-presidentialism or president-parliamentarism.

In the empirical analyses, supposing that semi-presidentialism was divided into the two sub-types, if my theoretical expectation was true, HPRs would be more likely to emerge either in premier-presidentialism or president-parliamentarism, relative to parliamentarism or presidentialism. Further, the statistical evidence should not line up with the argument that different expectations about the effect of each sub-type of semi-presidentialism on outcomes (e.g. a president-parliamentary dictatorship is less likely to develop into HPRs, compared with its premier-presidential counterpart). Otherwise, we must tailor the theory to fit the now standard wisdom.

Results

Table 2 shows the relationship between semi-presidential dictatorships and HPRs. In model 1, the positive coefficient of semi-presidentialism with statistical significance indicates that semi-presidential autocracies increased the probability of forming HPRs by a factor of 4.23. In model 2, the coefficient of semi-presidentialism was still positive, indicating that the relative probability that HPRs evolved into semi-presidential autocracies was 3.8 times higher than that of presidential dictatorships. Similar results were shown in model 3 when Eurasia and sub-Saharan Africa were added, in model 4 when four regimes in which the dominant party was reorganised after every election were excluded from the analysis and in model 5 when 17 regimes surviving less than one year were not included.¹²

Table 2.

Institutional settings and the likelihood of autocratic regime types.

	Model (1)		Model (2)		Model (3)		Model (4)		Model (5)
	HPRs		HPRs		HPRs		HPRs		HPRs
	Coef.	OR	Coef.	OR	Coef.	OR	Coef.	OR	Coef.	OR
Semi-presidentialism	1.441^***	4.226^***	1.337^**	3.809^**	1.015^*	2.760^*	1.131^**	3.098^**	1.019^*	2.771^*
	(0.543)	(2.295)	(0.553)	(2.105)	(0.541)	(1.494)	(0.552)	(1.711)	(0.591)	(1.637)
Parliamentarism			−0.727	0.484
			(0.903)	(0.437)
Years–1945	0.057^***	1.059^***	0.056^***	1.058^***	0.048^***	1.049^***	0.045^**	1.046^**	0.046^**	1.047^**
	(0.016)	(0.017)	(0.017)	(0.018)	(0.017)	(0.018)	(0.018)	(0.018)	(0.020)	(0.021)
Eurasia					2.713^***	15.073^***	2.749^***	15.630^***	2.550^***	12.809^***
					(0.882)	(13.299)	(0.864)	(13.500)	(0.847)	(10.843)
Sub-Saharan Africa					−0.084	0.920
					(0.466)	(0.428)
_cons	−4.062^***	0.017^***	−3.929^***	0.020^***	−3.904^***	0.020^***	−3.973^***	0.019^***	−3.819^***	0.022^***
	(0.665)	(0.011)	(0.690)	(0.014)	(0.663)	(0.013)	(0.685)	(0.013)	(0.727)	(0.016)
N	208		208		208		204		191
cluster	101		101		101		100		101
Wald chi²	19.82		19.66		36.59		32.38		34.63
Prob> chi²	0.0000		0.0002		0.0000		0.0000		0.0000
Pseudo Log likelihood	-68.352819		-67.876058		-61.278095		-56.879041		-56.814976

Note. Robust standard error in parentheses, OR means the odds ratio. Model 4 is to exclude four regimes where the dominant party is realigned in every election. Model 5 is to exclude 17 regimes surviving less than one year ^*p < 0.10, ^**p < 0.05, ^***p < 0.01.

Table 3 presents an original model committed to the problem of endogeneity with the Wald test of exogeneity. When using an IV, this study found that autocratic regimes in countries colonised by France or Portugal or former communist bloc countries tended to choose semi-presidentialism, and once adopting that, they were more likely to become HPRs (see Model 1 and 2). However, there is an institutional variation within former French colonies determined by their strength of ties with France (Elgie, 2012). Using colonial legacies from France as an instrument was, therefore, too arbitrary. The result still confirmed our expectations when this type of legacy was excluded (see models 3 and 4). All instruments were not weak comparing Cragg-Donald F Statistics with 10% relative bias of the 2SLS estimator we were willing to tolerate.

Table 3.

IV Analysis with probit model: semi-presidentialism and HPRs.

	Model (1)	Model (2)	Model (3)	Model (4)
	HPRs	HPRs	HPRs	HPRs
Semi-presidentialism (IV: communist and colonial legacy)	2.694^***	2.933^***	2.854^***	3.075^***
	(0.535)	(0.546)	(0.500)	(0.519)
Years–1945	0.006	0.001	0.004	0.000
	(0.011)	(0.012)	(0.011)	(0.012)
_cons	−1.481^***	−1.342^***	−1.407^***	−1.268^**
	(0.440)	(0.488)	(0.444)	(0.510)
N	208	204	208	204
Log likelihood	−89.111153	−81.589941	−89.983343	−83.460088
Wald test of exogeneity	7.48^***	7.47^***	8.72^***	7.59^***
Cragg-Donald F Statistics	26.398	18.270	22.927	13.887
Sargan Statistics	0 (exact)	0 (exact)	0 (exact)	0 (exact)

Note. Standard error in parentheses. Model 2 and 4 are to exclude four regimes where the dominant party is realigned in every election. Model 3 and 4 are to exclude colonial legacies from France as an instrument. The 10% relative bias of the 2SLS estimator we are willing to tolerate is 10.27. If the Cragg-Donald F statistic exceeds the critical value, we can conclude that our instruments are not weak. ^*p < 0.1, ^**p < 0.05, ^***p < 0.01.

Figure 5 reveals the impact of institutional settings, divergent non-democratic rule, and their combination on the survival curve of authoritarian regimes. As existing research has indicated, parliamentary autocracies tend to survive longer than their presidential counterparts (see Figure 5.1). SPRs had the lowest likelihood of collapse, followed by hybrid and then personalist regimes, but it was much more difficult for military dictatorships to maintain stable rule (see Figure 5.2). Among HPRs, those with parliamentary systems were the least stable dictatorial regimes (see Figure 5.3). The survival curves of presidential and semi-presidential HPRs, however, were not significantly different (see Figure 5.3). As expected, semi-presidential HPRs lasted longer than semi-presidential non-HPRs (see Figure 5.6), the effect of which was reversed for all parliamentary dictatorships (see Figure 5.4). Presidential HPRs were no more stable than their non-HPR counterparts (see Figure 5.5). The result still confirmed our expectations, that is, semi-presidential HPRs were more stable than their non-HPR counterpart, when control variables were added and the extended Cox model was used (see Appendix D).

Figure 5.

Kaplan-Meier survival estimates of different types of autocracies.

Figure 6 shows the relationship between the two sub-types of semi-presidential dictatorships and HPRs. Dictatorships with either a president-parliamentary or premier-presidential system, in contrast with their counterparts adopting other types of constitution, increased the probability of forming HPRs. The coefficient plots also confirm our theoretical expectations when autocracies with a presidential (or parliamentary) constitution were compared. However, the statistical evidence did not buttress different expectations about the effect of each sub-type of semi-presidentialism on outcomes (p = 0.478, no cluster on countries, p = 0.444, cluster on countries). Thus, it is not institutional variation within semi-presidential dictatorships determining the chances of HPRs formation.

Figure 6.

Coefficient plots on the effect of subtypes of semi-presidentialism.

Conclusion

This paper explores why HPRs emerge by analysing how different constitutional designs influence the strength of the opposition and the power distribution between the dictator and elites. It argues that, compared to parliamentary and presidential autocracies, semi-presidential dictatorships are more likely to develop into HPRs. In semi-presidential autocracies, the opposition is empowered to some extent by the legislature, while the dictator intervenes in parliamentary affairs and, thus, has more power than the elites who serve as members of parliament. Therefore, elites delegate more power to the dictator in exchange for investments in the party to co-opt or erode parliamentary opposition, constructing HPRs. Using quantitative methods, this study verified that the incentive structure inherent in semi-presidential systems paves the way for the creation of HPRs.

The paper has several important implications for comparative research on constitutional design, autocratic endurance, the origins and functions of authoritarian institutions and super-presidentialism. First, semi-presidentialism creates more limits for a ‘dictator’ than winner takes all presidentialism. The president in a semi-presidential system, for example, shares the power to appoint cabinets with the parliament to which the cabinet is responsible and, thus, cannot act peremptorily. Facing that parliamentary opposition may disapprove the PM candidate the president has proposed, initiate a vote of no confidence or override a president’s veto, the dictator as the president rewards elites through investments in the party in an attempt to increase their willingness to delegate more power and, hence, is restricted by elites. Second, this paper underlines the significance of constitutions. That is, those regimes developing without complying to the incentive structure embodied in different institutional settings are more likely to collapse because the elites or dictator will likely seek to change the status quo. Third, the paper indicates how constitutional design affects the creation and function of authoritarian institutions as legislatures or parties. Legislatures are unnecessary in presidential dictatorships, while both parties and legislatures reflect different levels of power sharing in parliamentary and semi-presidential autocracies. Finally, the key role of the interplay of the three principal actors in the semi-presidential framework suggests that super-presidentialism is caused by elites’ willingness to countenance a personalist rule in exchange for state resources to favour the dominant party.

There are two respects, however, in which we failed to consider the effects of other sub-types of semi-presidentialism, and cohabitation, ‘a situation where the president belongs to one party, the PM belongs to a different party, and the president’s party is absent from the government’ (Elgie, 2011: 55). First, this paper treats semi-presidentialism as a whole category, thus following a line of argument distinct from the dominant interpretation where we need nuanced classification of semi-presidentialism to separate their theoretical effects. Nevertheless, we also recognised that the institutions and practice within sets of countries with semi-presidential constitutions are so varied that HPRs are likely to emerge in one specific combination of constitutional heterogeneity and political circumstances, for instance, presidential supremacy in four subtypes under semi-presidentialism (Wu, 2011: 30–31). In future research, we could test whether the theoretical expectations depend on unobserved institutional (or partisan) effect.

Second, we originally assume that elites and the dictator constitute the ruling camp in charge of the executive branch from which the opposition is excluded. But if the ruling camp is not composed of one party, and the dictator’s party is not represented in the cabinet, there is a certain degree of possibility that the dictator’s allied parties holding power in the government engage in open conflicts with the dictator and cooperate with parliamentary opposition, thus further complicating the strategic interactions and regime formation. In our dataset, however, no cohabitation is case required to be excluded to meet this certain assumption. In future research, a modified theory should consider how cohabitation influences the interplay of the three actors and the probability of forming HPRs.

Future research might also investigate in closer detail how autocratic constitutions influence succeeding democratic survival through different forms of authoritarian rule. HPRs are characterised by personalist rule supported by a dominant party. First, a personalist dictatorship breeds higher levels of corruption and, thus, impedes economic development. Second, a dominant party, as a political vehicle of authoritarian rulers, is created to fulfil self-serving elites’ needs and cripple opponents (Wright, 2008). The dictator hardly depends on immature organisation and less-institutionalised party financing to dominate in the transition period and impose the rule to limit electoral competition, which decreases the level of party system institutionalisation in subsequent democracies (Riedl, 2014). In this way, poor economic performance and a fractionalised party system increase the likelihood of democratic collapse. In sum, in spite of ongoing debate on the effect of constitutional design of democracies on their survival, this paper implies that autocratic constitutions may relate to it.

Supplemental Material

Appendix_IPSR_R3 – Supplemental material for Does the constitution matter? Semi-presidentialism and the origin of hegemonic personalist regimes

Supplemental material, Appendix_IPSR_R3 for Does the constitution matter? Semi-presidentialism and the origin of hegemonic personalist regimes by Huang-Ting Yan in International Political Science Review

Supplemental Material

French_Spanish_abstract_829160 – Supplemental material for Does the constitution matter? Semi-presidentialism and the origin of hegemonic personalist regimes

Supplemental material, French_Spanish_abstract_829160 for Does the constitution matter? Semi-presidentialism and the origin of hegemonic personalist regimes by Huang-Ting Yan in International Political Science Review

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 6th Annual General Conference of the European Political Science Association. For their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper, I would like to thank Lisa Blaydes, Tobias Rommel, Nicole Rae Baerg, Alejandro Quiroz Flores and three anonymous reviewers. All remaining errors remain mine.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental material is available at

Notes

Author biography

Huang-Ting Yan is a PhD candidate at the Department of Government, University of Essex, UK. His research focuses on semi-presidentialism, regime survival, comparative authoritarianism, post-communist politics and political methodology.

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