Presidential Politics

About

Presidents are crucial political actors both politically and institutionally. They often play a decisive role as international actors, party leaders, electoral campaigners, government members, legislative proponents, constitutional guarantors, and veto players. The literature on how presidents matter to democracy and government performance has expanded in the last decades (e.g. Shugart and Carey 1992; Linz et al. 1994; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Taras 1997; Elgie 1999; Strøm et al. 2003; Cheibub 2007; Tavits 2008; Samuels and Shugart 2010; Blondel 2015; Elgie et al. 2016; Ganghof 2021 etc.). Long established research on presidentialism in the Americas and more recent scholarship on semi-presidential and parliamentary systems in Europe and elsewhere address a range of institutional factors related to both directly and indirectly elected presidents, e.g. inter-institutional conflict and policy coordination, cabinet formation and coalition building, president-party relations, electoral system factors, and presidential powers. The ECPR Standing Group on Presidential Politics facilitates networking of scholars in this field of research and strives to integrate comparative and case study approaches to advance knowledge on the role and importance of presidents in contemporary political systems.

Activities

The proposed Standing Groups aims to pursue its scientific goals by activating and strengthening the network of scholars (junior and senior) working on the same topic. Following this approach the SG would periodically organize panels and/or sections to the ECPR meetings. Moreover, the SG on presidential politics would aim to organize annual summer schools to include as many as possible young scholars, which are very important in the ECPR network. Similarly, the proposed SG’s members would be invited to attend and/or to propose workshop on crucial topics related to the general theme of the “presidential politics”. Thus, workshops on the theme proposed by the SG’s members will regularly be organized and supported. Moreover a SG Newsletter will be circulated among SG’s members as well as among those who will be interested in being updated on its activities. Finally, but not least, the SG official website will be the core of the external communication of the standing group information. In particular, the website will improve the opportunities of the SG to diffuse its research activities, to inform scholars on its programs and its goals. So, a supplementary opportunity to share the SG knowledge among the ECPR member and beyond.