Presidentialisation: One Term, Two Uses – Between Deductive Exercise and Grand Historical Narrative
| Author | Gianluca Passarelli,Robert Elgie |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918754500 |
| Published date | 01 May 2019 |
| Date | 01 May 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929918754500
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(2) 115 –123
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929918754500
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Presidentialisation: One Term,
Two Uses – Between Deductive
Exercise and Grand Historical
Narrative
Robert Elgie1 and Gianluca Passarelli2
Abstract
This article focuses on the two main contributions to the contemporary academic debate about
the term ‘presidentialisation’, namely the books by Samuels and Shugart and Poguntke and Webb.
The aim is not to rehearse critiques that have already been made about this term or to add
another to the list. Instead, the aim is to distinguish between two different ways in which the same
term has been applied in the two studies. Both sets of authors are concerned with the same term,
but each operationalises it in a different way. Acknowledging these differences allows us to focus
on a specific aspect of Poguntke and Webb’s account that is absent from Samuels and Shugart’s,
namely the construction of a grand historical narrative.
Keywords
presidentialisation, constitutional regimes, grand narrative, party presidentialisation
Accepted: 2nd January 2018
Introduction
This article examines the term ‘presidentialisation’. There is now a large body of work on
this topic (Dowding, 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Foley, 2000, 2004, 2013; Kefford, 2013a,
2013b; Mughan, 2000; Passarelli, 2015b; Poguntke and Webb, 2005b; Samuels and
Shugart, 2010; Webb and Poguntke, 2013). Some of this work questions the very useful-
ness of the term. For example, Dowding argues that the term ‘prime ministerialisation’
should be preferred at least in empirical studies that deal with processes of change in
parliamentary systems such as Australia and Britain. By contrast, Karvonen (2010) and
Garzia (2014) argue that contemporary processes of change can better be captured by the
idea of ‘personalisation’. These critiques are well known, and we do not wish to rehearse
them here. Instead, we focus on the book by Samuels and Shugart (2010) and the edited
1School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
2Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, Sapienza University, Roma, Italy
Corresponding author:
Robert Elgie, School of Law and Government, Dublin City University, Dublin 9, Ireland.
Email: robert.elgie@dcu.ie
754500PSW0010.1177/1478929918754500Political Studies ReviewElgie and Passarelli
research-article2018
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