Performance, Person, or Institution? Explaining Presidential Popularity in Semi-Presidential Regimes

This doctoral dissertation focuses on public opinion towards presidents operating alongside prime ministers. The power balance between these two executives varies especially in semi-presidential regimes, where a popularly elected fixed-term president shares executive power with a prime minister and the government, who, in turn, are accountable to the parliament (Duverger, 1980; Elgie, 1999). In terms of public opinion, this dual executive structure should benefit the president over the prime minister, but only if the former is politically subordinate to the latter. This connects to questions of political accountability, i.e., on what basis people ‘reward’ and ‘sanction’ incumbent political actors. The topic is important given that presidents are usually visible and high-profile figures with a possibility to translate their public ‘mandate’ into political power.

While the majority of semi-presidential studies have focused on presidents from an institutional perspective, this thesis examines their public position by providing a comprehensive picture of the aggregate-level and individual-level explanations of presidential popularity under a dual executive structure. Broadening also our conceptual understanding of presidential popularity, it suggests that public evaluations of the president reflect not only citizens’ perceptions of the president’s performance but also their perceptions of the institution as a whole and the individual occupying the office. The existing studies – building on the seminal work by Mueller (1970) on the U.S. presidency – have mainly concentrated on relatively powerful presidents in president-led systems. Four main explanatory categories are identified in the literature: the electoral cycle (referring to the ‘honeymoon effect’ and the ‘cost of ruling effect’), major events (the so-called ‘rally around the flag effect’), the economy (with mixed evidence, though), and the president’s party background. Case studies on semi-presidential countries, France and Portugal, have to some extent considered the institutional features of the regime type, including for example periods of cohabitation, i.e., when the president and the prime minister represent different parties and the president’s party is not represented in the cabinet. Otherwise, how power dynamics between the executives along with other features of the presidential office shape public opinion on presidents remain underexplored. This thesis addresses this apparent gap by drawing links between two above-mentioned broad literatures: on semi-presidentialism and on public opinion towards political executives. Empirically, it relies on various aggregate- and individual-level public opinion surveys and contextual data collected from several European semi-presidential countries over the period from 2000 to 2020 as well as data from presidential countries outside Europe.

The dissertation consists of three peer-reviewed journal articles and an introductory chapter. The first article published in European Political Science Review focuses on the association between presidential popularity and the level of presidential powers. It shows that the constitutional strength of the presidency shapes both the general level of presidential popularity and to what extent people
punish the presidents for changes in economy or get disappointed in them over time. Moreover, constitutionally weaker presidents are generally more popular than their stronger counterparts, and they retain better their popularity ratings under a weakening economy and following a honeymoon period. An important implication of this study is that the level of presidential powers should be considered as the primary explanatory factor in comparative studies of public opinion on presidents in semi-presidential regimes and beyond.

The second article published in Political Studies introduces an important additional perspective by focusing on the more practical power dynamics between the executives and their impact on presidential popularity in relation to the popularity of
the government. This includes party-political shifts and clashes between the executives that are expected to boost presidential leverage in situations where the president is politically opposed to the government. Concentrating on European semi-presidential countries – the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Poland, and Portugal – the results show that while both weak and strong presidents benefit from periods of minority governments, only stronger presidents benefit from conflicts with prime ministers and to some extent from periods of cohabitation. Weaker presidents, in turn, are expected to maintain a more neutral position. These novel
findings emphasize the importance of considering the complex relationship between the two executives when studying their public popularity.

The third article published in East European Politics approaches the topic from the perspective of political trust with individual-level data by examining whether the president’s alleged position ‘above’ parties or party politics explains support for the president in relation to other, arguably more ‘partisan’ political institutions. The focus is on a group of countries in Central and Eastern Europe, where the presidents tend to enjoy stronger levels of trust in relation to other political institutions, such as the government, prime minister, and political parties, but the presidents’ efforts to stay outside party-political disputes vary significantly. The explorative analysis reveals that while trust in president is influenced by party identification – meaning that citizens who support opposite party ideologies are more likely to express distrust in the president – it also reflects dissatisfaction with the government’s work, although prime ministers seem to be more consistently harmed by this factor. The results strongly indicate that presidents like prime ministers are actually evaluated through ‘partisan lenses’ and not systematically placed above party politics in semi-presidential regimes.

Together, the empirical findings of the three articles show that rather than the regime type itself the president’s authority within the system – dependent on the level of the president’s formal powers but also on the more practical power dynamics between the president and the prime minister – shapes public evaluations of the president so that the impact of external factors such as the economy or the electoral cycle become more irrelevant. This is not a problem as such, especially if the responsibility attributions reflect the actual level of presidential powers, yet it is not ideal for the functioning of our representative systems if the president’s more favourable public image shields the president from critique even in situations where voters should hold the president accountable. Against this background, the thesis presented also the idea that the ‘symbolic’ features associated with the presidency, such as the president’s alleged position ‘above’ parties or party politics, may benefit the president’s public position by obscuring the lines of responsibility. The empirical evidence indicates that this is not the case, though: people seem to hold those in
power accountable (referring to stronger presidents and prime ministers), but they also pay attention to the actions of those not in power (weaker presidents).

This doctoral dissertation produces novel insights on the president’s public position and role in semi-presidential democracies. Overall, the theoretical and empirical input of the thesis contributes to our understanding of political responsibility and accountability in systems with a dual executive structure. This, in turn, opens new avenues for studies concentrating on the causes and consequences of presidential authority.