Semi-Presidentialism

Abstract

There are now more than 50 countries in the world with semi-presidential constitutions. The first semi-presidential regimes were created in 1919 in Finland and Weimar Germany. The spread of semi-presidentialism was slow for a long time after this period, but during the third wave of democratization in the early 1990s semi-presidentialism became the constitutional form of choice for most new democracies. Today, countries continue to choose semi-presidentialism and for a variety of reasons. In 2007 Turkey passed a constitutional amendment that introduced a semi-presidential form of government as a way of strengthening the authority of the president. In contrast, in Kenya the conflict between the president and the leader of the opposition ended in March 2008 when they agreed to pass reforms that limited the president’s power and as a result created a semi-presidential system.