Foreign Policy Preferences and Vote Choice Under Semi-Presidentialism

Abstract

Under semi-presidential regimes, directly elected presidents often play a central role in foreign policy, but their responsibility for the economy is limited. I propose an office-centred explanation of voter behaviour in semi-presidential elections based on the foreign policy preferences of the electorate. In order to explore the empirical applicability of this addition to the theory, I explore the Lithuanian case: a semi-presidential country where the president has substantial powers in foreign and defence policy and the presidents are usually non-partisan. I employ a dataset from the Lithuanian 2019 post-election survey that offers a battery of items measuring the positions of voters on foreign policy issues. When controlling for alternative explanations, I find that foreign policy preferences (measured as an index of voter attitudes towards Russia and defence) are a strong and stable determinant of vote choice, in both the first and second rounds of presidential elections.