Political Leadership in Old and New Democracies

Abstract

This chapter examines the differences between political leadership in old and new democracies. It operationalizes the concept of political leadership as the decision-making authority of the president and/or the prime minister in these systems. It adopts an institutionalist approach to the study of political leadership. It argues that different political institutions provide incentives for actors to behave in different ways. Taking old democracies to be those countries that have been continuously democratic since before the early 1990s and new democracies to be those that have democratized since this time, it shows that there are institutional differences between them. There has been a redistribution of regime types, with a decline in the number of parliamentary regimes and a rise in the number of semi-presidential regimes. This shift means that new democracies are more likely to have directly elected presidents and that there are now more complex patterns of political leadership than before with a greater emphasis on presidential/prime ministerial relations. In addition, the fragmentation of party systems in new democracies and the prevalence of proportional electoral systems has helped to generate a higher turnover of prime ministers in new democracies. Generally prime ministers in new democracies tend to be weaker than their counterparts in old democracies.