Designing semi-parliamentary democracy

This chapter discusses new and improved ways of designing semi-parliamentary government. This constitutional format provides a flexible framework that can be adapted to different contexts and fine-tuned as an alternative to presidentialism. While the tension between different visions of democracy resurfaces in the design of inter-branch relations, semi-parliamentarism allows for ways of resolving legislative deadlock that would be more problematic under presidentialism and other forms of bicameralism. Because the executive is not personalized, it becomes less risky to allow this branch to dissolve the assembly or to initiate a referendum on a deadlocked bill. And because the second chamber’s democratic legitimacy is at least equal to that of the first chamber, deadlock can be avoided by weakening the veto power of the latter, rather than the former. The chapter also shows that semi-parliamentary government does not require a separate second chamber. The confidence chamber may be turned into a two-party confidence committee embedded in a proportionally elected assembly. The size of this committee may even be determined endogenously, depending on the behavior of parties and voters.