The President of Ireland in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

There is long-standing belief that the Irish presidency is a unique or at least a very unusual institution. To what extent is this interpretation correct? This article compares the Irish presidency with other presidencies. It examines the spread of direct presidential elections and the gradual diffusion of constitutions with a mix of presidential and parliamentary features. It then compares the Irish President with 42 other presidencies, including countries with a directly elected president and those with an indirectly elected president. The article compares the powers of these presidents, the process of election, and the prospects for constitutional reform. The comparison shows that Ireland is now one of a small group of countries that have a directly elected but weak presidency, and that while the Irish presidency may be unusual in almost all aspects of the electoral process, the Irish case has equivalents elsewhere. The main conclusion is that the Irish presidency is not unique. In all significant respects, the presidency exhibits and has always exhibited commonalities with equivalent institutions. That said, in a number of regards the presidency has always been and/or remains relatively unusual.

Keywords:

• Ireland
• president
• direct election
• powers
• uniqueness

Notes

The table includes Russia and Turkey, but excludes micro-states and communist regimes. The early constitutions are available in Wright (1919). In 1936 Bulgaria, Estonia and Germany are excluded because their constitutions were suspended at this point. There is a similar table in Strøm and Amorim Neto (2006: 622).

In a 1999 referendum Australia chose to maintain its parliamentary monarchy.

See www.semipresidentialism.com/?cat=56 (accessed 23 October 2012). This inventory excludes eight countries where the constitution was suspended or where there was an explicitly transitional constitution.

By their nature, absolute monarchies, where there is no government responsibility, are not democratic. There are no countries where the president is indirectly elected and where the government is not responsible to the legislature.

For students of Irish politics, the standard way of identifying the Irish system is to refer to it as a parliamentary democracy. However, students of comparative politics often refer to it as semi-presidential.

There is a highly contentious argument that the 1937 constitution borrowed directly from the 1919 German constitution in relation to the presidency. The two institutions ‘exhibit so many secondary resemblances … that a direct importation must be suspected’ (Hogan & Whyte, 2003: 4.1.61). There is no doubt that de Valera and others did consult other constitutions, but there are so many differences between the presidency in the 1937 Irish and 1919 German constitutions that if there was any ‘direct importation’ then it was strictly limited.

See the list in Elgie (2011: 24–25).

The Polity 2 scale runs from −10 (absolute autocracy) to +10 (absolute democracy). Information about Polity IV can be found at: http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm

Iceland and São Tomé e Príncipe are included in the list of countries with a directly elected president and collective cabinet responsibility, even though they are too small to be included in the Polity data set. Malta is also included in the list of countries with an indirectly elected president, even though it is too small to be included there. Pacific micro-states are excluded. Also excluded are Botswana and South Africa, where there is an indirectly elected president, but where there is no prime minister.

Even though, as noted in Table 2, the potential range of the Siaroff (2003) and Shugart and Carey (1992) scales is 0–9 and 0–40, respectively, the actual scores range from zero to eight and zero to 24, respectively (note that not all countries scored by these authors are included in Table 2). These two scales are standardised on the basis of the range of actual scores, i.e. 0–8 and 0–24, rather than the potential range. The actual scores on Tavits's (2009) version of Metcalf's (2000) revised version of the Shugart and Carey scale range only from two to 13. This is because Tavits is engaged in an exercise that measures only presidents with relatively few powers. Accordingly, the scores are standardised on the basis of the 0–24 range in order to ensure that the standardised scores on Tavits's scale are not artificially high. Where a country records a standardised score on more than one of the three scales, the mean of the standardised scores is reported in Table 3.

Clearly, constitutional powers are an imperfect guide to presidential power in practice. This is particularly the case in countries with uncodified constitutions, such as the UK, but also in other monarchies, including Belgium, Denmark and Sweden.

It is certainly true that the threat of a veto, such as happens in the USA, may be enough for a bill to be amended or even withdrawn. Even so, the veto example helps to illustrate some of the issues regarding the actual use of constitutional powers.

I am grateful to Tapio Raunio for confirming this point.

Both Shugart and Carey (1992) and Metcalf (2000) record a score of eight for Finland prior to the reforms in the 1990s.

Prior to the suspension of the constitution in 1934, the German president also served for a seven-year term. The fact that a seven-year term was the modal category at the time is one of the reasons why the extent of any ‘direct importation’ from the 1919 German constitution can be questioned.

Sri Lanka uses a form of preferential voting for presidential elections, but it is not included in the comparison here because it does not meet the requirements for a democracy that were identified previously.

In Turkey there has been no direct presidential election yet and the constitutional situation is currently under review.

In two-ballot run-off systems, the number of candidates at the first ballot is counted.

The effective number of candidates is a notional figure. However, it helps to control for the relative permissiveness of the nominating procedures and the relative fragmentation of the party system.

In Austria in 1980 the People's Party also declined to run a candidate against the incumbent Social Democratic president. In Portugal in 1991 the main opposition party declined to stand a candidate against the incumbent, again artificially reducing the number of candidates and leading to the easy re-election of the incumbent.

In 1973 parliament passed a law extending President Kekkonen's term for four years. This meant that the election that was due in 1974 took place in 1978.

See at: www.semipresidentialism.com/?p=196 (accessed 23 October 2012).