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Who's the chef? Economic voting under a dual executive
Author(s) -
LEWISBECK MICHAEL S.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
european journal of political research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.267
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 1475-6765
pISSN - 0304-4130
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-6765.1997.tb01168.x
Subject(s) - presidential system , contest , prime minister , cohabitation , voting , political science , dual (grammatical number) , executive power , prime (order theory) , power (physics) , economics , law and economics , political economy , public administration , law , politics , art , physics , literature , mathematics , combinatorics , quantum mechanics
Abstract. Standard economic voting models assume a dominant locus of policy responsibility, a single chief executive whose powers are fixed by certain inviolate institutional rules. The president‐centred US system serves as the paradigm here. However, economic voting may occur under a dual executive, whose powers change in response to the institutional rules themselves. France represents this second scenario. There are two executives, the President and the Prime Minister. Under conditions of cohabitation, with a partisan division of the power between the two offices, economic voting becomes more sophisticated. According to data from the 1993–1995 cohabitation, voters perceived that the Prime Minister, not the President, was responsible for the economy. Therefore, in the 1995 presidential contest, they directed their economic evaluations at the Gaullist party of the Prime Minister, not the Socialist party of the President.