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Die liberalen Demokratien der Gegenwart stehen unter Stress und die traditionellen politischen Parteien haben sich von ihren Wählern losgelöst. Seit den 1980er Jahren befinden sich die Parteien in einer Legitimationskrise, deren Auswirkungen vor allem zu Beginn des einundzwanzigsten Jahrhunderts sichtbar geworden sind. Neue populistische Herausforderer haben versucht, die von den Mainstream-Parteien hinterlassene Repräsentationslücke zu füllen; gleichzeitig ist die Technokratie zu einer der prominentesten Repräsentationsformen geworden. Politische Verantwortung und Responsivität scheinen in den Augen der Wähler oft unvereinbar zu sein. Darüber hinaus haben politische Personalisierung und Präsidialisierungstendenzen zu einer Situation geführt, in der einzelne „Führungspersönlichkeiten“ zu den entscheidenden politischen Akteuren geworden sind, zum Nachteil der Parteiorganisationen. Diese Habilitationsschrift untersucht die Beziehung zwischen repräsentativen demokratischen Institutionen in parlamentarischen und semipräsidentiellen Systemen und politischen Eliten und versucht zu verstehen, wie diese Beziehung durch den Wandel der Parteiendemokratie beeinflusst wurde. Insbesondere analysiert diese Arbeit das Funktionieren politischer Institutionen in demokratischen Kontexten sowie die Reaktionen der Parteien und die Wege der Eliten zur Macht als Indikatoren für einen Anpassungsprozess. Die Analyse stützt sich auf vier zentrale Forschungsfragen: Welchen strukturellen Chancen und Zwänge sind politische Elite bei der Ausübung politischer Macht ausgesetzt?; wie haben der Niedergang des „Party Government“ und die politische Personalisierung Opportunitätsstrukturen verändert?; wie gehen Parteien und Eliten mit dem demokratischen Wandel um?; hat der demokratische Wandel neue Kriterien für erfolgreiche politische Karrieren hervorgebracht? Der institutionelle Schwerpunkt liegt auf politischen Exekutiven und repräsentativen Versammlungen auf verschiedenen Regierungsebenen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die politischen Eliten Strategien des Widerstands verfolgen und auf den demokratischen Wandel nur schrittweise reagieren. Mit anderen Worten: Politische Eliten erscheinen eher reaktiv als antizipierend, wenn sie mit substanziellen Veränderungen der politischen Gelegenheitsstruktur konfrontiert werden. Insgesamt leistet die Studie einen Beitrag zur Debatte über die sich wandelnde Rolle von Parteien und politischen Eliten als Bindeglied zwischen Staat und Gesellschaft und liefert Einschätzungen für zukünftige Entwicklungen.
When presidents try to expand their tenure in office, are protesting social movements, or even youth movements, able to stop them from candidating unconstitutionally and thus to prevent a democratic backslide? So far, the literature on term bids by presidents tends to focus on the institutional arrangements to hinder such term bids in the first place, on presidential strategies to circumvent the constitutional law, or on counteractions of political elites. Mobilizations against such attempts by presidents to run for office again, after reaching the end of their last allowed term, are often solely included as “pressures from below”. To address these shortcomings, this dissertation explores the issue of term amendment struggles through the lenses of contentious politics systematically combined with insights of revolution theories and democratization studies. Its conceptual perspective therefore lies on the interactions of actors and their constellations to each other as well as to institutions. The author deduces three diverse pathways to promote institutional change and prevent democratic backslidings – through political elites, (political) allies, and security forces. By selecting two cases that are most similar in terms of institutions and youth movements at the forefront, Senegal (2011-12) and Burkina Faso (2013-14), this analysis offers insight in the divergence of the struggles and their outcome. Because in both cases, the announcement of the presidents to run for another term in office led to broad mobilization led by youth movements against such tenure amendments, the political system in general and socioeconomic inequalities - but with diverging results. In Burkina Faso, Blaise Compaoré eventually resigned while Abdoulaye Wade in Senegal candidated again, legitimized by the Constitutional Court. Based on extensive fieldwork, including interviews with movement leaders and their allies, as well as a comprehensive media analysis and the SCAD databank for the analysis of protest events, the author differentiates and reconstructs the various phases of the conflict. The results of the dissertation point at two dimensions most relevant to comprehend the dissimilar pathways the struggles took – the reach of mobilization and, closely interlinked to the first, the refusal of soldiers to obey orders. It shows further that these differences go back to the respective history of each country, its former protest waves, and political culture. Although both presidents faced mass mobilization against their unconstitutional candidature, only in Burkina Faso it eventually led to an ungovernable situation. The dissertation concludes by reflecting on lessons learned for future democratic backslidings by presidents to come and avenues for future research – and thus offers fruitful insights not only for academics but for those who aim to save democratic norms and institutions.
This doctoral thesis contains four empirical studies analysing the personal accountability of prime ministers and the electoral presidentialisation of parliamentary elections in European democracies. It develops the concept of presidentialised prime ministerial accountability as a behavioural element in the chain of accountability in parliamentary systems. The ongoing presidentialisation of parliamentary elections, driven by changes in mass communication and erosion of societal cleavages, that fosters an increasing influence of prime ministers’ and other leading candidates’ personalities on vote choices, has called performance voting – and the resulting accountability mechanism of electoral punishment and reward of governing parties – into question. This thesis analyses whether performance voting can be extended to the personal level of parliamentary governments and asks whether voters hold prime ministers personally accountable for the performance of their government. Furthermore, it explores how voters change their opinion of prime ministers and how differences in party system stability and media freedom between Western and Central Eastern Europe contribute to higher electoral presidentialization in Central Eastern European parliamentary elections. This thesis relies on several national data sources: the ‘British Election Study’, the ‘German Longitudinal Election Study’ and other German election surveys, the ‘Danish Election Study’, as well as, data from the ‘Forschungsgruppe Wahlen’. In addition, it utilises cross-national data from the ‘Comparative Study of Electoral Systems’. The findings contribute to the ongoing scholarly debate on the issue of accountability and electoral presidentialisation in parliamentary systems by providing extensive evidence on prime ministerial accountability under presidentialised electoral behaviour. Keywords: presidentialisation; prime ministers; voting behavior; accountability; personalisation.
