Ricerc@Sapienza

Why are some institutions capable of enhancing democracy, while others struggle under pressure? Shugart and Carey wrote their seminal book Presidents and Assemblies (1992) at a crucial time in modern history in an effort to answer these fundamental questions. Because of bold claims and huge theoretical and conceptual contributions, their timely publication became the starting point for a new way to think about institutional specifications and types of political systems.

This chapter aims to disentagle the ‘presidentialization’ and ‘prime ministerialization’ concepts and to clarify them. The first section begins by noting when the terms first came into common academic usage. It will also discuss the relationship between the concept of prime ministerialization and the more familiar concept of prime ministerial government as it has been used in the work on the core executive. The chapter will then focus on the most important research questions at stake in this area, noting the methods that are traditionally used to study this topic.