Presidents and Assemblies

John M. Carey is John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences at Dartmouth College. He has also taught at the Universidad Católica de Chile, the University of Rochester, Washington University in St Louis, Harvard University, and at the Fundación Juan March in Madrid, Spain. His interests are comparative politics, elections, and Latin American politics. His research focuses on institutional design and democratic representation. Carey's books include Legislative Voting and Accountability (Cambridge University Press), Executive Decree Authority (with Matthew Shugart, Cambridge University Press), Term Limits in the State Legislatures (with Richard Niemi and Lynda Powell, University of Michigan Press), and Term Limits and Legislative Representation (Cambridge University Press). He has published articles in the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Perspectives on Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Public Choice, Estudios Publicos, Political y Gobierno, the Revista de Ciencias Politicas, and the Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, as well as chapters in twenty edited volumes. Data and results from his research are available on his website (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~jcarey/).

• Part I. Presidential and Parliamentary Democracy: 1. Basic choices in democratic regime types; 2. What is presidentialism? Criticisms and responses; 3. The constitutional origin and survival of assembly and executive; 4. Legislative powers of presidents: veto and decree; Part II. Electoral Dynamics of Presidential Democracy: 5. Electoral dynamics: efficiency and inefficiency; 6. Electoral rules and the party system; 7. Electoral cycles and the party system; Part III. Institutiona: Engineering: 8. Semi-presidentialism: the third alternative; 9. Electoral cycles in semi-presidential regimes; 10. Divided polities and collegial presidencies; 11. Conclusions; Appendices.

'This is an important book. It is the first truly comparative analysis of presidential systems, a comparative analysis which had been almost entirely neglected so far: Professors Shugart and Carey are to be much congratulated for entering this field and showing how rich and varied it can be.' Government and Opposition