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Introduction

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The Informal Powers of Western European Presidents

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics ((PASTPRPO))

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Abstract

The chapter defines weak presidents by adopting as distinctive criteria the power of the Presidents according to each Constitution. This choice allows us to avoid making reference exclusively to regime types which in certain cases provide inconsistent constitutional design or on certain institutional features such as direct or indirect elections. Moreover, it points out why weak presidents are worth being studied, especially in connection with informal powers and informal politics. The aim of this book is to address the need to understand presidential activism by widening our knowledge on weak presidents, irrespective of the regime type they operate and on the basis of a Small-N comparative design which adopts an interactionist approach where personal, institutional and contextual factors are integrated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Even though presidents have been directly elected only since 1964.

  2. 2.

    In Finland presidents have been directly elected since 2000.

  3. 3.

    Especially because direct election seems to increase presidential activism when only one type of intervention is considered, such as vetoes (Köker, 2017) or discretionary government replacement (Schleiter & Morgan-Jones, 2009).

  4. 4.

    To be clear from 1918 to 1945 Finland witnessed several wars: in the 1918 the Finnish Civil war; from 1918 to 1922 the Heimosodat; from 1939 to 1940 the Winter War; from 1941 to 1944 the Continuation War and from 1944 to 1945 the Lapland War. In these years Kaarlo Juho Ståhlberg (1919–1925); Lauri Kristian Relander (1925–1931); Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad (1931–1937); Kyösti Kallio (1937–1940) and Risto Heikki Ryti (1940–1944) served as head of state.

  5. 5.

    In particular, English sources pointed out that President Kekkonen highly intervened in government formation but there is no detailed information about his influence in the policy-making. However, even for the former acts I do not succeed in identifying precisely the boundaries between formal and informal interventions such as for the nominee of the Minister of Foreign affairs as well as for the capacity of the president to censure the whole cabinet. Furthermore, English sources do not clearly detect each single cases.

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  1. University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy

    Selena Grimaldi

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Grimaldi, S. (2023). Introduction. In: The Informal Powers of Western European Presidents. Palgrave Studies in Presidential Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33330-9_1

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