The case for presidential term limits

Journal of Democracy

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 128-142

  Maltz, Gideon ^a  

^a Hogan and Hartson   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33846786451     PISSN: 10455736     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jod.2007.0010     Document Type: Review

References (16)

1. Population data are taken from the CIA World Factbook, www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html.
2. Countries are "presidential" if they have "strong" presidential powers, regardless of whether the president is elected directly or indirectly; there are five countries that are categorized as "presidential" without direct elections - Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Moldova, and South Africa. Countries are "semipresidential" if they meet either of two conditions: (1) presidents have "moderate" powers, regardless of whether they are elected directly or indirectly; or (2) presidents have "weak" powers, so long as they are elected directly. Presidential power is taken from John Gerring and Strom Thacker, "Political Institutions and Corruption: The Role of Unitarism and Parliamentarism," British Journal of Political Science 34 (April 2004): 295-330.
3. The election of presidents is taken from IFES, Election Guide, www.electionguide.org.
4. Countries are classified as politically open if they do not fall within the "politically closed authoritarian" category used by Larry Diamond in "Thinking about Hybrid Regimes," Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 21-35. I have created a dataset based on Diamond's categories but expanded it to cover changes prior and subsequent to 2001.
5. For presidential power see Gerring and Thacker, "Political Institutions and Corruption"; for regime type, I again use the modified dataset drawn from Diamond, "Thinking About Hybrid Regimes," grouping Diamond's "liberal democracy" and "electoral democracy" categories into the single category of "democracy" and his "ambiguous regime," "competitive authoritarian," and "hegemonic electoral authoritarian" categories into the single category of "electoral authoritarian."
6. Andreas Schedler, "The Menu of Manipulation," Journal of Democracy 13 (April 2002): 192.
7. Thomas Cronin, "Presidential Term, Tenure, and Reeligibility," in Thomas Cronin, ed., Inventing the American Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989), 64.
8. Lenard Cohen, "Embattled Democracy: Postcommunist Croatia in Transition," in Karen Dawisha, ed., Politics, Power, and the Struggle for Democracy in South-East Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 93.
9. Marina Ottaway, Democracy Challenged: The Rise of Semi- Authoritarianism (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment, 2003), 159.
10. Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, "Autocracy by Democratic Rules: The Dynamics of Competitive Authoritarianism in the Post-Cold War Era," paper for Mapping the Great Zone: Clientelism and the Boundary between Democratic and Democratizing Conference at Columbia University, New York, 4-5 April 2003.
11. Ottaway, Democracy Challenged, 157.
12. J. Mark Ramseyer, "The Puzzling (In)dependence of Courts: A Comparative Approach," Journal of Legal Studies 23 (June 1994): 741.
13. Rebecca Bill Chavez, The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies: Judicial Politics in Argentina (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 16.
14. Karla Hoff, Shale Horowitz, and Branko Milanovic, "Political Alternation as a Restraint on Investing in Influence: Evidence from Transition Countries," paper for Network on the Effects of Inequality on Economic Performance Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, 10-11 September 2004, 8.
15. Hoff, Horowitz, and Milanovic, "Political Alternation as a Restraint on Investing in Influence," 2.
16. Hansard parliamentary debates, 14 July 2005, www.parliament.the- stationary-office.co.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/cm050714/text/50714w16.htm.