Please forgive a little bit of shameless self-publicity, but a new book on semi-presidentialism has just been published. It is called Semi-Presidentialism and Democracy. It is coedited by Sophia Moestrup, Yu-Shan Wu and myself and published by Palgrave Macmillan.

The book is the result of a conference that was organised by Yu-Shan Wu at the Academia Sinica in Taipei in October 2008, which just shows how long it takes such projects to come to fruition. There are 15 chapters and no fewer than 300 pages, so hopefully it is worth the cost, which, admittedly and through no fault of the coeditors, is rather expensive. The details of the book are available at the Palgrave Macmillan website. Palgrave have made available Chapter 1 for free download. It is my chapter ‘Semi-Presidentialism: An Increasingly Common Constitutional Choice’.

The book focuses on semi-presidentialism’s effect on democratic survival and collapse. The Table of Contents is as follows:

PART I: VARIETIES OF SEMI-PRESIDENTIALISM
R. Elgie, ‘Semi-Presidentialism: An Increasingly Common Constitutional Choice’
Y-S. Wu, ‘Clustering of Semi-Presidentialism: A First Cut’
PART II: THE PERFORMANCE OF SEMI-PRESIDENTIALISM: GENERAL AND REGIONAL PERSPECTIVES
R. Elgie and P. Schleiter, ‘Variation in the Durability of Semi-Presidential Democracies’
J-W. Lin, ‘The Rules of Electoral Competition and the Accountability of Semi-Presidential Governments’
R. Elgie, ‘Semi-Presidentialism in Western Europe’
O. Protsyk, ‘Semi-Presidentialism under Post-Communism’
B. Reilly, ‘Semi-Presidentialism and Democratic Development in East Asia’
S. Moestrup, ‘Semi-Presidentialism in Africa; Patterns and Trends’
PART III: THE PERFORMANCE OF SEMI-PRESIDENTIALISM: COUNTRY PERSPECTIVES
C. Jalali, ‘The President as a Backseat Driver: Portugal’s Evolving Semi-Presidentialism’
Y-S. Wu & J-H. Tsai, ‘Taiwan: Democratic Consolidation under President-Parliamentarism’
K. Matsuzato, ‘Disintegrated Semi-Presidentialism and Parliamentary Oligarchy in Post-Orange Ukraine’
W. Crowther, ‘Semi-Presidentialism and Moldova’s Flawed Transition to Democracy’
S. Moestrup, ‘Haiti: Semi-Presidentialism in a Fractured Society’
Y-C. Shen, ‘Semi-Presidentialism in the Weimar Republic: A Failed Attempt at Democracy’
R. Elgie, S. Moestrup and Y-S. Wu, ‘Semi-Presidentialism and Democracy: What Have We Learned?’

Obviously, please feel free to contact me if you require more information.