The relationship between a head of government (head of the executive branch) and a nation's parliament or legislative assembly (the legislative branch) has long been the focus for comment and analysis - for example, has the prime minister in the United Kingdom come to a position of dominance at the expense of the power of parliament? Does the American president stand head and shoulders above Congress? Is a French president master of the system? Need the Russian president pay attention to the Duma? What of the position in other parliamentary and presidential systems? In this book, Baldwin seeks to provide answers, and does so by drawing upon the knowledge and expertise of an international group of scholars whose essays advance our knowledge of the subject. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies.

The relationship between a head of government (head of the executive branch) and a nation's parliament or legislative assembly (the legislative branch) has long been the focus for comment and analysis - for example, has the prime minister in the United Kingdom come to a position of dominance at the expense of the power of parliament? Does the American president stand head and shoulders above Congress? Is a French president master of the system? Need the Russian president pay attention to the Duma? What of the position in other parliamentary and presidential systems? In this book, Baldwin seeks to provide answers, and does so by drawing upon the knowledge and expertise of an international group of scholars whose essays advance our knowledge of the subject. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies.

By whatever name they are known (Parliaments, Legislatures, or Assemblies, to name but three) legislative assemblies in democratic societies face the twin challenges of institutional capacity and accountability to their citizens. In addressing these challenges, assemblies vary in the extent to which they serve the respective interests of three critical sets of actors: their members, party leaders, and voters. In this book, Shane Martin and Kaare W. Strøm identify three ideal types of democratic assemblies - the members' assembly, the leaders' assembly, and the voters' assembly - and analyze national legislative assemblies in the world's 68 most populous democracies, from Finland to Papua New Guinea, in light of these models. Based on extensive new cross-national data, they trace the implications of the three assembly types for the design, internal organization, resources, and powers of democratic national assemblies, develop indices of each assembly type, and score each of the 68 legislative assemblies on these indices. The analysis of legislative re-election rates in these countries reveals that the fate of incumbents depends on member resources as well as on leadership control, but is ultimately constrained by voter confidence. In conclusion, the authors discuss the past and future trajectories of legislative assemblies, including their susceptibility to democratic backsliding.

This book unpacks two decades of Nigeria’s National Assembly spanning 4th–8th legislative sessions. It focuses on the core areas of legislative functions – lawmaking, appropriation, oversight and representation – in examining the achievements, challenges and prospects of the legislature. This is particularly important because Nigeria being the most populous country in Africa is a crucial bastion of democratic governance in the region. Therefore, conducting deep diagnostics of the federal legislature as the custodian of popular mandate and the anchor of accountability offered immense opportunity for learning that would catalyze further institutional reforms and democratic consolidation.

Political leadership has made a comeback. It was studied intensively not only by political scientists but also by political sociologists and psychologists, Sovietologists, political anthropologists, and by scholars in comparative and development studies from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thereafter, the field lost its way with the rise of structuralism, neo-institutionalism, and rational choice approaches to the study of politics, government, and governance. Recently, however, students of politics have returned to studying the role of individual leaders and the exercise of leadership to explain political outcomes. The list of topics is nigh endless: elections, conflict management, public policy, government popularity, development, governance networks, and regional integration. In the media age, leaders are presented and stage-managed—spun—DDLas the solution to almost every social problem. Through the mass media and the Internet, citizens and professional observers follow the rise, impact, and fall of senior political officeholders at closer quarters than ever before. This Handbook encapsulates the resurgence by asking, where are we today? It orders the multidisciplinary field by identifying the distinct and distinctive contributions of the disciplines. It meets the urgent need to take stock. It brings together scholars from around the world, encouraging a comparative perspective, to provide a comprehensive coverage of all the major disciplines, methods, and regions. It showcases both the normative and empirical traditions in political leadership studies, and juxtaposes behavioural, institutional, and interpretive approaches. It covers formal, office-based as well as informal, emergent political leadership, and in both democratic and undemocratic polities.

The effective division of powers is critical to ensuring the promotion of good governance, democracy, and the rule of law in Africa. This book examines key issues arising during reforms of African constitutions, and focuses on the emergence of independent constitutional institutions providing checks against future abuses of powers.