Personalized and Collegial Governments

The paper begins with an examination of research literature on government systems that identifies and relates to personalized and collegial elements within different government systems. It explores studies that acknowledge the differentiation between presidential and parliamentary government systems and studies that focus on the characteristics of executives. It then proposes a new analytical framework that differentiates between collegial and personalized government systems (including elements such as the power of the chief executive vis-à-vis the ministers, control over the composition of the cabinet, etc.). Next, it offers an operationalization of the proposed parameters. Finally, it examines government systems in several democracies, analyzing their variance and similarities. The analysis relies on constitutional sources and data collected by other researchers. The intent is to cover the following 28 democracies (though we expect that a few cases may be omitted due to lack of reliable data): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.