Cohabitation

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Cohabitation ( French : " living together"), German for "cohabitation", describes a situation that occurs in semi-presidential systems of government in which the president and the strongest faction in parliament belong to two opposing political camps and the president therefore does not have his own majority in parliament. In phases of cohabitation, the head of state is severely restricted in his competencies and depends on close cooperation with the government and the parliamentary majority that supports it.

The term is primarily related to the political system of France in the Fifth Republic , but is a central feature of the semi-presidential system of government and can therefore appear in all such systems.

Cohabitations in France

So far there have been three such phases in the Fifth French Republic:

The term of office of President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing is not referred to as cohabitation , although his two prime ministers did not belong to his liberal UDF : Chirac was a conservative, Raymond Barre was non-party.

Cohabitation was prevented several times by the dissolution of the National Assembly and subsequent new elections. For example after François Mitterrand was elected President in 1981 and when he was re-elected in 1988.

Since the presidential mandate was shortened from seven to five years, the French presidential and parliamentary elections fall in the same year. The background to this constitutional amendment, which was adopted by the population in a referendum on September 24, 2000 , was, among other things, to prevent future cohabitation.

However, in the event of an early dissolution of parliament or an early presidential election, terms of office could again fall apart and then more likely cohabitation.

Situation in other systems of government

In presidential systems of government , the situation that the president and the majority faction in parliament belong to different camps can also arise. This is particularly common in the United States' political system , where it is called Divided Government .

In the parliamentary system of government , in which the government emerges from the parliamentary majority, a situation comparable to cohabitation is in principle excluded. In two-chamber systems , however, it can happen that there are different majorities in the upper house than in the lower house. The Japanese political system knows the term Nejire Kokkai ("twisted parliament").

literature

  • R. Elgie: France. In: R. Elgie (Ed.): Semi-Presidentialism in Europe. Oxford 1999. pp. 67-85.
  • J. Hartmann, U. Kempf: Heads of State in Western Democracies. Opladen 1989.
  • U. Kempf: The French political system. In: W. Ismayr (Ed.): The political systems of Western Europe. Opladen 2003. pp. 301-347.
  • W. Steffani: Semi-presidentialism: an independent system type? In: ZParl . 26: 621-641 (1995).
  • G. Vedel: La Cinquième République. In: O. Duhamel, Y. Mény (eds.): Dictionnaire Constitutionnel. Paris 1992. pp. 128-140.