Raising the Stakes: Investigating the Politicisation of Presidents in Parliamentary Democracies

Abstract

Over the course of the past decade, countries across the world have exhibited a curious trend: the politici-sation of unelected presidents in parliamentary democracies. Why have these neutral and supposedly pow-erless institutions been dragged into the political arena? Through the application of the Most Different Systems Design proposed by Anckar, this thesis seeks to understand the sources of polarisation in Turkey and India that have resulted in presidencies that are subjugated by the very political parties they are sup-posed to oversee. Via the lenses of social cleavage theory, the thesis finds that presidencies are most likely to become politicised when the country becomes divided over national identity and when the possibility of establishing consensus across the political spectrum breaks down. In addition to understanding the politi-cised parliamentary president, the thesis highlights the relative obscurity of the concept of the parliamentary president, and aims to restore the topic to the wider field of governmental systems.