The Dual Political Legislation Cycle in a Semi-Presidential System

1. The Dual Political Legislation Cycle in a Semi-Presidential System Fabio Padovano and Nicolas Gavoille | CREM, University Rennes 1 Introduction The Political Legislation Cycle predicts a peak of legislative production in the pre-electoral period, when the legislator increases voters' utility in order to be reelected. France is unique in that two elections set up the pace of political life: the presidential and the legislative elections, which potentially generate a dual legislation cycle. Motivations Empirical Model The special interest group theory of government (Stigler 1971, Tollison 1988): any law is redistributive by nature. The Political Business Cycle literature (Nordhaus 1975, Rogoff 1990): policies are sensitive to upcoming elections, as politicians aim at reelection. The production of laws can be strategically used to increase reelection probability  the timing of legislative production matters, just like in the PBC  The Political Legislation Cycle (Lagona and Padovano 2007, Padovano and Petrarca 2012) PLC theory has been studied mainly in context of parliamentary systems (Italy). On Tsebelis' (1999) scale of government discretionary power, France's semipresidential system is at the opposite extreme of the Italian case  the presence of a PLC in a semipresidential institutional framework would reinforce the generality of the theory France is a unique mix of parliamentarism and presidentialism  2 national elections set up the pace of the political life: the presidential and the legislative elections)  possibility of a DUAL legislation cycle With the help of a Hierarchical Poisson model, a newly assembled dataset focusing on the approved voted legislation from 1959 to 2012 is explored Hierarchical Poisson Model : Results TheoreticalUnderpinnings The 4 PLC variables shows the expected sign and are significant evidence of a dual Political Legislation Cycle The legislative production increases by 17% in the last year of a legislature, and increases by 13% during the last 6 months of the presidential mandate Conclusion