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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
There are good prima facie reasons to believe that directly electing a prime minister may provide the holder of that office with a tremendous power resource. Indeed some countries with weak prime ministers have debated this possible change, and one, Israel, carried it through. Using a theoretical argument based on the number of veto points in a political system, this article proposes that a directly elected prime minister will not increase the power of a prime minister. It studies what actually happened in Israel, and offers alternative explanations for the weakness of and lack of cohesion in its executive. Similarly, other factors are identified as causes of prime ministerial weakness in Italy and Japan.
The author would like to thank Michael Gallagher and two anonymous referees for their useful comments on the paper.
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