Introduction

This book is concerned with executive-legislative relations in the presidential and semi-presidential democracies of Asia. Since around the mid-1980s, comparative politics scholars have advanced our understanding of differences in executive-legislative relations and their impact on many aspects of political life. These impacts include regime stability, the quality of governance, policy-making processes, formation of parties and party systems, ethnic conflict, and even the international actions of the states.¹ These consequences have been analysed with a focus on differences in the two basic forms of executive-legislative relations - that is, (semi-) presidential versus parliamentary government - as well as with a focus on executive-legislative relations within one form of government. This book’s focus belongs to the latter type of analysis; specifically, it centers on executive-legislative relations within presidential and semi-presidential governments.