Abstract

As for the first dedicated, systematized and conceptualized on the basis of institutional, procedural, political and behavioral experience of France, semi-presidential system of government has undergone and is still undergoing significant theoretical, methodological and empirical modifications and perturbations, though still is one of the dominant model of interinstitutional relations in different countries. Accordingly, its updating and likely reinterpretation in the context of institutional, procedural, political and behavioral patterns and attributes are important for the development and improvement of the scientific knowledge about modern republicanism. This generated the key research task that comes on the evaluation of classical and contemporary/postclassical and formulation of updated and synthetic definitions of semi-presidentialism. The solution to this task is due to a large amount of scientific literature devoted to the issue of semi-presidential system of government. In particular, given the fact that nowadays Political Science has formed so many approaches to interpretation and verification of the empirical cases of semi-presidentialism. Consequently, the concept of semi-presidentialism was began to speak in plural, isolating classical and post-classical, minimalist and maximalist, dispositional and relational paradigms of its definition. However, the proposed classical and post-classical definitions of semi-presidentialism are largely criticized, on the basis of which we decided to synthesize their definitive advantages. This became the basis of synthetic and updated definition/reformulation of semi-presidentialism as a system of government, which must have the following attributes/characteristics: a) presence of the institution of president, who receives powers for a fixed term under direct or indirect nationwide elections and is not responsible to legislature; b) presence of the institutions of prime minister and cabinet, which do not receive powers for a fixed term under direct or indirect nationwide elections, but are always collectively responsible to legislature ; c) combining/dualism of executive by, on the one hand, president and, on the other hand, prime minister and cabinet. This «imposition» of classical/maximalist and post-classical/minimalist definitions of semi-presidentialism is theoretically, methodologically, logically and empirically important for several reasons: it promotes the verification of the concept of semi-presidentialism; it motivates and logically simplifies the isolation of different types of semi-presidentialism.