How useful is the concept of semi-presidentialism for understanding Essay

How useful is the concept of semi-presidentialism for understanding the political regime of the Fifth Republic - Essay Example The first aspect worth analyzing is to what extent France meets Duverger’s first criteria: a president elected by universal suffrage. In 1962, the then French president Charles de Gaulle passed a constitutional amendment altering the presidential election from parliamentary to universal suffrage (Curtis 2004). This meant that the president of the republic would be elected by the population, and therefore had to become a strong and appealing individual leader. At the time, this benefited De Gaulle since he epitomized charismatic leadership and desired a system were the president wielded the majority of government power and responsibility. Universal suffrage gave constitutional power to the president, as he, by virtue of being elected by majority vote, now possessed similar legitimacy to that of a majority in the Assembly. Thus, 1962 marked the beginning of a shift of power from the Assembly to the President, and is even considered by Robert Elgie to be the point that establishe d the Fifth Republic as a semi-presidential regime.   The second criteria of Duverger’s definition of semi-presidential regime is that â€Å"(2) he possesses quite considerable powers† (Duverger, 1980:166 cited in Elgie:2009). Scholars such as Robert Elgie criticized Duverger for being too vague in his definition of semi-presidential regimes. For instance, Duverger underscores the fact that the president must possess considerable powers, but never expounds on this idea in order to establish what is deemed to be considerable. Reading further on Duverger’s other work such as A NEW POLITICAL SYSTEM MODEL: SEMI-PRESIDENTIAL GOVERNMENT (1980), Duverger defined the considerable powers saying that French Fifth Republic as â€Å"A country with an all-powerful presidency† (Duverger 1980:170). He justified this proposition by citing Article 16 which states

Compare and differentiate the nature of the imagination in Tintern Essay

Compare and differentiate the nature of the imagination in Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth and Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Essay Example erences could be more marked that in Coleridges â€Å"Kubla Khan†, and Wordsworths â€Å"Tintern Abbey†, two poems that are as different in tone, subject matter, and treatment that it seems possible for two poems to be. â€Å"Kubla Khan† is an elaborate and sensual adventure, it is fantastical and a phonic treat, conjuring amazing, startling images in the minds eye and enacting this creation through the medium of sybaritic, mesmerising poetry. â€Å"Tintern Abbey†, on the other hand, written as it is in blank verse, is more austere and more consciously philosophical. Its dominant mode is not that of the image, but of thought, its rhythm more steady. These differences, albeit whilst they mask some similarities, are indicative of Wordsworth and Coleridges divergent understanding of the nature of the imagination. For a large part of the critical history of â€Å"Kubla Khan†, the poem has been considered as something slight, when it was published it was considered nothing more interesting that a nonsense poem. This reading is certainly a mistake and one made, I imagine, because of a misunderstanding of how to read the poem. It cannot be read, or at least to understand its significance it should not be read, on an ordinary level, for its word by word, phrase by phrase significances. Rather the very motion of the poem, its exaltation in creation is its sense; the poems means of creation is equal to what is created. In other words, the meaning of this imaginative poem, a poem that the imagination has slaved long over, is imagination itself. If we see the imagination at work as that which is represented in the poem, then we can also decipher precisely what the nature of imagination is in Coleridges conception. For example, in the very first stanza we see Kubla Khan â€Å"decree† his â€Å"stately pleasure dome† (2). Note that he decrees it, he does not decree that it be built. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, its construction begins: â€Å"So twice five miles of fertile ground /