While there is a vast literature about the efficacy (or productivity) of policymaking in the U.S. presidential system in general and through periods of divided government in particular, less attention has been paid to the effectiveness of a split executive in semipresidential political systems. Does cohabitation (whereby the executive branch is represented by a president elected by popular vote, on the one hand, and a prime minister is appointed by the president but responsible to the majority in the legislature, on the other) result in policy gridlock? Does cohabitation enhance bipartisanship? Does it strengthen the role of the opposition in the crafting of policies? In this book, Sébastien Lazardeux tries to answer these questions by using France as a case study.

In Chapter 2, Lazardeux presents a theory of how the institutional mechanism of a split executive under cohabitation affects the crafting and enactment of major legislation. The two central players, president and prime minister, are conceived as rational actors who are generally motivated by two sets of incentives. While policy incentives and electoral incentives are often congruent, electoral incentives (read: considerations of power) have more weight in the case of noncongruence. In such instances, “the prime minister is willing to sacrifice immediate policy gains to achieve electoral and policy gains in the future” (p. 38).

Under the author’s sequential model, the French prime minister first has a choice (not) to propose a bill. The president then has a choice (not) to oppose the bill. One central assumption of the model is that during cohabitation, the office of prime minister serves as a launching pad for winning the subsequent presidential election. In order to maximize their chances, prime ministers must protect themselves from public controversy with the presidents by focusing legislative action on minor, noncontroversial bills. Their ability to do so, however, depends on expectations on the part of legislators in the Assemblée Nationale. If the members of the majority expect the prime minister to win the next presidential elections and to keep their own seats, they have no reason to oppose the strategy. If they do not believe in the prime minister’s chances of becoming president, they will try to push through reforms as soon as possible, thus putting the prime minister under pressure to take action.

Over the course of three empirical chapters, Lazardeux tests the level of support for his model and its implications. In Chapter 3, he offers a detailed qualitative account of the three periods of cohabitation under the Fifth Republic, plausibly highlighting how differences in the respective prime ministers’ positions led to differing legislative strategies and presidential responses. From 1986 to 1988, Prime Minister Jacques Chirac was constantly challenged from within the governing coalition. Expecting François Mitterand to dissolve parliament after his reelection, the majority was in a hurry to push its policy agenda. Conversely, both prime ministers Edouard Balladur (1993–95) and Lionel Jospin (1997–2002) enjoyed cohesive majorities that were optimistic about their electoral future. As predicted by Lazardeux’s model, both Balladur and Jospin opted for voluntary constraint under such conditions, and they were thus able to pace the timing of reforms, a strategy that reduced the role of the president and contributed to prime-ministerial preeminence within the executive branch.

In Chapters 4 and 5, Lazardeux deploys an original data set covering what he labels “landmark” reforms enacted in France between 1967 and 2007 (that is, under periods of both unified government and cohabitation) so as to test the combined effect of cohabitation and various characteristics of the respective legislative majority on policymaking productivity. His quantitative analysis shows that larger majorities enact fewer, not more numerous, “landmark” projects. The analysis also shows that cohabitation per se has no independent effect on policymaking productivity (as the corresponding coefficient is positive but not statistically significant). In fact, cohabitation does not even lead to more compromise or negotiation, either between the various factions of the governing parliamentary majority or between the prime minister and the president. All of this goes to show that under cohabitation, policymaking inefficiency on the part of prime ministers and their majority is less a result of presidential obstruction than of a lack of political will to push legislation unilaterally.

It is the merit of this book and its author that the study of French cohabitation is carried beyond the conventional analysis of an exclusive game between president and prime minister. By including the specific relations between prime ministers and their parliamentary majorities as variables that affect policymaking strategies, Lazardeux charts new territory. A number of his methodological choices, however, are questionable. Examples include a reliance on published memoirs, rather than on an analysis of primary sources such as minutes. Another example is a merely procedural definition of what constitutes major (“landmark”) legislation and reform. Such reservations notwithstanding, the fundamental framework is viable and heuristically fruitful.

More fundamental and more uncomfortable questions remain. How likely is it that this study will inform French politics in the future? And in a comparative context, can both the conceptual framework and the main findings be applied to other semipresidential political systems? To his credit, the author himself addresses these issues in his concluding Chapter 6. In this context, however, his claims and assertions do not always quite convince. While it is true that cohabitation may still occur in France, constitutional reforms as implemented in 2000 and 2002 have greatly reduced its likelihood. Since that time, the length of the presidential mandate has been aligned with that of the deputies in the Assemblée Nationale, and the parliamentary elections have taken place immediately after the presidential elections. Inasmuch as the French themselves have always conceived of cohabitation as an anomaly, they have indeed done their best to avert it in the future.

Finally, how useful is Lazardeux’s study for comparative purposes? While the author’s preliminary attempt at extending his model to the alternative case of Portugal (pp. 143–46) should not be dismissed out of hand, one cannot help suspecting that a limited experience (all in all, the three periods of French cohabitation amount to less than 12 years) and, more generally, the special nature of the French case (a monarchie républicaine shaped by Charles de Gaulle and his towering legacy on how the role of the president is to be interpreted) significantly diminish the comparative value of the French example.

On the formal side, one truly disappointing feature relates to the quality of the written text. Many times, entire words are missing or grossly misspelled. “To legislative” (p. 138) is not a verb, and “the present” does not help when the author means to say “the president” (p. 45). It seems that insufficient attention was paid to the editing of Cohabitation and Conflicting Politics in French Policymaking. Its scholarly substance, however, is valuable.