Bolstering Prime-Ministerial Countercheck: A New Game-Based Investiture Scheme for Semi-Presidential Systems

This paper presents a fully articulated semi-presidential constitutional scheme (Scheme C) that embraces parliamentary fragmentation and minority governments as the new normal rather than pathologies requiring cure. Evolved from Schemes A and B, it strengthens prime-ministerial counterweights against the assembly. The scheme fuses (i) Westminster-style executive continuity and prime-ministerial dissolution initiative, (ii) French-style presidential authority in foreign and defence policy plus a robust legislative veto, (iii) synchronised presidential-legislative elections complemented by semi-mid-term legislative contests, and (iv) a game-based investiture rule paired with an innovative two-tier no-confidence procedure, both anchored in formal legislative confidence. Scheme C thereby achieves an unprecedented synthesis: more parliamentary than classic president-parliamentary or premier-presidential systems, more stable than Westminster models amid fragmented legislatures, and endowed with stronger mid-term democratic correctives than existing benchmarks. Its architecture simultaneously shields the prime minister from presidential overreach, the president from parliamentary extortion, and the state from governmental paralysis or authoritarian drift---even under unified political control of both branches. Scheme C is thus advanced not as theoretical speculation but as a coherent, stress-tested model ready for adoption in contemporary democracies facing persistent legislative fragmentation.