The head of state is the person who exercises a number of formal and ceremonial powers and responsibilities, such as receiving visiting monarchs and other heads of state, and accepting the accreditation of ambassadors. Usually the head of state will have some residual, almost referee-like, political powers—such as the appointment of a head of government or prime minister. In political systems which retain a monarchy it is the monarch who is the obvious head of state. In others it is a president, whose political powers may vary considerably. In some countries, such as Israel the degree of real political power is very limited except when, as occurs quite frequently in Italy for example, coalition formation requires the exercise of discretion in relation to the selection of a prime minister likely to be able to form a government capable of commanding the support of the parliament.
It is because of this that Italy, following the French model set by the Fifth Republic, is debating increasing the powers of the president. In some systems the roles of chief executive—with real political power—and head of state are merged, and this is obviously the case in the USA. In other political systems, notably France in the Fifth Republic, there is an ambiguity surrounding the role of the president, whose powers and responsibilities may vary according to particular political circumstances and the personality of the incumbent. There is no tidy pattern to the structure of states and governments, and the roles of their heads can be very complex. This headship need not even be held by one person: the Yugoslavian presidency after the death of Tito, for example, operated as a collective body of eight members with its leadership rotating among them, while the Israelis experimented, largely unsuccessfully, with alternating the prime ministership between two party leaders.
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