presidential and parliamentary

the executive

defining the executive

2 main powers of the government

  • leadership (e.g. foreign policy, budget, legislative proposals)

  • management (i.e. implementation of policy, crisis response)

  • head of government → e.g. president or prime minister/chancellor

  • cabinet ministers → e.g. foreign minister, finance minister etc

  • junior ministers / permanent state secretaries → outside the cabinet

  • civil servants → in ministries, departments, and agencies

how is the head of the executive chosen?

  • directly elected (Brazil)

  • elected by a special college (USA)

  • indirectly elected by a parliament (Germany)

how is the head of the executive removed?

  • impeachment by a court

  • vote of no confidence (UK)

  • removed by a political party (e.g. ANC in South Africa)

how are cabinet ministers appointed and removed?

  • by the president/prime minister

  • by the parliament/congress

presidentialism

separation of powers

  • president appoints the Cabinet (who may require individual approval by legislature)

  • president and cabinet cannot be removed by legislature

  • president and cabinet cannot dissolve legislature

  • examples: US, Ghana, Brazil

parliamentarism

fusion of powers

  • prime minister appointed by monarch/head of state

  • prime minister appoints cabinet → PM & cabinet may require a vote-of-investiture by legislature

  • PM & cabinet can be removed by legislature (e.g. ‘vote of confidence’ or ‘constructive vote of no confidence’)

  • PM/cabinet can dissolve parliament → new elections

  • but: some countries have fixed terms, where this is impossible

  • examples: Germany, India, UK

semi-presidentialism

partial separation of powers

  • president appoints PM, but PM appoints cabinet

  • PM & cabinet can be removed by either the president of the legislature

  • president can dissolve the legislature → new elections

the perils of presidentialism

5 problems of presidentialism according to Linz

  1. the executive and legislature have competing claims to legitimacy

  2. fixed terms of office make presidential regimes more rigid than parliamentary regimes

  3. presidentialism encourages a winner-takes-all outcome

  4. style of presidential politics encourages presidents to be intolerant of political opposition (legislature) - unlike PM

  5. presidentialism encourages populist candidates

waves of presidential-parliamentary debate

first wave of the debate

first wave

  • key IV(s): presidentialism vs parliamentarism

  • key DV(s): survival of democracy

  • analysis: univariate comparison

  • main finding: parliamentarism is better than presidentialism (Linz 1990, Stepan & Skach 1993, Riggs 1994)

critique

  • not considering the electoral system (Horowitz 1990)

  • skewed sample (power & gasiorowsi 1997)

comparative methods

systematic comparison

number of cases

  • small-N vs. large-N studies (e.g. single country vs. global comparison)

time period of study

  • is it a special period in history? (e.g. Cold War period)

longitudinal vs. cross-section analysis

  • country(s) over time vs. once-off

level of analysis

  • macro-level (e.g. countries)

  • meso-level (e.g. organisations within a country)

  • micro-level (e.g. individuals’ attitudes)

second wave of the debate

second wave

  • key IV(s): type of executive; powers of the executive, party system, electoral system type

  • key DV(s): survival of democracy; good governance (e.g. policy making capabilities)

  • analysis: multivariate comparison

  • main findings:

    • type of executive + party system fragmentation matter for survival of democracy (Mainwaring 1993)

    • (non-) legislative powers of the presidency matter democratic endurance (Shugart & Carrey 1992)

    • certain presidential system = can counteract particularistic tendencies of fragmented legislature (Shugart 1999)

the presidential toolbox

the presidential toolbox to construct legislative coalitions

  • agenda power → legislative powers awarded to the president, executive decree authority

  • budgetary authority → controlling of public spending

  • cabinet management → distribution of portfolios to alliance members

  • partisan powers → influence of the president over one or more coalition parties

  • informal powers → residual category reflecting country-specific historical and cultural factors (incl. patronage)

“as the value of partisan and agenda-setting powers declines, presidents increasingly resport to portfolio allocation, budgetary authority and informal institutions” (Chaisty et al. 2014)

the veto-player theory

agenda-setting power

the right to make a proposal (at the beginning of the policy process), or to propose an amendment

  • president (presidential system)

  • prime minister (parliamentary system)

veto player

the right to block a proposal

  • the median legislator in the ruling party (legislature)

  • a party in a coalition government (legislature)

  • the supreme court (judiciary)

third wave of the debate

third wave

  • key IV(s): veto-players broadly defined

  • key DV(s): democratic accountability; good governance (e.g. policy making capabilities)

  • analysis: veto-player theory & principle-agent theory

  • main findings:

    • deeper insights into policy change

the advantage lies in the method, rather than new Ivs being introduced

summary

  • 3 ideal types of executives: 1. presidentialism, 2. parliamentarism, 3. semi-presidentialism

  • the ‘perils of presidentialism’ might be less severve than previously thought

  • democratic consolidation depends on a range of factors, one of them is the design of the executive (others include the electoral system)

  • the ‘third wave’ of the presidential-parliamentary debate introduces the veto-player theory to generate new insights into policy choice and change

  • comparative methods → the importance of systematic comparison across time and space