Parliamentary vs. Presidential

[leftist manson]

Hi guys,
I'm doing a 2500-3000 word essay on the 'parliamentary vs. presidential' systems of government.... you know the deal...... Compare and contrast, give the positive and negative points of both and then conclude with my own analysis.....
Can somebody give some good resources.... you know, not just beginner stuff because it's a long essay..... the basic stuff can be given in 500 words :(
I need more material :(

[Victory]

One major criticism from presidential supporters opposed to the Parliamentary system is that the people don't elect the leader in a parliamentary system. Instead, they elect a party who in-turn elects the leader. Whereas, in a presidental system, the people elect the leader directly.

[bricolage]

If you want to give it an extra edge you could talk about mixed systems (eg. France) and mention Cohabitation. I'm guessing this is for school/college/university? If so that's an 'evaluative point' type thing that tends to go down well. Of course I'm just telling you how to do a good academic piece here which is why I dumped this bit of politics as soon as I could as you are extremely limited in what you can argue.

[syndicat]

i just read "Cracks in the Constitution" by Ferdinand Lundberg. he's a '50s-'70s era liberal. he traces the origins of the U.S. presidential system to a desire of the elite to continue aspects of feudal monarchical power after the revolution, to counter popular power. Veto for example derives from the 17th century "royal prerogative". Lundberg argues that the British parliamentary system is superior, tho I think in light of what's happened in more recent years this is less clear...parliamentary systems seem equally capable of control by corporate capital. but anyway, you might be interested in Lundberg's arguments.

[Adil3tr]

In a presidential society, though, the president and legislature can be on opposite sides, paralyzing government.

[Proletarian Ultra]

One angle to look at might be why presidential systems are more prone to dictatorship.

The normal assumption is that presidents are too powerful and just arrogate power to themselves.

But there's plenty of cases where precisely the opposite happens: e.g. in Honduras recently. Government breaks down because of the split between the executive and legislative...in that case the army was actually called in by congress. Same thing happened in Chile.

Is strong separation of powers really a good idea?

Giovanni Sartori's books on constitutional design are a good read, if your library stocks them.

[leftist manson]

One angle to look at might be why presidential systems are more prone to dictatorship.

The normal assumption is that presidents are too powerful and just arrogate power to themselves.

But there's plenty of cases where precisely the opposite happens: e.g. in Honduras recently. Government breaks down because of the split between the executive and legislative...in that case the army was actually called in by congress. Same thing happened in Chile.

Is strong separation of powers really a good idea?

Giovanni Sartori's books on constitutional design are a good read, if your library stocks them.

Really great points.... one of the arguments in general made by pro-parliamentary voices is that some of the world's poorest countries are republics while 19/20 of the world's wealthiest are parliamentary democracies....
What do you guys think about this???

*Just checked Sartori's book online and i'm blown by the info in it..... 'comparative constitutional engineering'....
Thankyou so so so so much....

[leftist manson]

i just read "Cracks in the Constitution" by Ferdinand Lundberg. he's a '50s-'70s era liberal. he traces the origins of the U.S. presidential system to a desire of the elite to continue aspects of feudal monarchical power after the revolution, to counter popular power. Veto for example derives from the 17th century "royal prerogative". Lundberg argues that the British parliamentary system is superior, tho I think in light of what's happened in more recent years this is less clear...parliamentary systems seem equally capable of control by corporate capital. but anyway, you might be interested in Lundberg's arguments.

Thankyou... checking it out....
This is precisely the sort of stuff i need.... Any other books or even online stuff?? Thanks a lot....
Got two more days and time's running out lol....

[leftist manson]

If you want to give it an extra edge you could talk about mixed systems (eg. France) and mention Cohabitation. I'm guessing this is for school/college/university? If so that's an 'evaluative point' type thing that tends to go down well. Of course I'm just telling you how to do a good academic piece here which is why I dumped this bit of politics as soon as I could as you are extremely limited in what you can argue.

Thanks... Yeah, it's a Research paper as the TA put it and emphasized over and over lol..... Our own analyis is basically confined to the last or so paragraph where we summarise our points.... The body has to have material from different sources and 'preconceptions' would have the marks deducted ...
And yeah the Mixed systems part gives a good spin to the essay..thanks

[bricolage]

while 19/20 of the world's wealthiest are parliamentary democracies....

I don't think is actually true, taking this from a list of countries by GDP;
- Japan, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, Spain, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium and Switzerland are parliamentary.
- US, Brazil, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico have strong Presidents (although I might be wrong about some of these and would be happy to be corrected, this was all just done from a cursory glance).
- France and China I believe can count enough as mixed

Anyway if you look at those that are parliamentary 7 of them have constitutional monarchs which is over 50%. If we also then look at the worlds poorest countries they have all been previous victims of colonialism that swept away traditional monarchical systems, hence why so many when brought back, unwilling to simply have pure parliamentarism, went for the Presidential model. There is also the fact that there has been a strong admiration of the US in a lot of places and the idea that they are powerful, they have a President, we should have a President... ignoring the fact that the US being powerful is one of the reasons they cannot be.

Although of course I'd say the form of government is just a side point and the reasons why certain countries are poorer or richer comes down to more material things than that, eg. colonialism, development vs underdevelopment, position in world trade systems etc etc

[leftist manson]

I don't think is actually true, taking this from a list of countries by GDP;
- Japan, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, Spain, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, Turkey, Belgium and Switzerland are parliamentary.
- US, Brazil, Russia, South Korea, Indonesia, Mexico have strong Presidents (although I might be wrong about some of these and would be happy to be corrected, this was all just done from a cursory glance).
- France and China I believe can count enough as mixed

Anyway if you look at those that are parliamentary 7 of them have constitutional monarchs which is over 50%. If we also then look at the worlds poorest countries they have all been previous victims of colonialism that swept away traditional monarchical systems, hence why so many when brought back, unwilling to simply have pure parliamentarism, went for the Presidential model. There is also the fact that there has been a strong admiration of the US in a lot of places and the idea that they are powerful, they have a President, we should have a President... ignoring the fact that the US being powerful is one of the reasons they cannot be.

Although of course I'd say the form of government is just a side point and the reasons why certain countries are poorer or richer comes down to more material things than that, eg. colonialism, development vs underdevelopment, position in world trade systems etc etc

Thanks a lot..... Yeah introducing the historiographic idea of how the the poorest emerged from colonialism would be a great idea....
As for the poorest countries having presidential systems, i took it from this video loll
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAtBryLmrcU&feature=related

I can see that it's quite one-sided though and neglects to take into account an ex-superpower like Russia and an emerging economy like South Korea....

For the poorest, i'm pretty sure they must have used not the size of the GDP but GDP/capita....

Great points btw.... using them ...thanks..

[bricolage]

For the poorest, i'm pretty sure they must have used not the size of the GDP but GDP/capita....

Yeah I wasn't sure about whether to use nominal GDP or GDP per capita but I thought in this case if we are talking about poorest vs. richest the first would be better, GDP per capita puts countries like Luxembourg and Norway at the top which I don't think is a very accurate representation of wealth distribution/concentration.

[Demogorgon]

Robert A. Dahl has written some good stuff on this, Arend Lijphart more still. Both of them and particularly Lijphart prefer the Parliamentary system as they regard it as being more democratic in the case of Lijphart because a Parliamentary system can give broader representation in Government and Dahl because a legislature is closer to the will of the people.

On the other hand the major problem with a Parliamentary system is that you are effectively using an electoral college to elect the executive rather than electing them directly.

Anyway Lijphart's "Patterns of Democracy" should contain some good information on the differences though as I say he has a clear bias in favour of the parliamentary system.

One connected issue that Lijphart brings up is he sees the most "consensual" systems (that is parliamentary systems with proportional representation) as more progressive than the most majoritarian (presidential systems with "pluralitarian" or majoritarian electoral systems) with in between systems being, well in between.

He sees this as more of an argument for proportional representation than for parliamentarianism with a Parliamentary system not based on proportional representation obviously coming down on the majoritarian and more right wing side. But he does seem to think there is some degree of correlation.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Conclude cynically.

Many parliamentary systems now operate on a more presidential basis. The Prime Ministers act like they're presidents, with their own cabinets of unelected officials parallel to the official cabinet, dictating to both cabinets, and doing "cabinet shuffles" arbitrarily. Look at Italy's Berlusconi. Look at Canada's Chretien and Harper. Look at Britain's Blair and Brown.

Heck, look at Russia (well, at least until Putin gets his presidential chair back ;) )!

Meanwhile, officially presidential systems (since many Prime Ministers have ceremonial presidents) are not always officially separate from the legislature. Most can dissolve the latter at will, like Yeltsin's 1993 coup d'etat.

[bricolage]

Many parliamentary systems now operate on a more presidential basis. The Prime Ministers act like they're presidents, with their own cabinets of unelected officials parallel to the official cabinet, dictating to both cabinets, and doing "cabinet shuffles" arbitrarily. Look at Italy's Berlusconi. Look at Canada's Chretien and Harper. Look at Britain's Blair and Brown.
True to an extent but he difference being that they are still dependent on the support of the legislature, Blair and Brown could do all they wanted through cabinet but if they lost too many rebels (and hence the majority in the Commons) they were powerless. Presidents are less dependent on this

[Demogorgon]

True to an extent but he difference being that they are still dependent on the support of the legislature, Blair and Brown could do all they wanted through cabinet but if they lost too many rebels (and hence the majority in the Commons) they were powerless. Presidents are less dependent on this
Not necessarily, a President, depending on the system can be left a lame duck without the ability to carry his or her legislative programme. A Prime Minister is less hampered by this because the fact they are Prime Minister at all indicates they have backing in the legislature. Obviously when they majority is very slim and there are back bench rebels they are in trouble, but normally they are okay.

I think though we have to be very clear about the difference between the Westminster System and other Parliamentary systems though. Under the Westminster system the Prime Minister's power is almost unlimited so long as they have a comfortable majority in Parliament. There are some exceptions of course, the Australian Government is hampered by a powerful proportionally elected Senate and the New Zealand Government has a proportional parliament and is normally a minority depending on case by case support from other parties and this tones down the power of the Prime Minister somewhat. But generally in a Westminster system the Prime Minister only has to worry about two things, staying as party leader and winning the next election.

Other Parliamentary systems are far less like this though because firstly they often make the Prime Minister much more dependent on the rest of the cabinet requiring Cabinet decisions rather than the Prime Minister making decisions alone and also Proportional Representation and a more formally dependent relationship with the legislature generally make the executive less powerful.

So I think in terms of Executive dominance you could roughly say that Westminster systems are most dominant, Presidential systems more in the middle and other Parliamentary systems at the least dominant executive end.

When you take into account the electoral system in most Westminster systems means that voters choice only loosely translates into the actual result, the sheer amount of power the Prime Ministers have becomes very troubling indeed.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I wonder how the criticism above can be carried over to Sovnarkom vs. the Central Executive Committee in practice. The latter, which was supposed to mimic the cabinets of "Other Parliamentary Systems" (dependency upon the Congress of Soviets), was gutted of its power right from the formation of that collectivity which mimicked the heads of both "Westminster Systems" and "Presidential Systems": Sovnarkom.

[Westminster: comfortable majority in the CoS and CEC; Presidential: no real dependency upon the CoS and CEC]

[leftist manson]

Robert A. Dahl has written some good stuff on this, Arend Lijphart more still. Both of them and particularly Lijphart prefer the Parliamentary system as they regard it as being more democratic in the case of Lijphart because a Parliamentary system can give broader representation in Government and Dahl because a legislature is closer to the will of the people.

On the other hand the major problem with a Parliamentary system is that you are effectively using an electoral college to elect the executive rather than electing them directly.

Anyway Lijphart's "Patterns of Democracy" should contain some good information on the differences though as I say he has a clear bias in favour of the parliamentary system.

One connected issue that Lijphart brings up is he sees the most "consensual" systems (that is parliamentary systems with proportional representation) as more progressive than the most majoritarian (presidential systems with "pluralitarian" or majoritarian electoral systems) with in between systems being, well in between.

He sees this as more of an argument for proportional representation than for parliamentarianism with a Parliamentary system not based on proportional representation obviously coming down on the majoritarian and more right wing side. But he does seem to think there is some degree of correlation.

Thanks a lot lot..... just to let you know i'm consulting these books :)

[Demogorgon]

Another one I forgot to mention that is actually probably more beneficial than what I mentioned earlier: Parliamentary vs Presidential Government again by Lijphart (as editor this time). I think the title makes it self evident why it will be useful for you.

[Revy]

Hmm. Well if we had a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister would be Nancy Pelosi , Speaker of the House. And Congress would have a lot more power. In short, it wouldn't be much different at all.

In parliamentary systems the party votes for a leader, and the party that wins get their leader as Prime Minister. They're still voting based on personalities though. Look at the UK, people were voting for or against David Cameron, or for or against Gordon Brown.

[Demogorgon]

Hmm. Well if we had a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister would be Nancy Pelosi , Speaker of the House. And Congress would have a lot more power. In short, it wouldn't be much different at all.

In parliamentary systems the party votes for a leader, and the party that wins get their leader as Prime Minister. They're still voting based on personalities though. Look at the UK, people were voting for or against David Cameron, or for or against Gordon Brown.
That's mostly true, though I imagine Obama would be Prime Minister, a different system would lead to the likes of him seeking different office.

However I would strongly urge people not to compare America and Britain when comparing Parliamentary and Presidential systems. Britain is not a typical Parliamentary system as it is (now New Zealand has adopted Proportional Representation) probably the most extreme example of the Westminster system which is not a normal Parliamentary system.

Also when you think about it, America isn't that normal a Presidential system either. The electoral college for instance and the electoral system for the House of Representatives make it stand out, and not in a good way. Most importantly however most Presidential systems are far from two party systems.

[Dimentio]

Hmm. Well if we had a parliamentary system, the Prime Minister would be Nancy Pelosi , Speaker of the House. And Congress would have a lot more power. In short, it wouldn't be much different at all.

In parliamentary systems the party votes for a leader, and the party that wins get their leader as Prime Minister. They're still voting based on personalities though. Look at the UK, people were voting for or against David Cameron, or for or against Gordon Brown.

That is really because people are rather following leaders than ideologies. Its in the human mind to be attracted by individuals and follow them because they have ideas that correspond to their interests. That's why most gods have human characteristics.