Presidents, Governments, and Parliaments. A Framework for Analysis of the Institutional Design of Contemporary Democracies. (original) (raw)
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Constitutional Political Economy, 2020
The institutional design of democratic regimes has attracted much attention from a legal and political perspective, because it affects the actual distribution of power among political actors and the effectiveness of their decisions. The article advances a classification of the democratic institutional design, with particular reference to the triangular interactions among Presidents, Governments, and Parliaments. Moving from the assumption that the arrangements among these three top political institutions identify the main patterns of the democratic government, the distinction among Parliamentary, Presidential, and Semi-Presidential systems set by the constitutional law is rejected and a new classification schema is advanced. In this new perspective, the institutional design of democracy consists of the institutional roles of authority, procedural resources attached to them and arenas of confrontation among the roles.
The Prime Essentialities of Presidential and Parliamentary Governance on The Globe
INTEGRATED RESEARCH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, SCIENCE AND INNOVATION, 2019
The establishment of democracy in countries with no prior democratic experience, its reestablishment in countries that had experienced periods of authoritarian rule, and the expansion in the number of independent states following the demise of European and Soviet communism led to the adoption of democracy in most countries. As a result of these changes, attention has been focused on constitutional rules that guide competition for and the exercise of political authority under democracy. Democratic governments are those that permit the nation’s citizens to manage their government either directly or through elected representatives. This is opposed to authoritarian governments that limit or prohibit the direct participation of its citizens. One of the fundamental aspects of constitutional design is the choice between presidential government, parliamentary government and a hybrid system that combines some aspects of these two. A main difference between the presidential and the parliamentary systems of governance is as a result of how that states executive, legislative and judiciary organs are organized.
PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM(S) and PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM(S)- DILEMMAS AND CHALLENGES
PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM(S) or/and PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEM(S): DILEMMAS AND CHALLENGES
The author analyzes the contemporary models of government, including the Macedonian one, through the relations between legislative and executive, at normative level and in practice. According to her, the problematic and relative methodological value of the dichotomy “parliamentarism-presidentialism” in classification of government can be also seen in the Macedonian example of “separation” of powers. The Macedonian “constitutional cocktail” is even more complicated and more hybrid in the practical functioning of institutions due to absence of democratic tradition and civic political culture, due to partytocratic state, strong elements of ethocracy as well as due to fragile civil society. Key words: separation of powers, government, parliamentarism, presidentialism, semi-presidentialism, democracy, consociational model of democracy, partitocrazia
Lytvyn V. Institutional and procedural determination of premier-presidentialism as a type of semi-presidential system of government and its manifestations and operationalisations in European countries // Studium Europy Srodkowej i Wschodniej. 2021. Nr. 16. S. 69–91.
The article is dedicated to analyzing the phenomenon of premier-presidentialism as a system of inter-institutional relations both in theoretical terms as well as in the context of the real political process in European countries. In view of this, the author singled out institutional and procedural determinants of premier-presidentialism and stated that premier-presidentialism is a separate type of semi-presidential system of government. In this way, the institutional and political manifestations and the parameters of operationalization of premier-presidentialism in European countries were analyzed. The researcher singled out current and historical cases of premier-presidentialism in the analyzed region and, in view of this, found that premier-presidentialism is generally characterized by monistic collective responsibility of governmental cabinet solely to the legislature, by the president’s ability to dissolve parliament and call early elections and hence by the dualism in the executive. It is concluded that premier-presidentialism is characterized not so much by transactional as by hierarchical relations in the triangle “president – governmental cabinet / prime minister – parliament”. Keywords: system of government, semi-presidentialism, premier-presidentialism, president, governmental cabinet, prime minister, parliament, legislature, European countries.
The Democratic Quality of Institutional Regimes: a Conceptual Framework
Political Studies, 2002
Lijphart's spectrum of democracies -recently expanded by Jack Nagel to a sub-majoritarian sphere of pluralitarian systems which use disproportional electoral systems in order to manufacture majority governments from minorities in the electorate -is based on only one dimension: inclusion of preferences. Political scientists in the Lijphartian tradition wrongly assume that inclusion of preferences, which is an input characteristic, automatically leads to responsiveness, which refers to actual policy decisions and hence is an output characteristic. We therefore add 'responsibility' as a second input characteristic and employ it alongside the inclusiveness of institutional regimes. We argue that in representative democracies there exists a trade-off between inclusiveness and responsibility. This trade-off helps us to measure the democratic quality of institutional regimes. The now expanded spectrum of democracies based on these two dimensions shows that majoritarian democracy proper -in which governments represent a majority of individual preferences but not more than necessary -is the best possible combination of the two democratic values.
European Journal of Political Research, 1997
This article aims at defining the concept of 'semi-presidential government' and detailing the diversity of its practices. There are in fact three types of semi-presidential regimes: the president can be a mere figurehead, or he may be all-powerful or again he can share his power with parliament. Using four parametersthe content of the constitution, tradition and circumstances, the composition of the parliamentary majority and the position of the president in relation to the majoritythe author seeks to explain why similar constitutions are applied in a radically different manner.
The Character of Democracy: How Institutions Shape Politics
2014
The Character of Democracy: How Institutions Shape Politics offers a uniquely comprehensive overview of the major democratic institutions found around the world, including electoral systems, party systems, presidential and parliamentary governments, legislatures, federalism, and constitutional courts. The authors first present five broad categories of democratic ideals that reflect the consent of the governed--meaningful elections, fair representation, accountability, majority rule and minority rights, and the functionality of the state--and then explain how well different institutional designs live up to these democratic ideals. For each institution, they provide an in-depth treatment of its related literature, describe variations in how it is structured around the world, and explain why these variations are important to how democratic political systems work. Case studies of the political structures found in Brazil, Germany, Japan, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United S...
Book Reviews:Mechanisms of Democracy: Institutional Design Writ Small
Ethics, 2008
In their analysis of the transition from communism to capitalism, employ the analogy of a ship at sea. Because the ship is already afloat, the crew cannot engage in a wholesale restructuring of the entire vessel. Instead, the crew must make smaller changes and improvements given the existing constraints of being afloat at sea. This analogy captures the motivation behind Adrian Vermeule's Mechanisms of Democracy: Institutional Design Writ Small.
Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism
British Journal of Political Science, 2013
The presidential-parliamentary distinction is foundational to comparative politics and at the center of a large theoretical and empirical literature. However, an examination of constitutional texts suggests a fair degree of heterogeneity within these categories with respect to important institutional attributes. These observations indicate that the classic presidential-parliamentary distinction, and the semi-presidential category, may not be systemic. This article investigates whether the defining attributes that separate presidential and parliamentary constitutions predict other attributes that are stereotypically associated with these institutional models. The results suggest the need for considerable skepticism of the ‘systemic’ nature of the classification. Indeed, the results imply that in order to predict the powers of a country's executive and legislature, it is more useful to know where and when the constitution was written than whether the country has a presidential or ...