Presidential versus Parliamentary Government

Abstract

The last twenty-five years have witnessed dramatic growth in the number of political regimes that meet basic standards of procedural democracy, such as freedom of association and expression, competitive elections that determine who holds political power, and systematic constraints on the exercise of authority (Robert Dahl 1971; Samuel Huntington 1991). What has been called the “third wave of democracy” is driven by the confluence of various trends—the establishment of democracy in countrieswith 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. A common consequence of these transitions is to focus attention on the constitutional rules that guide competition for and the exercise of political authority under democracy. One of the fundamental aspects of constitutional design is the choice between parliamentary government, presidential government, or a hybrid format that combines some aspects of these two. The distinctions among regime types at issue here have to do with how the popular branches of government—the assembly and executive—are selected and how they interact to form policy and administer the government. Assemblies— variously known as congresses, parliaments, legislatures, or a host of countryspecific names—are popularly elected in all democracies, but executives are not. The general characteristics of parliamentary and presidential regimes are as follows.