President Vs Prime Minister
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This paper compares presidential and parliamentary forms of democratic government, discusses in detail the similarities and differences of the two systems as well as their strengths and weaknesses, and concludes with an observation of why some states are more likely to choose a presidential system as opposed to a parliamentary system.
Presidential and Parliamentary Systems:
A Comparison
Parliamentary and presidential forms of government are the two principal types of democracy in the modern world. The respective advantages and disadvantages of the two systems have been long debated, at first mainly by British and American political participants and observers, but with increasing frequency in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America and the emerging states of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
The distinctions between the two systems are more important now than ever due to
the recent world-wide wave of democratization which has intensified both the debate and its significance. The struggling new nations of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are desperate to establish democratic forms of government and are seeking the style of democracy that will prove most effective for their own unique political, social,
and economic needs. 1
Of particular interest to the citizens and prospective leaders of these budding democracies is the matter of reaching a decision regarding which of the two most widely-practiced democratic systems of governmentЖthe presidential form or the parliamentary formЖplaces more power directly in the hands of its people.
In other words, which system more closely approaches a true democratic ideal ? Other concerns play a role, but these are the two primary issues under debate across eastern Europe, in the nations making up the Commonwealth of Independent States, and in the emerging democracies of much of the Third World.
Proponents of the parliamentary form of government as the most democratic assert that a parliamentary system is a more efficient way to run a country, and cite numerous reasons for their position. First of all, a parliamentary system gives its citizens a greater voice in the affairs of their legislature. Citizens know to a much greater degree what to expect from the people they elect to public office and also know to a much greater degree of certainty whom to blame if things go wrong or elected officials dont deliver what they have promised to deliver.
In contrast, the presidential system, which features separate executive and legislative branches in which each member of the legislature is permitted to vote according to his or her own interests, has an inherent weakness in that it is difficult for citizens to establish accountability for government actions.
A good example of this comes from the American experience, when one considers the number of times various presidents and congresses of the United States have blamed one another for obstructing legislation. Members of the executive branch, often from the president himself on down to the lowest assistant press secretary, can and often do blame the legislative branch for any impasse, while several hundred members of Congress and their staffs and political supporters in turn blame the executive branch; leaving the average voter at a loss as to who is really responsible. The term gridlock has been introduced into Americas political lexicon to describe this all too frequent and disillusioning legislative phenomenon that often cripples the American legislative process.
Citing reasons such as this, advocates of a parliamentary system maintain that a parliamentary form of democracy benefits the people to a much greater degree and is much more effective than a presidential system, because it offers them a more efficient government with more direct responsibility.
For example, in a parliamentary election process, political parties and candidates for legislative office compete for votes with promises to the voters just as they do in the United States. But the crucial difference is that, in a parliamentary system, the set of promises made by the candidatesЖcalled the mandateЖcannot be broken later by the government. 2
Unlike in a presidential system of electioneering, promises made during a political campaign in a parliamentary system are not vague in nature or content, but are in fact quite specific. In Canada, for example, the actual mandate of each party is published and distributed to the electorate during the campaign. As a result, relative to American voters, Canadian voters enjoy a more concrete idea of the policies for which they are voting.
Furthermore, once elected to parliament, members are strictly required to vote along party lines or risk being literally expelled from their party. For voters, this means that the decisions they make in the voting booth translate much more directly into actual government policies than is the case in a presidential system of democracy, where the legislators have acquired much more political independence and often pursue their own agendas in outright defiance of their party leaders.
Consequently, it is tremendously important who forms the majority government in a parliamentary system. Indeed, it is of much greater import than who forms the majority in a presidential system. Since party members must vote according to established party lines, essentially all legislation introduced by the majority party is passed by parliament and becomes law. 3
This of course works to the benefit of the majority or plurality of the citizens who elected the majority party with the expectation that it would do as promised in the elections. Also, since the prime minister is the person in charge of the majority party and thus has a tremendous amount of influence over behind-the-scenes intraparty discussions, it is also more obvious to whom the blame should be assigned if the ruling partys mandate is not followed. The ruling party cannot seek to avoid responsibility by blaming the other party as in a presidential system, the rigidity of the party structure and the enforced discipline of its members preclude such a course because it is evident to all that the minority party is powerless to affect the outcome of the vote.
In contrast, passing legislation is a serious problem in the presidential system. The American system intentionally includes checks on legislation to make the process slower and more difficult. In theory, the intention is to force lawmakers to reflect