Student Question
What are the strengths and weaknesses of parliamentary and presidential governments using the U.K and U.S.A as examples?
Quick answer:
Parliamentary and presidential systems have distinct strengths and weaknesses. The U.S.'s presidential system is more democratic, directly electing the executive, but can lead to partisan gridlock. The U.K.'s parliamentary system encourages coalition-building, reducing the risk of majority tyranny and gridlock, but lacks strong checks and balances between branches. Parliamentary systems may be more stable against coups and adaptable to diverse societies, though they can manipulate election timing strategically.
Most representative democracies come in one of two types: A
presidential system such as the USA, in which there is an executive
who is directly elected, and a parliamentary system such as
the UK, in which the legislature is elected and then the legislature chooses
the executive. Some countries have hybrid systems (such as France), and other
systems are possible (the executive could be folded fully into the legislature,
made a council of several people, etc.), but these are by far the most
common.
A presidential system like the US is inherently more democratic; any time you
can pass the power directly to the people instead of making it through some
intermediary you make the system more democratic. But "more democratic" does
not necessarily mean "better"; many political scientists argue that it
is possible to have too much democracy, and end up electing demagogues and enacting awful...
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policies by rallying the opinion of an ignorant public.
A parliamentary system can be a means of weakening the tyranny of the
majority, the possibility that a democratic vote could lead a majority of
the population to violate the rights of a minority of the population. With a
parliamentary system, there is more coalition-building within the parliament
necessary to achieve executive power, mitigating the effects of simply having a
majority in favor of a harmful policy.
Parliamentary systems generally avoid partisan gridlock, where one
party controls the executive and an opposing party controls the legislature,
and neither is willing to do anything because it would mean supporting the
opposing agenda. (This has clearly been a major issue lately in the US, whereas
it rarely happens in the UK.) On the other hand, parliamentary systems remove a
check and balance---the executive and legislative branches are now
more closely tied, and the two cannot as easily act as checks on one another as
they could in a presidential system. So again it depends on whether we would
rather have government that does things the people might not agree with, or one
that doesn't do anything at all.
There is also empirical evidence suggesting that parliamentary systems may be
more stable against coups and transitions to authoritarianism, particularly in
countries with high levels of ethnic, religious, or cultural fractionalization.
Third World countries that used parliamentary systems have had much more
success transitioning to democracy than those that used presidential systems.
This could be for many reasons, but all other things equal, it does argue in
favor of a parliamentary system.
Some parliamentary systems allow the parliament to schedule elections more or
less when they please (within certain constraints), whereas presidential
systems almost always have a well-defined election schedule such as holding an
election every four years. This can allow the ruling party to partially control
the election outcome by manipulating the calendar, holding votes only when
their poll numbers are favorable. On the other hand, it avoids the
inconvenience of overly frequent elections and allows new elections to be held
if a prime minister is incapacitated (whereas in a presidential system there
usually has to be a vice president or some similar mechanism for automatic
succession).
References