Presidentialism versus Parliamentarism: Implications for Representativeness and Legitimacy

Despite optimistic expectations that the new states of the world will, increasingly, become democratic and peace-loving in the “new world system” created after the collapse of all the modern empires, we see growing signs of pervasive violence. Efforts to support the consolidation of existing democracies need to be augmented by struggles to prevent their collapse. Two crucial problems recur in these struggles: how to legitimize states that are often viewed by unwilling subjects as oppressive and lacking the authority or ability to govern effectively, and how to share power in countries where it is concentrated, unrepresentatively, in the hands of ambitious minorities. Democracies that cannot respond to the urgent needs of their citizens should expect them to resort to resistance, terrorism, and revolutionary violence.

Two main forms of democratic governance exist on the basis of western examples: the presidentialist design illustrated by the United States, and parliamentarist forms developed in Western Europe. The argument advanced here is that the presidentialist formula is inherently less able than parliamentarism to support the degree of representativeness and legitimacy required as a minimal basis for the survival of democratic governance. Some of the exceptional reasons why, despite the high rate of collapse of other presidentialist regimes, the US constitutional system has survived so long are explained. Because it is, indeed, very difficult to transform any presidentialist regime into a parliamentary one, the US example is used to support lessons concerning the costs that must be paid for presidentialist regimes to survive.