Systems of Government: Parliamentarism and Presidentialism

Presidentialism and Accountability for the Economy in Comparative Perspective

T o what extent do the institutions of presidentialism allow voters to hold governments accountable? Powell and Whitten (1993) suggested that voter capacity to sanction is strong when “clarity of government responsibility” for outcomes is clear, and vice versa. I argue that clarity of responsibility functions differently under presidentialism and that presidentialism generates particular forms ...

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Parties, and Mandate-Representatio

How does presidentialism affect democratic representation, both in theory and in practice? In this paper, part of a larger book project, we build on our previous research (Samuels and Shugart 2003), which argued that all else equal, presidentialism impedes representation based on prospective government “mandates.” Inspired by and building on research on Latin America by Susan Stokes (2001), her...

REGIME TYPE: DOES IT REALLY MATTER? On the Perils of Semi-Presidentialism for Party System Institutionalization in Post-communist Eastern Europe

Among political scientists the debate about the relative virtues/vices of the different regime types has constituted one of the most incandescent fields of inquiry. Yet few studies address the impact of semi-presidentialism on the prospects for party system institutionalization, otherwise a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the consolidation of democracy (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995;...

Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

Systems of Government: Parliamentarism and Presidentialism February 2003 Parliamentary and Presidential Democracies: Which One is Best? With the exception of the United States, where a system of separation of executive and legislative powers

Parliamentary and Presidential Democracies: Which One is Best? With the exception of the United States, where a system of separation of executive and legislative powers exists, all countries that are considered to be stable democracies adopt a constitution that is, at least partially, parliamentary. A parliamentary constitution is characterized by the fusion of executive and legislative powers,...