Is Parliamentarism Conducive to Better Political Outcomes Than Presidential Systems? Essay

Is Parliamentarism conducive to better political outcomes than Presidential systems? My interpretation of the question leads me to believe if parliamentary systems are better than presidential systems in deriving better political outcomes. By better political outcomes this implies not only ease of making political decisions but also the manner in which the two systems function and which is better, and whether or not this leads to favourable political outcomes. Issues that I am going to discuss in this essay are going to include the functionality of both systems, the differences between the two systems and whether or not the system provides and facilitates good political outcomes. According to Bagehot â€Å"a Presidential system endows the incumbent with both the ceremonial functions of a head of state and the effective functions of a chief executive.†(Bagehot) In a Presidential system the executive branch exists and resides outside of the legislature. The executive branch does not purpose legislature but have the power to veto them. â€Å"The president has a fixed term in government and it is usually a difficult process trying to eliminate the president.†(Verney) The executive branch controls their cabinet and does not members of the cabinet serve at their will, this means the President can hire or fire anyone from the cabinet. According to Verney â€Å"Parliamentary system, consists of the head of government that are dependent on the confidence of the legislature and can be dismissed by a legislative vote of no confidence.†(Verney) There are two main types of parliamentary democracy which consist of the ‘Westminster system’ and the ‘Consensus system’ but there is also a hybrid of the presidential and parliamentary system which is called the semi-presidential system. The Westminster system derives from the UK and can be found in many of Britain’s ex-colonies such as India and Canada. The Westminster system tends to be a more adversarial style of debating. The consensus system can be found in Germany and Spain and tends to be more consensus style of debating system. Firstly, legislation is always a key factor to answering the question as to which of the following systems is conducive to better political outcomes. Linz argues that â€Å"in a Presidential system both Legislature and the executive can claim legitimacy since both drive their power from the votes of the people in free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible.†(Linz)This occurs because a Presidential system adopts the separation of powers format. Presidential systems usually but not exclusively reside in Federal countries. This allows for a separation of powers between the legislature and executive. This separation can be looked at in different forms, some advantageous and hinders to political outcomes. For example an advantage of having the separation of powers in the Presidential system is that it does not create a dictatorship type of government. The separation of powers means that in the Presidential system the executive as well as the legi slature are can both claim legitimacy, which in turn means that they can both cancel each other out. Presidents cannot impose laws and legislature cannot interfere with presidential powers. In the United States there is a supreme court that decides whether or not the legislature or the President are acting unconstitutional and thus act as a referee in the debating between the two factions of government. The presidential system is seen to be more democratic because of the conflict between the two factions of government. The congress in the US represent the different views of the people in different states and the president represents the US as a whole thus a conflict between the two bodies shows a more democratic process. The Presidential system also has fixed term elections, this is a key argument used by pro-presidential academics, and Horowitz argues that fixed term elections leads to better democratic outcomes. The reason for this thinking is because, â€Å"Fixed terms does not produce winner takes all outcomes as there is conflict between legislature and executive.†(Horowitz) A fixed term also links into the previous mentioned point about reducing the chances of an elective dictatorship as there would eventually have to be a set date for an election and thus if either the executive or the legislature has proven to be unpopular they would get voted out of office. However there are disadvantages to the presidential system in terms of fixed terms and conflicts with legislature. One key disadvantage is that the conflict between the president and the legislature produce political gridlock within the system, â€Å"the separation of powers of a presidential system frequently creates undesirable and long-term political gridlock and political instability whenever the president and the legislative majority are from different parties.†(Linz) Linz â€Å"argues that this inherent political instability can cause democracies to fail, as seen in such cases as Brazil and Chile.†Linz believed that political gridlock can prove to be costly in the forging of governments because it hinders the speed and decisiveness of democracy and thus cause democracies to fail like he mentioned in South America. Also a separation of powers in the presidential system leads both the president and the legislature to become less accountable. Both the executive and the legislature can shift blame upon each other and thus leads to less accountability come election time to the vote rs. Parliamentary systems on the other hand have their government intertwined with the legislature and government is formed form the legislature. In the UK, the Westminster model forms government form the winning party in parliament. So in a parliamentary system there is no separation of powers. The advantages of this are that it reduces the likeliness of political gridlock. Linz argues that â€Å"Parliamentarism imparts flexibility to the political process, presidential makes it rigid.†(Linz). As the government would expect to have backing from their party they have the ability to pass through legislations quicker with less hassle than a presidential system may incur. This is an advantage over the presidential system the executive is often chosen independently from the legislature. If the executive and legislature in such a system include members entirely or predominantly from different political parties, then stalemate can occur. In this form it can be said that Parliamentarism is conductive to better political outcomes than the presidential system. The passing of legislature is an important task for any government as it shows strength and can make or break a government’s reputation. In respect to this I feel that the presidential system may be lacking in terms of being able to pass legislation as it may not be able to react quick enough to changing events or situations, this is where a parliamentary system seems to be more adequate, however a parliamentary system could become gridlocked if there is a minority government with low discipline so the element f political gridlock is not only exclusive to Presidential systems. However the issue of legitimacy in the Presidential systems has the ability to cause numerous problems in the terms of legislation passing. But it can also be argued in the case for support of the Presidential system it can be argued that Prime ministers are constrained to the need of The House of Commons and thus do not act as fast as expected. An example of this is taken from John F. Kennedy work where he states, â€Å"Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain were constrained by the need to maintain the confidence of the Commons.†(Kenned y) In the need for confronting German military build up before the outbreak of the Second World War. Another issue to contend with is how the governments are elected. In a Parliamentary system, the government is elected through the party system and thus the winning party forms government through having a simple majority in the parliament. In the presidential system, the executive is elected by the public and is directly elected. This difference between the two systems is seen in both an advantage and disadvantages. In a presidential system Voters know who they are voting for and accountability resides within the President. Horowitz states â€Å"Voters have a clear choice of Ideology to pick from.†(Horowitz) This means that there is no only the one straight choice and thus it is clear to voters who they are picking and what type of ideology this is going to represent. However a disadvantage of this is that direct election creates a zero-sum game. This is that there is only one winner and all other votes do not amount to anything and thus no coalition can be made with the oppos ition. This is seen has undemocratic and a hindrance to better political outcomes. An example of this is seen with the Bush vs. Gore election of 2000, where Bush won the election by 271 to 266. In such a close competition, where arguably almost half of the country voted against him. It seems undemocratic to have Bush becoming the President; this can lead to the polarisation of politics within that country. This is because when a president wins an election he is the head of state as well as the representative of a nation but he stands for a clearly partisan political option. But Presidential system has one up on its parliamentary counterpart as the â€Å"voters know and are in control of who they are voting for to be president, while in a parliamentary system voters vote for their constituent MP and the party decides who is Prime minister,† (Riggs) this can be seen as hindering democracy and could not be conductive to better political outcomes. However the Parliamentary system can be an advantage because it leads to power sharing and coalitions, thus it is argued makes politics more representative. An example of this is mentioned by Lijphart, â€Å"Parliamentarianism has attractive features for nations that are ethnically, racially, or ideologically divid ed. In a unipersonal presidential system, all executive power is concentrated in the president. In a parliamentary system, with a collegial executive, power is more divided. In the 1989 Lebanese Taif Agreement, in order to give Muslims greater political power, Lebanon moved from a semi-presidential system with a strong president to a system more structurally similar to classical parliamentarianism.†(Lijphart) However it can be argued that a parliamentary form of government leads to the personalisation of power by the prime minister or an ethnic group in the country. As there is no fixed terms is in the Parliamentary style of government it is argued that if a prime minister was to get voted in with a large majority, with the whip system in place, where all party members will obey the party line the government is capable of introducing any legislature, without any issue. This can be seen as being undemocratic as it would lead to an elected dictatorship. This was the case in Nigeria during the 1960s, â€Å"Under the Westminster model, during the 1960s, groups in the North managed to secure a majority in Parliament and began to seize power and excluded everyone else from power. This lead to an ethnic authoritarian rule of the country, and was the main factor for the Nigerian Biafrican War and countless military coups.†(Horowitz) This shows that Parliamentarism is just as harmful as presidential system in stifling democracy. Horowitz makes the comment â€Å"It is possible that Presidential systems helped stifle democracy in Latin America, Parliamentary systems have helped stifle democracy in Africa.†(Horowitz) To conclude, the Presidential system has its advantages to conducive a better political outcome, such as having fixed terms, direct elections and separations of power however these advantages can also act as disadvantages when viewed in another way. The parliamentary system too has its advantages to creating a better political outcomes, its advantages such as likeliness of coalition, being supposedly more representative and being more responsive in creating a stronger government also can be seen as a disadvantage when looked at in a different light. Dahl states â€Å"claims that parliamentarianism is less prone to authoritarian collapse. These scholars point out that since World War II, two-thirds of Third World countries establishing parliamentary governments successfully made the transition to democracy. By contrast, no Third World presidential system successfully made the transition to democracy without experiencing coups and other constitutional breakdowns.† This in effect argues the point that parliamentary systems have been more successful in terms of having peaceful transition from colonialism to democracy but although presidential system may not have had a successful transition to democracy but parliamentary system has not had a 100% success rate and thus we cannot say for definite if it is better than presidential system we can only assume. My research in this essay has led me to believe that the both system are conducive to better political outcomes in their own way, theoretically they are both capable of producing democratically stable countries and environments with better political outcomes, however in practice this is not always the case and thus I feel that my research has led me to be inconclusive and i have to sit on the fence when trying to realise which one cre ates a better system. Bibliography Bagehot W, (1867) The English Constitution, MacMaster University Dahl, R (1989) Democracy and Its Critics- – Yale University Press Horowitz, Donald L. (1990) Comparing Democratic Systems- The Johns Hopkins University Press Kennedy. John F. (1940)- Why England Slept?, Macmillan Lijphart, Arend (1999). Patterns of democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press. Linz, Juan J. The Perils of Presidentialism – The Johns Hopkins University Press Riggs, Fred. (1988) The Survival of Presidentialism in America International Political Science Review Verney