Does pure parliamentarianism present a more supportive evolutionary framework for consolidating democracy than pure presidentialism? This research from Columbia University argues that there is a much stronger correlation between democratic consolidation and pure parliamentarianism than between democratic consolidation and pure presidentialism. Furthermore, the findings are sufficiently strong to warrant long-range studies that test the probablistic propositions indicated.
The struggle to consolidate the new democracies – especially those in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia – has given rise to a wide-ranging debate about the hard choices concerning economic restructuring, economic institutions and economic markets. A similar debate has focused on democratic ‘political’ institutions and ‘political’ markets.
One political-institutional question that has only recently received serious scholarly attention concerns the impact of different constitutional frameworks on democratic consolidation. ‘Institutional frameworks’ in functioning democracies provide the basic decision rules and incentive systems concerning government formation, the conditions under which governments can continue to rule and the conditions by which they can be terminated democratically. More than simply one of the many dimensions of a democratic system, constitutions create much of the overall system of incentives and organisations within which the other institutions and dimensions, found in the many types of democracy, are structured and processed.
The range of existing constitutional frameworks in the world’s long-standing democracies is relatively narrow. They are almost all presidential or parliamentary or a semipresidential hybrid of the two. ‘Pure presidentialism’ and ‘pure parliamentarianism’ each have two fundamental characteristics. A pure parliamentary regime in a democracy is a system of mutual dependence: 1. The chief executive power must be supported by a majority in the legislature and can fall if it receives a vote of no confidence. 2. The executive power (normally in conjunction with the head of state) has the capacity to dissolve the legislature and call for elections. A pure presidential regime in a democracy is a system of mutual independence: 1. The legislative power has a fixed electoral mandate that is its own source of legitimacy. 2. The chief executive power has a fixed electoral mandate that is its own source of legitimacy.
Parliamentarianism is a more supportive constitutional framework. The explanation for this lies in the following theoretically predictable and empirically observable tendencies:
- Greater propensity for governments to have majorities to implement their programmes.
- Greater ability to rule in a multiparty setting.
- Lower propensity for executives to rule at the edge of the constitution and its greater facility for removing a chief executive who does so.
- Lower susceptibility to a military coup.
- Greater tendency to provide long party-government careers, which add loyalty and experience to political society.
Democracies tend to increase the degrees of freedom that facilitate the momentous tasks of economic and social restructuring facing new democracies as they simultaneously attempt to consolidate their democratic institutions.
- Virtual dismissal of the pure parliamentary model by most new democracies and the hasty embrace of presidential models should be reconsidered.
- The analytically separable propensities of parliamentarianism interact to form a mutually supporting system.
- This system, qua system, increases the degrees of freedom politicians have as they attempt to consolidate democracy.
- The analytically separable propensities of presidentialism also form a highly interactive system. However, they work to impede democratic consolidation.
