Presidential or Parliamentary
Sue Witmer, who teaches in Pennsylvania, pointed out this article. It's well worth your time, and perhaps the time of your students, too.Fareed Zakaria, writing at CNN, asks a comparative question. However, it's a question that even students of US government should consider. What are the advantages of a parliamentary system? Or, the advantages of a presidential system? You will note, that Zakaria has to take into account some of the ambiguity that I think is so important for students of comparative politics to appreciate.
Does America need a prime minister?
After the S&P downgrade of the United States, no country with a presidential system has a triple-A rating from all three major ratings agencies. Only countries with parliamentary systems have that honor (with the possible exception of France, which has a parliament and prime minister as well as an empowered president).
Juan Linz, professor of social science at Yale, argued that parliamentary systems are superior to presidential systems for reasons of stability…
In America today… [w]e have one party in one house of the legislature claiming to speak for the people because theirs was the most recent electoral victory. And you have the president who claims a broader mandate as the only person elected by all the people. These irresolvable claims invite struggle…
Remember, the political battle surrounding the debt ceiling is actually impossible in a parliamentary system because the executive controls the legislature. There could not be a public spectacle of the two branches of government squabbling and holding the country hostage.
If we’re in for another five years of this squabbling in the U.S., we are going to make presidential systems look pretty bad indeed.
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Labels: parliament, president, regime, theory
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:44 AM
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