Presidential vs. parliamentary system: Which is better?

Great Debates
1

In the United States, government at the federal and state levels is based on the presidential or “separation of powers” system: The head of government, the president or governor, is elected directly by the voters and serves for a specific term. This means the president is not institutionally a member of Congress and might be of a different party than that which controls Congress. It also means the executive branch has its own separate electoral mandate, great independent power, and a wide latitude of freedom from legislative oversight.

The United Kingdom uses the parliamentary system: There is no clear division between the legislative and the executive – the latter is a subset of the former. In American terms, Parliament acts as an electoral college which chooses the prime minister and all cabinet secretaries, a process known as “forming a government”. (The British use the word “government” where Americans would say “administration”; where we would say "government, the British say “state” or “Crown”.) This means the p.m. – who must be a Member of Parliament in the first place, elected from one particular borough or constituency – is always the acknowledged leader of the majority party in Parliament, or of the senior party in a multi-party coalition. Elections to Parliament must be held at stated periods, but the prime minister can dissolve parliament and hold early elections at any time; and Parliament also can remove the p.m. at any time through a “vote of no confidence.”

Practically all of the world’s republics and constitutional monarchies, and the constituent states or provinces of federal systems, use one or the other of these systems. Some, like France, try to combine the two, with complicated power-sharing arrangements between the president and prime minister.

Which is better? What are the advantages of one system over the other? What do you think?

2

Correction, in Britain they have cabinet “ministers,” not "secrataries.

3

Well, your premise is already mistaken. In the United States of America, the president is not elected directly by the voters, assuming you mean by “voters” the general population.

4

I’m partial to the Canadian (British) parliamentary system, despite my criticisms.

I find having PM is so much more informal than a President. I also like the way the PM has to work within the House of Commons. While there, he is heavily scrutinized by the opposition parties during Question Period. I would really love to see Pres. Bush have to stand up and face questions every other day, personally I think he’s far too sheltered behind his press secretary.

I also like that our Ministers (secretaries) are elected members, and tend to rotate through positions. Again, they seem to face far more criticism from the opposition making things slightly more transparent.

5

'll try to speak for the Canadian system.

Cabinet (equivalent to US administration)is typically made up of elected MPs. Typically. It is possible for the PM to appoint to a cabinet position (i.e. Stephan Dion Inter-governmental affairs). They do not nessisarily have to run in a by election though. The cabinet sits with the rest of the Governing caucus in the legislature on a daily basis and are expected to reply directly to questions fro the opposition parties. All actions with their departments (Fisheries, Defense, Foreign Affairs) ultimately rest with them making the question period typically very interesting.

The PM is not elected by the public. The PM’s party is elected by the public. While you can argue that the public is at least aware of their choices in potential leaders that leadership may change at any time due to prevailing politics with a given party. The current PM has been forced (if you can call it that) to step down by February 2004. This is not due to loss of confidence votes with in the legislature nor due to public opinion but rather due to maneuvering by the perceived heir to the throne. The party leadership is selected from within the party at regular conventions either by membership votes or by various blocks within the party. Should the party win a majority of the seats at the next election the party leader become PM.

I prefer the fact that the executive is continually grilled by the legislative branch. The problem of course is that should a bill/debate not be going the way the executive would like, they are able to wield great power within their majority to shut down debate or have the vote on whatever bill is present a vote of non confidence. Such votes almost ensure that the vote on the governing side will be in line with executive direction.

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Posted by Monty:

Well, yes, as the 2000 election painfully reminded us all, we do have the Electoral College. But this still produces a separation-of-powers system – the point is that Congress has no role in electing the president and, absent very extraordinary circumstances, is powerless to remove him.

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Well you have the advantage of definitive election dates. Removes a big advantage that the PM has up here.

8

Parliamentary system in the UK seems to work better when the governing administration has an overall majority in parliament so it is not too weak, however when it has too great a majority it means that it is effectively a presidential system.

This is our current position, and you could include debate about the merits of differant voting systems, such as PR, ‘first past the post’, qualified transferable voting etc.
Differant voting systems tend to produce differant political spectrums, and this has an intimate effect on a parliamentary system.

Look at the differance between the UK and Italy, both function in their own way but because of differant voting systems the UK tends to have more stable governments, but the Italian system still works, it just changes leadership very often and sometimes the frequency of elections due to instability gets in the way of legislation and encourages a shorter term approach.

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Still partly wrong, BrainGlutton. Check the Constitution please and you will see that the Congress does have a role in selecting the president and Veep on occasion.

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BrainGlutton, you appear to know what Parliamentarism is, though you partly misexplained it, IMHO :slight_smile: .

Basically, Parliamentarism is the concept that the administration/government is formed by the largest constellation of parties in the Parliament (the legislative body) that are able to achieve a “declaration of confidence” from the full Parliament. The administration/government is the executive body and it’s definitely separated from the legislative body, though they require the continuous confidence of the Parliament (meaning that if the administration/government steps over the line, the Parliament could declare that “You don’t have our confidence”, and the administration/government will have to step down)

Note: Contrary to what’s common in the US, in a parliamentary system it’s not common to replace the bureaucrats (a new administration/government would not replace the head of the intelligence agency, for instance, - the bureaucrats are expected to be or act politically neutral.
A parliamentary process would look something like this:

  1. There is an election
  2. The Head of State (for instance the King) asks the party leader of the largest party to try to form a government. If the largest party got more than 50% of the vote, the party would form the government on their own. If they are not in majority, they will try to form a majority constellation, or try to form a minority government.
  3. If the majority party are unable to form a government (which is not that uncommon), the task is given to the leader of the second largest party.
  4. When a government is forming, the Prime Minister does not have to come from the largest party in the Parliament, nor the largest party in the constellation. The Ministers/Secretaries does not have to be members of the Parliament. Remember, the government is a body completely separated from the legislative branch. It’s only the initiation of the process in forming a government which originates from the Parliament.
  5. When a government has been formed, the PM will address the Parliament. From then on the government passes its proposals to the Parliament, where any proposal needs a majority approval to pass. In every vote in the Parliament, a proposal will get the votes of the goverment parties. If it’s a minority goverment they a proposal also needs the support of an opposition party. The opposition parties may also introduce proposals of their own.
  6. The government will step down if the majority of the representatives in the Parliament declare that they do not have confidence in the government, or if the government does not feel they have the ability to continue (special note: The Parliament may also declare a “no confidence” in a particular minister/secretary, forcing only this person to resign). But this does not mean that a new election automatically will be held (this would be electing new representatives to the Parliament all over again), in some nations the process only starts over from step 3 above.
  7. And the administration/government has its workplace separately from the Parliament, but have to appear before the Parliament whenever the Parliament calls for them.
    I would also like to mention that there are differences in the election systems, between the “the winner takes it all” system (US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia) typically a 2-3 parties system, - and the “proportional system” used in all the other democracies in the world, typically a 5-8 parties system. Certainly the number of parties in the Parliament have great effect upon how well the parliamentary process works.

Personally I definitely prefer the parliamentary system, because both the government as a whole and individual ministers/secretaries always have to answer to the elected representatives (they have to appear before the Parliament answering questions when the Parliament asks them to). But I’m not so sure it will work very well in a two party nation like the US. If I have understood correctly, the US also have its substitue for the “no confidence” principle in the impeachment process.

11

Posted by Alien:

Well, it’s not really a substitute. A parliament, if I understand you correctly, can vote “no confidence” for any reason. The American impeachment process requires that the president be adjudged guilty of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the nature of which the Constitution does not define. At any rate, it is understood to be a highly extraordinary remedy. Only two American presidents have been impeached by the House of Representatives, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton; and neither was convicted by the Senate. (Richard Nixon almost certainly would have been both impeached and convicted; he avoided this by the unprecedented step of resigning.) When Clinton was impeached, there was a lot of discussion on talk radio about the arcane procedure for trying a president in the Senate. It was rather like the French in 1789 trying to figure out how to run an Estates General when no such thing had been called for more than 150 (?) years.

In sum, once an American president takes office, he almost certainly will serve out his full term, barring death or disability.

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Oh, and by the way, Alien – you say the cabinet ministers need not be members of Parliament, but what about the prime minister? Doesn’t the p.m. have to be an m.p., at least in the British system? That could produce an anomalous result – if the sitting p.m.'s party wins an election but the voters of his own borough turn him out! But my understanding is that never happens, because British m.p.'s are not required to be actual residents of their boroughs, thus a politician can choose, within limits, what borough he wants to stand for, and the party leader always gets to pick a “safe seat.” Am I wrong?

13

Thanks for the clarification, I’m with you now. And yes, you understood me correctly, with the parliamentary system the government (with its theoretically unelected politicians) always has to have the confidence of the Parliament (the elected ones).

14

Alien: Your posting explaining the UK’s parliamentary system is very good reading. If you’ve read Archer’s First Among Equals, could you comment on how accurately it reflects the political system in the UK?

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  1. The prime minster and minsters must be members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords (it’s extremely rare for any minister to be selected from the house of Lords though and IIRC there was a prime minsister from the house of Lords only a few decades ago but only for a few months during a caretaker government, otherwise the Prime Minster is never from the House of Lords).

  2. British MPs are required to be residents of their constituency which means they must own a house there. The part leader’s/ Prime miniser’s seat is usually in a safe area but they don’t move around just to make sure of a safe seat.

16

I would like to emphasize that my post above described the parliamentary system in general, I see that MC has answered your question as it relates to the UK system, - personally I’m not that familiar with British politics.

Generally the Ministers/Secretaries does not have to be members of the Parliament (for instance, Norway), but each country would have their own rules I guess. This is the key line: It’s only the initiation of the process in forming a government which originates from the Parliament. When a party leader is given the task of forming a government, he may choose whomever he wants, but he better choose wisely because the Parliament would kick them out if not.

I deliberately left out whether the PM have to be a member of the Parliament or not (you’re sharp). Actually I don’t think he/she has to be, but this would be extremely unlikely in-real-life. Imagine a party leader forming a government, giving the top job to some stranger nobody has heard of. No Parliament nor voters would accept this.

*That could produce an anomalous result – if the sitting p.m.'s party wins an election but the voters of his own borough turn him out! *
That’s true democracy isn’t it? Hypothetically two different situation may arise:

  1. The party leader himself is chosen by the party members. They also have the power to replace him with someone else, even if he’s the current PM. So, theoretically he could be kicked out as party leader, but remain as PM. In reality this would never happen, the PM would simply step down before the party disintegrated in the polls, - that is, if the Parliament didn’t kick him out first, see 2 below.

  2. Any government has to have the support of their own parties in the Parliament in order to stay in power. In theory, they may turn on their own government, though I have never heard about such a case.
    In reality it’s not that common for governments to get the “no confidence” from the Parliament (with the exception of the chaos in Italy some years ago). Yes, it happens, but when it does this is usually pretty undramatic. As in all democracies, the government is judged by their voters, and voters don’t like politicians who don’t take responisbility. Having 5-10 parties to choose from, voters can easily turn their support to someone else.

17

Monty, I haven’t read “First Among Equals”, but I’ll check out some reviews. Thanks for the tip. As I said above, I’m not that familiar with the political system in Britain, it’s quite different from the European mainland. For instance, the Brits got the House of Lords, which is more of a relic judged by modern European democracy standards.

18

Such an occurance in Canada would likely be remedied by a member of the governing party stepping down and a by-election being run with the party leader running for election there. Tradition would tend to require that other parties do not actively contest the seat. Such tradition extends to other party’s leaders during the period between general elections. I suppose any party leader that lost his/her seat and the election would not last as leader of their party in the first place.

19

I believe a big advantage the Parliamentary system has over the Presidential system of government is that unlike a President, the Prime Minister is not a figurehead. In the current Iraq war and others, it was deemed “unpatriotic” to criticize George Bush’s policies as he was the President, and therefore “America”. On the other hand, the UK’s Tony Blair got no such Teflon coated treatment.

It disturbs me that a president can have so much power, and be able to be held un-accountable because questioning his/her use of it is criticizing the nation as a whole. I’m much more comfortable with having some figurehead like the Queen (or a republican President), who represents the power and glory (and opens shopping malls and launches boats, etc) but does not delve into politics, and have an elected, and criticizable Prime Minister making the decisions.

20

I love discussions like this, but I think it worth noting that “better” had better be defined.

Is a “good” government supposed to reflect the “will of the people?” (which people?) Or the desires of a majority? Or of the largest faction? Or the most powerful faction? Or some group honored by history and tradition?

But one ought not just assume that representativeness is a prime consideration in evaluating a government. Perhaps the real purpose of government is to institute some general socio-econo-moral theory (Marxism-Leninism); or minister to a certain class in a manner consistent with national honor and independence (Castro’s Cuba; North Korea); or enforce the dictates of God (the Ayatollah’s Iran).

As I recall, Plato taught that the purpose of government is ultimately to produce excellent human beings.

Here in the U.S., there is an unusual degree of consensus on questions of “what ought to be done”–with few exceptions, the arguments are over smallish details and issues of who (ie, which party) is to get credit or blame. What actually happens involves manuevering within a narrow arena.

Hence I have come to believe that the basis of modern U.S. government is our cultural desire for individual hero-worship, combined with a wish to see certain cultural values “writ large” for the rest of the world to admire. And I don’t especially criticize this, by the way.

So selecting our national leaders–especially the President–comes to be very much like casting someone in a role in a play, movie, or TV show. Unless there is a gratingly obvious discrepancy between person and role, we don’t care too much what the Prez is “really like.” The issue is: will he or she present himself publically in an appropriate manner? (You must present yourself as caring, sympathetic, sure of yourself, not too pretentious, fairly well-educated, at least moderately intelligent, have good “instincts”, a sense of humor, love American traditions, have a certain gravitas, speak well, admit error–but not have to too often, be above the partisan fray, show occasional courage, have a certain physical attractiveness and personal magnetism, and in general exemplify the many virtues Americans like to think are part of the “American character.”)

The idea of an audience-judged “reality TV show” to select the next President is a fairly good idea. Or, there is the sort of thing they do for the Phillippines Senate, in which the populace produces, somehow, a list of prominent persons, the top vote-getters among those listed becoming Senators.

Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw (but not Dan Rather) probably embody what most Americans want to see in a President: perhaps the method whereby those gentlemen were selected ought to be applied. Of course the ideal President would have been Walter Cronkite, back 20 years ago or so.

Get the point? Decide what government is FOR, and THEN decide how to select its leaders and procedures.