Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government

by Lijphart, Arend

• ISBN13: 9780198780441
• ISBN10: 0198780443
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-04-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Parliamentary and presidential governments--exemplified by most European countries for the former and the United States and Latin America for the latter--are the two principal forms of democracy in the modern world. Their respective advantages and disadvantages have been long debated, at first mainly by British and American political observers but with increasing frequency in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America, but also in Western and Eastern Europe and Asia. The recent world-wide wave of democratization has intensified both the debate and its significance. This volume brings together the most important statement on the subject by advocates and analysts--from Montesquieu and Madison to Lipset and Linz. It also treats the merits of less frequently used democratic types, such as French-style semi-presidentialism, that may be regarded as intermediate forms between parliamentarism and presidentialism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
British Parliamentarism Versus American Presidentialism	p. 29
Parliamentary Government and Presidential Government	p. 31
The Spirit of the Laws	p. 48
The Federalist Nos. 47, 48	p. 52
The Federalist No. 70	p. 54
At the Convention: The Paucity of Models	p. 57
The English Constitution: The Cabinet	p. 66
Committee or Cabinet Government?	p. 72
The President and Congress	p. 75
A Bicentennial Analysis of the American Political Structure	p. 78
Leave the Constitution Alone	p. 90
Presidentialism in Latin America	p. 95
The Angostura Address	p. 97
Efforts Made by Various Latin American Countries to Limit the Power of the Pr esident	p. 101
Presidentialism in Latin America	p. 111
The Perils of Presidentialism	p. 118
Ideas and Attempts at Reforming the Presidentialist System of Government in Latin America	p. 128
Presidentialism and Parliamentarism in Brazil	p. 133
Semi-Presidentialism and Other Intermediate Forms	p. 137
The Bayeux Manifesto	p. 139
A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government	p. 142
Cabinet Government in the United States	p. 150
The Gaullist System in Asia: The Constitution of Sri Lanka	p. 152
Constitutional Reform in Argentina Council for the Consolidation of Democracy	p. 158
Report on the 1848 Draft Constitution of Switzerland Constitutional Reform Committee	p. 173
A Collegial Executive for Uruguay	p. 175
Parliamentarism and Presidentialism in Africa, Asia, and Europe	p. 179
Report on the Draft Constitution of Nigeria Constitution Drafting Committee	p. 181
For a Directly Elected President of India	p. 187
The Case for a Directly Elected Prime Minister in the Netherlands	p. 191
Direct Election of the Prime Minister International Forum of the Israel-Diaspora Institute	p. 194
Systematic Evidence: Broadly Comparative and Multivariate Analyses	p. 201
Comparing Democratic Systems	p. 203
The Centrality of Political Culture	p. 207
The Virtues of Parliamentarism	p. 212
Presidentialism: A Problematic Regime Type	p. 217
Contemporary Democracies: Participation, Stability, and Violence	p. 223
Governing by Committee: Collegial Leadership in Advanced Societies	p. 236
Notes on Contributors	p. 243
Guide to Further Reading	p. 245
Index	p. 251
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.