In the article titled Systems of Government: Parliamentarism and Presidentialism the author Jose Cheibub has examined the best kind of democracies between presidential and parliamentary democracies. According to the author, parliamentary constitution comprise of executive and legislative powers. The role of the parliament is to allow the government to remain and come into power. Politicians together with academics have been found to have a popular relation with the parliamentarism concept. This is because of the power that it has which is the ability to eliminate the government through a vote of no-confidence which allows for a new government to be formulated. However, when no votes are passed it is not possible for the parliament to overthrow the government but rather they will call for an election where the citizens will be given the liberty to enact their democracies in the nation.
On the other hand, the limitation that comes with presidentialism is the reason majority of academics and politicians do not focus on it. Presidentialism aspects provide a prospect for the government to inhabit a certain period of time in office. It shows that there is a huge difference in the ways in which presidentialism and parliamentarism operates. There are also thoughtful consequences in the manner in which the two systems work. For instance, under presidentialism the government does not acquire any form of support meaning that they will not achieve any legislative support. This will result in deadlocks which cause conflict between the legislative and governmental powers.
However, the only positive side is that there can never be any coalition in the presidential regimes regardless of the deadlocks. It is because there are incentives that promote cooperation between the politicians together with the political parties and the government. At the same time, decentralization within the presidential system makes decision process easy and simple which enables them to respond positively to the proposed legislatures enabling them to pursue individualism instead of partisan strategies. This is the reason you find that the ability of the government always remains stable minus any forms of crises making the process of implementing policy easy and simple.
The research however found that regardless of these positive sides of the government, the presidential regime still remains unattractive choice. This is because of the increased risk of it collapsing despite its form. However, to make matters worse, the possibility of the parliamentary democracies to die are higher than the presidential democracies. This is the irony of the situation which makes the presidentialism life to be longer than the parliamentary one which only lasts 7 years while that of the presidential running for 10 years. One can easily tell the minimal difference, but it still matters. It is important to also mention that both the democracies are faced with several limitations and risks that make their prospects of survival for democracy minimal.
The author’s stand on the issue is that parliamentary democracies stand a better chance of survival compared to the presidential democracies. It means that the author has regarded the analysis that has been conducted to evaluate the survival levels of the two democracies. At the same time, the author refutes the ideas that presidential democracies are at a risk of deadlocks between the legislatives and executives. He also objects the ideas regarding parliamentary democracies not experiencing any form of deadlock and argues that the deadlocks under the parliamentarism are totally different from the presidentialism. He comes to the conclusion that presidential regimes has some form of independence thus making it possible for them to work properly compared to the parliamentarism. It is, therefore, not important to spend more resources to pre-empty the choice because of the power that it holds. The other relevant information that makes the presidentialism more favorable is because of stability that makes the political calendar more predictable making it possible to exist within the national constituency.
The author makes proposals regarding the presidential constitution paying much attention to its agenda and legislative power, presidential elections and legislative rules, and also constitutional term in regards to presidential reelection. At the same time, the presidency powers which is obtained from the constitution provides the presidency with several powers such as veto power, decree power, exclusive power, and urgency in regards to billing process. However, all these powers combined can have both negative and positive consequences on the presidencies. The author also mentions that presidential elections provide presidentialism with some advantages especially the length which they take to hold the national office. This may favor them when it comes to situations that are heterogeneous and volatile. At the same time, when presidential and parliamentary elections takes place at the same time, the presidential election is given more attention by the people which helps in generating their potential to last in office compared to the legislation. The only thing that can limit them is the presidential reelection which is mentioned in the constitution. The presidential term limit provides a strong connection between the voters and their selected candidate for the presidential office position.