Presidentialism

Abstract

Just as electoral systems are divided into majoritarian and proportional, so are democratic political systems generally divided into presidential and parliamentary. However, the latter distinction is more difficult to draw than the former one. Sure, presidential and parliamentary systems can be defined by mutual exclusion. Sure, a presidential system is non-parliamentary and, conversely, a parliamentary system is non-presidential. But the distribution of the real world cases into these two classes obtains impermissible bedfellows. The reason for this is, on the one hand, that presidential systems are for the most part inadequately defined; and, on the other hand, that parliamentary systems differ so widely among themselves as to render their common name a misnomer for a deceitful togetherness. We shall look into this later. Here, and first, we are required to define presidential systems and thereby to make sure that they are not confused with facade presidential forms or erroneously perceived as mixes, as quasi- or near-parliamentary presidentialisms.