THE PERILS
OF PRESIDENTIALISM
Juan J. Linz
Juan J. Linz, Sterling Professor of Political and Social Science at Yule
University, is widely known for his contributions to the study of
authoritarianism and totalitarianism, political parties and elites, and
democratic breakdowns and transitions to democracy. In 1987 he was
awarded Spain's Principe de Asturias prize in the social sciences. The
following essay is based on a paper he presented in May 1989 at a
conference in Washington, D.C. organized by the Latin American Studies
Program of Georgetown University, with support from the Ford
Foundation. An annotated, revised, and expanded version of this essay
(including a discussion of semipresidential systems) will appear under the
title "Presidentialism and Parliamentar-ism: Does It Make a Difference?"
in a publication based on the conference being edited by the author and
Professor Arturo Valenzuela of Georgetown University.
As more of the world's nations turn to democracy, interest in
alternative constitutional forms and arrangements has expanded well
beyond academic circles. In countries as dissimilar as Chile, South
Korea, Brazil, Turkey, and Argentina, policymakers and constitutional
experts have vigorously debated the relative merits of different types of
democratic regimes. Some countries, like Sri Lanka, have switched from
parliamentary to presidential constitutions. On the other hand, Latin
Americans in particular have found themselves greatly impressed by the
successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy that occurred in
the 1970s in Spain, a transition to which the parliamentary form of
government chosen by that country greatly contributed.
Nor is the Spanish case the only one in which parliamentarism has
given evidence of its worth. Indeed, the vast majority of the stable
democracies in the world today are parliamentary regimes, where
executive power is generated by legislative majorities and depends on
such majorities for survival.
By contrast, the only presidential democracy with a long history of
52 Journal of Democracy
constitutional continuity is the United States. The constitutions of Finland
and France are hybrids rather than true presidential systems, and in the
case of the French Fifth Republic, the jury is still out. Aside from the
United States, only Chile has managed a century and a half of relatively
undisturbed constitutional continuity under presidential government-but
Chilean democracy broke down in the 1970s.
Parliamentary regimes, of course, can also be unstable, especially
under conditions of bitter ethnic conflict, as recent African history attests.
Yet the experiences of India and of some English-speaking countries in
the Caribbean show that even in greatly divided societies, periodic
parliamentary crises need not turn into full-blown regime crises and that
the ousting of a prime minister and cabinet need not spell the end of
democracy itself.
The burden of this essay is that the superior historical performance of
parliamentary democracies is no accident. A careful comparison of
parliamentarism as such with presidentialism as such leads to the
conclusion that, on balance, the former is more conducive to stable
democracy than the latter. This conclusion applies especially to nations
with deep political cleavages and numerous political parties; for such
countries, parliamentarism generally offers a better hope of preserving
democracy.
Parliamentary vs. Presidential Systems
A parliamentary regime in the strict sense is one in which the only
democratically legitimate institution is parliament; in such a regime, the
government's authority is completely dependent upon parliamentary
confidence. Although the growing personalization of party leadership in
some parliamentary regimes has made prime ministers seem more and
more like presidents, it remains true that barring dissolution of parliament
and a call for new elections, premiers cannot appeal directly to the
people over the heads of their representatives. Parliamentary systems may
include presidents who are elected by direct popular vote, but they
usually lack the ability to compete seriously for power with the prime
minister.
In presidential systems an executive with considerable constitutional
powers-generally including full control of the composition of the
cabinet and administration-is directly elected by the people for a fixed
term and is independent of parliamentary votes of confidence. He is not
only the holder of executive power but also the symbolic head of state
and can be removed between elections only by the drastic step of
impeachment. In practice, as the history of the United States shows,
presidential systems may be more or less dependent on the cooperation
of the legislature; the balance between executive and legislative power
in such systems can thus vary considerably.
Juan J . Linz 5 3
Two things about presidential government stand out. The first is the
president's strong claim to democratic, even plebiscitarian, legitimacy; the
second is his fixed term in office. Both of these statements stand in need
of qualification. Some presidents gain office with a smaller proportion
of the popular vote than many premiers who head minority cabinets,
although voters may see the latter as more weakly legitimated. To
mention just one example, Salvador Allende's election as president of
Chile in 197&he had a 36.2-percent plurality obtained by a
heterogeneous coalition--certainly put him in a position very different
from that in which Adolfo Suirez of Spain found himself in 1979 when
he became prime minister after receiving 35.1 percent of the vote. As we
will see, Allende received a six-year mandate for controlling the
government even with much less than a majority of the popular vote,
while Suirez, with a plurality of roughly the same size, found it
necessary to work with other parties to sustain a minority government.
Following British political thinker Walter Bagehot, we might say that a
presidential system endows the incumbent with both the "ceremonial"
functions of a head of state and the "effective" functions of a chief
executive, thus creating an aura, a self-image, and a set of popular
expectations which are all quite different from those associated with a
prime minister, no matter how popular he may be.
But what is most striking is that in a presidential system, the
legislators, especially when they represent cohesive, disciplined parties
that offer clear ideological and political alternatives, can also claim
democratic legitimacy. This claim is thrown into high relief when a
majority of the legislature represents a political option opposed to the
one the president represents. Under such circumstances, who has the
stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the
legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their
power from the votes of the people in a free competition among
well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may
erupt dramatically. There is no democratic principle on the basis of
which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might
provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of
much force in the eyes of the electorate. It is therefore no accident that
in some such situations in the past, the armed forces were often tempted
to intervene as a mediating power. One might argue that the United
States has successfully rendered such conflicts "normal" and thus defused
them. To explain how American political institutions and practices have
achieved this result would exceed the scope of this essay, but it is worth
noting that the uniquely diffuse character of American political
parties-which, ironically, exasperates many American political scientists
and leads them to call for responsible, ideologically disciplined
parties-has something to do with it. Unfortunately, the American case
seems to be an exception; the development of modem political parties,
particularly in socially and ideologically polarized countries, generally
exacerbates, rather than moderates, conflicts between the legislative and
the executive.
The second outstanding feature of presidential systems-the president's
relatively fixed term in office-is also not without drawbacks. It breaks
the political process into discontinuous, rigidly demarcated periods,
leaving no room for the continuous readjustments that events may
demand. The duration of the president's mandate becomes a crucial
factor in the calculations of all political actors, a fact which (as we shall
see) is fraught with important consequences. Consider, for instance, the
provisions for succession in case of the president's death or incapacity:
in some cases, the automatic successor may have been elected separately
and may represent a political orientation different from the president's;
in other cases, he may have been imposed by the president as his
running mate without any consideration of his ability to exercise
executive power or maintain popular support. Brazilian history provides
us with examples of the first situation, while Maria Estela Martinez de
Perbn's succession of her husband in Argentina illustrates the second.
It is a paradox of presidential government that while it leads to the
personalization of power, its legal mechanisms may also lead, in the
event of a sudden midterm succession, to the rise of someone whom the
ordinary electoral process would never have made the chief of state.
Paradoxes of Presidentialism
Presidential constitutions paradoxically incorporate contradictory
principles and assumptions. On the one hand, such systems set out to
create a strong, stable executive with enough plebiscitarian legitimation
to stand fast against the array of particular interests represented in the
legislature. In the Rousseauian conception of democracy implied by the
idea of "the people," for whom the president is supposed to speak, these
interests lack legitimacy; so