Comparative politics: concepts and analysis

¶ … Politics

Although it is not perfect, the presidential system of government, as typified by the United States (U.S.) is the best system of government ever conceived. By creating a system where the public can remove administrations, without changing the legal basis for government, democracy aims at reducing political uncertainty and instability, and assuring citizens that however much they may disagree with present policies, they will be given a regular chance to change those who are in power, or change policies with which they disagree. This is preferable to a system where political change takes place through violence. Democracies are also more peaceful. Democratic nations do not aggressively attack their neighbors; they seek to resolve differences peacefully. The market forces become the overriding concern in a democratic state. "Immanuel Kant, the original proponent of the democratic peace, contended that in democracies, those who pay for wars -- that is, the public -- make the decisions, so they are understandably cautious."

A presidential system, or a congressional system, is a system of government of a republic where the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative. The defining characteristic of a presidential government is how the executive is elected, but in nearly all presidential systems the president is both head of state and head of government, and has a fixed term of office. Elections are held at scheduled times, and cannot be triggered by a vote of confidence or other such parliamentary procedures. The executive branch is unipersonal. Members of the cabinet serve at the pleasure of the president and must carry our the president's policies. "The government which is elected by the democratic procedures becomes the absolutely legitimate government. If legitimacy is strong, then it becomes culturally taboo to overthrow it. It even becomes taboo not to see it as 'our government.' Because U.S. citizens think this way, the United States is politically stable."

There are also a few countries - the Czech Republic and South Africa being examples - which have powerful presidents who are elected by the legislature. These presidents are chosen in the same way as a prime minister, yet are both heads of state and heads of government. These executives are titled "president," yet are constitutionally identical to prime ministers. Some political scientists consider the conflation of head of state and head of government duties to be a problem of presidentialism because criticism of the president cum head of state is criticism of the state itself.

A president, by virtue of a fixed term, may provide more stability than a prime minister who can be dismissed at any time. Stability was virtue prized highly by the framers of the Constitution, as we see in the writings of James Madison in the Federalist Papers. "Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice."

A prime minister is usually chosen by a few individuals of the legislature, while a president is usually chosen by the people. According to supporters of the presidential system, a popularly elected leadership is inherently more democratic than a leadership chosen by a legislative body, even if the legislative body was itself elected. In some parliamentary systems though, such as Israel's, the party leader is chosen by the party's rank and file membership through primaries.

It is also claimed that the direct mandate of a president makes him or her more accountable. The reasoning behind this argument is that a prime minister is "shielded" from public opinion by the apparatus of state, being several steps removed. Despite the existence of the no confidence vote, in practice, it is extremely difficult to stop a prime minister or cabinet that has made its decision. To vote down the cabinet's legislation is to bring down a government and have new elections, a step few are willing to take. Hence, a no confidence vote in some parliamentary countries, like Britain, only occurs a few times in a century.

The fact that a presidential system separates the executive from the legislature is sometimes held up as an advantage, in that each branch may scrutinize the actions of the other. In a parliamentary system, the executive is drawn from the legislature, making criticism of one by the other considerably less likely. According to supporters of the presidential system, the lack of checks and balances means that misconduct by a prime minister may never be discovered. "Presidents and legislatures are directly elected and have their own fixed mandates. This mutual independence creates the possibility of a political impasse between the chief executive and the legislative body for which there is no constitutionally available impasse-breaking device."

Some supporters of presidential systems claim that presidential systems can respond more rapidly to emerging situations than parliamentary ones. A prime minister, when taking action, needs to retain the support of the legislature, but a president is often less constrained, even when checks on their power are in existence. A presidential system establishes the presidency and the legislature as two parallel structures. Critics argue that this separation of powers creates undesirable gridlock, and that it reduces accountability by allowing the president and the legislature to shift blame to each other. It is also claimed that the difficulty in removing an unsuitable president from office before his or her term has expired represents a significant problem.

Other supporters of presidential systems sometimes argue in the exact opposite direction, however, saying that presidential systems can slow decision-making to beneficial ends. Divided government, where the presidency and the legislature are controlled by different parties, is said to restrain the excesses of both parties, and guarantee bipartisan input into legislation.

Many people consider presidential systems to be superior in surviving emergencies. A country under enormous stress may, supporters argue, may be better off being led by a president with a fixed term than rotating premierships. The fixed term may also serve to allow an unpopular president to maintain a policy that many people may not agree with, but turns out to be the correct course for the country.

The fact that elections are fixed in a presidential system is likewise often held as a valuable "check" on the powers of the executive. While parliamentary systems often allow the prime minister to call elections whenever he sees fit, or orchestrate his own vote of no confidence to trigger one when he cannot get a legislative item passed, the presidential model is said to discourage this sort of opportunism, and instead force the executive to operate within the confines of a term he or she cannot alter to suit his or her own needs.

Winning the presidency is a winner-take-all, zero-sum prize. Unlike a prime minister, who may have to form a coalition, a president's party can rule without any allies for four to six years, a worrisome situation for many interest groups. Juan Linz argues that

The danger that zero-sum presidential elections pose is compounded by the rigidity of the president's fixed term in office. Winners and losers are sharply defined for the entire period of the presidential mandate. . . losers must wait four or five years without any access to executive power and patronage. The zero-sum game in presidential regimes raises the stakes of presidential elections and inevitably exacerbates their attendant tension and polarization.

Some political scientists and argue that presidential systems have difficulty sustaining democratic practices, noting that presidentialism has slipped into authoritarianism in many of the countries in which it has been implemented. Seymour Martin Lipset and others are careful to point out that this has taken place in political cultures unconducive to democracy, and that militaries have tended to play a prominent role in most of these countries.

A disadvantage of presidential systems is the tendency towards authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Some political scientists say that the presidentialism is not constitutionally stable. According to some political scientists, such as Fred Riggs, presidentialism has fallen into authoritarianism in every country it has been attempted, except the United States. "Embattled Presidents are often tempted to resort to desperate and even unconstitutional measures in order to bypass Congress and achieve their goals. Sometimes, as in the Philippines in 1972, the President suspends Congress and rules by martial law and executive orders."

In a presidential system, the legislature and the president have equally valid mandates from the public. There is often no way to reconcile conflict between the branches of government. When president and legislature are at loggerheads and government is not working effectively, there is a powerful incentive to employ extra-constitutional maneuvers to break the deadlock. Ecuador is presented as a case study of democratic failures over the past quarter-century. Presidents have ignored the legislature or bypassed it altogether. One president had the National Assembly tear gassed, while another was kidnapped by paratroopers until he agreed to certain congressional demands. From 1979 through 1988, Ecuador staggered through a succession of executive-legislative confrontations that created a near permanent crisis atmosphere in the polity. In 1984, President Leon Febres-Cordero tried to physically bar new Congressionally-appointed Supreme Court appointees from taking their seats. "Parliamentary government avoids the problems associated with presidentialism since it mandates a degree of cooperation between the executive and legislature if either are to remain in office, and it also allows for a change in leadership without precipitating a crisis of state."

Presidential systems are said by critics not to offer voters the kind of accountability seen in parliamentary systems. It is easy for either the president or Congress to escape blame by blaming the other. Describing the United States, former Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon said "the president blames Congress, the Congress blames the president, and the public remains confused and disgusted with government in Washington."

Another alleged problem of presidentialism is that it is often difficult to remove a president from office early. Consider John Tyler, who only became president because William Henry Harrison had died after thirty days. Tyler refused to sign Whig legislation, was loathed by his nominal party, but remained firmly in control of the executive branch. Since there is no legal way to remove an unpopular president, many presidential countries have experienced military coups to remove a leader who is said to have lost his mandate.

Part II

Most popular modern ethical and philosophical doctrines state that all humans are divided into groups called nations. The nationals, born of the "nation" in this sense, are distinguished by common identity and origin. Nationals are considered to share certain traits and norms of behavior, certain duties toward other members and certain responsibilities for the actions of the members of the same nation. Today the word nation is often used synonymously with state, as in the United Nations. But a state is more properly the governmental apparatus by which a nation rules itself. Max Weber provided the classic definition of the state:

Today, however, we have to say that a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that "territory" is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it.

The concept of a nation, as well as many other concepts that involve division of people into groups based on origin and identity, can be traced as far back as the emergence of territorial animals, which seek to drive away from their territory all competitors unless they belong to their group. The first recorded use of the word "nation" was in 968, when Liutprand, bishop of Cremona, while confronting the Byzantine emperor on behalf of his patron Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, boldly declared in his report, "which you say belongs to your empire belongs, as the nationality and language of the people proves, to the kingdom of Italy."

The idea of a nation gained wide acceptance and popularity in eighteenth century, when romantic nationalism was developed and used to shatter the old world order of dynastic or imperial hegemony. While today many nations appear to coincide with an independent state (a nation-state), this happenstance occurred comparatively rarely in pre-modern history. The rise of nationalism in the 18th and 19th century saw the idea that each nation deserves its own state gain momentum in Europe. Today, however, many nations exist without a state, such as the Kurds, Assyrians, Gibraltarian and the Native American nations, whereas many states comprise several nations, such as Belgium, United Kingdom and Spain. There are other examples - until 1922 the Irish nation was wholly within the United Kingdom. Following a move for independence, the country was partitioned into an independent southern state, now the Republic of Ireland, with Northern Ireland remaining in the Union.

The idea of a nation remains somewhat vague, in that there is generally no strict definition for exactly who is considered to be a member of any particular nation. "Where states were formed before a nation emerged, the explicit efforts of the state to limit and encourage selective nationalism are particularly evident. Specified exclusion has provided a crucial referent demarcating those included."

Many modern states show a great diversity of cultural behaviors and ethnic backgrounds. England may furnish a classic example: a territory which is not a state, since it has no government of its own, and which has large immigrant populations and diverse cultural behavior, yet the English are often described as a nation.

Nation-building refers to the process of constructing or structuring a nation using the power of the state. This process aims at the unification of the people or peoples within the state so that it remains politically stable and viable in the long run. Nation-building can involve the use of propaganda or major infrastructure development to foster social harmony and economic growth. It has been succinctly described as "the use of armed force in the aftermath of a conflict to underpin an enduring transition to democracy."

Examples of nation-building include the Marshall Plan and the current occupation of Iraq by the United States and United Kingdom. The United States itself went through a process of nation-building after the Civil War to reconstruct the South. This process lasted close to a century, only finally culminating in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. "The chief threats to us and to world order come from weak, collapsed, or failed states. Learning how to fix such states -- and building necessary political support at home -- will be a defining issue for America in the century ahead."

Nation-building requires a devotion of money and military efforts, but most importantly it requires time. In the nation-building efforts of Germany and Japan following WWII and more recent efforts in Kosovo, Haiti and Somalia in the 1990s, it is evident that a successful nation-building project requires years, the average time close to seven years. James Dobbins served as U.S. special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, which he cites as the most important instances in which American military power has been used in the aftermath of a conflict to support democratization in the post World War II era - along with Germany and Japan. According to Dobbins, the greatest factor influencing successful nation-building is "the level of effort, as measured in troops, money, and time."

Multilateral nation-building is more complex and time-consuming but considerably less expensive. Unity of command and broad participation are compatible if the major participants share a common vision. Resources are important. He says it can produce "more thorough transformations and greater regional reconciliation, [but only] when the major participants share a common vision."

Many political scholars maintain that the bigger the occupying force, the fewer the postwar casualties. If this holds true for Iraq, then the force reductions by other countries will increase the violence there, thus impeding postwar reconstruction. Dobbins also says:

It is nearly impossible to put together a fragmented nation if its neighbors try to tear it apart. Every effort should be made to secure their support.

Accountability for past injustices can be a powerful component of democratization, but should be attempted only if there is a deep and long-term commitment to the overall operation.

It can't be done quickly: 'None of our cases was successfully completed in less than seven years.'

Opposition to nation-building was one of the planks George W. Bush's presidential campaign in 2000. He has since revised this position. "In Afghanistan, in Iraq, and now in Haiti, the Bush administration has found itself enmeshed in the daily workings of failed states and has taken on responsibilities as far-ranging as protecting government leaders, repairing infrastructure, and serving as a sort of police force amid a hostile citizenry."