Political executives. Would it be best for a new democracy to adopt a presidential system or a parliamentary system? Support your answer with evidence from two or more states.

Running Head : Political executives

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Introduction

Democracies can be organized in a variety of ways . The most important institutional difference among them is the relationship between the executive and the legislature . Therefore the two principal alternative modes are the parliamentary and presidential government . The relative merits of these two forms of democracy have been debated for long time considerably longer than the existence of modern democracy itself , which was not fully , established anywhere , taking the requirement of universal suffrage seriously until he

beginning of the twentieth century . The main subject of the debate has been the respective advantages and disadvantages of parliamentary and presidential government , and secondly less controversial and hence less frequently discussed subject is the origins and causes of these alternative forms of government . Third concerns the exact definitions of parliamentary and presidential government as well as the definitions of forms of government that appear to be intermediate between parliamentarism and presidentiarism can these various systems of government be clearly and ambiguously distinguish from one another (Lijphart , 1992

Parliamentary systems are `more conclusive ' to stable democracy than presidential systems . This applies especially it nations with deep political cleavages and numerous political parties . Presidential system has contributed to instability in Latin America and in West Africa (Diamond , 1988 . It is of almost importance first to consider the national scene to as to find out if there is any need for a change or modification in the constitution . Once we start arguing as to whether we should have a presidential form or not , we then ask ourselves whether it should be the American or the French variety and then get into the examination of those two systems and thus invariably kind ourselves into barren debate (Linz , 1990

Presidential system

Having resolved to constitute India as a nation in the presidential system , the framers of the constitution provided for a democratic pattern which had no pertinent to note that the words of `a parliamentary democracy ' mentioned anywhere in the constitution . The framers of the constitution visualized three major wings of democracy legislature , executive and judiciary and assigned them distinct functions . Under this system they thought of parliament consisting of two houses , namely the house of the people and the council of states The house of the people was to consist of members of parliament elected by their respective constituencies and the council of states was to consist of representatives elected indirectly by the members of state legislature as well as members of parliament

The problem arises when one visualizes a state of affair at the national level where , in the absence of clear-cut alternatives , a thin majority consisting of a coalition of more than one political party including regional parties , emerges at the national level . It is clear that under such circumstances , where every leader would want to be the prime minister , no government could be stable , defections would be encouraged and unlike a situation where in case of any instability in the states a stable national...