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The Perils of Parliamentarism in Contrast to Presidentialism in Democratic Transition
- 1 The University of Hong Kong
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Abstract
The paper raised some doubts on a few academic literature’s arguments that Parliamentarism is better than Presidentialism for new democracies in the transitional period. It instead found that parliamentarism could also lead to critical perils to democratic transition, at least in some particular political situations, like increasing the instability of the government, encouraging political speculation and polarization, and allowing ruling parties to self-benefit from the manipulated electoral system. Instead, presidentialism could be conducive to addressing these perils of parliamentarism and enable a more robust, stable, and successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy for many countries. This paper took examples of presidentialism in Philippine and Taiwan. Compared with presidentialism, parliamentarism has several key weaknesses. They include government instability under minority rule, polarization in countries with enormous social cleavages, encouraging politicians to pursue political speculation and defect their electorates, and the likelihood of electoral system maneuver by ruling parties. Thus, for new democracies, presidentialism may perform better than parliamentarism, at least on some occasions.
Keywords
parliamentarism, presidentialism, democratization, political transition
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Cite this article
Yang,M. (2023).The Perils of Parliamentarism in Contrast to Presidentialism in Democratic Transition.Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,21,20-24.
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