in Today Comparative Politics
Parliamentary, Presidential and Mixed
Democracies
Two Visions of Democracy:
Implications for Democratic Institutions
Looking ahead
Final Exam
College Avenue Gym Annex
Thursday, December 16
Not in Scott 123!
8 to 11 am
Final exam
Thursday,
December 16
8 to 11 a.m.
College Avenue
Gym Annex
NOT in Scott !
Three Types of Democracy
Presidential
Parliamentary
Mixed
Classification depends on the relationship
between
Government
Legislature
President (if any)
Government
A parliamentary democracy: government
depends only on a legislative majority to exist.
The government comprises a prime minister
and the cabinet.
Prime minister = political chief executive and head
of the government
Cabinet: ministers who head the various
government departments.
In a parliamentary democracy,
the executive branch = the government
What Distinguishes Them?
A presidential democracy : the government
does not depend on a legislative majority to
exist.
A parliamentary democracy: the government
depends only on a legislative majority to exist.
A mixed democracy: the government depends
on a legislative majority and on an
independently elected president to exist.
Legislative responsibility: legislative majority
has the constitutional power to remove a
government from office without cause.
Legislature removes a government by means
of a vote of no confidence.
Government
Ministerial responsibility: constitutional
doctrine by which cabinet ministers must
bear ultimate responsibility for what
happens in their ministry.
Collective cabinet responsibility: doctrine
by which ministers must publicly support
collective cabinet decisions or resign.
Government Formation
New governments form in parliamentary
democracies in two circumstances:
1. Following elections
2. During an inter-election period, following the resignation
of the current government
How do governments form?
Government must enjoy the confidence of the
legislature both to come to power and to stay in
power.
All governments need the support of a
legislative majority.
Which Parties Form the Government?
If a single party controlled a majority of the
legislative seats, that party usually forms the
government.
But what happens when there is no majority
party?
It is relatively rare to have majority parties in
parliamentary democracies.
81% of the governments that formed in Western Europe
from 1945 to 1998 emerged from political situations in which
there was no majority party.
Government Formation
Formateur: person designated to form the
government; the formateur is often the PM
designate.
The leader from the party winning the most seats normally
acts as formateur.
Once the formateur is chosen, he needs to put a
government together that is acceptable to a
legislative majority.
The ability to nominate cabinet members is one of
the most important powers held by the formateur.
In single-party governments, PM has enormous discretion.
In coalition governments, PM is more constrained.
Cabinets and Political Objectives
Office seeking politician
Interested in the intrinsic benefits of office
Wants as many ministerial portfolios as possible
Policy seeking politician
Wants only to shape policy
Pure Office-Seeking Model
In this case, a formateur can get other parties
to join the government only by giving them
ministerial portfolios.
Strong empirical evidence that you have to
give large parties more office than small
parties.
Gamsons Law: Cabinet portfolios will be
distributed among government parties in strict
proportion to the number of seats that each
party contributes to the governments
legislative majority.
Coalition theories in one dimension
100 seats in Parliament
7 parties
There are many possible majority coalitions.
Actually, 61 of them
Which coalitions will form?
Coalition theories in one dimension
1.von Neumann and Morgenstern: only minimal
winning coalitions will form.
A coalition is minimal winning if removal of any party
makes it a minority coalition.
BE, ABF, ACE, ADE, AEF, AEG, ABCD, ABCG, CDEF,
DEFG are all minimal winning.
Argument: Once you reach a majority, why give away
valuable Cabinet portfolios to additional parties?
Coalition theories in one dimension
2.Riker: Only a minimum winning coalition with
the smallest number of seats will form.
Argument: Parties value Cabinet positions. The larger
is a partys share of seats, the more Cabinet posts it
can claim.
CDEF is the uniquely smallest minimal winning
coalition.
5 + 4 + 33 + 9 = 51
Coalition theories in one dimension
3. Lieserson: A majority coalition with the
smallest possible number of parties is most
likely to form.
Argument: Forming a majority government requires
costly bargaining among potential coalition
members. Such costs increase with the number of
parties.
There is no 1-member majority coalition.
BE is the sole 2-member majority coalition.
Pure Policy-Seeking Model
With parties pursuing this objective, a formateur
can induce them to join the government only by
giving them policy concessions.
In other words, the formateur cannot implement policy at his
own ideal point. Instead, he has to implement a coalition
policy that is somewhere between the ideal points of all his
coalition partners.
Likely that a formateur will have to give more
policy concessions to large parties than small
parties.
Pure Policy-Seeking Model
Implication 1: want to form coalitions with parties
that are located close to you in the policy space.
As a result, you will form a particular type of coalition
government called a connected coalition.
A connected coalition: the member parties are located
directly next to each other in the policy space.
Implication 2: choose the connected least MWC
because you do not want to buy more legislative
seats with policy than you strictly have to.
Coalition theories in one dimension
4.Axelrod: A minimal connected majority
coalition will form.
A coalition is connected if every party lying between
two members of the coalition also belongs to the
coalition.
Argument: Any party should prefer to join with its
ideological neighbors: whatever policy compromise
they choose will be close to its preferred position.
There are 4 minimal connected majority coalitions:
ABCD, BCDE, CDEF, and DEFG.
What do the data tell us?
Sample of 218 parliamentary governments in
European nations using proportional
representation between 1945 and 1987
Using survey data, subjective expert
judgments, and analyses of party platforms,
scholars have located parties along LeftRight the dimension.
What do the data tell us?
Each of the models is consistent with some
governments in the sample.
Minimal winning coalition model does the
best.
About 2/3 of the multiparty governments involved
minimal winning coalitions.
Nearly all of the minimal connected winning
governments were also minimal winning coalitions.
But more than 1/3 of the governments did not
have a majority at all, contradicting all of
these models.
Presidential Democracy
A democracy in which the government does not
depend on a legislative majority to exist.
The government comprises the president and the
cabinet.
The president is the political chief executive and
head of the state.
Government Formation and Survival
in Presidential Regimes
The government in presidential democracies cannot be
dismissed by the legislature even if a majority of legislators
want this to happen.
No votes of no confidence
President is always the formateur.
President appoints (and dismisses) whomever he wants to the cabinet.
Presidents party is included in the cabinet regardless of its legislative
size.
If the government formation process fails in a parliamentary
democracy, then we get new elections, a new round of
bargaining, or a caretaker government.
If the government fails to win opposition support in a
presidential democracy, then the presidents party just rules
on its own.
Mixed Democracy
Government depends on a legislative majority and
on an independently elected president to exist.
The government consists of a prime minister and a
cabinet.
In a mixed democracy, the executive branch
consists of the government and the president.
President is part of the executive branch but not part of the
government.
Cohabitation
No guarantee that the president and the prime
minister will come from the same political party.
Cohabitation: a president from one political bloc
and a prime minister from another
The president nearly always gets to appoint the
prime minister. So, why do we get cohabitation?
President may need to appoint a prime minister
from an opposition party when the presidents
party or bloc does not control a legislative
majority.
Recent examples
France: 1986-1988, 1993-1995, 1997-2002
Sri Lanka: 2001-2003
Ukraine: 2006-2007
Majoritarian vs. Consensus Institutions
Arrows Theorem and the related oligarchy and
veto-power theorems pose an institutional
"trilemma."
Suppose we take as necessary the Unanimity and
Pairwise Determination conditions.
Given those requirements, collective decisionmaking institutions can deliver, at most, two of
the the three following desirable qualities:
Decisive choices for most or all configurations of citizens
preferences
Coherent and stable choices
E.g., transitivity or the absence of cycles
Absence of sharp inequalities of power
E.g., dictatorship, oligarchy, extensive veto power
All constitutions confront tradeoffs
Designers of constitutions have responded to
these tradeoffs in two characteristic ways:
Concentrate Power
Creating majoritarian systems
Disperse Power
Creating consensus systems
Such systems are configurations of
governance institutions that correspond to
two competing visions of democracy.
Majoritarian Systems
Teams of politicians compete for the support
of voters.
The team selected by a majority of voters are
then given unfettered control over policy.
Voters observe social, economic, and political
outcomes and decide whether to retain or
replace the team that are held responsible for
producing those outcomes
Institutions are designed to maximize clarity
of responsibility and accountability
Consensus System
Representative institutions are created so as
to reflect the preferences of as many voters
as possible.
Legislators represent the interests of the full
spectrum of voters and vote on issues the
way "citizens themselves would have voted."
Institutions are designed to maximize the
representation of all views found in society
and to make sure that decisions reflect
consideration of minority views
Institutional configurations: ideal types
Majoritarian
Majoritarian
Two parties
Single-party majority
Consensus
Electoral
system
Party system
Government type
Proportional
Many parties
Coalition/minority
Unitary
Authority levels
Federal
Unicameral
Legislative form
Bicameral
Legislative supremacy
Parliamentary
United Kingdom,
Jamaica, Trinidad
Constitutional arbiter
Higher-law constitution
Regime type
Presidential
Prototypical
examples
Switzerland, Belgium,
Netherlands
Evaluating Democracies
Accountability
Clarity of Responsibility
Mandates
Government identifiability
Representation
Responsiveness
Congruence
Majoritarian systems
monitor, reward, and punish
Accountability: are voters able to reward or
punish parties for their behavior in office?
Clarity of responsibility : are voters able to
identify exactly who it is that is responsible for
the policies that are implemented?
Accountability via retrospective voting
Using past performance of incumbent parties to decide
how to vote in the current election
Majoritarian systems allow voters to elect
candidates who promise desired policies
A mandate is a policy that the government is both
authorized and obligated to carry out once in
office.
Government identifiability refers to the extent to
which voters can identify what government
alternatives they are voting for at election time
Prospective voting
Majoritarian Institutions Maximize
Clarity of Responsibility and Accountability
Clarity of
Responsibility
Accountability
Dictatorships
High
Low
Consensus
democracies
Low
Medium
Majoritarian
democracies
High
High
Majoritarian Institutions Maximize
Clarity of Responsibility and Accountability
Clarity of
Responsibility
Accountability
Dictatorships
High
Low
Consensus
democracies
Low
Medium
Majoritarian
democracies
High
High
Majoritarian Institutions Maximize
Clarity of Responsibility and Accountability
Clarity of
Responsibility
Accountability
Dictatorships
High
Low
Consensus
democracies
Low
Medium
Majoritarian
democracies
High
High
Consensus Democracies Emphasize
Importance of Representation
Two dimensions of Representation
Responsiveness, or dynamic representation, how
well elected representatives respond to changes
in the preferences of the electorate.
Congruence, or static representation, refers to
how well elected representatives match the
preferences of the electorate.
Majoritarian and Consensus Democracies:
Electoral Success v. Policymaking Power