Is U.S. ‘presidentialist’ democracy failing?

[jimmy olsen]

Doom?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-us-presidentialist-democracy-failing/2016/02/10/37fa9ec8-d018-11e5-abc9-ea152f0b9561_story.html

Is U.S. 'presidentialist' democracy failing?

By Charles Lane Opinion writer February 10 at 9:17 PM 

Perplexed by today's turbulent American political scene? Not to worry: A distinguished political scientist wrote an essay 26 years ago that anticipated our predicament with eerie explanatory power. The only downside is that its author specialized in the causes of democratic collapse.

"The Perils of Presidentialism," by Yale University's Juan J. Linz, compared the Westminster-style parliamentary system with "presidentialist" systems that divide executive and legislative power between separately elected presidents and assemblies. The former, he concluded, were inherently more stable than the latter.


Charles Lane is a Post editorial writer, specializing in economic policy, federal fiscal issues and business, and a contributor to the PostPartisan blog. View Archive

This was an unlikely argument for an academic in the United States — a presidentialist nation deeply attached to separation of powers as a constitutional principle and equally confident of its political stability.

Yet Linz, a Spaniard, had closely studied his native country's 20th-century journey from democracy to dictatorship and back again, as well as the chronically unstable presidential systems of Spain's former colonies in Latin America.

Drawing on that history, Linz identified comparative disadvantages of "presidentialist" democracy. The fundamental one: Whereas a prime minister owes his power to the same majority that produces parliament, the president and legislature in a presidentialist democracy can both claim to represent the national majority, a source of competition that can spawn conflict, even chaos, when rival parties control the two branches.

Presidential systems include a fixed term for the chief executive, to add predictability and to curb dictatorial tendencies. However, this intended stabilizer actually makes politics "rigid," Linz warned. Whereas a parliamentary system can oust or, alternatively, fortify, controversial prime ministers through a vote of confidence, the only way to get rid of a wayward president before his term ends is by risking an impeachment crisis.

The rise and fall of prime ministers might give parliamentary countries such as Italy and Japan an almost comic appearance of political instability; but, Linz cleverly argued, their revolving door is actually a source of stability, since short-term kerfuffles help "avoid deeper crises." Governments come and go; democracy remains.

In contrast, the fixed presidential term adds a "winner take all" element to presidential elections, since parties and voters know that they're likely to be stuck with the victor for years. This "raises the stakes in presidential elections and inevitably exacerbates their attendant tension and polarization," Linz wrote, as if reporting from New Hampshire on Tuesday.

Adding to the drama, presidentialism makes the chief executive a personal repository "for whatever exaggerated expectations his supporters may harbor. They are prone to think that he has more power than he really has or should have." For his part, a president may "tend to conflate his supporters with 'the people' as a whole," making the "obstacles and opposition he encounters seem particularly annoying."

Americans have seen this dynamic at work in such episodes as Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempted "packing" of the Supreme Court and President Obama's use of executive action to counter Republican naysaying on guns, immigration and other issues.

Among Latin American failures of presidentialism, perhaps the most dramatic was the overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende in a 1973 military coup, after he tried and failed to swing his nation sharply left against center-right opposition, in parliament and in the streets.

For Linz, who died in 2013, such cases established a rule: Presidentialist democracy is most vulnerable in a polarized society with multiple parties and a volatile electorate.

Accordingly, he saw the United States' system as a stable exception because most voters were middle-class centrists and its two parties differed only "within a larger, moderate consensus."

This assessment seemed plausible when Linz wrote it in 1990. Nevertheless, he failed to address the growing polarization and political crisis that led to the Civil War in 1861, the proximate cause of which was Southern panic at what Abraham Lincoln would do with presidential power after the "winner take all" election of 1860.

When you consider that precedent, Linz's argument for exceptionally stable American presidentialism gets ever so slightly less reassuring.

In the quarter-century since he published his essay, the centrist Cold War-era political consensus has broken down. Decaying, too, are the two ideologically flexible "big tent" party coalitions that subscribed to that consensus.

Rank-and-file Democrats and Republicans are polarizing along ideological lines while further sorting themselves into subgroups ominously correlated with race, region and identity.

Long-standing establishments in both parties risk losing control to men — Donald Trump for the GOP, Bernie Sanders for the Democrats — whose first major acts of party membership were to launch insurgent presidential nomination bids.

The intense following each arouses recalls Linz's concerns about "the interaction between a popular president and the crowd acclaiming him," which "can generate fear among his opponents and a tense political climate."

By contrast, establishment politicians are wishy-washy, thoroughly compromised if not corrupt and, perhaps worst of all, boring. We may miss them someday.

[garbon]

I often opine on the similarities of the U.S., Spain and Latin America.

[Admiral Yi]

One aspect of American democracy that seriously needs fixing is the budgeting process.  There has to be some kind of default in the absence of agreement.

[celedhring]

Well part of the point here is that the US and Spain are dissimilar. We have a parliamentary democracy.

The overall point is BS, though - in my opinion at least.

For Linz, who died in 2013, such cases established a rule: Presidentialist democracy is most vulnerable in a polarized society with multiple parties and a volatile electorate.

All democratic systems are vulnerable to a polarized society and a volatile electorate.

[Jacob]

All systems are vulnerable to a polarized society and a volatile electorate.

Sounds about right.

[PDH]

The Res Publica was doomed when Marius was elected to multiple terms as consul in a row.

[Ed Anger]

The Res Publica was doomed when Marius was elected to multiple terms as consul in a row.

Sadly, Sulla never got to butcher the old fart. Or Cinna either.

[grumbler]

The Res Publica was doomed when Marius was elected to multiple terms as consul in a row.

Nah, it wasn't really doomed until Sulla marched on Rome and proved that he was more powerful as a general than any elected official.  Marius helped the situation get to that point, but Sulla pulled the trigger.  The Republic could have survived Marius.

[PDH]

The Res Publica was doomed when Marius was elected to multiple terms as consul in a row.

Nah, it wasn't really doomed until Sulla marched on Rome and proved that he was more powerful as a general than any elected official.  Marius helped the situation get to that point, but Sulla pulled the trigger.  The Republic could have survived Marius.

Just because you lost your farm because you were declared an enemy of the state doesn't mean that the collapse didn't start before Sulla.

[Valmy]

It was doomed when the Senate murdered the noble Tiberius Gracchus. 

[MadImmortalMan]

PM John Boehner.

[Josquius]

Yet the UK is moving towards an ever more presidential way of doing things

[Ideologue]

1. I wish people would stop comparing Trump to Sanders as if their (still nascent) successes are mirrors of one another.  Sanders is a career politician.  Trump is a pandering demagogue.

2.  America's biggest 19th century problems were in fact solved with a civil war, and most of America's biggest present-day problems could be solved with another.  So, if that's what "American presidentialism" leads to, why is that bad?

Americans have seen this dynamic at work in such episodes as Franklin D. Roosevelt's attempted "packing" of the Supreme Court and President Obama's use of executive action to counter Republican naysaying on guns, immigration and other issues.

Oh, no, two Democratic presidents used their legal authority.  (But at least their FDR example actually involved the potential exploitation of a terrifying constitutional loophole that, if used, would essentially destroy the SCOTUS in the presence of a united front from the other two branches of government.  Are executive actions even remotely on that level of dirty pool?)

[Admiral Yi]

What loophole are you talking about?

[Ideologue]

  The lack of any constitutional limit on number of justices at any one time.  The number of SCOTUS members is fixed by statute, not Article III.  If Congress and the President wished, they could amend the statute (as FDR planned to do), and put more justices on the court.  Presumably, these new appointees would be creatures of the President and to a lesser degree the Senate, and do their bidding, effectively destroying the Supreme Court's power of judicial review over governmental actions.  Obviously, in the short run, this could be beneficial (if Obama and the Democratic Senate had appointed a couple of new justices to counterbalance our shitty ones, for example), but it would eviscerate one of the cornerstones of our constitutional democracy.  YMMV, then, on whether you'd ever want this to happen--it would basically depend on whether you like American constitutional democracy, which I more-or-less do even if there are a lot of parts of the constitution I don't actually like.