Reading: Chapter 5
(F) Day of the week: Thursday Class: IS307 Created Time: April 29, 2021 1:11 PM Database: Class Notes Database Date: April 29, 2021 1:11 PM Days Till Date: Passed Last Edited Time: August 8, 2021 10:10 PM Type: Reading Notes
How does the theoretical argument about the superiority of parliamentary over presidential government measure up to the empirical evidence?
empirical evidence support parliamentary government
- There are many percent of western European democracies and many stable British Commonwealth democracies are parliamentary
- from 1979 to 1989, it is estimated that there are 43 stable democracy in the world, including 36 parliamentary, 5 presidential and 2 semi-presidential.
- Within the last few years, it is approximately 96 countries are democracy, more than half (65) of the world’s democracies are parliamentary .
empirical evidence favor presidential government.
It is true that many presidential systems have failed especially in Latin America, but the failure of presidential could probably lie in
- inherent institutional design faults
- the economic problems
- lack of democratic traditions
- fragmented parties of the countries which adopted the system in the first place.
Although parliamentary system has been successful in western European countries and and British commonwealth countries, it is impossible to know whether parliamentary system can yield any better democracy in Latin America. It is important to note that parliamentary systems failed in Greece and Turkey, and did not perform at all well in France and Italy.