The Fusion of Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

Abstract:     
No question of constitutional design is more intensely debated than whether emerging democracies should adopt presidential or parliamentary systems. This is an important debate but it misses a critical point about constitutional design — namely that the structural differences between presidentialism and parliamentarism conceal much more than they reveal. In this Article, I demonstrate precisely how conventional accounts of the structural differences between presidentialism and parliamentarism actually obscure their functional similarities.

Keywords: presidentialism, parliamentarism, constitutional design, efficiency, electoral systems, separation of powers, fusion of powers

Accepted Paper Series