Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, and Democracy Reconsidered

Abstract

Is presidentialism harmful to democratic consolidation? Despite two decades of investigation, the empirical results are mixed. In contributing to this debate, I propose that democratic breakdown must be understood as a two-step process, from democratic crisis to democratic breakdown. I argue that presidentialism generates political instability through its institutions, which are associated with the emergence of democratic crisis, but presidentialism does not lead a democracy from democratic crisis to democratic breakdown. Using data covering all democratic regimes from 1946 to 2008, I demonstrate that presidential democracies are more likely to encounter crises than parliamentary or semi-presidential democracies. But once a crisis is present, presidentialism does not lead to a greater likelihood of breakdown. Therefore, the findings suggest that Juan Linz was correct about presidentialism generating unstable democracies, but this process does not occur in the way he theorized.

Keywords: Democratic Crisis, Democratic Breakdown, Democratic Consolidation, Presidentialism