Presidential in All But the Name: The Centralising Drift in Legislative/Executive Relations in India

Abstract

This paper examines the centralising drift in legislative-executive relations in India. It argues that although, on the surface, the Indian Constitution appears formally committed to a system of Westminster-style Parliamentary democracy, a closer scrutiny of constitutional design as well as constitutional practice reveals an effective shift to a Presidential-style system, but without the checks and balances that are meant to constrain Presidential power.

Through legal devices such as the anti-defection law, constitutional silences around Speaker independence and opposition party rights, and judicial decisions strengthening the party leadership at the cost of the legislature, the legislature has, over time, come to be dominated by the executive to a degree far greater than is commonly found in parliamentary systems. The paper concludes by noting, therefore, that parliamentary dysfunction in India is not because of the character of individual politicians, but traceable, in large part, to constitutional design: in particular, to how the Constitution distributes power between the legislature and the executive, and the structure of incentives and disincentives that it thus creates.

Keywords: constitutional law, comparative constitutional law, parliament, executive, India