ABSTRACT

Modernity is characterized by three closely linked developments of the past two centuries --industrialization, nationalism, and democratization -- as they evolved primarily in Western countries. During the past half century, however, these processes have deeply modernized the rest of the world, especially the countries that were conquered by the empires that had become most modern. Wars between the empires weakened them so much that they could no longer resist liberation movements among the conquered peoples which created a host of new states. In them, however, the costs of modernization, which were masked by its positive aspects during earlier years, are now manifesting themselves with appalling ferocity. They include violent conflicts between ethnic nations and states, floods of hapless refugees, the rise of military authoritarianism, spreading anarchy, the mushrooming of squatter settlements in rapidly expanding mega-cities, the prevalence of lawlessness, and the virulence of neo-traditionalist reactive movements.

To cope with these problems, several inter-linked processes are needed, including democratization of states, the decentralization of power within states and the delegation of authority from states to regional and global organizations, both governmental and non-governmental. A critical element in these processes involves the constitutional design of democratic governance. Unfortunately, weak democracies often collapse, giving way to military authoritarianism or to a democratic facade in countries that remain essentially authoritarian.

Among the factors that affect a democracy's capacity to survive such turbulence is its basic constitutional structure -- especially whether it has selected a parliamentarist or a presidentialist format. Comparisons suggest that, at least in relation to the problems of industrialism and nationalism, parliamentarist regimes are more likely to succeed than presidentialist ones. Elsewhere, the author has shown that the consolidation of public authority and the deepening of representative institutions in a democracy are more easily accomplished under parliamentarist than presidentialist rules. Unfortunately, when choices are possible, strong leaders naturally favor presidentialism which not only empowers them but seems to be more stable -- they need to understand that if they want democracy to succeed in their countries in the long run, they should accept the apparent costs of parliamentarism.

13 January 1997

NOTE: The report which follows, after a preliminary discussion of the para-modern context of contemporary problems --the negative aspects of modernity in the West and the bitter fruits of modernization in the rest of the world -- contains three parts:

Part One Modern Democracy, discusses the basic design of modern organizations as a framework within which modern democracies have evolved. The alternatives leading to the historic rise of parliamentary and presidential constitutional regimes are clarified, and the underlying reasons for their major differences are explained.

Part Two Industrialization and Constitutionalism shows how the Industrial Revolution evolved on the basis of rising bourgeois (capitalist) power but has subsequently depended for its spread on the effective management of public policies by competent administrative systems, both governmental and non-governmental. Differences in their capacity to manage complex and powerful bureaucracies explain why parliamentary governments are more likely than presidentialist regimes to be able to integrate and implement the complex strategies required by industrialization in all modern states.

Part Three: Nationalism and Constitutionalism, compares the rise of state nations -- where established states created nations -- during the evolution of modernity, with contemporary efforts to create viable states in countries rent by domestic ethnonational conflicts and the struggles of divided nations to be re-unified. Because of its greater capacity to represent minorities in the formation of public policies under conditions of ethnic diversity, and to sustain administrative autonomy for ethno- political communities in countries torn by ethnic cleavages, parliamentarism is more likely to succeed in these tasks than presidentialism. NOTE: A completely revised text on this topic was prepared for use in a UNESCO working paper -- it can be found at: ETHNIC DIVERSITY, NATIONALISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

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INTRODUCTION: THE PARA-MODERN CONTEXT

The modern age is marked by rapid social transformations -- both a marvelous and a tragic reality that distinguishes our times from those of earlier ages in which diverse social orders of many kinds were stable for relatively long periods of time -- a justification for the use of traditional to characterize them. During the last two centuries, however, social change has become so noticeable that the world viewed by older people today is radically different from the world they knew as children.

To be more specific: the evolution of modernity involved the industrial "revolution," the rise of nationalism, and the replacement of royal sovereignty based on supernatural sanctions by popular sovereignty based on secular beliefs. Of course, innumerable side-effects of modernity also occurred, but in this report I shall deal only with these three central processes. Moreover, during the last half century, as modernization became a universally popular slogan -- especially in countries liberated from imperial domination -- the three goals of economic growth, ethnic nationalism and peoples' power have been universally applauded even when they could not be actualized.

Unfortunately, modernization has a lunar aspect -- it has a bright face we all admire and a dark side we ignore. During its heyday, the positive aspects of modernity were celebrated but, today, its negative aspects have become increasingly salient. During the early stages of modernization, conventional wisdom viewed the troubles experienced in the successor states of collapsed empires as merely transitional, as difficulties that traditional societies would overcome as soon as they moved, free of the yoke of imperialism, through the necessary stages of development.

These sanguine expectations ignored the negative aspects of modernity -- what I refer to as para-modern, i.e. the unwanted consequences of modernization. If we think of the positive aspects of modernity as ortho-modern, we can see that our admiration for modernization hinged on blinders that permitted us to focus on the ortho-modern while ignoring the para-modern. We were simply blind to the para- modern aspects of modernity that have always existed. To rationalize the obvious evils that were ubiquitous, we viewed them as residues of the pre-modern world, as remnants of traditionalism, or as the result of anti-modern forces or "evil empires"-- we thought of them as challenges that could be overcome without surrendering modernity. Like Don Quixote, we jousted at windmills while failing to see that the para-modern is as modern as the ortho-modern.

When an airplane crashes and kills all its passengers, we assume an evil terrorist is responsible rather than recognize the unavoidable risks of aviation -- such risks were never taken by pre-industrial people. When medical and public health achievements lead to population pressures, we blame the victims. When industrialization generates urban slums and the abuse of women and children, we close our eyes or blame the radical reformers. We have yet to see, I think, that the negative consequences of modernity, its para-modern aspects, are as much a product of modernization as the ortho-modern achievements which we justifiably celebrate. In popular usage, "modernity" refers only to "ortho-modernity," and the "para-modern" consequences of modernization are viewed as residues of traditionalism. We still need to learn that the para-modern is truly modern -- the dark side of the moon is as lunar as the bright side. From its early beginnings, the para-modern and the ortho-modern have been linked and both are equally "modern". This point is so important that it bears frequent repetition.

In the following analysis, I shall speak first about some of the perennial aspects of para-modernity --they have been with us for several centuries. The main difference between contemporary and earlier periods is that the para-modern symptoms of modernity have become so salient that we can no longer ignore them. It is now part of our conventional wisdom to repudiate the ortho-modern, to condemn the aspects of modernity that most of us have come to enjoy and use -- INTERNET and cyberspace providing a good example. The craze for post-modernism reflects this polarity -- it rejects all that is modern instead of viewing modernity as a Janus-like process whose good and bad consequences are inextricably linked.

We all use automobiles, airplanes, telephones, computers and antibiotics as though they had always existed and were not specific products of modernity. Yet, before modernity evolved, none of them existed and we would all be walking or riding horses, books would be scarce and the INTERNET non- existent, most humans would be living in close contact with their neighbors and relatives (their kith and kin) while ignoring the rest of the world. Indeed, most pre- modern practices and products survive -- they remain a fundamental part of our lives. Social changes generate a mammoth pyramid whose top layers build on older and lower layers. Neo-traditionalists yearn for the "good old days," forgetting that they also enjoy many of the benefits of modernity and cannot retreat to the past without abandoning the modern world whose good and bad features are inextricably linked: without them, indeed, neo- traditionalism itself could not thrive! Actually, the most serious problems we face today are para-modern, not traditional -- they are caused by modernity, not its opponents, and we cannot avoid them without also sacrificing the advantages of the ortho-modern.

Coping with Para-modernity. In order to cope with para-modernity, to manage social transformations, we need a better understanding of the long-term dynamics and consequences (both positive and negative) of modernization, and we need to use the tools that modernity has given us, above all the organizational tools. We need to understand how to create governments and non-governmental associations able to implement the policies and norms needed to manage the fundamental transformations generated by modernization - - especially its most savage and frightening aspects, i.e. the para-modern.

There is widespread agreement that democracy offers more hope for managing the fundamental social transformations of modernization than authoritarianism and military rule. Although there are some who might challenge this assumption, I shall not debate it here. Rather, I shall analyze the main democratic models available for coping with the para-modern problems generated by industrialization and nationalism. No doubt the problems involved in democratization -- how to switch from monarchic and authoritarian rule to popular sovereignty -- are also problematic. I have discussed the issues involved in making democracy work elsewhere -- Riggs (1997). Here, I intend to assume the existence of democratic regimes and ask how they can cope with two of their most urgent modern problems. There are, of course, many other major concerns, like the need to resolve conflicts, to deal with wars and inhumane conduct, with drugs, crime, and terrorism. Many such problems existed long before modernity evolved but I will focus this report on issues specific to modernity in order to limit its scope.

It is tempting to dwell here on the kinds of policies that are needed to cope with modernity. However, a good deal of work has already been done on these matters, whereas less attention has been paid to the constitutional requisites for the creation and management of regimes that can make and carry out appropriate policies. It is useless to recommend solutions that a regime cannot implement. Thus the management of major para-modern issues requires the development of forms of constitutional democracy that can successfully manage relevant policies. To establish such regimes, we need to understand the institutional requisites for democratic governance to succeed.

No doubt many non-institutional forces, both domestic and external -- including economic development, cultural norms, geographic resources, and historical experiences -- fundamentally affect the prospects for democracies to survive and cope with the problems of para-modernism (Przeworski 1996). Assuming that this is true, we still need to ask how, within any given set of non-institutional parameters, the most appropriate choices about the structure and operations of a regime can be made. Moreover, it may be easier to change the laws and constitutional practices of a country than to make fundamental transformations in its cultural norms, economic status and geographic environment. Historical factors, such as choices made in the past, cannot be reversed although, when we understand them better, we may more easily change some of their consequences. In order to do that, however, we need to know more about the institutional variables relevant to the success of democratic governance.

The evolution of modernity entails a new pattern of organization with far-reaching consequences. The new pattern is pervasive but, assuredly, it has not eliminated old patterns that survive in everyday life, especially in families, clans, gangs, small corporations, ethnic groups, and some churches and religious sects. Both modern and non-modern organizations may be democratic and undemocratic in the way they function. Moreover, contemporary states can be democratic only if they are organized in a modern way. Thus organizational modernity is a prerequisite for the establishment of democratic states. However, authoritarian states may also have a modern form of organization. The problems of industrialism and nationalism can only be solved by modern states -- states that retain a non-modern form can survive only by isolating themselves from the rest of the world, or if they have such great natural resources that they can exchange them for desired imports and subsidize their citizens as a "ruling class" while exploiting aliens as their employees, a "working" class.

To make sense of such broad generalizations, we need to understand the fundamental structure of all modern organizations (which I will explain below). However, first let us be clear that modern is not a synonym for contemporary. We need a clear distinction between a time- frame which distinguishes between past, present and future events or situations, and fundamental design features that can be characterized as modern or non-modern -- I avoid the terms, 'pre-modern' and 'post-modern' because they imply a time frame. Many contemporary organizations retain non- modern structures -- in fact, the most distinctive feature of modern organizations is their capacity to link two fundamental structural forms (hierarchic and polyarchic) both of which have co-existed since ancient times.

Of course there is a relationship between the temporal and design dimensions inasmuch as modernity evolved recently in human history and dates back only a few centuries. As I shall explain, the paradigmatic structure of modern organizations evolved as part of the emergence of modernity, a process that also included industrialization and the rise of nation states. Moreover, modernity overlies non- modernity which persists in all aspects of life. Most contemporary non-governmental organizations (including families, gangs, clubs, sects, etc.) remain non-modern in form while the number of modern non-governmental organizations and states continues to increase. Even un- democratic states often have a modern form of organization. Although the term, post-modern is widely used, it refers to criticisms of the modern rather than inquiries into any new forms of social organization -- its dominant orientation appears, therefore, to be anti-modern rather than futuristic. Actually, a temporal dimension is relevant and we might postulate significant changes accompanying the transitions from proto-modern (prior to 1850) to mid-modern (1850-1950) and late-modern (1950 to ??). But what will evolve next remains, I think, a speculative mystery.

We should also distinguish between modernity and democracy. No doubt all modern democracies link these two aspects, but it is also possible for modern organizations to be non-democratic (authoritarian). A comparison between classic city and village states, which were organizationally non-modern, and present-day democracies which are uniformly modern, makes it easy to see the fundamental structural differences -- and also to recognize modern forms of authoritarianism. The following table may help us:

The differences between modern and non-modern organizations can be found by contrasting the first row with the second,#1 1 but the distinctive features of democracy emerge by comparing the first column with the second. Modern democracies contain both the contemporary and the democratic features. Modern states (whether democratic or not) are a product of modernity and they provide the organizational framework required for any state to cope with the linked modern phenomena of industrialization and nationalism. Among these states, I believe those that are democratic are more likely to succeed than those that are authoritarian, and among the democratic states, those that are parliamentary are more likely to succeed (and survive) than those that are presidential in their constitutional design. A few non- modern states (monarchies) persist, but their survival is made possible by great natural wealth or other features that insulate them from the driving forces of the modern world.

These broad generalizations need to be understood in contexts of variability which require each country and organization to design a distinctive way to govern itself, and a wide variety of alternative laws, institutions and practices may be equally satisfactory as a basis for use by modern organizations seeking to manage fundamental social transformations. Put more positively, I believe that for any modern government to be democratic, it must create some institutional options that are responsive to its own special needs and circumstances. However, these options arise within the context of modern organization. Although non- governmental associations and international organizations (both governmental and non-governmental) are subject to the same basic considerations, they also vary enough so that it will simplify our analysis if we focus on states as exemplars of modern organizational principles.

Modern States. Stripped of details, the quintessential feature of modern governance -- and the foundation for modern democracy -- is the structural linkage between two major components: a membership-based polyarchic structure for popular representation and a managerially- based hierarchic structure for policy implementation. The first component is a constitutive system anchored in an elected assembly #2 and the second contains a managerial (bureaucratic) sub-system able to administer policies authorized by the constitutive system. Modern democracies (and, indeed, all modern associations, i.e., self-governing membership-based organizations) link a constitutive system with a bureaucracy. In democracies, these two components constitute complementary opposites, linked in dynamic interaction --modern authoritarian regimes also have the two components but they do not interact dynamically, typically because the constitutive system is hierarchic rather than polyarchic in practice, even though it may look polyarchic in form.

The concept of complementary opposites has been recognized for thousands of years -- it's most familiar symbol is the yin-yang of classic Chinese philosophy (Riggs 1996a). However, at the concrete organizational level, this complementarity is strictly modern -- it scarcely existed before modernity made it commonplace. To understand this remarkable fact, we need to say a bit more about the two (yin-yang) components.

The first (the constitutive system) is polyarchic -- its constituents (citizens, members) are formally represented in elected assemblies, and its head is also elected, whether indirectly or directly. Normally, as in states, the members are individual citizens, but in federations, like the United Nations, members may be states -- in corporations they are share-holders and each share gives its owner one vote. Consequently although the principle of individualism is often expressed in constitutive system by the one-person, one-vote principle, we often find group representation, and also weighted voting where votes are proportional to ownership. Great variations may also be expressed in voting rules between, for example, systems of proportional representation and those based on single-member electoral districts. Candidates for election may be nominated by factions (often organized formally as political parties) or non-partisan elections may prevail. All members eligible to vote may actually vote, or many may abstain; and distinctions can be made between members (citizens) who are eligible to vote, and others (subjects) who are governed by the system although they cannot vote.

The second (managerial) component is hierarchic -- authority from above permeates the whole. This is the normal bureaucratic structure with a commanding center and subordinated officers committed to following orders. In practice, of course, many subdivisions compartmentalize bureaucracies into more or less autonomous bodies, sometimes including polyarchic councils or teams. The core authority may also be more or less unified. As to size, managerial hierarchies range between very large and very small -- their members may serve as professionals or amateurs, on a long- term basis or for short periods of time. As in the yin-yang symbol, the yin component contains yang elements and the yang component contains yin elements. Thus modern polyarchies typically include hierarchic features and the hierarchic part has polyarachic factors.

Non-modern. Traditionally, forms of governance were polyarchic or hierarchic. The former prevailed throughout pre-history and survived long after history began in small-scale state-less societies and often in village and city states. The great historical civilizations, however, were organized under the hierarchic authority of monarchic or imperial rulers. Their legitimacy presupposed supernatural forces that, as manipulated by royal ceremonies or ancestral rites, were thought to bring welfare and health to all their subjects -- there were no countervailing polyarchic structures of authority although power was not necessarily monolithic -- for example, caste divisions, priestly power, and role distinctions often, in fact, led to power sharing.

As the great empires evolved, monarchic rule was reinforced by increasingly elaborate bureaucratic structures for public administration: royal officials helped rulers dominate their subjects and extract the resources -- financial, military, and spiritual -- needed to maintain their power. When faith in the supernatural efficacy of a sovereign waned -- as when Chinese emperors were seen as having lost the "Mandate of Heaven" -- revolts occurred and dynasties fell. Although bureaucrats were sometimes powerful enough to dominate their rulers, they could not replace them the way military dictators often replace contemporary presidents. Sometimes, bureaucrats assassinated rulers but, in such cases, one of them would be crowned as a successor, thereby maintaining the formal legitimacy of the monarchy -- a notable example can be found in the Mamluke dynasty of Egypt (Glub, 1973).

Modern. The spread of modernity has brought far-reaching transformations of life at many levels. The increasing social complexity generated by industrialism has created complex new problems that traditional bureaucracies could not solve. Moreover, growing secularism undermined the belief systems that made traditional authoritarianism acceptable.#3 Paradoxically, traditional forms of bureaucratic authority still provide the basic framework for managing public administration in all modern governments, but the political context has been transformed by the invention of new forms of polyarchic authority based on the representation of citizens (members) whose interests are affected by governmental policies and operations.

Modern constitutive systems need to be strong enough to maintain control over their hierarchical components while also giving appointed officials enough authority to enable them to administer increasingly complex policies effectively. Constitutive systems vary a great deal in the way they are designed and operate. There is no assurance they will work effectively -- their collapse usually leads to domination of a state by appointed officials, led by military officers. But the specific rules that enable a constitutive system to work effectively in one country may not be appropriate in another country: the variable context set by geography, natural resources, history, culture, economic and educational levels, etc. all affect the viability of particular institutional designs.

An important variable that affects the ability of any constitutive system involves the degree to which cultural homogeneity or heterogeneity prevails among its people -- the more contradictory their demands and expectations, the more difficult it becomes to satisfy their needs and expectations. Moreover, modernization brings with it a rising level of expectations concerning the availability of material goods and services that may not, in fact, be available to the citizens of a country that lacks the resources and infrastructures needed to supply them. Traditional rulers could always blame disasters on supernatural forces beyond their control, but modern politicians facing angry constituents feel the brunt of their resentments when unrealistic demands cannot be satisfied.

Many of these demands are the products of para-modernity, the unfortunate by-products of modernity. Above all, industrialization heightens the tensions between rich and poor, as conspicuous wealth in the midst of poverty becomes more and more unacceptable. Increasingly, potent medical and public health practices lead to population growth but also to sullen anger and violence among an increasing number of victims of poverty and illness. Growing awareness of citizenship rights as the foundation of representative government clashes with cultural diversity and ethnic nationalism which, when combined with unresponsive and ineffective governance, provokes ambitious leaders to mobilize resistance movements and engage in civil wars.

In order to cope with the growing complexity and difficulties of modernity, modern constitutive systems need to avoid some fundamental traps and resolve some deep contradictions. This report will focus on those generated by industrialization and the rise of nationalism. In order to do that, we must first identify more specifically the design features that best enable a constitutive system to represent its citizens (members) and to manage a bureaucracy that is capable of understanding and coping with the great problems they confront. The structure of representation is internal and that of management is external in the sense that the former involves the basic rules of the polyarchic system, whereas the latter involves relations with the hierarchic administrative apparatus.

To be sufficiently representative, an elected assembly needs to include members who understand and are responsive to the diverse interests of all their constituents and be able to influence public policy on their behalf. To achieve this goal, the electoral system must be open and the representative assembly must be powerful. The link between these properties of a constitutive system can be easily understood if we think about the consequences of a closed electoral system and a weak assembly.

Elections are closed whenever the candidates of only one party can be seated. This form of organization may be modern but it is not democratic because it excludes from the assembly representatives of all those whose interests and views differ fundamentally from that of the ruling party, especially its leaders. Moreover, when only all members of an assembly are candidates of a single party, they need to follow the party line when voting and this transfers the locus of decision-making to the ruling party, making the elected assembly a "rubber stamp." Such an assembly is necessarily weak, making the constitutive system an ineffective counterpart to the hierarchic system of public administration. Much has been written about the preconditions for holding open elections and managing legislative bodies -- I shall not attempt to review this literature nor add to the discussion here. Rather, let me turn to the second question posed above, how a constitutive system can be linked effectively with the managerial system of governance.

The Linkage Mechanisms. The capacity of any modern democracy to solve the deep problems of modernity, especially those generated by industrialism and nationalism, depends on the ability of its polyarchic and hierarchic components to mesh successfully. Even if the bureaucracy and the constitutive system in a modern organization could be evaluated as perfect, the system would be handicapped or fail if the linkage mechanism between the two components could not work well. For it to succeed, the head of government needs to be simultaneously accountable to the members in the constitutive system and also able to direct the managerial system effectively.

Because bureaucratic institutions for the management of governmental affairs are ancient and were never viewed as explicitly "political" or "policy-making" structures, they have always been taken for granted by reformers whose attention was focused, perhaps unavoidably, on the overtly political institutions of sovereignty, starting with monarchs as the focus of authority and legitimacy. Efforts were made to replace bad kings with good kings, or to compel kings to accept limitations on their authority, as represented in the English case by Magna Carta, the charter of liberties imposed on King John by a coalition of barons in 1215.

When it became clear that subsequent kings could not be depended on to respect such limitations voluntarily, attention shifted to representative institutions that could restrain monarchs in exchange for the revenues that a rising bourgeoisie could provide. When this led to irreconcilable conflicts, it seemed natural to suppose that kings might be pushed aside and replaced by an assembly, leading to what has been called convention governance.

In any such regime, an elected assembly replaces the monarch and tries to govern directly, perhaps using a set of legislative committees chaired by leading members to manage the various departments of government. Perhaps unavoidably, conflicts between leading members of such an assembly led to the rise of a ruthless protagonist able to dominate and even eliminate his rivals. The "Commonwealth" period (1649-1660) in England may be mentioned as an early example: under the nominal rule of Parliament, following the execution of King Charles in 1649, Oliver Cromwell, as a member of Parliament and a rising military leader, became "Protector" in 1653 and the de facto boss of a revolutionary regime during a period of civil war which lasted until the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.

Over a century later, the French "Convention" from 1792-5 provides perhaps the clearest and most horrible example of the violence and excesses this form of governance is vulnerable to. Rivalry among factions within the assembly led to the Terror and the ruthless dictatorship of Robispiere. One may also view the Continental Congress in America (1781-1789) as a governing assembly (although its members were representatives of the thirteen states, not individual citizens). Its rather chaotic experience paved the way for the Federal Constitution which created a new form of republic whose elected president was not to be a member of Congress but would exercise countervailing power as the Chief Executive.

No doubt government by an elected assembly can be relatively viable though weak in small towns and villages, but it has shown itself to be unworkable as a formula for managing the affairs of an independent state or even of a city. In practice, when the constitutive system is an elected assembly without a stable structure for managing and coordinating the civil services and the military bureaucracy, this formula leads to chaos, anarchy and despotism.

A 20th century variant of the convention model was created by the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, under the slogan of "all power to the soviets." In its constitutional theory, the U.S.S.R. embraced a kind of "convention" theory: its Charter refers to the Supreme Soviet as "the highest organ of state popwer" but, as Douglas Verney has pointed out, the constitutional myth masked a reality in which real power was exercised by the Communist Party (Verney, 1959: 70). Actually, the Soviet system evolved into a highly vulnerable state system that crushed individuality and liberty in the name of republican ideals -- as a caricature of convention theories, the Bolshevik regime demonstrated its ultimate lack of viability.

The quest for a viable system of governance that would be able to reconcile the principles of representative government with the need to manage a powerful apparatus of public administration, including its armed forces, led, in the United States and Western Europe, to the emergence of two novel formulas for establishing stable constitutional democracy. Both required a design that linked representative assemblies with a managerial hierarchy of governance. The first and surely the more precarious scheme reflected the unstable balance of power that had evolved in England by the end of the 18th century -- a regime based on the separation of powers that we refer as presidentialist. I use this awkward word because presidential characterizes the role of the president rather than the regime as a whole. Moreover, since parliamentary republics also elect presidents, the same word can apply to them. I try to reduce ambiguity by using presidentialist to characterize any constitutional system, like the American, based on the separation-of- powers.#4

Subsequently, during the 19th century, a more stable formula evolved in which real power passed to the elected assembly in the form of a parliament -- i.e. a representative body that institutionalized the executive power as a component sub-structure, the cabinet. Although this design is often called the "cabinet" system, I refer to it as parliamentarist. The term "cabinet" is ambiguous because presidentialist regimes also have cabinets, and "parliamentary" is imprecise because this term properly refers to characteristics of parliament rather than of the regime as a whole.

The earlier (presidentialist) format is more clumsy and essentially impractical than the later (parliamentarist) format -- it established a form of tandem rule by an elected assembly and an elected president, subject to a system of "checks and balances" designed to prevent each branch from abusing power and, inadvertently, it hampered effective governmental decision-making. The model was based on the historical experience of 18th century monarchies in which continuing struggles between kings and elected assemblies prevailed with no clear mechanism for compromising or reconciling profound differences of ideology and interest. This arrangement became increasingly contentious and hampered the emergence of laws and practices required by an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie as it took the lead in creating the Industrial Revolution and driving projects designed to create a national state -- interestingly, by bringing district leaders to the capital as MPs, parliaments socialized local elites and helped to create nations.

The parliamentarist model evolved gradually as power was transferred from kings to parliaments -- even though, often enough, kings were permitted to retain their thrones and to reign as symbolic heads of state. De facto, the executive power was taken from kings and lodged, instead, within the parliament as a governing committee, the cabinet. Thus, instead of separating the authority of government into two branches, as presidentialism did, parliamentarism fused these powers within the framework of a parliament. It is necessary to distinguish between the notion of an elected assembly (such as the Congress in a presidentialist regime) and a Parliament which contains two major components, an elected assembly and a cabinet.

The two designs are often viewed as equally useful options, but I consider this an illusion. However, ambitious leaders during any period of political transformation are likely to favor presidentialism because it helps them consolidate their personal power. One of the historical accidents that enabled presidentialism to work as well as it did in the United States was the personal modesty of George Washington, a revolutionary leader who, quite reluctantly, accepted the burdens of presidential power for two terms but firmly rejected nomination for a third term. The rising power of the United States has subsequently led Americans, and many foreign observers also, to credit the presidentialist model and attribute undeserved merits to it. Contemporary leaders who are true statesmen should, I think, shelve their personal ambitions (which presidentialism promises to gratify) and think, instead, about the historical legacy they can leave if they support the more stable form of modern constitutional democracy that parliamentarism can create.

Unfortunately, superficial observers think of presidentialism as more inherently "stable" than parliamentarism. This notion is based, I think, on a misconception of what stability means. Because presidents rule for a fixed term, some people see the presidentialist system as more stable than parliamentarism where cabinet crises can occur at any time. However, parliamentary democracy typically survives such catastrophes whereas a deep crisis in any presidentialist regime typically destroys the constitutional system and substitutes authoritarianism. In practice, therefore, the presidentialist system, although more long-lasting, it is ultimately as much a formula for disaster as the convention schemes of the 17 and 18th centuries, and the single-party regimes of the 20th. It can be viable, I believe, only so long as it can be managed as an oligarchy that effectively represses impoverished majorities and ethnic minorities despite fervent declarations of its intentions to represent all the people. A more stable and democratic formula for governance evolved after parliamentarism was invented in the 19th century. To understand why this should be so we need to consider at least three of basic institutional features: the constitutive system, the bureaucracy, and the parliamentary anchor for regime legitimacy.

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Updated: 1999

Posted: 12 Feb. 1997
Updated: 11 June 2000