Presidentialism versus Parliamentarism: Implications for Representativeness and Legitimacy
Author(s): Fred W. Riggs
Reviewed work(s):
Source: International Political Science Review / Revue internationale de science politique, Vol.
18, No. 3, Contrasting Political Institutions. Institutions politiques contrastées (Jul., 1997), pp.
253-278
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InternationalPolitical ScienceReview (1997), Vol. 18, No. 3, 253-278
Presidentialism versus Parliamentarism:
Implications for Representativeness and
Legitimacy
FRED W. RIGGS
ABSTRACT.
Despite optimistic expectations that the new states of the world
will, increasingly, become democratic and peace-loving in the "new world
system" created after the collapse of all the modern empires, we see growing
signs of pervasive violence. Efforts to support the consolidation of existing
democracies need to be augmented by struggles to prevent their collapse.
Two crucial problems recur in these struggles: how to legitimize states that
are often viewed by unwilling subjects as oppressive and lacking the authority or ability to govern effectively, and how to share power in countries where
it is concentrated, unrepresentatively, in the hands of ambitious minorities.
Democracies that cannot respond to the urgent needs of their citizens should
expect them to resort to resistance, terrorism, and revolutionaryviolence.
Two main forms of democratic governance exist on the basis of western
examples: the presidentialist design illustrated by the United States, and
parliamentarist forms developed in Western Europe. The argument
advanced here is that the presidentialist formula is inherently less able
than parliamentarism to support the degree of representativeness and
legitimacy required as a minimal basis for the survival of democratic governance. Some of the exceptional reasons why, despite the high rate of
collapse of other presidentialist regimes, the us constitutional system has
survived so long are explained. Because it is, indeed, very difficult to transform any presidentialist regime into a parliamentary one, the us example
is used to support lessons concerning the costs that must be paid for presidentialist regimes to survive.
The Context of Modernity
The collapse of the world's modern empires, both communist and capitalist in ideology, spawned a large number of successor states. Despite early optimism that they
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could become thriving democracies, many have, instead, become weak authoritarian states unable to govern effectively throughout their inherited domains (Jackson,
1990). Anarchic chaos prevails in many of these countries, provoking revolutionary
movements, rival ethnic groups, and criminal gangs to challenge the authority of
those in power. Inherited colonial bureaucracies, headed by military officers, often
respond to resulting crises by seizing power in the name of peace and order-and
also, of course, to protect their own rights and privileges.
Nevertheless, in this context, there are growing signs of democratization
(Huntington, 1991) and many states have struggled out of turmoil and authoritarianism to establish (or re-establish) democratic constitutional government. What
are the prospects for success of these emergent democracies (Diamond, 1996)?How
can interested outsiders best understand what is happening and help the leaders of
incipient democracies succeed and sustain their fledgling democratic institutions
when they come under attack?
To what extent is the fate of these countries determined by forces outside their
control? Perhaps they are trapped by the historic dynamics of our modern world.
However, could it also be possible that if their leaders knew more about what works
and what doesn't work in their situations, they would be able to make choices that
might enhance the prospects for successful consolidation and maintenance of
democratic institutions? More specifically, does it make a difference whether they
choose to be governed by constitutional rules based on the separation-of-powersas
exemplified by the us model, or by parliamentarism, based on the fusion-of-powers
as we find it in Western Europe?Because the basic design of any constitutional system
of governance profoundlyaffects the operation of other institutional variables, I shall
focus here on the pros and cons of parliamentarismand presidentialism.
Polyarchicand Hierarchic Subsystems
These are the two most important components of modern democracies. To be clear
about the following analysis, we need to recognize that all modern states (and
membership-based non-governmental associations as well) contain two basic
substructures, one polyarchic and the other hierarchic (Dahl, 1971; Riggs, 1996).
No doubt modern states vary between authoritarian and democratic extremes,
depending on whether their polyarchic subsystems have only one, or at least two,
important political parties. Some pre-modern states also remain in the world-they
typically have hierarchic but not polyarchic substructures-and some stateless
societies that are polyarchic but not hierarchic can also be found in remote places.
This means that although most contemporary states have a modern format, a few
non-modern states also remain alive.
All modern states contain linked polyarchic and hierarchic substructures. They
are democratic only if there is electoral competition for seats in their elected assemblies-some modern states, accordingly, are not democracies. The modes used to
link the hierarchic and polyarchic substructures of a modern state profoundlyaffect
the way they work: this explains why those with parliamentarist regimes can more
easily solve many modern problems than can those based on the presidentialist
model, for reasons to be explained below. These preliminary assertions are conceptual, involving definitions of such key words as "democracy,""modern,""presidential," "parliamentary,""polyarchy"and "hierarchy."Such words also have other
meanings but I intend to use them only in a way that conforms to the foregoing
text.
FREDW. RIGGS
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To recapitulate and elaborate a bit, any modern association (whether it be a state
or a non-governmental organization) contains: (1) a polyarchical system anchored
in an elected assembly which I call a constitutivesystem(Riggs, 1969) and, (2) a hierarchical (managerial or bureaucratic) subsystem responsible for implementing the
policies authorized by the constitutive system. The notion of an "association" used
here is that of any "organization" whose constituent members share practices
(structures) that enable them to make collective decisions. In this sense, all modern
states are associations, but most modern associations are non-governmental organizations-the word organization is often used as a synonym and I would rather use
it except for the fact that parts of an association, like its bureaucracy, or even
individual bureaus, are often also called "organizations." All modern associations
are, therefore, self-governing organizations that link a constitutive system with a
bureaucracy; some are states but many are non-governmental bodies. Put differently, any association that lacks a constitutive system is not "modern." Many but
not all modern associations are also "democratic," but when a single party monopolizes the nomination of candidates for assembly seats by effectively precluding its
opponents, they are, by definition, not democratic-I call them closedconstitutive
systems.By contrast, any constitutive system that enables two or more parties to
compete for assembly seats may be called open.
Competitive (open) elections are needed to legitimize modern associations.
However, pre-modern associations lacked constitutive systems and derived their
legitimacy from other sources. More specifically, pre-modern monarchies gained
their legitimacy from supernatural forces, such as beliefs in the divine right of
kings. Monarchic rituals and sacrifices were thought to bring welfare and health to
all subjects. Such legitimacy depended, no doubt, on religious (spiritual) beliefs in
the potency of supernatural forces and the capacity of crowned kings to influence
their earthly impact (Hocart, 1970). The spread of secularism as an empirically
oriented and typically modern way of viewing the world has undermined the legitimacy of monarchic rule and given representative governance its compelling force.
I believe that all legitimate governments (i.e., states whose citizens accept their
authority voluntarily) are legitimized from above by monarchic rule (a few endangered monarchies still survive in our world) or from below by democratic rule. No
doubt many contemporary states are ruled by autocrats who have seized power by
violence but, I think, their reliance on fear and coercion renders their rule illegitimate and precarious. Their collapse leads to new military rulers or democratic
Protogovernance, typically in a precarious basic form that I call proto-democracy.
democracies may evolve into consolidated stable democracies, or may again collapse
into authoritarianism. Exceptionally they may become single-party dictatorships, a
modern but undemocratic type of state; my guess is that although some such states
remain alive today, new ones will not be created. More frequently, however, they
may be torn apart by secessionist movements generated by dissatisfied ethnonational communities. The focus of this article is on the institutional variables that
enhance the prospects for survival of proto-democracies, and more specifically, on
their capacity to legitimize their authority and expand the representativeness of
their electoral/party systems so as to meet the urgent needs of all their minority
communities.
States in transition often manifest formalistic compromises in which, for
example, a constitutive system may exist formally but not in reality-competitive
elections may be held for membership of a puppet assembly, and corrupt practices
may assure the election of a "president" who had previously seized power as an
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autocrat. Such formalism is typical of what I call the prismaticmodel (syndrome)
where mutually contradictorypractices coexist and continuously cross-pressureeach
other (Riggs, 1964). Actually, I believe, formalism exists everywhere in the world
today, but it prevails more in some contexts than in others. Western observers are
so accustomed to thinking that what people say largely corresponds to what they
do that they often assume that constitutional charters are enforced, laws are implemented, and policies executed as they are written. More commonly, I am afraid,
formally promulgated norms are effectively violated in practice-formalism is
ubiquitous.
The basic problems involved in achieving and sustaining democracies, therefore,
may not be manifested in the formal texts of constitutional charters and laws.
Rather, they hinge on the conditions that permit these norms to be implemented
in practice. Ideally, I would like to talk about all these conditions but limited space
permits me to review only the two conditions that I view as minimally necessary
and relevant to the constitutional forms of a state: representativeness and legitimacy. These conditions can, I believe, be achieved more easily under parliamentarist than under presidentialist principles of governance and the rest of this article
is devoted to a discussion of this proposition. Other conditions requisite to the
consolidation of democracy also need to be considered, however, and I hope that
writers dealing with them will keep in mind the fact that some polyarchicpractices
that can work well under parliamentarist conditions may destroy regimes based on
presidentialist structures (Riggs, 1997).
Presidentialism
versus Parliamentarism
This claim requires, of course, a clear understanding of the distinction between
presidentialism and parliamentarism. To the degree that formalism prevails, the
political realities in some states are better described as authoritarian than
democratic, regardless of the formal prescriptions of their constitutional charters.
In the following discussion I shall assume some modest realism, that is, the formal
charter describes political practice, at least approximately and not necessarily
absolutely.
The ideal type of a modern democracy is not based on a single formula because
there are two different plans for linking open constitutive systems with bureaucracies and we may refer to them as presidentialistand parliamentarist.Although
"parliamentary" and "presidential" are often used for the same concepts
(Lijphart, 1992), I prefer forms that can clearly distinguish between constitutional
systems and the specific institutions found in them. For example, presidentialoften
refers to the office of an elected leader, and it is used in both presidentialist and
parliamentarist democracies as well as single-party and autocratic regimes.
Parliamentaryusually characterizes the assemblies found in parliamentarist
systems; by contrast, we use congressfor the assemblies of presidentialist regimes
and legislaturefor a broader concept that includes both. Non-modern states and
non-democratic modern states are not characterized as "presidentialist" or
"parliamentarist" even though they may, formally, have "presidents" and
"elected" assemblies.
We may think of some constitutional models that are neither presidentialist nor
parliamentarist: the Swiss confederacy may provide an example. More importantly,
there are hybrid systems that display some features of both types: the French Fifth
Republic is the best-known case. Nevertheless, most democracies adhere to one of
FREDW. RIGGS
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two fundamental rules designed to link their open constitutive systems with the
bureaucracy through the role of the head of government, as I shall now explain.
Presidentialism
The presidentialist form of constitutional democracyevolved first in the United States.
This format has been widely emulated in other countries: it replaces monarchs with
presidents elected for a fixed term. Most importantly, they have the authority (at least
nominally) to manage the governmental bureaucracy.Some comments on the historical situation that led the founding fathers of the us Constitution to reproduce the
existing powers of the king of England while rejecting monarchic principles can be
found in Needler (1996: 119). Concurrently,an elected assembly was created to parallel the president on the basis of the principle of the "separationof powers."This principle has been followed in all presidentialist regimes.
Two important consequences flow from the presidentialist rule that the head of
government is elected for a fixed term. First, the president holds office until that
term ends and cannot be discharged by parliamentary votes of no-confidence and,
second, control over the bureaucracy is divided between rival centers of authority.
The first result can lead to gridlock between the executive and legislative branches,
impairing the accountability of the chief executive to the elected assembly and
hampering the ability of a government to govern. The second effect impairs the
ability of any presidentialist regime to control its appointed officials and therefore
limits its capacity to manage a bureaucracy powerful enough to deal effectively with
complex modern problems. The fact that the head of government also serves as
head of state is a dysfunctional complication but not, I think, a basic problem for
presidentialist regimes.
Parliamentarism
In parliamentarist regimes, by contrast, cabinet accountability to parliament
produces a fused executive/legislative authority manifested in a cabinet. Such
cabinets differ fundamentally from the coterie of executive appointees known,
misleadingly, as a "cabinet" in presidentialist regimes. The cabinet leader, usually
known as a prime minister, or premier, needs the support of a parliamentary
majority to stay in power. This system has two fundamental consequences: first,
because the constitutive system in such regimes is fused-that is, the cabinet is
accountable to the elected assembly and can be discharged by a vote of no-confidence-deadlock between the two branches can be avoided and its ability to make
public policy can be enhanced. Second, control over the bureaucracy is strengthened by the fusion of powers; officials are responsible to an integrated center of
authority. This means both that they can administer more effectively because they
can be more powerful, and that they can also be better controlled because the
power of the regime is fused.
Without claiming that presidentialism is more or less democratic than parliamentarism, or that it is a "better" system in any sense, I believe that, for structural
reasons, parliamentarist democracies are more likely to survive than presidentialist democracies. Statistical data supports this deductive conclusion. The analysis of
135 countries observed annually between 1950 and 1990 by Przeworski and his
associates proves that contemporary "Parliamentary regimes last longer, much
longer, than presidential ones..." (Przeworski et al. 1996: 47). My own earlier
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analysis also supported this conclusion (Riggs, 1993). No doubt parliamentary
regimes which have too many political parties are vulnerable to frequent cabinet
crises (due to "polarized pluralism"-Sartori, 1976: 131ff.), whereas presidents
typically remain in office for their full terms, but cabinet crises are not regime
collapses and so the inference that presidentialism is more "stable" than parliamentarism rests on two different definitions of "stability."
The US Exception
The long-term survival of presidentialism in the United States can be explained, I
think, by practices that differ from those usually found in other presidentialist
regimes (see Riggs, 1988, 1994a). I shall not try to describe them here, but they
provide a basis for suggesting some of the constitutional practices that could be
adopted by presidentialist regimes wishing to enhance their own prospects for
survival. Many of these practices support oligarchic power. By contrast, most presidentialist regimes strive to be more democratic than the United States as measured
by levels of voter turnout, by reliance on proportional representation, by limiting
the terms of office of members of congress, and by compulsory voting. More
concretely, the price paid by Americans for the survival of theus constitutional
regime impairs both its representativeness and its legitimacy-I shall discuss these
claims in more detail below, after a comment on why presidentialism persists
despite its serious limitations.
If it can be shown that presidentialist regimes are seriously handicapped by
contrast with parliamentarist systems, especially with respect to representativeness
and legitimacy, we may wonder why presidentialism is not generally rejected in
favor of parliamentarism. An early draft of this essay contained historical evidence
to support the proposition that although parliamentarist regimes have occasionally
been transformed in favor of presidentialism, virtually no presidentialist regime has
successfully become parliamentarist. The explanation rests on how the ambitions
of leading politicians are affected by these two regime types. We cannot realistically expect presidentialist regimes to become parliamentarist, but we can offer
advice on how to preserve presidentialist democracy from the threat of authoritarianism. Unfortunately, this advice involves accepting rules that perpetuate
oligarchic democracy at the expense of more democratic procedures, notably those
that would make the regime more representative.
Most of the available research on democracy focuses on its consequences, what
values are served by democratic processes, and how can or should these processes
be sustained. The emphasis is often on public policies more than on constitutional
foundations. Yet the structure of governance as prescribed in constitutional
documents, basic laws and charters, greatly affects the ability of a regime to support
democratic processes and achieve democratic results, especially as reflected in the
problems of representativeness and legitimacy. The former involves a kind of
top-down question and the latter a bottom-up perspective.
From the top-down, we can look at the degree to which the "people"in a country
are represented by its institutions, especially in the elected assembly (parliament,
congress, or legislature) through which the polyarchic function of representing
constituents is implemented. The answer to this question requires us to ask who
votes, who is eligible and, among them, who actually votes? From the bottom-up
point of view, we have to ask how legitimate is the authority of any regime, and do
citizens view its policies as deserving of respect and obedience even when sanctions
FRED W. RIGGS
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for non-compliance are not threatened? This question applies not only to resident
citizens who are, at least formally, represented in elected assemblies, but also to
non-resident citizens living or travelling outside a country, and to non-citizen
residents who, for any reason, are not eligible to vote. In the remaining sections of
this article, I shall argue that presidentialist regimes are handicapped by comparison with parliamentarist regimes in their efforts to deal with both the top-down
(representative) and the bottom-up (legitimacy) challenges.
Democracy and Representativeness
To answer these questions, we should, I think, recall how modern democracies were
established and the basic problems they had to solve-in the context of survival,
the main issues concern prerequisites rather than such ideal consequences as
quality of life, freedom, justice, and security. The questions I am asking here do
not focus on what democracies could or should do or become. Rather, they involve
questions about what is necessary for a democracy to survive. The questions are
different and they require different answers.
I shall focus on two requisites for survival: representativeness and legitimacy.
Western industrialized state nations, during the post-Westphalian era, have become
so well established that their legitimacy is almost assured regardless of their constitutional design, and this is especially true for the United States. In the successor
states of the modern empires, however, legitimacy remains problematical, consider
Bosnia, Somalia, Zaire, and Nigeria as examples. How does a state become legitimate (Linz and Stepan, 1996: 14)? Does its constitutional form make a difference?
As for representativeness, this has always been a crucial issue for democracies and
it remains so in all countries today. Let me say something about it first, and later
talk about legitimacy as a closely related issue.
OligarchicDemocracy
Representative governments have quite different views about the degree to which
democracies must respond to the needs of all citizens or may, instead, favor some,
notably the owners of property. Increasingly, today, democracies face questions that
involve ethnicity, how marginalized minorities can and should be represented. No
doubt, ideally, democracies ought to represent all the classes and communities
found among their citizens and subjects. In practice, however, some groups are
always more powerful and better represented than others. My basic argument is
that it is easier to be fully representative of any population under parliamentarist
than under presidentialist rules.
Under a facade of representativeness, a ruling elite may actually dominate-this
is carried to an extreme under single-party or even hegemonic party dominationbut one cannot easily draw a line between all citizens and those who, somehow, are
entitled to preferential treatment. Whenever a small group can manipulate the
machinery of government in order to create a facade of representativeness, we have
oligarchic democracy, or oligocracy,as I prefer to call it. Oligocracies are democratic
in form-having competitive elections, with a party system and an elected assembly, for example-but they are also oligarchic insofar as their ruling groups do not,
in fact, truly represent the whole population. "Oligocracy"is, admittedly, a neologism but it is easy enough to remember and it helps us explain why a presidentialist regime can survive.
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In fact, I believe, presidentialist regimes can survive only by oligarchic means,
that is., they must limit the access to power of marginalized ethnic communities
and lower class populations. Powerful movements to make presidentialist regimes
more representative have undermined their viability, leading to catastrophic
collapses and, typically, military authoritarianism. No doubt this proposition will be
very unpopular and it will be stoutly resisted; to sustain it, we need to look closely
at the historical record and at theoretical arguments. I have considered the statistical evidence already (Riggs, 1993) and my findings are reinforced by Przeworski
et al. (1996), although they do not pinpoint the reasons why presidentialist regimes
are, typically, so short-lived.
The first reason is historical. Consider how movements to replace monarchic rule
with representative government were driven by the gradual empowerment of
bourgeois communities in western Europe and, subsequently, by European settlers
in the Americas and Australia/New Zealand. Except in their own trading cities, no
bourgeoisie ever dominated an imperial empire or kingdom until well after the
modern states evolved in the post-Westphalian era. Subsequently, as capitalists
gained power in somewhat precarious mercantilist alliances with kings, they began
to demand that monarchs surrender their autocratic powers. In order to succeed,
however, capitalistic merchants, the bourgeoisie, needed allies among landed aristocrats, the church, bureaucrats, and intellectuals.
They formed a united front with them in order to empower the people. A classic
expression of this intention can be found in the us Declaration of Independence (4
July 1776), which declared that it had become "necessary for one people to dissolve
the political bonds" whereby the King of Great Britain had sought to establish "an
absolute tyranny over these states [colonies]." A long catalog of alleged abuses by
the king, usually omitted in references to the Declaration, follow this claim,
concluding with a declaration that "in the name and by the authority of the good
people of these colonies, [they] solemnly publish and declare, that these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREEAND INDEPENDENTSTATES,that they are
absolved from all allegiance to the British crown...."
The People
The word, "people," has always represented a fuzzy concept. Bourgeois activists
needed enough allies to gain power but they scarcely wanted to empower peasants,
poor people, slaves and "blacks,"or even the women in their lives. No sharp lines
were drawn between those to be excluded and those to be enfranchised in a system
of representative governance, but the term, people, served their purposes. This word
may refer to such notions as: everyone in general, all citizens of a state, all members
of a community who share a common culture, ordinary folks by contrast with high
status persons or elites, the subjects or followers of a ruler or leader, and various
other concepts.
To empower the "people," in short, could mean quite different things to different people; many people would not be viewed as "people" for electoral purposes.
The proponents of representative government sought to disable monarchs and,
ambiguously, to empower just enough "people" to reserve power for the
"respectable" and "propertied citizens." The founding fathers of the American
Constitution clearly feared "democracy"as a form of populism and they thought of
"representative government" as a way to legitimize an oligarchic regime in which
"minority"-that is, property-rights would be protected under the authority of
FRED W. RIGGS
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elected office-holders. In the American republic, despite the emancipation of slaves
and women's suffrage, oligocracy has remained in effect, primarily because so many
poor and uneducated citizens fail to vote. No doubt additional factors contribute to
the oligarchic results, notably campaign financing and lobbying. What the wealthy
cannot achieve by suffrage they can largely accomplish by offering incentives that
win the support of legislators by other means.
In other presidentialist regimes, for the most part, fundamental reforms have
expanded the definitions of "people" and such measures as proportional representation in multi-member electoral districts and compulsory voting have, I believe,
placed an impossible strain on the political regime, leading to periodic breakdowns
and authoritarianism. By contrast, in parliamentary regimes it is possible, I believe,
to expand representativeness to "all the people" without overburdening the constitutional system; I will discuss the reasons below.
Before doing so, however, let us acknowledge two different though overlapping
reasons for oligarchic rule. One involves the failure of citizens to vote even though
they are legally eligible to do so; this is what happens so much in the United States
that, typically, about half of the citizens who could vote do not actually do so. The
other reason arises from the presence in a polity of subjects who are not eligible to
vote. This condition arises most conspicuously in empires where the metropole may
be democratic but conquered territories contain subject populations who have no
voice in the political system. We can think of the former as a civic oligocracy where
citizens fail to exercise their rights of suffrage and the latter as an imperial oligocracy whose subject populations are not eligible to vote.
In the American case, imperial oligocracy evolved toward civic oligocracy when
slaves, who had previously been excluded from all rights of citizenship, became
enfranchised after the Civil War but were, nevertheless, effectively excluded from
voting until after the recent Civil Rights movement. Comparable changes affected
the status of women, of conquered indigenous peoples, and of legal immigrants who
are not naturalized citizens. The fact that many former subjects do not vote illustrates the overlap between the two concepts. We can say that subjects become
pawns when they acquire the rights of citizenship but, in fact, fail to exercise those
rights or experience obstacles that keep them from exercising them. Thus imperial
oligocracy can merge into civic oligocracy, and it is useful to be able to use a single
word, oligocracy,to refer to both conditions.
Oligocracy
All democracies are, at least to some degree, oligocracies. This term puts the focus
on the representativeness of constitutional democracies rather than on such political consequences of democratic governance as the extent to which they achieve
justice and equity, human rights, civil liberties, and social welfare. To be oligocratic
is to deny some people an effective voice in their government despite institutions
that promise political representation for all "citizens" living under the same regime.
Can democracies afford to be fully democratic? No doubt, ideally, all democracies strive to become or ought to be more representative. However, perhaps until
they become well institutionalized, new democracies need to be oligarchic; most
will, in fact, be oligocracies. When unrealistic expectations for democratic governance are raised, success may be jeopardized. Responsible leaders, confronting the
limits of a country's resources and capabilities, may feel reluctant to empower
impoverished and uneducated people whose real needs greatly exceed the capacity
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of the regime to provide social services and other benefits. Such was the reasoning
behind Sun Yat Sen's famous "Three Principles" when he advocated a stage of
"tutelage" to prepare the Chinese people for the exercise of democracy.
When universal suffrage prevails, candidates often promise much more than they
can deliver. After they have been elected, when they cannot fulfill their promises,
the whole process of democratic empowerment becomes discredited. Disillusioned
voters, under such conditions, may well conclude that democratic institutions are
inherently fraudulent, leading them to boycott elections; extreme frustration may
also lead them to support revolutionary movements, ethnonational revolts, and
criminal gangs. We need to ask how representative can governance be in the new
successor states of the collapsed empires. More specifically, can presidentialist
regimes afford to be as democratic as parliamentarist regimes and still survive?
Structure
There are those who argue that the parliamentarist/presidentialist option is a
tweedledum/tweedledee question, that it makes little difference which constitutional formula is embraced. Some even think that presidentialism offers a more
stable framework for newly established democracies, confusing cabinet crises with
regime collapses. No doubt such great variations prevail among both presidentialist and parliamentarist regimes that supplementary institutional choices and noninstitutional factors may affect regime survival more than historically determined
regime types. Nevertheless, I believe that the constitutional choice makes a big
difference. The reasons are counter-intuitive, however, and they require explanations.
Consider, first, that the viability of presidentialism hinges on the ability of president and congress to reach agreements under the constraints of a constitutional
separation-of-powersprinciple which enables each to flout the other. This means
that gridlock may occur for an indefinite period of time between the executive and
legislative branches or, more probably,the president, with the support of the armed
forces and the civilian bureaucracy,will domesticate the legislature, forcing it into
submission or even dissolving it by a coup d'etat.
A puppet legislature, of course, makes a mockery of representativeness. No
matter how large the citizen majority may be that voted for a president, any chief
executive not subject to constraints imposed by an elected assembly can easily
succumb to temptations to become an autocrat. The maintenance of a politically
potent elected assembly is, therefore, crucial for the survival of any democracy, and
no assembly will be powerful unless its members compete for office against rival
candidates; a single party in power can compel its members to follow party dictates
and render the elected assembly a mere rubber stamp for the ruler.
No doubt universal suffrage and popular representation are as feasible, in principle, under presidentialism as they are in parliamentarist systems. However, the
potential for gridlock undermines the capacity of presidentialist regimes to rule
effectively unless political power is centripetalized by a somewhat oligarchic
(limited) suffrage. The centripetalization of electoral competition in America
requires a political focus on the center where two parties can compete for the
support of "independents."
Although outvoted centrists have not voted for winning candidates, they share
the preferences of the winners on so many issues that they are willing to accept
defeat. Moreover, winning candidates compromise on so many issues in order to
FREDW. RIGGS
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create a broad coalition that losers scarcely feel the difference between the rivals.
In the 1996 presidential race, for example, candidates Dole and Kemp, though
personally committed to the anti-abortion "Right to Life" principle, have obscured
this plank in their party's platform so as to retain the support of "Pro Choice"
Republicans. If this idea sounds undemocratic, perhaps it is, but the awkward
system works because compromisers can win power and the marginalized people
who feel most alienated by the electoral results have not actually voted.
By contrast, when almost everyone votes, widely different and strongly held
ideologies gain supporters in elected assemblies. This blocks agreements, not only
within the assembly but also between the legislature and the executive. In parliamentarist regimes, a multiplicity of parties and positions can be harmonized (at
least to some degree) by the design of coalition cabinets, but under presidentialism, uncompromising minorities can only block agreements in the assembly, leaving
the president free to deny real influence to all minority (extremist!) groups.
To make presidentialism work, I believe, it is necessary to centripetalize power
enough so that voices of moderation based on centrist views can prevail in both the
executive and legislative branches. Political leaders know that when marginalized
people don't vote, it is much easier to elect moderates. Despite the pervasive
rhetoric in support of increased voter participation, the fact is that when all citizens
vote in a separation-of-powers regime, the survival of constitutional democracy is
jeopardized.
Differing Needs
Maslow's hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1970) helps us understand the psychological
dynamics of this phenomenon: the lower one's income, the greater one's need for
subsistence, for food, clothing, and housing, whereas the more secure one is, the
more one's psychic and social needs take priority. To win the support of impoverished and uneducated constituents, politicians make wildly exaggerated and expensive promises that can scarcely be redeemed. Less needy and better educated voters
suspect that such promises are unrealistic and they also feel threatened by them
(since higher taxes would be needed to pay for welfare benefits). The political
center, therefore, supports policies that affect their many higher level needs, at
lower cost, while rejecting politicians who sponsor costly projects for the most needy.
The main reason for the centripetalization of politics in America is no doubt the
continued use of single-member electoral districts, another holdover from the traditional British model. Claims that the exceptional homogeneity of the American
"people" can account for this phenomenon strike me as dubious. To test such
claims, consider how, in the name of democratic representativeness, many presidentialist systems have adopted some form of proportional representation (PR), a
structure that assuredly generates centrifugalized democracy. By enabling citizens
of diverse income levels, cultural backgrounds, and ideological preferences to gain
representation in an assembly, PRoffers attractive options to members of marginalized communities who would not vote in single-member districts where they can
never expect to win.
The motivation for marginalized people to continue to participate in elections
ultimately depends on the degree to which their assembly representatives can,
indeed, share in the exercise of power, helping to shape policies that respond to the
practical (and expensive) interests and concerns of their supporters. In parliamentarist regimes, the cabinet system gives minority parties an opportunity, at times,
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to share real power. With a popularly elected head of government, however, the
principle of winner takes all, stressed by Linz (1990, 1994), prevails and minority
members of congress remain as permanently marginalized at the center as they
normally are on the periphery.'
Parliamentarist regimes, by contrast, can afford to be more representative and
yet survive. A key point involves their ability to use proportional representation
without endangering the regime. Because even small minorities in parliament can
participate in coalition cabinets, it is possible for them to be accommodated.
Moreover, the willingness of minority leaders to compromise increases, I believe,
when they consider the possibility of actually sharing power in governance. Even
countries following the Westminster electoral model are able, in principle, to gain
support for regional parties whose members often form local majorities. Because of
the cabinet system, their members in parliament can be co-opted into a governing
coalition, whereas under presidentialist rules that option is closed to them.
The prospect of perpetual marginalization in a separation-of-powers congress
may embitter the leaders of minority communities who win seats because of PRand
compulsoryvoting; it may reinforce their incentives for remaining obdurate; and at
least, they would endear themselves to their marginalized supporters without
having to pay a political price for their extremism. Even when they cannot win
legislative battles, they can enhance their community support and hope, eventually,
to gain other prizes thereby.
This risk is reduced in the United States by the single-member district system,
plus widespread abstention. The resulting inability of "third party" candidates to
share power leads many of their supporters to drop out, or to switch to one of the
two major parties where they can at least hope for small favors. My conclusion is
that, whereas high degrees of representativeness are compatible with parliamentarist constitutional democracy, they undermine presidentialist regimes which
periodically collapse except in the United States, where long-term oligocracy helps
to sustain the system.
Democracy and Legitimacy
Political legitimacy rests on sovereignty. In a way, these are two sides of the same
coin: sovereignty involves the source of authority and legitimacy its acceptance.
Kings
Traditionally, with supernatural sanctions, kings and emperors were viewed as
having sovereign powers by virtue of a divine mandate or even their incarnation as
divinities (Hocart, 1970). The obligation to serve a king, to pay tribute, and to obey
the king's servants, was not just based on fear and reverence but, in addition, it
depended heavily on beliefs concerning spiritual forces that could be appeased and
guided by royal ceremonies and rituals to bring health and welfare to the ruler's
subjects. To be a subject was not to be oppressed and exploited but, rather, to be
protected and strengthened. To be "His Majesty's Servant" was a badge of honor.
The "divine right of kings" was, therefore, a source of legitimacy that sustained the
acceptance of authority. Disobedience and disloyalty would not only lead to physical punishments but also to disorder and disasters in the world; the legitimacy of
royal authority was, therefore, reinforced by a strong sense of self-interest. Subjects
who wanted to prosper and be healthy, to achieve their own goals in life, felt that
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loyal obedience to authority was not only a duty but a privilege and a road to
success.
No doubt, in the real world, actual kings were often so incompetent, selfish, or
vain that they tended to invalidate their own authority. Traditionally, in China,
emperors were thought to have a "Mandate from Heaven" that assured prosperity
and peace to all of their subjects. When disasters occurred, they were viewed as
evidence that emperors had lost this mandate and deserved to be overthrown, a
rationalization accepted by all those who sought, during bad times, to overthrow
and replace emperors. In Europe, during the post-Westphalian period of state
formation, European kings lost the spiritual legitimacy that had somehow persisted
under the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy, despite all the disorder of European
feudalism. The Reformation brought national churches and reduced the sacred
mystique of monarchs who came, increasingly, to be viewed as tyrants and autocrats.
As anarchy grew, the need for new political foundations increased and, after the
Peace of Westphalia, the notion of an independent secular state gained ground.
In this context, the rising power of capitalists and the explosive forces of the
Industrial Revolution evolved and produced mounting conflict between society and
monarchs. The American and French revolutions shattered the surviving mystique
of monarchic rule. But what should take its place? The French history of rotation
between republican and monarchic rule during the nineteenth century reveals how
ambivalent and fragile the transition from royal to popular sovereignty can be. A
more sharply defined transition took place in North America where the revolution
against the English monarchy was followed by the establishment of a republic that
has now maintained itself, despite a civil war, for over two centuries.
The transition from monarchic to republican states, however, requires much
more than the replacement of hereditary kings by elected presidents. Instead, it
involves the replacement of sovereignty, a long-term, precarious process. A
completely new framework is needed to provide legitimacy for the state and to give
citizens a feeling that they will, indeed, benefit from the changeover. Tories who
fled their homes after the American Revolution show that not all of the colonists
were happy about this change. How could they have been reassured? Three foundation stones for a constitutional democracy are, potentially, available to sustain the
transformation: the head of state, an elected assembly, and a bureaucracy. Let us
look at each, in turn.
Presidents
The traditional basis for the legitimacy of a state rested on the divine right of kings
to rule, a sacred basis for sovereignty, as noted above. The transition to constitutional democracy requires the creation of a new basis for legitimizing the state. The
most obvious way to achieve this goal is simply to elect a president to replace the
king. Popular sovereignty based on the people might replace the divinity of kings
as a basis for legitimating the authority of the state. Instead of counting on supernatural forces to sustain life and health, a government responsive to the concerns
of its citizens will adopt policies designed to meet their needs.
However, the founding fathers were ambivalent about this. They suspected that
the "people" might elect a demagogue who would, ironically, oppress minorities,
especially the propertied class whose support had driven the Revolution. To avoid such
a disaster, they decided to institute an Electoral College whose members would be
appointed by the governors of each state: it was hoped they would be conservative
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and affluent men since property qualifications for voting prevailed in the states.
Hence, although dejure sovereignty might be in the hands of the "people,"defactoit
would be exercised by propertied people, forming an oligocracy.
However, the new oligarchs understood that they could not claim the rights of
sovereignty. They knew that the people had to be the ultimate source of authority
in the new republic. Thus the myth of the "people"as sovereign was needed to legitimize the exercise of executive authority. All the benefits that, traditionally, were
thought to flow from royal sovereignty were, instead, to be conferred by popular
sovereignty. This was scarcely a self-evident truth. The legitimacy of the new republic was by no means universally accepted. How, then, could the rising bourgeoisie
gain popular acceptance for a secular republic?
Some of the founding fathers actually wanted to establish an American monarchy
but feared a hereditary kingship would prove unacceptable: instead, they urged the
election of a president for life. In the end, fear of autocracy prevailed and they
decided to let a president hold office for only four years, but with the possibility of
re-election any number of times. Moreover, the founders gave the president all the
functions of an eighteenth-century king, including the right to reign as head of state
plus the right to rule as head of government. The big change was to replace the
sacred grounds for royal authority with the secular principle of popular sovereignty.
The secular or managerial functions of a king could be assigned to a president
without noticing any great difference. Actually, the founders did not distinguish
between these two functions: kings and presidents, in their minds, were just chief
executives.
The distinction between the functions of reigning and ruling evolved only subsequently, and its evolution in England is paradigmatic. There, after the experience
of the Commonwealth and the violence of parliamentary power, the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 established a monarchy with curtailed powers (no doubt Magna
Carta of 1215 had paved the way). But even a century later, the functional division
between the reigning and ruling powers of a king were not clearly understood.
Indeed, the American colonists were so angry at the king that they ignored the
sacred basis of royal sovereignty.
Only after it became clear, in England, that a king's prime minister and cabinet
could, in fact, rule with the consent of parliament, the distinction between the
ceremonial (sacred) functions of head of state, reserved to the monarch, and the
cabinet's political functions as head of government became clear (Needler, 1996:
119). The constitutional history of England is a familiar story, but political scientists tend to view the ceremonial functions of a constitutional monarch as little
more than a relic of tradition and a dispensable luxury, ignoring the traditional
grounds of sovereignty in all kingdoms. Today, even ordinary"people"in democratic
monarchies have begun to ask whether or not the royal institution costs more than
it is worth and some among them are even advocating republicanism. Once monarchism has lost its charm, its ability to serve as a legitimizing force for government
declines, but is it dead?2
Consider the case of Japan, whose emperor remained as a powerful symbol
despite the humiliation of that country's military defeat. Although the natural
instinct of MacArthur and his staff during the subsequent military occupation was
to establish a presidentialist republic (as the United States did in South Korea and
South Vietnam), the imperial presence was so strong that the American-designed
new constitution respected the emperor's authority and established a parliamentarist system patterned, in part, on the imperial constitution which had been
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granted by imperial edict following the Meiji Restoration in 1867. The remarkable
stability of post-warJapan after its crushing defeat and unconditional surrender in
World War II can be attributed, in part at least, to the steadying influence of its
imperial institution.
With these cases in mind, one has to look again at the history of Western Europe,
where it appears that the countries which retained their monarchies while establishing parliamentarist regimes (Great Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, and the
Scandinavian countries) have been more stable and enjoyed more legitimacy than
the European republics: France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (until the royal restoration in 1975). Switzerland may be exceptional: perhaps that hinges on its "neutrality." The fear of powerful neighbors may have done more to cement the loyalty of
the Swiss people to their confederal regime than any centripetal domestic forces,
and, no doubt, the radical decentralism of confederalism makes the cantons a focus
of legitimacy for many Swiss people.
Even if royal traditions still honored in constitutional monarchies have helped to
legitimize the authority of parliamentarist regimes, can we say that parliamentarist
republics can still establish the legitimacy of their states more easily than do presidentialist regimes? Does either form have an advantage over the other? In both
cases, the locus of sovereignty has moved from the monarchy to the people. How
has it worked out?
The American Prototype
In presidentialist regimes, following the American example, elected presidents have
been expected to reign as well as to rule. Conventional wisdom might lead us to
assume that a popular president as elected head of state could do more to legitimize a regime than a parliamentarist president who is not elected by the people
and who lacks the power to rule. I believe that this opinion is misguided. It presupposes that the head of state in a republic can perform the legitimizing functions of
a monarchy. I believe, by contrast, that no secular leader, regardless of the means
of selection, can ever replace the "divine rights of kings" as a source of political
legitimacy.
Nevertheless, the American experience has supported different and more
optimistic conclusions. No doubt because of his military leadership during the
Revolution and his personal modesty, the charisma of George Washington facilitated the transformation of a loose confederation into a unified federal republic,
thereby creating false expectations about what a president could accomplish.
Moreover, in the late eighteenth century, the agenda confronting all governments
was so limited that the challenges facing any president as head of government were
minimal. Since then, the Industrial Revolution, an increasingly complex society
shaped by geographic expansion and multi-ethnic diversity, plus growing interdependence with the world system have magnified the problems facing contemporary
presidents. These increasingly complex issues have made the role of head of government so burdensome and controversial that the ability of American presidents to
focus on their ceremonial functions as heads of state have now become so compromised as to make it quite difficult for them to preside effectively as such.
The image of continuous controversy between the executive and the legislative
branches makes the presidency seem not to be the Government, but only a vulnerable part of the governing process. The right of impeachment, though rarely
exercised, often reminds citizens that their president is human and is as likely to
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err as any other citizen, a far cry from the mantle of kingship where royal immunity
supports the slogan, "The King can do no wrong."
Contemporary presidents also face the same public image problems as other
celebrities: they are exposed to ridicule and attacks by the mass media and trivial
suits can be brought against them for alleged misdeeds. To the degree that presidents are humiliated and entangled in political controversies, their ability to reign
as heads of state is undermined. More radically, I would argue that without a supernatural framework, no mere human can exercise the legitimizing role validated by
the divinity of kings. No doubt this role seems incredible to secularized moderns
but, I believe, it was truly compelling and real in pre-modern societies.
The basic inability of any secular head of state to replace the charisma of traditional monarchs is starkly visible in the post-independence history of the successor
states to the collapsed modern empires. Unfortunately, the only shared sentiments
felt by the majority of their citizens is that of hostility to their former rulers.
Perhaps if, as in Switzerland, there was any real threat that the imperialists would
return, shared fears would generate a sense of patriotic loyalty to the state. Such
fears are no longer important, I think, because when the modern empires collapsed,
they collapsed for good. In none of them, today, can we find any of the enthusiasm
for imperial conquests that emerged during the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Indicative of this new environment is the Somalia intervention by the UN
in 1992, when the great powers co-operated to try to create order in a disintegrated
quasi-state without any sign that they might want to annex it as, for example, they
had partitioned and annexed Poland in the late eighteenth century, or sought to
partition China after the Manchu empire collapsed in 1911. If an imperial power
attempted to annex Bosnia, perhaps its warring ethnonations would join forces to
resist an external enemy, but surely that is a most unlikely scenario.
Sometimes charismatic and able persons have been elected to lead their countries
under presidentialist constitutions. Unfortunately, however, they have often been
so frustrated by a recalcitrant congress that they have transformed their country
into a de facto autocracy, recreating the history of France under its Second Republic
which President Louis Napoleon scrapped to create his own empire. The recent
history of Peru and the Philippines provides apt examples, as does Per6n's rule in
Argentina.
If a military group seizes power during a time of crisis, it typically imposes an
authoritarian dictatorship based on fear rather than on the acceptance of legitimate authority. When, predictably, an elected head of state fails to generate
genuine popular support for a democracy, an apparently easy option is for the
elected head of government or a military group to seize power and rule autocratically.3 No doubt any constitutional democracy can collapse but, I think, the failure
of presidentialist regimes to develop a viable framework for legitimizing their rule
is a major liability. No president, as head of state, can really replace a king as the
basis for that state's legitimacy; presidents can symbolize the state but they cannot
invoke supernatural powers to assure the welfare of their subjects.
ElectedAssemblies
To learn more about this question, let us consider the legitimacy of states under
parliamentarist rule. An obvious consideration might involve the fact that parliamentarist regimes have full-time heads of state, whether they be elected presidents
or hereditary monarchs. This might be a factor, and the debate in these republics
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between advocates of popular versus indirect election of their presidents suggests
that it is an important consideration. Such debates do not, of course, occur in parliamentary monarchies, where there may well be republican movements to jettison
their kings, but the heritage of monarchism can, in fact, buttress the legitimacy of
the state. However, even in these countries, I think, kings can no longer assure the
sacred foundations for sovereignty and the unwillingness of any republic to restore
monarchism shows that traditional beliefs in the magic of kingship have almost
completely vanished.
Actually, therefore, no contemporary head of state can provide the sovereign basis
for legitimacy that modern states need. Even parliamentarist regimes reigned over
by full time presidents or kings, have experienced catastrophic collapses (for
examples, see Riggs, 1993). Nevertheless, there are reasons why parliamentarist
republics may well achieve higher levels of legitimacy for the state than presidentialist ones.4
When the locus of sovereignty shifts from the crown to the citizens, should we
not really look to the people as the basic source of legitimacy for a state? No doubt
a highly respected president might symbolize the state, especially at the inter-state
level, but internally, does not an elected assembly more truly represent the popular
source of authority? Even if the "people" elect a president, they elect many more
legislators and, I expect, they feel much closer bonds with them.
Martin Needler does not acknowledge this point but he does write-after noting
the serious functional limitations of a parliament by contrast with a congress under
presidentialist rule-"one of the striking features of a parliamentary system, as
opposed to a presidential one, is the way that the entire political life of the country
is focused on the legislature." Could it be that, even though a parliament does not
"rule" in the way that a congress may, it does effectively personify the identity of
a people and legitimize its government? Needler goes on to say that "new policy
initiatives are usually announced in the chamber and not to news conferences or
television audiences.... In a parliamentary system an opposition exists whose job
it is to marshall the best arguments that can be made against the government's
policies, day after day" (Needler, 1996: 125) Strikingly, the fact that oppositionists
and "back-benchers" of the ruling party(ies) can debate government policies in
parliament offers a voice to the people-their fears and hopes, their questions and
doubts, can all be expressed and reported daily in the media as a more faithful
representation of their views than the ceremonial and unified voice of a head of
state. Moreover, members of parliament can take the time to speak philosophically
about major issues of policy and politics that rarely come into focus in congressional
debates, where more specific policy issues must take priority.
Cabinets
Remember, also, that cabinets are, structurally, components of parliament; they do
not stand outside the congress as do the chief executives in presidentialist regimes.
Quite naturally, therefore, the cabinet announces its policies to and in parliament,
not in the media. Thus parliaments are simultaneously both the government and
its opposition, a true mirror of the ambivalence of the people. Moreover, because
of party discipline, parliamentarist governments can make decisions without the
dogged uncertainties that choke presidentialist regimes.
Even those in opposition may feel more respect for a government that can act
than they do for one thwarted by indecision and gridlock. Permanent minorities
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must derive more satisfaction from publicized parliamentary debates than they ever
get from the continuous frustrations of being permanently unheard and unrepresented in policy decisions. Parliaments, moreover, do hear clever and insistent voices
speaking to issues of broad public concern by contrast with a congress in which
insiders make deals behind closed doors where, typically, the dominant interests of
pluralities-as in "porkbarrel legislation"-reward those with power at the expense
of mute minorities.
Americans puzzle over the sometimes raucous conduct of English parliamentarians but they fail to consider the trade-offs involved. Members of parliament who
envy the power exercised by members of congress can also enjoy the luxury of debating major issues and confronting ministers during question periods. The resulting
theatrics enable parliament to retain the interest of the general public without
holding the government hostage; public policy-makingcan proceed in tandem with
dramatic legislative performances. Here, I feel, lies the true lodestar of identity and
legitimacy for the parliamentarist state.
By contrast, even when TV cameras focus briefly on legislative debates in the
United States and other presidentialist regimes, they often involve quite technical
and legalistic issues, rarely rising to the levels of eloquence so often heard in parliamentary debate. The public image of congress is that of an assembly whose
members cannot reach agreement among themselves and persist in blocking effective executive action, or they compel the president to sign measures he does not
really support, thereby compromising the governmental process and obscuring the
president's image.
In parliamentarist republics the true focus of sovereignty has shifted from the
monarchy to the "people" as represented in parliament. A powerless king or a
ceremonial president may be useful for public ceremonies when pomp and circumstance are called for, but the "head of state" cannot really legitimize the state as
that function passes to the parliament. Moreover, the functions of governance in
these regimes are not vested in any office outside of parliament: Americans tend
to forget that the government, in parliamentarist systems, is actually an organ of
parliament, a parliamentary committee known as the cabinet. Its presiding officer,
a prime minister, is the first among equals and not, certainly not, a substitute for
the king. A parliament is more than a legislature; it contains an assembly that can
hold the government accountable, and it also contains the government. Thus parliament is not only the voice of the people but the regime itself.
No doubt political parties operate as "powers behind the throne" and their own
governing organs may call the shots for their members in Parliament. The extent
to which this is true varies among parliamentary regimes, however, and I cannot
offer any simple statement about it except to say that I doubt if any party, as such,
is ever viewed as the locus of sovereignty and legitimacy. Conversely, any person or
institution seen as a focus for the legitimacy of a state's system of governance is
undoubtedly subject to various influences. My point here is to not to focus on the
de facto locus of power but to identify the symbolic focus of authority as a basis for
sustaining the legitimacy of a state.
ProportionalRepresentation
Because most parliamentary majorities are multi-party coalitions, it is also possible
for minorities to become part of the government. Americans hear so much about
the British parliament and the Westminster system, that they easily forget that its
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majority party system of governance is atypical among parliamentarist regimes, just
as the American polity is atypical among presidentialist regimes. Under parliamentarist rules, proportional representation can become meaningful in a way that
it cannot under presidentialism simply because representatives of minority communities can not only gain assembly seats but also can share in governance, especially
in coalition cabinets which often rotate rapidly, thereby enabling more citizens to
feel, at least symbolically, that their voices are heard in a consociational state (to
borrow Lijphart's term, 1969).
The Constitution
If, as shown above, neither the president nor the congress can truly epitomize
popular sovereignty, as a parliament can, we may ask ourselves how, indeed, the
American system has managed to survive. My answer is that, somehow, they have
accepted an inanimate surrogate. Instead of looking to any living institution to serve
as the basis for legitimacy and sovereignty in the United States, its citizens glamorize the Constitution and the flag. This enables them to accept malicious charges
against both the elected and appointed officials, and to repudiate "government" as
an enemy of the people, while reifying and deifying the Constitution. Instead of
viewing the state with reverence and awe as a legitimate expression of popular
sovereignty, Americans increasingly celebrate themselves in a kind of narcissistic
self-adulation as "the greatest nation" on earth while simultaneously attacking the
state that embodies this nation.
If these difficulties confront the United States despite its achievements, how
much more must the same presidentialist model undermine the viability of other
democracies? A vicious circle intensifies
their difficulties; one reason the
American system can survive today is because it has already survived for so long.
I do not accept any kind of explanation based on theories of political "inertia"
or "traditionalism,"
namely that people automatically
perpetuate whatever
already exists. Rather, I would argue that the glamorization of the American
Constitution works, in part at least, because of its age. In countries where new
charters have frequently been adopted, it is certainly not easy to think of the
Constitution as expressing a kind of divine force that makes it a sacred foundation for the state. No doubt, even the newest charters, as recently adopted in
South Africa, may be taken very seriously as a practical guide for political
conduct, but I wonder if they have the stature of a legitimizing source of authority for the state.
At the practical level of implementation, the specific consequence of venerating
the Constitution in America is the power it gives the us Supreme Court. Nine elders
appointed for life by the president, with the consent of the Senate, have become in
a very real sense the final arbiters for the legitimacy of the American state.
Whatever they agree was the intent of the founding fathers, including subsequent
amendments, becomes the ultimate source of legitimate authority. This has
happened, I believe, in no other constitutional democracy, not because their courts
are necessarily less powerful but only because their constitutional charters are not
equally venerated. That does not mean, of course, that the will of the people is not
accepted as the basis for legitimizing other states but only that in other presidentialist regimes the basis for determining the will of the people, as the final arbiter
of the state's legitimacy, is even weaker than it is in the American regime. Other
countries that view the American model as a viable formula for constitutional
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democracy need, therefore, to understand that their success may hinge on their
ability to establish a venerable constitutional charter and to accept the decisions of
a supreme court whenever its stipulations become controversial.
Mandarins
The ultimate basis for legitimacy in presidentialist democracies cannot, I think, be
understood until we add to the foregoing analysis some remarks about the role of
the state bureaucracy.In addition to their normal functions as agents for the administration of public policies, bureaucrats need to be seen as, potentially, a basis for
the legitimization of modern states, something only mandarins can do.
The ancient Chinese mandarinate provides the basis for this claim. Under
imperial rule, Chinese emperors created a powerful and prestigious apparatus of
government composed of "superior men" (in the Confucian tradition) who had
competed with each other by taking highly competitive examinations to test their
literary, philosophical, and historical knowledge and, thereby, to enable their rulers
to pick the candidates best qualified to administer the government and bring honor
and prestige to the state. So successful were they that, for most Chinese subjects,
the real authority of the state rested more in the austere pronouncements of
mandarins than it did in imperial proclamations.
Parliamentarist regimes have adopted the mandarin principle (with variations)
and installed career officials who, following their appointment after taking
academic tests, are rotated among posts in different locations and public agencies,
becoming experienced managers of public policies and trusted advisers to members
of cabinet. Thus, in fact, through long experience and dedicated service to the state,
they acquire the ability not only to manage government business effectively but also
to help the cabinet shape public policy and, indeed, to serve as authentic voices of
the state (Campbell and Szablowski, 1979; Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman, 1981;
Dogan, 1975; Teng, 1943).
When Europeans speak of the state, I believe, they often have in mind the whole
body of public officials, persons who not only carry out administrative tasks but also
sustain an aura or mystique that enables them to speak with authority on behalf
of the state. Though cabinets rise and fall, mandarin officials remain in office. The
legitimacy of the state rests, therefore, not only on parliament but also on the solid
rock of governance as expressed in its state apparatus.
Much of what mandarins do is carried out in secret; indeed, it is even difficult
for scholars doing research on public administration to ask them probing
questions. The Weberian image of modern bureaucracy as steeped in secrecy is
fully justified for all mandarinates, traditional as well as modern. Such secrecy
protects mandarins from the kind of public scrutiny and embarrassing disclosures
that often humiliate both politicians and bureaucrats in the United States. There
seems to be a growing tendency for close aides of an American president to reveal
details of White House conduct and conversations to the mass media (Waldman,
1996). Such practices deeply erode the sense of legitimate authority required for
any modern democracy to function effectively. My conclusion is that not only does
parliament (including the government) manifest the legitimacy of the state in
parliamentarist regimes but, in addition, the respected officials who represent the
state in their daily contacts with citizens reinforce and uphold this sense of
unquestioned authority. Moreover, in many parliamentarist regimes the government is even viewed as external to the "state," as a kind of temporary pilot. By
FREDW. RIGGS
contrast, the ship of state as a real entity consists of its officials-the
apparatus.
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state is its
Non-mandarins
Citizens in a presidentialist regime, however, are wary about the "state" because it
lacks such an apparatus. For them, "state" and "government" are synonyms and
may equally be blamed for their misfortunes. Although this statement may
somewhat exaggerate the reality, I think that when one compares the record of
mandarin officials with that of the non-mandarins who hold office as career
functionaries, retainers or transients in presidentialist regimes, the contrast is striking. This contrast is not accidental; no presidentialist regime could survive if it
created a mandarinate to conduct the public administration. A true mandarinate
in the United States or any other separation-of-powers regime would soon gain the
power to rule. Its members in the office of the president would control presidential
decisions and, as staff members of legislators, it would soon control congressional
decision-making also.
To prevent this from happening, every president and congress must insist on the
right of patronage, to name their own followers, friends, and relatives to high office.
For them, personal loyalty is more important, politically, than expertise and experience. As a result, some commentators on governance in the United States claim
that it is not, truly, a state, and political scientists who may admit that it actually
is a state, do not like to use this term and they assign it low priority in their work
on "politics."
Am I overstating this point? One of the reasons why the us presidentialist regime
has, exceptionally, lasted so long can be traced to the historical events that led to
the Pendleton Act in 1883 and the formation of career civil services staffed by
specialists recruited to fill posts on the basis of a merit system. The guidelines for
establishing these services expressly prevent the formation of a mandarinate and
even the recently established Senior Executive Service falls far short of creating
mandarins (Riggs, 1994b). Those who identify the state with a career bureaucracy
claim that the United States only became a state after the Pendleton Act had been
adopted by Congress (Stillman, 1991).
The creation of a functionist bureaucracy in the United States during the last
century permitted enough enhancement of its administrative capabilities to enable
a complex industrialized society to cope with many modern problems without falling
victim to bureaucratic domination. However, these career officials are not powerful enough to legitimize the authority of the state to govern. In fact, popular attacks
on the American "bureaucracy"rage and, in the mind of many Americans, public
officials are seen as enemies of the Constitution rather than as its bulwarks.
Retainers
By contrast with the United States in other presidentialist regimes, at least those
established during the nineteenth century, retainers still occupy most posts in the
government. These are patronage appointees who, despite their lack of special
training and expertise or of tenure guarantees have, in fact, become virtually
permanent incumbents in the bureaucracy. The retention of retainers in office
means that government officials in these countries are even less able than their
American counterparts to sustain the legitimacy of a constitutional democracy.
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Instead, in most of them the risks of insurgency facing every president are so
awesome that the ambitious and frightened men who are typically elected to the
office of "president"feel they must recruit loyal relatives and friends to help them
rule and stay in power. All too often, however, these hangers-on cannot resist the
opportunities offered by high office to enrich themselves and to abuse their authority. Inadvertently, therefore, they contribute to the instability that permits a cabal
of military officers, during some subsequent crisis, to overthrow the government
and establish a dictatorship.
Unfortunately, the United States has also come, increasingly, to be seen by many
citizens as illegitimate and its sovereign authority is questioned. Fortunately,
however, the hybrid structure of its bureaucracy does enhance the administrative
capabilities of the state while destroying the possibility that bureaucrats (military
or civil) could seize power. The fortified capabilities of its non-mandarin career
officers support the former result while the persistence of patronage at the top
ensures the latter. Nevertheless, this compromise is an unhappy one, I think,
because it fails to enhance the legitimacy of the state even though it keeps power
from falling into the hands of appointed officials.
Only parliamentarist regimes, I believe, are capable of managing a mandarin
bureaucracy that can truly augment the authority of parliament as the authentic
voice of the people and the source of governmental authority in a modern state. They
are able to do so because the fusion of powers in a cabinet permits them to maintain
effective control over an intrinsically powerful mandarinate. Such considerations
reinforce my opinion that only a parliament, with strong bureaucratic support, can
replace monarchyas a basis for the legitimacy of democratic states in our late-industrial age. By contrast, all presidentialist regimes are severely handicapped. The
American state, exceptionally, is able to persist because of the great respect of most
citizens for its Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, augmented by
the competence, without much respect, that its hybrid bureaucracyhas achieved.
Conclusion
When governance in America and other presidential regimes is compared with
governance in most parliamentary systems, it becomes evident, I think, that presidentialism faces greater obstacles than parliamentarism in creating a sense of legitimacy for the state. The historical successes of the United States and veneration
for its charter as felt by most Americans could mean that its constitutional design
is likely to continue indefinitely without fundamental changes. However, that model
should not deceive observers in other countries, where, especially in the successor
states of the modern empires, it is surely a recipe for disaster.
The truth of this conclusion needs to be tested by empirical analysis as well as
the theoretical explanations offered here. Such data can be found in the historical
record (Riggs, 1993). One might suppose that American advisers in other countries
would warn them against the dangers involved in copying the American modelexceptionally, Thomas Carothers has recently complained that a growing number
of Americans who "careen around the world helping to draft constitutions" teach
"a high school civics vision of democracy as a gleaming edifice..." with the us
Congress as a shining example (Carothers, 1996). Unfortunately, because they do
not systematically compare the American experience with that of other presidentialist regimes, they are unaware of the inherent difficulties involved in the separation-of-powers design. They prefer to think that, because the United States
FREDW. RIGGS
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Constitution has, indeed, survived with widespread applause for two centuries, it
must be a model that can be emulated with advantage by other countries. When
they compare different parliamentary regimes with each other, it becomes easy
enough to point to cases where, for various reasons, parliamentarism has worked
quite badly. When conclusions from comparative analysis are made by reference to
the worst cases of parliamentarism and perhaps the most (if not only) successful
case of presidentialism, how credible are these results?
My own conclusion is that presidentialist regimes necessarily experience greater
difficulty than parliamentary systems in solving the inherent problems of democracy. With respect to the downward problem of representativeness, the need for
oligocracy to sustain a presidentialist democracy means that, despite its lip service
to universal suffrage, the more democratic a presidentialist regime becomes, the
more it endangers its own survival. Yet without such representativeness, growing
class and ethnic conflicts in virtually all countries will surely lead to escalating
violence and disorder.
As for the upward problem of enhancing the legitimacy of democratic regimes as
a replacement for monarchic government, presidentialist governments cannot count
on either their congress or their elected presidents to inspire the sense of authority required for viable constitutionalism.5 Moreover, they can afford to establish a
mandarin bureaucracy capable of inspiring genuine confidence in the integrity and
ability of the state apparatus to govern democratically.
The inherent difficulties experienced by presidentialist regimes in solving these
modern problems does not mean that parliamentarism offers a "magic bullet," that
it can assuredly solve these problems more effectively. For various historical,
economic, demographic, geographic, and other reasons, many of the new states of
the world will continue to live in poverty and despair, under weak authoritarianism
and anarchy, experiencing violence and self-destructive behavior, genocide, "ethnic
cleansing," civil wars, and terrorism. However, if any state can establish a constitutional democracy, I believe that its prospects for success will be significantly
higher if its constitution prescribes parliamentarist rather than presidentialist rules
for self-government.
Parliamentarist regimes can more easily increase the representativeness of governance for their citizens by accommodating to the growing demands generated by
electoral and party systems rooted in proportional representation, and they can
enhance the legitimacy of governance by reliance on parliament (including the
cabinet) to express a nation's sovereignty. They can also more safely support
mandarin bureaucracies as both symbols of the state and as an effective apparatus
for managing public administration. Whether or not these hypotheses are true may
not yet be proven, but the arguments that support them seem strong enough to
deserve serious attention.
Notes
1. It is importantnot to equate centripetalismwith a two-partysystem. There are good
examples of two-partysystems in presidentialistregimes like Uruguay,Colombia,and
Venezuela, yet politics in these countries is highly centrifugalized-in Uruguay, for
example,factionalizationand list-votingfragmentpowerwithin that country'stwo longestablishedparties.I havediscussedthis matterelsewhereand shall not repeatthe explanation here (Riggs, 1994a).Nevertheless,the two-partysystem is often viewed, rather
simplistically,as an explanationfor the relative success of Americanconstitutionalism.
Both centripetalismand the two-partysystem are affected by the "first-past-the-post"
276
Presidentialism
versusParliamentarism
(single-member plurality) electoral system. Elsewhere, this voting system has been
largely rejected as essentially "undemocratic"on the premise that democracy requires a
higher level of representativeness in government. The American centripetalized polity,
by contrast, is quite oligarchic, an important reason for its survival.Ironically, the exceptional fact that American constitutionalism has lasted so long may hinge (in part, at
least) on the unwillingness of large numbers of poor and uneducated citizens to vote.
No doubt centripetalism has other costs: it not only supports oligocracy but it leads
political campaigners who lack great issues to focus instead on the personal character
and reputation of their opponents. Since all candidates (like the rest of us) have character faults, personal attacks are embarrassing, but ultimately one of the candidates must
win-the net effect is a loss of legitimacy for the regime. Since all candidates must be
moderates, with notable exceptions, of course, most American legislators are willing to
compromise and, ultimately, to negotiate and adjust so as to avoid deadlock, that is, longlasting gridlocks.
By contrast, in other presidentialist regimes where the democratic norms of popular
representation are stronger, and where the law often requires citizens to vote, populist
pressures grow, leading to the election of charismatic dogmatists who insist on their
"integrity"and refuse to compromise. This tendency is reinforced by proportionalrepresentation. In short, centrifugalism polarizes parties and rewards candidates disposed to
insist uncompromisingly on their party's platforms (Sartori, 1976: 136-137). They
typically promise benefits they cannot deliver and oppose compromises that might enable
the state to do more than it actually does. Under presidentialism, therefore, the need to
be more representative endangers the long-term survival of the regime.
2. In our late-modern times, after republicanism has replaced monarchy, it is difficult to
restore constitutional monarchy. However, where monarchic traditions have remained
strong, they have eased the transition to democracy whenever kings have accepted their
curtailed roles with good grace. A remarkable illustration occurred in 1932 in Thailand
where the promoters of that country's revolutionary coup d'etat originally advocated
republicanism. After the king had capitulated, however, they accepted his offer to return
to the throne as a constitutional monarch. Through all the subsequent years of military
dictatorship, the king has been a stabilizing force, much revered by most Thai people,
and he has recently facilitated the transition to parliamentarydemocracy in that country
(Riggs, 1966).
3. Many if not most of the presidents elected to office in the new states have also undermined their own prestige by succumbing to temptations to exploit power for personal
advantage. Their inability, as heads of government, to manage the complexities of
modern life also contributes to their debilitation. To illustrate this problem, consider the
case of President Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam. I met him a year or two before he
was elected to this office, with American support. In our conversation, he expressed great
feelings of patriotism and support for democratic values. Yet after he came to power, his
regime became infamous for its corruption, much based on the misdeeds of his own
relatives whom he had felt obliged to appoint to positions of power. When he was later
assassinated, there was no sense of loss as though the country's identity had been
affected; by contrast, consider how the assassination of PresidentJohn F. Kennedy moved
most Americans, even those who disagreed with his policies, to profoundgrief and a sense
of national loss. Kennedy had, actually, despite the handicaps of his office, become a
focus of loyalty as the charismatic head of state, but even in America, such feelings do
not attach to every president.
4. In some countries, where independence from an empire was negotiated without revolutionary violence, these agreements paved the way for successor states in which the legitimacy of the regime continued to hinge on respect for the imperial throne. This has been
true, I would guess, in the anglophone dominions of the British Commonwealth.
Admittedly no governor-general can perform the functions of a head of state, but is it
possible for this office to become a valid surrogate for the monarchy, especially if the
king or queen makes frequent ceremonial tours to reinforce the sense of legitimacy and
FRED W. RIGGS
277
confidence the throne inspires? Canada might provide a good test case. However, even
more significant might be the residual sense of loyalty to the throne of traditionally
minded people in decolonized states where secularism has not spread to the masses.
Among those without a modern secular education, monarchic sovereignty may still
remain more appealing than secularized ethnic nationalism.
Even in the United States, a residual feeling about the British monarchy generates a
strong sentiment of solidarity or identity, at least for those who celebrate their descent
from English colonists and, perhaps, for others who have somehow accepted the monarchic mystique. However, it is significant that India, upon gaining its independence,
decided to become a republic and promptly elected a president, as did Ireland after its
bitter struggle for independence. In both countries, the British Crown had come to be
viewed with hostility rather than reverence, but may that not have been more true among
secularized politicians than among traditionally minded peasants?
It might be useful to compare the roles of president in countries like Austria, Finland,
Iceland, Germany, Italy, Israel and, of course, France. In all these cases, the powers of
the presidency have been controversial and have varied considerably. Does parliamentarism work better with stronger or weaker presidents? Should the president in a parliamentary regime be popularly elected (which typically makes the role stronger) or be
chosen by parliament or a special assembly of some kind, like the electoral college in
America or, indeed, India. Such a procedure may make the position weaker politically
but can it assure the selection of a more prestigious and less controversial person?
5. Recent events suggest that, even in the United States, the legitimacy of presidentialist
rule may not last much longer. The widely reported standoff between the FBI and the
"Freemen" in Montana may be only the visible top of an iceberg of mounting efforts by
"militia" movements and ethnic nationalists to discredit and nullify the regime.
Increasing terrorism and the fears it engenders now provoke a mounting anti-terrorist
struggle that will provoke more fear and suspicion of the regime. Even in normally patriotic homes, fear and suspicion is mounting, as indicated by the growing popularity of
"Christian thrillers," an increasingly popular genre of "dragon fiction" in which the
"moral and teleological doctrines of evangelical Christianity... " are used to promote
the idea that "government and social institutions are evil ..." (Passaro, 1969: 65).
Perhaps this is merely a temporary down-turn in public confidence generated by current
crises but it may also be intensified by the growing inability of American presidents to
reign while also trying to rule under mounting attacks by Congress, the courts, and the
mass media.
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Biographical Note
FRED RIGGS is Professor Emeritus at the University of Hawaii. He was born in China
and took his PhD at Columbia University. His chief focus of teaching and research
has been on comparative governance-particularly
on bureaucracy and politics in
Third World countries but, more recently, also on the United States and other presidentialist regimes. He also has a major interest in ethnic nationalism as a modern
phenomenon, and in the refinement of new and necessary concepts together with
the terms required to designate them unambiguously. ADDRESS:Political Science
Department, University of Hawaii, 2424 Maile Way, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.
[e-mail: FREDR@HAWAII.EDU.]