DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT
Democracy and Power
For authoritarians and other critics, a common
misapprehension is that democracies, lacking the power to
oppress, also lack the authority to govern. This view is
fundamentally wrong: Democracies require that their
governments be limited, not that they be weak. Viewed over the
long course of history, democracies do indeed
appear fragile and few, even from the vantage point of a decade
of democratic resurgence. Democracies have by
no means been immune to the tides of history; they have collapsed
from political failure, succumbed to internal
division, or been destroyed by foreign invasion. But democracies
have also demonstrated remarkable resiliency
over time and have shown that, with the commitment and informed
dedication of their citizens, they can
overcome severe economic hardship, reconcile social and ethnic
division, and, when necessary, prevail in time of
war.
It is the very aspects of democracy cited most frequently by
its critics that give it resiliency. The processes of
debate, dissent, and compromise that some point to as weaknesses
are, in fact, democracy's underlying strength.
Certainly, no one has ever accused democracies of being
particularly efficient in their deliberations: Democratic
decision-making in a large, complex society can be a messy,
grueling, and time-consuming process. But in the
end, a government resting upon the consent of the governed can
speak and act with a confidence and authority
lacking in a regime whose power is perched uneasily on the narrow
ledge of military force or an unelected party
apparatus.
Checks and Balances
One of the most important contributions to democratic
practice has been the development of a system of
checks and balances to ensure that political power is dispersed
and decentralized. It is a system founded on the
deeply held belief that government is best when its potential for
abuse is curbed and when it is held as close to
the people as possible.
As a general term, checks and balances has two meanings:
federalism and separation of powers.
Federalism is the division of government between the
national, state or provincial, and local levels. The
United States, for example, is a federal republic with states
that have their own legal standing and authority
independent of the federal government. Unlike the political
subdivisions in nations such as Britain and France,
which have a unitary political structure, American states cannot
be abolished or changed by the federal
government. Although power at the national level in the United
States has grown significantly in relation to state
authority in the 20th century, states still possess significant
responsibilities in such fields as education, health,
transportation, and law enforcement. In centralized, or
"unitary," systems, these functions are administered by
the national government. For their part, the individual states
in the United States have generally followed the
federalist model by delegating many functions, such as the
operation of schools and police departments, to local
communities. The divisions of power and authority in a federal
system are never neat and tidy--federal, state,
and local agencies can all have overlapping and even conflicting
agendas in such areas as education, for
example--but federalism does maximize opportunities for the
citizen involvement so vital to the functioning of
democratic society.
In its second sense, checks and balances refer to the
separation of powers that the framers of the American
Constitution in 1789 so painstakingly established to ensure that
political power would not be concentrated within
a single branch of the national government. James Madison,
perhaps the central figure in the drafting of the
Constitution and later fourth president of the United States,
wrote: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative,
executive, and judiciary, in the same hands...may justly be
pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
Separation of powers is in some ways a misleading term,
because the system devised by Madison and the
other framers of the Constitution is more one of shared rather
than separate powers. Legislative authority, for
example, belongs to the Congress, but laws passed by Congress can
be vetoed by the president. The Congress,
in turn, must assemble a two-thirds majority in both the House of
Representatives and the Senate to override a
presidential veto. The president nominates ambassadors and
members of the cabinet, and negotiates
international treaties--but all are subject to approval by the
Senate. So is the selection of federal judges. As
another example, the Constitution specifies that only the
Congress has the power to declare war, although the
president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces--a source of
tension between the two branches that was
apparent during the protracted Vietnam War of the 1960s and early
1970s and in the brief Gulf conflict of 1990-
91. Because of the need for congressional approval to enact a
political program, political scientist Richard
Neustadt has described presidential power in the United States as
"not the power to command, but the power to
persuade."
Not all the checks and balances within the federal
government are specified in the Constitution. Some have
developed with practice and precedent. Perhaps the most
important is the doctrine of judicial review, established
in an 1803 court case, which gives the U.S. Supreme Court the
power to declare acts of Congress
unconstitutional.
The separation of powers in the American system is often
inefficient, but it provides an important safeguard
against the potential abuse of power by government--an issue that
every democracy must confront.
Prime Ministers and Presidents
Among a democracy's most important decisions is the method
of electing its leaders and representatives. In
general, there are two choices. In a parliamentary system, the
majority party in the legislature, or a coalition of
parties, forms a government headed by a prime minister. This
system of parliamentary government, which first
evolved in Great Britain, is today practiced in most of Europe,
the Caribbean, Canada, India, and many countries
in Africa and Asia (often former British colonies). The other
major method is direct election of a president
independently of the legislature. This presidential system is
practiced today in much of Latin America, the
Philippines, France, Poland, and the United States.
The chief difference between parliamentary and presidential
systems is the relationship between the
legislature and the executive. In a parliamentary system, they
are essentially one and the same, since the prime
minister and members of the cabinet are drawn from the
parliament. Typically, the government's term of office
will run for a specified period--four or five years, for
example--unless the prime minister loses a majority in
parliament. In that case the government falls and new elections
are held. Alternatively, another party leader is
offered a chance to form a government by the head of state,
either a president or constitutional monarch, whose
role is chiefly symbolic.
The separation of powers characteristic of the
American-style presidential system is lacking, since parliament
is the preeminent governing institution. Instead, parliamentary
systems must rely much more heavily on the
internal political dynamics of the parliament itself to provide
checks and balances on the power of the
government. These usually take the form of a single organized
opposition party that "shadows" the government,
or of competition among multiple opposition parties.
In a presidential system, both the head of government and
the head of state are fused in the office of the
president. The president is elected for a specified period
directly by the people, as are the members of the
congress. As one element of the separation of powers, members of
the president's cabinet are usually not
members of congress. Presidents normally can be removed from
office before finishing their terms only for
serious crimes or malfeasance in office. A legislative majority
for the president's party can ease passage of his
political program, but unlike prime ministers, presidents do not
depend on such majorities to remain in
office.
Representatives
Another important decision of any democracy is how to
organize elections. The fundamental choices are
again two: plurality elections or proportional representation.
Plurality elections, sometimes referred to as
"winner-take-all," simply mean that the candidate with the most
votes in a given district wins--whether a plurality
(less than 50 percent but more than any rival) or a majority
(more than 50 percent). Presidents are elected in a
similar fashion, but on a nationwide basis. Some systems provide
for runoff elections between the top two
candidates if no one receives an outright majority in the first
round. Plurality systems tend to encourage two
broadly based political parties that dominate the political
scene.
By contrast, voters in a system of proportional
representation, such as that employed in much of Europe,
usually cast ballots for political parties, not for individual
candidates. Party representation in the national
legislature is determined by the percentage, or proportion, of
votes received by each party in the election. In a
parliamentary system, the leader of the majority party becomes
the prime minister and selects the cabinet from
the parliament. If no party has received a majority, the parties
engage in intensive negotiations to form a ruling
coalition of parties. Proportional representation tends to
encourage multiple parties that, even though each
commands the loyalty of only a relatively small percentage of
voters, often find themselves negotiating for a
place in a coalition government.
Parliaments and Presidents
A principal claim for parliamentary systems, which today
make up the majority of democracies, is their
responsiveness and flexibility. Parliamentary governments,
especially if elected through proportional
representation, tend toward multiparty systems where even
relatively small political groupings are represented in
the legislature. As a result, distinct minorities can still
participate in the political process at the highest levels of
government. This diversity encourages dialogue and compromise as
parties struggle to form a ruling coalition.
Should the coalition collapse or the party lose its mandate, the
prime minister resigns and a new government
forms or new elections take place--all without a crisis
threatening the democratic system itself.
The major drawback to parliaments is the dark side of
flexibility and power sharing: instability. Multiparty
coalitions may be fragile and collapse at the first sign of
political crisis, resulting in governments that are in
office for relatively short periods of time. The government may
also find itself at the mercy of small extremist
parties that, by threatening to withdraw from the ruling
coalition and forcing the government to resign, can make
special policy demands upon the government. Moreover, prime
ministers are only party leaders and lack the
authority that comes from being directly elected by the
people.
Another concern is the lack of formal institutional checks
on parliamentary supremacy. A political party with
a large enough majority in parliament, for example, could enact a
far-reaching, even anti-democratic political
program without any effective limits to its actions, raising the
prospect of a tyranny of the majority.
For presidential systems, on the other hand, the principal
claims are direct accountability, continuity, and
strength. Presidents, elected for fixed periods by the people,
can claim the authority deriving from direct
election, whatever the standing of their political party in the
Congress. By creating separate but theoretically
equal branches of government, a presidential system seeks to
establish strong executive and legislative
institutions, each able to claim its electoral mandate from the
people and each capable of checking and balancing
the other. Those who fear the potential for executive tyranny
will tend to emphasize the role of the Congress;
those concerned with the potential abuse of a transient majority
in the legislature will assert the authority of the
president.
The weakness of separately elected presidents and
legislatures is potential stalemate. Presidents may not
possess the votes to enact their program, but by employing their
veto power, they can prevent the congress from
substituting its own legislative program.
Presidents, by virtue of their direct election, may appear
more powerful than prime ministers. But they must
contend with legislatures that, whether or not controlled by the
opposition, possess an election base independent
of the president's. Party discipline, therefore, is considerably
weaker than in a parliamentary system. The
president cannot, for example, dismiss or discipline rebellious
party members as a prime minister usually can. A
prime minister with a firm parliamentary majority is assured of
passage of the government's legislative program;
a president dealing with a congress jealous of its own
prerogatives must often engage in protracted negotiations
to ensure a bill's passage.
Which system best meets the requirements of a constitutional
democracy: parliamentary or presidential? The
answer is the subject of continuing debate among political
scientists and politicians, in part because each system
has unique strengths and weaknesses. It should be noted,
however, that both are compatible with constitutional
democracy, although neither guarantees it.
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