ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEMS

Advantages of Presidential Systems

For advocates, presidential systems are preferable to parliamentary systems because of the following advantages that they carry.

1. the separation of powers between legislative and executive branches prevents the problem of executive domination, establishes limited government and thereby protects individual rights and liberties.
2. unlike the parliamentary system under which each party is likely to represent only its sympathizers, President in presidential system, as a single nationally elected official, tends to represent an entire country and thereby acts as a symbol of national unity.
3. because of fixed terms, the presidential systems provide greater continuity in the executive and ensure far more political stability than parliamentary systems.
4. presidential systems are far more efficient than parliamentary systems in the sense that voters are likely to have information in advance about who will lead the new government.
5. presidential systems provide voters more opportunities to influence and shape the policy-making process in that they are represented by two separately and independently elected institutions- legislature and executive.
6. because of independence of legislature, the individual elected members of the legislature in presidential system tend to have more influence on policy-making than in a parliamentary system.

Disadvantages of Presidential Systems

1. Because of separation of powers, the presidential systems are likely to cause a deadlock between legislature and executive in the sense that these two institutions on the basis of their equal public legitimacy (dual legitimacy as Linz calls) tend to clash over policy causing a threat to effective policy-making and effective implementation of policy programmes.
2. Several political scientists (Linz, Alfred Stepan and Cindy Skach) argue that there is far less democratic stability in presidential states with deep political cleavages and multiple parties than in parliamentary states in the sense that dual legitimacy prevents the executive and legislature to arrive at democratic resolution of conflict.
3. Presidential systems are highly rigid in that both the executive and legislature have fixed terms of offices. As Bagehot insisted that ‘everything is rigid, specified, dated’. The President cannot be usually removed from office before the expiry of his or her term even if he or she is incompetent to meet any serious problem causing political crisis.
4. The President on the basis of his or her supposedly national mandate tends to be averse to any form of power sharing and compromise. In this respect, the presidential system is problematic in highly divided societies.
5. Accountability in presidential systems becomes blurred in that both legislative and executive branches claim credit for policy successes and offload the blame for policy failures.
6. Because of unipersonal executive responsibility, the presidential systems suffer from the problem of weak cabinet causing far less deliberation than occurs under parliamentary systems.