Presidentialism is like a car-boat

It might even sound like a good idea to some people until it faces reality

Unfortunately, presidentialism is not only a mere curiosity

It’s not an uncommon conversation for me: “OK, you have argued for several flaws of presidentialism. What is an advantage presidentialism has over parliamentarism?” It’s a good question in general. If you want to get a sense of how careful some person is about interpreting evidence in a nonbiased way, ask them to explain what evidence against the position they are taking there is. Unfortunately for me, I am yet to find an advantage for presidentialism. This doesn’t make me look as an objective thinker. The problem is that presidentialism really is an inferior arrangement. It is the result of combining two different forms of decision-making which can be the most efficient depending on the circumstance into a form which doesn’t preserve the qualities of either form, while keeping the disadvantages. It is the car-boat of forms of government.

Just to make my point, I will state the obvious. Using a boat or a car can be your best option depending on your objectives. If you are going from your house in the suburb to the nearest mall, you will take the car. If you are going from a beach house to an isolate island with no land connection, the boat is best. A car-boat tries to the functions of both, and ends up doing neither well. For this reason, it exists as a mere curiosity because some people think it is cool.

I would say we should be more adult-like with regards to government and express our romantic side in other areas

Likewise, it won’t always be the case that you need a collective body for decisionmaking - even if there is a representation of someone else’s interests. In fact, in the vast majority of cases we don’t have a collective body, we just hire one person. In firms, the hierarchy is not of one collective body on top of another, it is one person who supervises several others with different functions, all the way down. It will be better to have one person being the agent rather than a collective body:

• The more time the principal has to observe the quality of service and effort exherted by the agent;

• The greater the capacity the principal has to observe the quality and effort;

• The shorter the time-span of the relationship;

• The fewer the number of principals;

• The smaller the probability the objectives assigned may be in conflict with one another;

• The more the interests of the principals align with each other;

• The more the principals have a similar understanding of what the best strategies are;

• The more the principals can interact with each other;

• The less familiarity the potential members of the collective body have with rules of order/parliamentary procedure;

Suppose you need help filing your taxes a given year. Are you going to hire one accountant (or one firm, which will assign one accountant) or are you going to set up a board of accountants? Obviously the first - but why is it obvious? The list above helps us understand.

• You have considerable time to observe the service - it’s not unreasonable to think that you can dedicate at least five minutes for every hour the accountant has put into it;

• You have familiarity with the information, you know how responsive your accountant is, etc. (even though there might be some quality aspects you migt miss);

• It is a very brief relationship, by the time you set up a board you would probably be late with your taxes;

• You are the only principal (which makes moot other items);

• The objective is pretty straightforwad - file the minimum amount of taxes in a perfectly legal way.

Everything indicates you are better off hiring just one person, and in fact no one ever establishes a board to file their individual taxes one specific year.

Naturally, if you change the signs on the above characteristics, it will be better to have a collective body. It may have stood out as you read that in the case of national governments, everything points to it being better to have a collective body as the main agent. I will still go through one-by-one:

• The population has very little time to observe the quality of service and effort exherted by the agent;

• The population lacks adequate capacity to observe the quality and effort;

• The relationship is of years at least (considering individual mandates) or of indefinite duration (considering the whole institution);

• The number of principals is literally the entire population and most often is in the millions;

• The sheer amount of different responsibilities a government has ensures the probability that several of the objectives assigned are in conflict is 100%;

• The interests of the principals vary considerably;

• There is great disagreement as to how to achieve objectives even when there is agreement on those objectives;

• Interaction among members of the population is extremely small relative to population size;

• MPs are invested in learning how to operate rules of procedure and have specialized staff dedicated to helping them;

Those are the extreme cases and arguably the easy ones. Absolutely nobody argues for a board for filing your taxes once; and almost nobody with any real influence thinks we should only elect a president, with no Congress whatsoever. But there are edge cases. Just like some trips you might be unsure whether walking or taking the car is the best option, in some situations it is not clear whether it will be better to set up a collective body to make the decisions or rely on a single agent.

Someone setting up a family trust might weight the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and ponder the factors above to see which option is best. In parliamentary countries, there are arrangements which make the government itself more collective (cabinet government) or more individual (prime ministerial). The list above helps illustrate why it is an ambiguous situtation. While parliaments have much fewer members than there are people in a country’s population, their full membership is significant. Interests will also differ significantly. Capacity to observe quality and efforts is much higher than in the general population, but is it high enough? My inclination is that cabinet government has been neglected, but I concede it is not as clear cut.

The important point, however, is that it is never better to try to have both - which is what the presidential system does. When a president must go through Congress, you get none of the benefits of individualized decision-making. There’s no agility, no cost-saving. It’s like sailing a car-boat across the channel.

If a president doesn’t have to go through Congress, the risks of not having a Congress at all are realized. One could argue that for executive functions an individual works well, but not for legislative functions. I don’t think that is plausible. Legislative and executive functions are extremely blurred. There isn’t any type of decision we do not expect presidents to have an opinion nowadays. The typical decision of a president is certainly of the kind that would call for a collegiate body if none existed. But the one that does exist is significantly restrained in its powers. It’s like trying to cross the channel with your car-boat in car mode!

“Why is there such a system in the first place?”, one could ask. The separation of powers arose because it was clear to elites that kings did not represent their interests as well as parliaments. Because those elites did not have enough power to strip kings of all their functions at once, separation of powers was the compromise solution. For that purpose, it makes complete sense. The whole theory of separation of powers created by Montesquieu is a rationalization of the institutions he already observed in England and which were still evolving and far from its best form. For advancing the interests of the population, presidentialism works as well driving up the river.