Do you think it's viable to have a "pure presidentialism" system as in without a legislative body for a city government? Any evidence in that direction?
Viable in what sense? If it can exist, yeah, it can, but the outcomes are so disastrous few places even try. Most of those presidents, if elected, would try to guarantee that they would never lose power again.
If there's only one person on charge of legislative and executive powers, it will be a dictatorship, no matter how the person rose to power.
The city government would be part of a larger democratic country with independent courts and election commissions etc. obviously pure presidentialism is insane for a national or even a state government.
That would make them less bad than a president without a legislature (and would secure that periodic elections still happen). But personalistic power is a source of disasters. I have a whole new section in the second edition of the book on this
There is a trade off between preference integration and Political coherence.
In a Presindentialist system you give large powers to a single person, so you have coherent and decisive policy, at the cost of disenfranchiment of half of the people, polarization and the danger of turning presidentialism into dictatorship.
Presidentialism is mini autocracy, and it has some of its advantages, as described by Hobbes. For me the advantages are modest, the Risk enormous.
The problem is you don't get integration and political coherence, quite the opposite. The separation of powers make presidential systems much less cohesive. Parliamentary systems are diverse in the input, convergent in action.
Oh, sometimes you get political coherence! That is precisely the worst case scenario: the charismatic President, powerfull in his Party, and with the Legislature.
Do you think it's viable to have a "pure presidentialism" system as in without a legislative body for a city government? Any evidence in that direction?
Viable in what sense? If it can exist, yeah, it can, but the outcomes are so disastrous few places even try. Most of those presidents, if elected, would try to guarantee that they would never lose power again.
If there's only one person on charge of legislative and executive powers, it will be a dictatorship, no matter how the person rose to power.
The city government would be part of a larger democratic country with independent courts and election commissions etc. obviously pure presidentialism is insane for a national or even a state government.
That would make them less bad than a president without a legislature (and would secure that periodic elections still happen). But personalistic power is a source of disasters. I have a whole new section in the second edition of the book on this
There is a trade off between preference integration and Political coherence.
In a Presindentialist system you give large powers to a single person, so you have coherent and decisive policy, at the cost of disenfranchiment of half of the people, polarization and the danger of turning presidentialism into dictatorship.
Presidentialism is mini autocracy, and it has some of its advantages, as described by Hobbes. For me the advantages are modest, the Risk enormous.
The problem is you don't get integration and political coherence, quite the opposite. The separation of powers make presidential systems much less cohesive. Parliamentary systems are diverse in the input, convergent in action.
Oh, sometimes you get political coherence! That is precisely the worst case scenario: the charismatic President, powerfull in his Party, and with the Legislature.