In the presidential form of democracy such as America, the President is the executive head as well as the head of state of the government who is aided by his ‘cabinet’ chosen by him. The President thus combines, both the executive functions as well as the diplomatic and ceremonial functions of the state. The President chooses members of his ‘cabinet’ who could be any citizen of the United States whom the President may deem fit to head that post. In a parliamentary democracy, the executive head of the government is the Prime Minister while the head of state is another person who could be the President (example India) or a Monarch (example Britain) who is charged with the ceremonial functions of the state and has residual executive powers, which are mostly exercised only in times of emergency. The Prime Minister’s cabinet ministers are usually members of his own party.
In a presidential democracy, the President is usually chosen directly by the people. In a parliamentary form, the people choose their representatives who then choose a Prime Minister from the party that gains majority and the mandate to govern the country. In a parliamentary form of democracy, a coalition of parties can also be formed to get the requisite majority to earn the mandate to govern.
In the presidential form, the government is divided into the Executive headed by the President, The Legislature with its two chambers of Congress; The Senate and the House of Representatives and the Judiciary. In a parliamentary form of government, the Executive is headed by the Prime Minister; The Legislature has two houses of parliament; the upper and the lower houses and a separate judiciary.
The American presidential form of democracy has instituted a separation of powers between the legislature and the executive with the judiciary having wide-ranging independent power. (Patterson, p. 54).In the parliamentary form of government, the executive and legislature are more integrated. Parliamentary governments take lesser time to pass laws because there is less disagreement between the Executive and the Legislature (McQuoid-Mason, 1994, p. 12) as compared to the presidential form of democracy. Thus the system of checks and balances is stronger in the case of the presidential form rather than the parliamentary form where only the parliament can check the constitutionality of governmental action (Hague & Harrop, 2001, p. 279). Throughout American history, judicial activism has surfaced time and again to challenge either the executive or the legislature, which has at times, limited the ability of the Executive or the Legislative to deliver insufficient time. This is not the case in a parliamentary form of government where there is only one sovereign authority – The Parliament, where the party in power controls both the executive and the legislature that decides and passes all laws of the country.
In conclusion, it can state that the presidential and parliamentary versions differ in a charter of duties, the system of electing people, structure, the scope of a division of powers between the various organs of the government as also the degree of checks and balances that the two systems have.
References
- Hague, R., & Harrop, M, 2001, Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction, Macmillan, NY.
- McQuoid-Mason, D. I,1994, Democracy for all: Education Towards a Democratic Culture, Juta and Company Limited, Pretoria, SA.
- Patterson, T. E, 2009, American Democracy 9th edition, McGraw Hill, NY.