Dual Executive Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Among democratic political systems across the world, three models of organizing relations between the executive and legislative branches of government exist: parliamentary, presidential, and dual executive systems. In a parliamentary system, the executive consists of a cabinet that is headed by the prime minister and arises directly from the legislature. The cabinet is responsible to the legislative majority, which can dismiss the executive by means of a motion of no confidence. In presidential systems, on the other hand, a popularly elected president appoints and directs the cabinet. The executive and the legislature have separate popular mandates, and they are mutually independent for their survival in office. Dual executive systems combine the central features of parliamentary and presidential systems by dividing executive authority between a popularly elected president and a cabinet that stems from, and is responsible to, the legislature.

In dual executive systems, there are two centers of executive power, each with its own popular mandate, although in the case of the cabinet, this runs indirectly through the legislature. Dual executive constitutional design occurs across the globe but is especially common in central and eastern Europe, where it was adopted on a large scale after the breakdown of communism. Contemporary examples of governments with dual executives are those of France, Portugal, Russia, Poland, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Mali, and Peru.

The distribution of power between the president and the cabinet varies considerably across dual executive systems. A president’s constitutional role may be limited to the signing of international treaties and a weak presidential veto of legislation. However, there are also presidents who possess a much broader constitutional basis for interfering in executive affairs. But these constitutional differences explain only part of the actual power relations in a dual executive system. Custom and political circumstances may affect the balance of power between presidents and cabinets at least as profoundly and can produce variations through time. The nature of the parliamentary majority is especially important in this respect. Being dependent upon support from the legislature, the cabinet’s position vis-à-vis the president may be stronger when the assembly majority is opposed to the president. On the other hand, if the legislative majority is supportive of the president, the latter’s executive influence generally increases at the expense of the cabinet. Such shifts in power within otherwise stable constitutional systems are possible because of ambiguities in many dual executive constitutions.

The precise scope of presidential influence is often unspecified in dual executive constitutions, which means that the actual distribution of executive tasks between presidents and cabinets is dependent upon party politics and may become the subject of intraexecutive competition. These features make dual executive constitutional design flexible, yet at the same time prone to political instability, personal ambitions, and power concentration. The academic debate on the appropriateness of dual executive constitutional design is therefore unsettled.

Bibliography:

Duverger, Maurice. “A New Political-system Model: Semi-presidential Government.” European Journal of Political Research 8, no. 2 (1980): 165–187.
Elgie, Robert, ed. Semi-Presidentialism in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Shugart, Matthew S. “Semi-Presidential Systems: Dual Executive and Mixed Authority Patterns.” French Politics 3, no. 3 (2005): 323–351.