Peter1469
08-28-2014, 05:47 AM
Parliamentary system or separation of powers (http://ricochet.com/archives/should-the-u-s-have-had-a-parliamentary-system/)
On the one hand, separation of powers is intended to make it hard to make changes.
On the other hand, people complain about grid lock.
Would the U.S. be better off without a president or a separation of powers? Should we instead join most of the other advanced industrialized nations as a parliamentary democracy?
Over at the Liberty Fund’s Law and Liberty website (http://www.libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/), I debate this issue with noted libertarian law and economics scholar Frank Buckley of George Mason Law School, who thinks that American exceptionalism in our constitutional design has led our country astray by producing more executive tyranny than under a British-style parliamentary system. I argue that in American democracy the real threat to liberty comes from congressional and administrative sources — and that the President is necessary to check those twin excesses.
The debate raises some interesting questions. Look at the presidential systems in the rest of the world. It seems true that they have produced more instability than parliamentary systems, particularly in Latin America. What would have happened in U.S. history if we had been a parliamentary democracy? Isn’t there something unique about the United States that prevents presidential systems from collapsing into dictatorship?
On the one hand, separation of powers is intended to make it hard to make changes.
On the other hand, people complain about grid lock.
Would the U.S. be better off without a president or a separation of powers? Should we instead join most of the other advanced industrialized nations as a parliamentary democracy?
Over at the Liberty Fund’s Law and Liberty website (http://www.libertylawsite.org/liberty-forum/), I debate this issue with noted libertarian law and economics scholar Frank Buckley of George Mason Law School, who thinks that American exceptionalism in our constitutional design has led our country astray by producing more executive tyranny than under a British-style parliamentary system. I argue that in American democracy the real threat to liberty comes from congressional and administrative sources — and that the President is necessary to check those twin excesses.
The debate raises some interesting questions. Look at the presidential systems in the rest of the world. It seems true that they have produced more instability than parliamentary systems, particularly in Latin America. What would have happened in U.S. history if we had been a parliamentary democracy? Isn’t there something unique about the United States that prevents presidential systems from collapsing into dictatorship?