Yujeong Kim

Exchange student

108 021 24387 2

An Introduction to Comparative Constitutional Law

Dual executive system :

The solution for Bananas Republic

Outline

Introduction3

Body 3

Analysis of countries 3
Multiparty presidential system : Brazil 3
Parliamentary cabinet system: Germany 6
Dual executive system: France 7

Solution Suggestion 9

Conclusion 10
The Constituent Assembly of Bananas Republic is now creating a new Constitution
to enhance the ineffectiveness of the current presidential system. In this paper, I will illustrate
multiparty presidential system, parliamentary cabinet system and dual executive system.
Then, I will evaluate advantages and disadvantages of them by giving examples of Brazil,
Germany and France. Despite having already looked at the Brazilian, German and French
experiences, the Assembly members were not able to make up their minds. Therefore, I will
also give additional examples of the United States. Then, I would explain why the dual
executive system is the best option for the Bananas Republic.

To begin with, there are various forms of governance in the world. These forms can
be divided into two rough categories. 'Monarchy vs Republic' is one, and 'Presidential vs
Cabinet system' is another. The classification of monarchy and republicanism is a
classification according to the governing subject. Monarchy is a form of sovereignty owned
by a monarch, and republic is a form of majority rule from which sovereignty comes from
sovereignty. Today, there are few countries directly governed by monarchs. Most of them are
in the form of constitutional monarchies that reign but do not rule. A much more common
form today is a republicanism where sovereignty comes from the people. In the Republican
system, representatives who participate in state affairs are elected by a public vote.

Another classification system or government system is 'presidential system vs the

parliamentary government system,'. There are two types of authority of ruler. One is the head
of state, the other is the head of government. The former represents the state externally and
has the highest authority as a symbol of national unity, while the latter refers to the chief
executive who establishes and implements the state's major policies while leading the cabinet.
In the presidential system, the president has both powers, but in the cabinet system, the head
of state and the head of the government are separated. For example, the United States is
presidential country. Germany and the United Kingdom are cabinet countries.1

First of all, Brazil’s multiparty presidential system shows a few weak points and
strong points. There are some fundamental disadvantages of multiparty presidentialism.
Corruption, rent seeking, and fundamentally flawed ways of conducting political business are
often considered as problems of Brazil. And some scholars insist that these are the product of
managing Brazil’s brand of multiparty presidentialism. The disorder roiling Brazil is not the
product of individual malfea-sance or an innate culture of corruption, but rather of flawed
1
Yeongoo, C. (2008), The story of the French president, Kyobo.
institutional engineering. Apparently, the dynamics of multiparty presidentialism foster a
political arena widespread with rent-seeking and corrupt behavior. In order to govern, chief
executives in multiparty presidential systems have to reconcile two competing goals. On the
one hand, they seek to provide public goods for the majority of voters; on the other, they must
lock in the support of the parties that make up the governing coalition. This key feature of
multiparty presidential systems leads to three interrelated outcomes: a power imbalance
between the executive and the legislature, interest-group dominance, and bad governance.
First, multiparty presidentialism skews the balance of power between the executive and
legislative branches to a degree that corrodes the checks and balances integral to the proper
functioning of a presidential democracy. With a fractured legislature facing a president who
wields expansive powers, legislators do not have the capacity to deliver on meaningful
programmatic commitments to their constituents. Instead, they specialize in providing
particularistic goods. To obtain these goods, they come to depend on handouts from the
executive and on resources from private interest groups; these dependencies compete with
and un- 116 Journal of Democracy undermine their accountability to voters. Second, these
dynamics allow interest groups to take on an outsized role in shaping policy decisions at the
expense of the majority of voters. Corruption-fueled relations with each other and with
outside interests give the executive and legislative branches a shared incentive to limit the
reach of the judiciary and other watchdog institutions, further damaging accountability.
Finally, the erosion of checks and balances and of accountability in turn breeds bad
governance, defined as a situation in which rent-seeking and outright corruption are the rule
rather than the exception.

However, there are several strong points of multiparty presidentialism. To speak

about the advantages of multiparty presidential system, it is strong and stable. It was claimed
that presidents elected in majority contests can coexist with fragmented legislatures without
necessarily bumping up against deadlock or political instability. Moreover, multiparty
presidentialism can provide stable governments as long as presidents control the legislative
agenda and are able to deploy resources to get the loyalty of individual legislators. 2
Furthermore, the strength of institutional checks on the executive’s discretion. Good
governance hinges on the delegation of extensive powers to both presidents and autonomous
institutions that can and will check the executive branch. Where presidents concentrate

2
Eduardo Mello and Matias Spektor, “Brazil: The Costs of Multiparty Presidentialism”,
Journal of Democracy 29, no.2(April 2018): 114-115
powers without congress’s consent, what is happening is not delegation but usurpation.
Remembering that one is not the other can help us to avoid overstretching the concept of
“strong presidents.”3

In addition, the United States, a representative multi-party presidential state, is also a

good example. The United States is now experiencing similar problems with the Bananas
republic. It is the inefficiency of the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Constitution gives the most
power to the legislative branch of Congress among legislation, justice, and administration.
However, Congress does not have the ability to respond quickly to complex social problems.
This is because it is common for lawmakers to represent the interests of their constituencies
or states in Congress. Of course, there are lawmakers who put national interests ahead of
local interests, but since the constitution does not limit the term of office of lawmakers, it is
reasonable for lawmakers who want to be re-elected to engage in legislative actions to
improve local interests. Therefore, members of the U.S. Congress cannot be free from the
requirements of constituents and the lobbying of interest groups associated with it. From a
textbook point of view, lawmakers representing such diverse interests will make laws through
dialogue and compromise. However, legislation is often not smooth in the process of
maximizing partisan interests and personal interests. Therefore, the prescription the authors
present is the strengthening of the president's authority. Unlike lawmakers, the president can
evaluate policies from a national interest perspective and make macroscopic judgments with
interest in long-term effects, not short-term effects, because he has the will to leave his legacy
in history. Specifically, the authors argue that it is important to strengthen the president's
authority to set the agenda. The current legislation in the United States is revealed plans to
scrap the bill, which is considered in committee and Senate and to approval by the president
after a vote in plenary session of the complicated and lengthy process. However, it is also true
that there are exceptional cases in which the president has used fast-track to ratify agreements
or treaties with foreign countries in Congress . The authors suggest institutional reform which
apply to all legislative process the Fast Track.

Second, German parliamentary cabinet system can be another alternative. The

parliamentary cabinet system is a form in which the executive branch is composed of two
organizations, the president and the cabinet, and the cabinet is not only elected by the
parliament, but also has political responsibility for the parliament. In the system, the right to
3
Carlos Pereira and Marcus André Melo, “The Surprising Success of Multiparty
Presidentialism”, Journal of Democracy, no. 23(July 2012): 159
distrust the Cabinet and the right to dissolve the parliament become a means of mutual
control, maintaining a power balance between the legislature and the administration, and
forming a close republic and cooperative relationship between the two. There are several
advantages of the parliamentary cabinet system. First, there is a system of the vote of
nonconfidence, so if public sentiment changes, the cabinet can be altered quickly. As the
forces with a majority of seats make up the government, the government can run its policies
smoothly. The responsibility of state affairs is clear, and political dialogue and compromise
are activated. The voices of various minority parties can also be reflected in state affairs.

The German parliamentary system is the distinctive German realization of

parliamentary democracy. Overall, German parliamentary system is evaluated positively. The
responsibility of the government to Congress in the system, and its reliance on parliamentary
confidence in its appointment and de-appointment, realize democratic and parliamentary
principles in a way that prevents the government from being too authoritative but does not
deprive it of the independence needed to handle government affairs. In this constitutional
composition, the importance given to the Federal Assembly helps to have comprehensive
effect while it is representatively formed on the principle of national sovereignty. However, it
is in the hands of the representative, the Federal Assembly, to decide on the fate of the
government.

However, as a result of this strong position in Congress, the increasingly widespread

"parliamentaryization" occurs. In parliamentaryization, important state-directed decisions
which are originally in action belonging to the federal government are subordinated to joint
decisions by Congress. These often occur in areas of foreign policy, European policy, security
policy, fiscal policy, or political planning. This parliamentaryization frequently leads to the
progression of division of labor cooperation between government and Congress – but in
political practice, there is little friction between the government and the broad convergence of
content between this parliamentary majority and the federal government supported by them.
In other words, the existence of considerable agreement between the government and the
majority of parliament who support the government has become a major feature of a
parliamentary cabinet system.

These can be considered as continuing developments promoted beyond definition by

the Federal Constitutional Court in the form of parliamentary government system.
Nonetheless, these situations must be illuminated thoroughly in a critical way, as they
obscure the areas of government and congressional responsibility. Nevertheless, this
"Staatsleitung zurgesamten Hand" ensures sufficient participation in Congress and, in this
way, prevents governments from acting too authoritatively away from the will of the people. 4

Third, France dual executive system has some advantages and disadvantages. On
the premise of a republic, the authority of the head of the administration is divided between
the president and the prime minister. In other words, the dual executive system is a
compromise between the two systems that combine elements of the presidential system and
the parliamentary system. In this sense, it is also called "decentralized presidential central
system" or "constrained parliamentary cabinet system." Depending on the compromise aspect
of power, the actual appearance appears very different. It is basically more like a
parliamentary system. Depending on whether it is closer to the presidential system or the
parliamentary system, however, it is classified as Austrian style, which is more powerful than
the purely parliamentary system, or French style, which is closer to the presidential system. It
is sometimes classified into Finnish, where the president is in charge of external affairs, the
prime minister and the cabinet are in charge of internal affairs and French, where
administrative powers are given alternately to the president or prime minister depending on
the outcome of the general elections.

Strictly speaking, political scientists view the dual government system as a modified
type of the presidential system rather than the middle of the presidential system and the
cabinet system. According to Giovanni Sartoti, for a political system to be classified as a dual
government system, it must have the following characteristics at the same time. First, the
president, the head of state, is directly or indirectly elected by the people. Second, the head of
state shares executive power with the prime minister. In the presidential system, power,
which was concentrated only on one president, is dispersed in the dual government system,
and there are two organizations with power. In other words, in the presidential system, the
president was independent of the parliament by the separation of power between the
administration and the parliament, but in the dual government system, the president, who is
the head of state, must share power with the prime minister. Third, the president does not
govern directly, but through a cabinet. Fourth, the president appoints the prime minister and
the prime minister appoints officials from the Cabinet. But the prime minister and cabinet are

4
Michael Brenner, “Regierungssystem und Machtverteilung - Das parlamentarische
Regierungssystem der Bundesrepublik Deutschland –“, Journal of Constitutional Law 5,
no.1(March 2018):31-32
independent of the president and rely on congressional confidence. Fifth, in the dual
government system, the balance of power between the president and the prime minister is
skewed to one side.

France's dual government system is sometimes called a semi-presidentialism or a

parliamentary presidential system. In this system, if the president's party is a parliamentary
majority or a majority, the president exercises very strong authority. This is the core of the
French Fifth Republic presidential system that Charles de Gaulle envisioned. In this case, the
president has stronger authority than in the United States. However, the problem is when the
president's party is a minority in Congress or a minority party. Under these circumstances, the
president cannot help appointing a prime minister from a different party, a majority, and the
president and prime minister are in a competition with each other overpower. This situation is
called cohabitation. In this case, the power of the president is limited and the prime minister
has substantial power, which is similar to the parliamentary cabinet system.

The most powerful powers exercised by the French president are the right to dissolve
parliament and the right to produce an election. In order to efficiently manage state affairs,
the president can dissolve Congress early and hold a general election before the end of his
term and put important policy proposals to a referendum so that the people can make their
own choices. The fact that the Fifth Republic has made a lot of use of the method of deciding
important policies through referendums proves that the president's power has been
strengthened and the role of Congress has been reduced. Another thing that is mentioned as
the strong authority of the French president is the emergency powers stipulated in Article 16
of the Constitution. This is the power to exercise unlimited power. It states, "When a
republic's system, national independence, territorial unity or the international community's
commitment is seriously threatened and constitutional power to control it is interrupted, the
president of the republic may seek formal advice from the prime minister, the chairman of
both houses and the Constitutional Court and take the necessary action. The president
announces it to the public through a message." There is no regulation on a specific situation
and the authority is abstract, so it can be interpreted as a de facto full authority.

France's presidential system was originally a strong presidential system. Charles de

Gaulle tried to realize a president-centered responsibility politics by finding a lesson from the
failure of the cabinet system to lead state affairs stably during the 3rd and 4th republics. The
Constitution of the Fifth Republic has two characteristics at the same time because it
combines elements of the presidential system and the cabinet system. Since both the election
of the president and the composition of the parliament are made by direct elections by the
people, both the president and the parliament are power subjects with legitimacy. If the party
to which the president belongs wins the majority, France's presidential system becomes a
perfect presidential system as originally intended by the Constitution of the Fifth Republic.
However, if the party to which the president belongs becomes a minority party, a cohabitation
government will be formed, and in this case, the Cabinet will be responsible for the
management of state affairs, so it takes the form of a parliamentary cabinet system. When
Charles de Gaulle finalized the Constitution of the Fifth Republic, he did not foresee the
possibility of a cohabitation government. However, there were three cohabitation
governments during the Mitterrand and Chirac administrations, which showed a stable form.
The French presidential system, which operates as a dual government system, has entered a
stable phase. The cohabitation government, which is considered a weakness, is not
necessarily bad in that the left and right can cooperate through balance and checks.5

Considering advantages and disadvantages of multiparty presidential system,

parliamentary cabinet system and dual executive system, I suggest that modified dual
executive government system is the best option for the Bananas Republic. First, the dual
executive system itself is a form that has already fused the presidential system with the
parliamentary cabinet system to complement each's strengths and weaknesses. The
presidential system is powerful and stable, but it can produce political corruption. The
parliamentary government system is inefficient. Dual executive system is a hybrid to solve
these problems of both systems. It makes the president more powerful than in ordinary
presidential system when the majority of Assembly members are from the president’s party.
And if the former cabinet defied public sentiment, the new cabinet consisted of opposite party
will enhance the situation. Second, France is an excellent example of using dual executive
system. Even though a system is theoretically perfect, whether the system will blend well into
reality is another problem. However, France has been running the country well for a long
time using this system and it shows that this system is stable and realistic. In addition, France
has shown an example of solving the problem of the coalition government, which is
considered a disadvantage of this system. Therefore, even if there is a problem after
introducing this system in the future, the Banans republic can refer to the solution of France.
Third, considering the given situation of Banana republic, the dual executive system is the
5
Yeongoo, C. (2008), The story of the French president, Kyobo.
best. According to the text, the president too often becoming hostage of Parliament and
having difficulties in forming stable coalitions in Parliament and curbing sufficient political
support, which generates a high level of bargaining and corrupt political practices. is the
problem with Banana Republic is the problem. Therefore, a parliamentary cabinet system is
not an alternative. The presidential system is in the present was not powerful enough to solve
current problems. Thus, I would recommend dual government system. In the system,
Presidential authority is great so that he can manage state affairs quickly and the National
Assembly is able to change the cabinet depending on the situation.

In conclusion, the dual executive system is the best alternative for the banana
republic. It is because that the parliamentary cabinet system is so inefficient and that makes
the current problem of the banana republic worse. In addition, the current presidential system
adopted by the banana republic produced difficulties in forming stable coalitions in
Parliament and curbing sufficient political support. As been seen in the case of Banana
Republic and Brazil, the presidential system causes corruption.