Comparing Political Regimes Kitap Alıntıları – Alan Siaroff

One can best consider the EU to be some sort of hybrid between confederation and federation.

Examples of unitary states are Estonia, Greece, Iceland, and New Zealand- all rather small places. In between a federation and a unitary state, though, are countries with regional governments, and even elected regional governments (like a federation), but where these regional governments and their powers are not protected by being entrenched in the constitution. As such, these regions could be abolished, merged, or have their powers reduced without any legal right to prevent such changes. Of course, central governments may rarely choose to do such things if that will annoy public opinion, but they could. Countries with this type of political organization are Colombia, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Slovakia, and Sweden. In Sweden, regional governments have existed for centuries; in the other cases, they are much more recent. In fact, Italy seems to be moving somewhat towards full federalism, but is not there yet.

Women are less than half of the deputies in every national parliament in the world -and thus less that half in every national parliament in the world’s democracies. However, in Sweden, they are near-parity minority; as of Sweden’s 2002 elections, 45.3 percent of the deputies in the (unicameral) Swedish Riksdag are women. At the other extreme, as of 2004 there are no women in the parliaments of several democracies in Oceania: Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.

In a presidential system, in order to increase the president’s support in the legislature, scholars have argued for having the entire legislature elected at the same time as the president, so as to maximize the president’s coat-tails effect.

In a parliamentary system, one effective procedure is to require a constructive vote of non-confidence ; that is, when (before) a government is removed, there must be majority support for an alternate government (or prime minister) to take over.

Indeed, a president may not even be able to count on members of her/his own party. In a parliamentary system, deputies almost never vote against a government of their own party, since this would bring down the government; however, in a presidential system there is no such constraint.

In some parliamentary systems, there is a formal vote by the parliament on a would-be government/prime minister, which/who must then win this vote of investiture. Such a procedure is called positive parliamentarianism, since there must be a positive endorsement of a new, or continuing, government (even if the voters apparently did so). In contrast, under negative parliamentarianism there is no vote of investiture that one must win. A prime minister and government are simply appointed, and they are assumed to be acceptable (negative confirmation) unless or until there is a successful motion of non-confidence. In situations where no party wins a majority, positive parliamentarianism is likely to lead to a majority coalition (so it has the votes to be invested), whereas negative parliamentarianism is likely to lead to a minority government of the largest party. Related to this variation, it is also generally the case that it takes longer to form a government under positive parliamentarianism, usually a month and sometimes several months. Broadly speaking, positive parliamentarianism is the more common version globally; however, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the other former British colonies use negative parliamentarianism, as do Austria, France, Portugal, and most Nordic countries.

Almost all presidential systems (Cyprus being the one exception) place a limit on the number of consecutive terms one can be president -and some presidential systems go further by limiting individuals to one term only, that is, a president cannot ever run for re-election. This constraint has been particularly common in Latin America, existing, for example, in Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico. Although this rule obviously prevents someone being in office too long, it also lessens the incentive to do a good job since one cannot be re-elected.

Women are less than half of the deputies in every national parliament in the world -and thus less that half in every national parliament in the world’s democracies. However, in Sweden, they are near-parity minority; as of Sweden’s 2002 elections, 45.3 percent of the deputies in the (unicameral) Swedish Riksdag are women. At the other extreme, as of 2004 there are no women in the parliaments of several democracies in Oceania: Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu.