Parliamentarism

[Page 571]Parliamentarism denotes a form of government in which the legislative and executive powers are fused instead of originating from a separate popular mandate. The core feature of a parliamentary government is that the executive somehow emerges from and can be removed by the legislature. A second crucial characteristic is the dependence of the executive on legislative confidence for its survival, and the governmental accountability to parliament that results from that: Parliament can make or break the government. A third fundamental characteristic of parliamentarism is the collective (collegial) executive of parliamentarism versus the single-person executive in presidentialism.

Parliamentary systems are characterized by the direct election of a legislative assembly from which the executive emerges. As a consequence of this strong mutual dependency for survival of legislative ...