Analysis Of Juan Linz's Presidential Or Parliamentary Democracy

In his seminal essay “Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: does it make a difference?” Juan Linz argued that presidential systems organized power in a way that gave way to pathologies that enabled regime crisis. These pathologies emanated from two basic components of the presidential system, its “rigidity” and its “dual legitimacy” (Linz 1994, p. 6). The “rigidity” of the system, Linz argued, surfaced given that “both the president and congress are elected for a fixed term, the president 's tenure in office is independent of the legislature, and the survival of the legislature is independent of the president.” (ibid). This rigidity enabled the election of outsiders, winner-takes all tendencies, the polarization of political parties amongst

This left the interbranch conflict between the executive and judicial branch, but more significantly the judicial and legislative branch less explored. In fact, Linz does not even consider the court’s legitimacy when asserting the problem of “dual legitimacy,” and even denotes the court as an “anti democratic” institution that occasionally moderates this executive-legislative interbranch conflict (Linz 1990; 65). Even scholars critiquing Linz’s argument, Mainwaring and Shugart (1997, p. 283) write that the “judiciary is generally inferior in terms of power to executive and legislative branches.” Were scholars studying the way power was organized and presidentialism right in their reading of the court as an “anti-democratic” legitimate, and weak institution?

To briefly answer, their reading was surprising given that in 1994, the same year of such a seminal publication, comparativist Vallinder, Torbjörn was writing and editing an entire issue on the “judicialization of politics” in the International Political Science Review noting its “worldwide emergence.” In 1995, Torbjörn Vallinder alongside Neal C. Tate co-edited and published the essays on the issue into the book they titled, The Global Expansion of

The legitimacy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its institutions has therefore, emanated from the expanded “decisionary power” of the people (Spanakos, Political Order). Ciccariello-Maher (2013) has argued the people, or what he refers to as “constituent power” preceded and enabled the Bolivarian Revolution. This has been evident in salient court rulings, in which the judiciary has stood by its commitment to such a participatory democracy. This will be evident in the rulings discussed infra regarding referendums in 1999 (calling for a constituent assembly) , and 2004 (calling for the CNE to enable a recall referendum on President Chavez), the former, case showing a court that ensured its own demise after the Constituent Assembly rewrote the constitution and deposed it). Such is precisely why, the court’s obstruction the expression of the en masse demand for political change is puzzling, namely because a self-pronounced participatory government has truncated the articulation of constituent power using liberal arguments to protect the “minority” or ensure “procedure.” is the court acting legitimately in its protection of minority rights (a reading of judicialization of politics could find this acceptable) or has the