American democracy is unfixable

The problems with presidentialism are structural

In The Perils of Presidentialism, the late political scientist Juan Linz contrasted presidentialist and parliamentary forms in terms of democratic stability. The nature of his argument concerns the structural impediments and restraints the president faces - all the while being the only nationally elected official, and the tension between these two facts as impacting the stability of the presidential system.

Many of these points have their historical and modern examples, but I think good ol’ fashioned political science can be clarifying in times of power expansion on the part of the president. “How and why did we get here” is a question many have tried to answer, with some pointing to failures of this or that administration, or interest group conflict and so on. But the structural nature of presidential conflict that persists through current and future administrations are less subject to the controversies of the day and point towards deeper problems at the heart of American democracy.

Presidentialism’s contradictions

In his article, Linz chooses parliamentarism as the primary competing democratic structure to presidential systems. Set in the background of the collapse of the soviet union as well as the transition of many South American governments’ authoritarian regimes, Linz belongs to a group of comparative regime scholars set out to provide political guidance to these collapsing regimes to transform them into something better. Upon close inspection, contradictions in presidential systems emerge.

Linz

Parliamentary systems are those that have one democratically elected legislative body, whereas presidential systems include an executive who serves for a fixed term and is elected separately from the rest of the governmental body. In these cases, the president serves as the ceremonial and symbolic head of state as well as retaining independent executive powers. This dual-mandate creates in the office an aura, or a set of popular expectations and a self-image of what the president should be. Linz continues:

But what is most striking is that in a presidential system, the legislators, especially when they represent cohesive, disciplined parties that offer clear ideological and political alternatives, can also claim democratic legitimacy. This claim is thrown into high relief when a majority of the legislature represents a political option opposed to the one the president represents.

Under such circumstances, who has the stronger claim to speak on behalf of the people: the president or the legislative majority that opposes his policies? Since both derive their power from the votes of the people in a free competition among well-defined alternatives, a conflict is always possible and at times may erupt dramatically. There is no democratic principle on the basis of which it can be resolved, and the mechanisms the constitution might provide are likely to prove too complicated and aridly legalistic to be of much force in the eyes of the electorate.

What’s striking about this point is that in recent history, the president and the congressional majority represent opposing parties around half of the time. The conflicts that necessarily rise out of these opposing factions do not have a democratic basis on which they can be mediated. Essentially, Linz is saying that in these cases we will have to lean on the constitution, but the complex legalese may not make sense to the public and lack the democratic legitimacy their votes provided.

Linz then highlights another source of conflict - the fixed nature of presidential terms and election schedules. Apologies for the quote wall, but this section is worth the read.

The second outstanding feature of presidential systems-the president's relatively fixed term in office-is also not without drawbacks. It breaks the political process into discontinuous, rigidly demarcated periods, leaving no room for the continuous readjustments that events may demand. The duration of the president's mandate becomes a crucial factor in the calculations of all political actors, a fact which (as we shall see) is fraught with important consequences.

Consider, for instance, the provisions for succession in case of the president's death or incapacity: in some cases, the automatic successor may have been elected separately and may represent a political orientation different from the president's; in other cases, he may have been imposed by the president as his running mate without any consideration of his ability to exercise executive power or maintain popular support.

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All political leaders must worry about the ambitions of second-rank leaders, sometimes because of their jockeying for position in the order of succession and sometimes because of their intrigues. The fixed and definite date of succession that a presidential constitution sets can only exacerbate the incumbent's concerns on this score.

Add to this the desire for continuity, and it requires no leap of logic to predict that the president will choose as his lieutenant and successor-apparent someone who is more likely to prove a yes-man than a leader in his own right. The inevitable succession also creates a distinctive kind of tension between the ex-president and his successor. The new man may feel driven to assert his independence and distinguish himself from his predecessor, even though both might belong to the same party.

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The old president, for his part, having known the unique honor and sense of power that come with the office, will always find it hard to reconcile himself to being out of power for good, with no prospect of returning even if the new incumbent fails miserably. Parties and coalitions may publicly split because of such antagonisms and frustrations. They can also lead to intrigues, as when a still-prominent former president works behind the scenes to influence the next succession or to undercut the incumbent's policies or leadership of the party.

These tensions are familiar to us today. Insider reporting shows over time that the considerations presidents make with respect to their vice are at odds with choosing a good leader. In Obama’s case, he specifically chose the already elder statesman at the time, Joe Biden, to be his vice. This choice was supposed to offset the public impression of Obama’s relative inexperience. More to the point, Obama sidelined Biden in favor of supporting Hillary. Recently, we’ve seen similar dynamics with Biden and Kamala, a choice that perplexed many at the time given that Kamala’s poor primary showing should have indicated that her popularity might not be enough to sustain a tough presidential campaign.

But again, Biden chose her to appeal to one side of the democratic column while ignoring the very real possibility that she would have to govern or at the least, run in his place, towards the end of his term. Even more recently we’ve seen Trump pick JD Vance, who by all accounts does not have mass appeal and merely represents Trump’s ideals in a younger vessel. Perhaps Vance could be a popular leader in the future, but it’s at the very least unclear that these recent vice picks are directly related to one’s capacity to lead.

If both sides of the political culture succumb to the same mistakes, this is representative of a deeper problem than the “my side good your side bad” style of partisan commentary popular today.

Zero-sum conflict

Warning: quote wall ahead.

Presidentialism is ineluctably problematic because it operates according to the rule of "winner-take-all arrangement that tends to make democratic politics a zero-sum game, with all the potential for conflict such games portend.

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The danger that zero-sum presidential elections pose is compounded by the rigidity of the president's fixed term in office. Winners and losers are sharply defined for the entire period of the presidential mandate. There is no hope for shifts in alliances, expansion of the government's base of support through national-unity or emergency grand coalitions, new elections in response to major new events, and so on. Instead, the losers must wait at least four or five years without any access to executive power and patronage. The zero-sum game in presidential regimes raises the stakes of presidential elections and inevitably exacerbates their attendant tension and polarization.

This at least leaves the president room to potentially heal the partisan divide caused by the zero-sum nature of his election, right?

Once he has won, can he not set himself to healing the wounds inflicted during the campaign and restoring the unity of the nation? Can he not offer to his defeated opponents-but not to the extremist elements of his own coalition-a role in his administration and thus make himself president of all the people? Such policies are of course possible, but must depend on the personality and political style of the new president and, to a lesser extent, his major antagonists. Before the election no one can be sure that the new incumbent will make conciliatory moves; certainly the process of political mobilization in a plebiscitarian campaign is not conducive to such a turn of events.

The new president must consider whether gestures designed to conciliate his recent opponents might weaken him unduly, especially if he risks provoking his more extreme allies into abandoning him completely. There is also the possibility that the opposition could refuse to reciprocate his magnanimity, thus causing the whole strategy to backfire. The public rejection of an olive branch publicly proffered could harden positions on both sides and lead to more

The issue in a nutshell is that the president has the choice to try to bridge the gap to the losers or not. If he does, he risks alienating his most extreme supporters, but if he doesn’t he opens himself up to increased legislative gridlock as well as political attacks on the legitimacy of his democratic mandate.

For example, presidential systems either include legislatively malapportioned districts, or an upper chamber that gives extra weight to rural areas. If the president is elected with the help of urban areas, the gridlock he will inevitably face will be in part due to legislators who represent rural or sparsely populated areas. This invites accusations that the legislator is in hock to narrow interest groups or local influence - contradicting the president’s plebiscitarian mandate.¹ By that same token, if the president does in fact gain support from these same areas, he is open to attacks from legislators using those very arguments.

The conspiracy theories start rolling in, with rurals believing that urban elites are destroying their way of life, and urban elites believing that they are being held back by antiquated ways of living. In this way, the office of the president is opened up to a type of populism which can embolden the president to view constitutional barriers to his power as incompatible with the mandate he is said to represent.

The plebiscitarian component implicit in the president's authority is likely to make the obstacles and opposition he encounters seem particularly annoying. In his frustration he may be tempted to define his policies as reflections of the popular will and those of his opponents as the selfish designs of narrow interests.

This identification of leader with people fosters a certain populism that may be a source of strength. It may also, however, bring on a refusal to acknowledge the limits of the mandate that even a majority-to say nothing of a mere plurality can claim as democratic justification for the enactment of its agenda. The doleful potential for displays of cold indifference, disrespect, or even downright hostility toward the opposition is not to be scanted.

The current state of politics

Imagine if you were in a diner in the 50s, and discussing the relative merits of voting for Eisenhower or Stevenson. The ideological overlap between the Republican and Democratic parties at this time was large.

Let’s dive into policy. The basic landscape of post WW2 politics was characterized by the Republican party embracing new deal reforms and the Democratic Party joining with the Republican Party in embracing moderate Liberalism and containment as a rebuttal to soviet expansion. The result of this coalition was the permanent acceptance of New Deal expansion and the expulsion of communist elements from the political culture.

The lack of ideological polarization made it easy for the government to work together, without much in the way of presidential power creep on one hand and congressional gridlock on the other.

Contrasted with today, that consensus is no longer in place and hasn’t been for a long time. The level of ideological polarization and intraparty uniformity create near-continuous gridlock, and a president increasingly incentivized to take extra-constitutional actions to preserve and expand the power he has. Congressional gridlock further discredits the legislative body in the eyes of the public, which generates a populist revival premised on attacking DC elites or the “rich men north of Richmond.”

Did Juan Linz have Trump Derangement Syndrome?

Even though much of his theory predicts the shape of presidential conflict we see today, I don’t think we can just throw political science into the garbage bin for sounding a bit TDS:

1. Linz died in 2013, well before he could have possibly been accused as retrofitting a theory to explain Trump’s actions in the year 2025.

2. This particular article was released in the 90s and mostly limited itself to South American examples of institutional turmoil, such as that of Chile.

And this I think should lower our priors on the efficacy of the presidential system. The extra-constitutional abuse of power is incentivized by a flurry of government artifacts, set in place to restrict the executive due to legitimate fears at the time of kings and Caudillos.²

So you have an office with a plebiscitarian mandate, who is also restricted to a fixed term on a fixed election schedule, and half the time congress hates him while his die hard supporters demand their pound of flesh. The root of the issue here is that we have highly ideological parties which increases the temperature of the political room at the same time it locks the legislative body into stasis - unable to restrict abuses of the president while at the same time increasing the likelihood of those abuses happening.

Actually make America great again

For a current example—Tracewoodgrains, while talking about Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s book Abundance, said that the issue with the book is that Klein and Thompson aren’t making enough enemies.

This, I think, perfectly illustrates the issues quoted above. The abundance movement is in theory aimed at appealing to a popular will—the desire to construct helpful improvements across society, which can cut across narrow-interest groups and into popular reality.

At a minimum for abundance to succeed, the temperature of the room will need to decrease, because the ideas present in that book require congressional action to occur. In the future I hope we have political leaders that tone down rhetoric and political temperature in favor of national solidarity. Maybe then we can get back to building.

1. A mandate from a national popular election. The founders believed that electing the executive in this way would undercut narrow interest-group conflict typical of legislative forms in service of representing something of a popular will.

2. A Spanish military dictator.