Parliamentary vs Presidential System: How They Differ

In a presidential system, the head of government, usually called the president, is elected separately from the legislature for a fixed term and cannot be removed by it except in extraordinary cases. In a parliamentary system, the head of government, usually a prime minister, holds office because they command the support of parliament and can be removed by it at any time through a vote of no confidence. The United States is the classic presidential system, the United Kingdom the classic parliamentary one, and France combines features of both.

The parliamentary system

In a parliamentary system the executive depends on the confidence of the legislature. The prime minister's authority comes from being able to command a majority in parliament, and the government is accountable to it.

• Choosing the head of government. Practice varies. In the UK, Canada, India and Australia, the head of state appoints as prime minister the person most likely to have the support of a majority. In Japan and Ireland, parliament chooses the nominee and the head of state appoints them. Some countries also require a formal confidence vote within a set time.
• Removing the head of government. Parliament can remove a government through a vote of no confidence. In the UK model, a governing party can also replace its leader between elections, and the new leader becomes prime minister without a general election.
• Head of state. The head of state is usually a separate, largely ceremonial figure: a monarch, as in the UK, or a president chosen by popular vote, by parliament or by an electoral college, as in Germany and Italy.

The political scientist Arend Lijphart distinguished a Westminster model, with adversarial debate and a prime minister well above other ministers, as in the UK, Canada and India, from a consensus model, with more proportional elections and stronger committees, as in Germany and Spain.

The presidential system

In a presidential system the executive draws its authority from a source separate from the legislature. The president is often both head of state and head of government, is elected directly or indirectly, and serves a fixed term. Typical powers include vetoing legislation, granting pardons, directing foreign policy, commanding the armed forces and appointing executive officials.

The United States

The US developed the first true presidential system at the Constitutional Convention of 1787.

• The president is elected through the Electoral College for a four-year term. Since the Twenty-second Amendment was ratified in 1951, no one can be elected to the office more than twice.
• The Constitution bars executive officers, including the president, from sitting in Congress at the same time.
• Congress cannot remove a president simply because it disagrees with them. Removal requires impeachment by a simple majority of the House of Representatives, on grounds of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors", followed by conviction by two-thirds of senators present. Three presidents have been impeached, but none has been convicted by the Senate.

Presidential systems spread to Latin America after independence from Spain in the 1810s and 1820s, and are also found in countries such as South Korea and Indonesia.

France's semi-presidential system

A semi-presidential system has both a popularly elected president serving a fixed term and a prime minister and cabinet who answer to parliament. The French Fifth Republic is the best-known example.

• The president has been directly elected since a referendum in 1962, using two rounds of voting if no candidate wins a majority in the first.
• A referendum in 2000 shortened the term from seven years to five, first applied in 2002. Since a 2008 reform, no president can serve more than two consecutive terms.
• The president appoints the prime minister and can dissolve the National Assembly, though not again within a year of the election that follows a dissolution.
• The National Assembly alone can dismiss the prime minister's government.
• The president can be removed only through a special impeachment procedure before a High Court drawn from both houses of Parliament.

When the president and the Assembly majority come from opposing sides, the president must work with a prime minister from the other camp, an arrangement known as cohabitation. It first happened after the 1986 parliamentary election. Shortening the presidential term in 2000 made cohabitation less likely.

Choosing and removing the leader: side by side

	United Kingdom (parliamentary)	United States (presidential)	France (semi-presidential)
Head of state	Monarch	President	President
Head of government	Prime minister	President	Prime minister, appointed by the president
How the leader is chosen	Appointed as the person able to command the Commons	Elected through the Electoral College for four years	President directly elected for five years
Can the legislature remove the government?	Yes, by a vote of no confidence	No, only impeachment and conviction of the president	Yes, the Assembly can dismiss the government; not the president
Fixed term	No; a Parliament lasts at most five years	Four years; at most two elected terms	Five years for the president; at most two consecutive terms

The arguments for and against each

Criticisms of presidential systems

The best-known critique is Juan Linz's essay "The Perils of Presidentialism", published in the Journal of Democracy in 1990. Linz argued that presidential elections are winner-takes-all contests that raise the stakes, that fixed terms make the system rigid because an unpopular or failing president cannot easily be replaced, and that conflict between president and legislature can lead to deadlock and, in some cases, to democratic breakdown. Other scholars, such as Fred Riggs, argued that presidential systems have often slid into authoritarian rule.

The case for presidential systems

Defenders answer that a single elected executive makes responsibility clear, as the American politician James Wilson argued. Presidential government avoids the cabinet crises that can bring down parliamentary governments, a president can act quickly in an emergency without first securing a parliamentary majority, the direct election gives the president a broad mandate, and the separation of powers lets each branch check the other. Our explainer on the separation of powers covers that principle.

The case for parliamentary systems

Walter Bagehot, in The English Constitution (1867), praised parliamentary government for its serious debate and for allowing a change of government without waiting for an election. R. Kent Weaver has argued that parliamentary systems can change policy quickly when there is a stable majority, because there are fewer checks to overcome. Supporters also say that responsibility is clearer, since a government cannot shift blame onto a separately elected legislature.

Criticisms of parliamentary systems

Critics say a government with a large majority can become very powerful, with few limits between elections. Rapid changes of government can also mean policies are reversed back and forth. Voters have no direct say over who becomes head of government, and in some countries governing parties can choose the timing of elections to suit themselves. The political scientist Giovanni Sartori pointed to the "assembly government" of France's Third and Fourth Republics, under which, he argued, governing became close to impossible.

Neither family of systems is automatically more democratic. Both are used by long-established democracies, and much depends on the electoral system, the party system and the wider constitution.