Lecture 6

• Political Science: Session 6 focuses on executives and bureaucracies, with the lecturer being dr Ammar Maleki.
• The previous session, Session 5, covered constitutions, courts, legislatures, functions, size and structures of legislatures, bicameralism, and measuring parliamentary powers.
• The executive is the political institution executing laws and policies, and is the top slice of the administration, responsible for getting things done.
• In presidential systems, the executive is headed by a president and ministers, while in parliamentary systems it is headed by a prime minister and cabinet.
• A republic is a political system in which all members of the government are either elected or are appointed by elected officials, with no monarch.
• Constitutional monarchy is a state headed by a monarch, but where the monarch’s political powers are severely limited by constitutional rules, standing in contrast with a ruling or absolute monarch.
• In a parliamentary system, the head of state is the figurehead leader of a state, while in a presidential system the head of state is the leader of a government.
• There are three forms of the relation between the legislature and the executive: parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential.
• In a parliamentary system, legislative and executive are fully dependent, while in a presidential system legislative and executive are independent, and in a semi-presidential system legislative and executive are partly dependent.
• In a parliamentary system, the cabinet, headed by the prime minister, is accountable to the parliament and subject to a vote of no confidence.
• In a parliamentary system, if parties B and C and D and E form a coalition, it would be a grand coalition.
• In a parliamentary system, parties can form a coalition even if they lack a parliamentary majority.
• In a parliamentary system, the results of a parliamentary election are seen in a table with the parties' names and the number of seats won.
• The president in a semi-presidential system serves as the head of state and shares responsibility of being the head of government with the prime minister.
• The president in a semi-presidential system often has considerable power, especially for foreign affairs.
• In a parliamentary system, the prime minister, who is usually the leader of the largest party, is the head of government and the president is the head of state.
• In a semi-presidential system, the president is elected by the people and has a limited fixed term of office.
• In a parliamentary system, there are various types of coalition governments, including single-party majority, single-party minority, majority (or minimum winning) coalition, oversized (surplus majority) coalition, grand coalition, and minority coalition.
• In a parliamentary system, if parties A and C and D form a coalition, it would be a minority coalition.
• The president in a semi-presidential system appoints the prime minister.
• In a presidential system, the people directly elect the president, who serves as head of government as well as head of state, usually with a limited number of terms in office, and appoints ministers and steers the government.
• In a presidential system, the executive and the legislature have fixed term of offices, and there is less overlap in membership between the executive and the legislature.
• Use the most recent information of your countries, such as the size of legislation, current government, etc.
• Norris, P (2008) Driving democracy, Do Power-Sharing Institutions Work, 29-50, is an extra reading for the next session.
• Extra readings for the next session include Maleki, A & Hendriks, F (2016) Contestation and Participation: Operationalizing and Mapping Democratic Models for 80 Electoral Democracies, 1990 - 2009, Acta Politica.
• Compulsory readings for the next session include McCormick, Hague & Harrop & (2022) Comparative Government and Politics, Bloomsbury.
• Submit your 16 answers via Socrative (room: PoliticalScience) by Friday 10th @ 18:00.
• This assignment is worth 4% of the total grade, with a correct answer worth 0.24 point and correct references worth 0.32 point, so 14*0.24 + 2*0.32 = 4.
• Find the requested information in the next page table for both your course - country and your home - country.
• Multi-level government is the topic of the next session, with readings including Chapter 11 from McCormick, Hague & Harrop (12th), Chapter 7 from Norris (on CANVAS), an article on decentralization (on CANVAS), and summaries made by yourself.
• Keep a copy of your answers for yourself, as you may need them later.
• Mention references used for answering each question, using APA style referencing; WIKIPEDIA or SLIDES of the course are not references per se!
• Neither the president nor the legislature can ordinarily bring down the other in a presidential system.
• Weber’s definition of bureaucracy is “a structured hierarchy in which salaried officials reach national decisions by applying explicit rules to the facts before them”.
• Regime types and democratic models 18
• New Public Management (NPM) is a critique of Weber’s idea of bureaucracy, stating that “government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem”.
• The evolution of bureaucracy has moved from the Spoils system, where elected political leaders distribute administrative jobs to those supporting the winning candidate, to the Merit system (meritocracy), where public officials are recruited based on talent, and qualifications measured by competitive examinations.
• The use of Information Technology (ICT) in providing public services is known as e-government.
• Stages of e-government include Information, Interaction, Transaction, and Integration.
• Doyle, D., & Elgie, R reference for prespow.