In: Economics
GOVERNMENT: In recent years, presidents have expanded their power through increased use of executive orders, executive agreements, and other unilateral instruments. Is the United States becoming a “presidential republic”? Is this a development to be feared or welcomed?
Yes sure it will happen. A Federal republic is a federation of States with a republican form of government. We can define the same in another way that is a country that is goverened by elected representative and by an elected leader rather than by a king or queen.Just think about the postcolonial countries in Africa or Latin America with weak parliaments and rule of law, but strong presidential powers. Then we can find that the problem with most presidential republics is that they’re kind of dictatorships. So this usually happened because systems were actively designed for a ‘strong leader’ to lead the country to greatness. In fact, what often happened is that far from greedily protecting their own powers, politicians found it was pretty beneficial to give away those powers in exchange for things they want. The most important demerits of the presidential system is it appears to be autocratic because the President is empowered to act more or less in his discretion and will be irresponsible because the executive is made independent of the legislature. There is no effective means by which the responsibility for the exercise of power may be ensured.
This is something we should fear.