Abstract
We sketch the long-standing debate about the relative effect of presidential and parliamentary institutions on democratic performance. We identify the psychological mechanisms that underpin the argument that presidentialism is likely to be perilous for democratic performance, focusing on the likelihood of conflict between the president and the legislature under presidentialism. We outline the laboratory experiment that tests to see whether there is evidence to support the psychological mechanisms associated with the perils of presidentialism. We present the basic results of the experiment and briefly discuss their implications for both the pragmatic institutionalist account that we are presenting in this book and the more specific debate about the supposed perils of presidentialism.
David Doyle, Oxford University, Oxford, UK
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The experiment was held at the CESS Lab at Nuffield College Oxford. The experiment received ethical approval from the Social Sciences and Humanities Inter-divisional Research Ethics Committee (IDREC) [CUREC1A, ref. no. R46721/RE001]. The experiment was supported by a grant from the John Fell Fund at Oxford University (Project 133/012).
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Elgie, R. (2018). The Psychological Effects of Presidential Institutions: written by David Doyle and Robert Elgie. In: Political Leadership. Palgrave Studies in Political Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34622-3_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-34622-3_3
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