Congress, President, and Parties: Shifting Roles

Abstract

In order to clarify the changing relationship between president and Congress, we need to account for the changing involvement over time by the political parties. Accordingly, these themes are here intermingled in an exploration of political development from the country’s founding up to the present. Besides recounting an informative tale, this overview reveals what factors have set the stage for the shifting power equilibrium that has emerged. I then compare the situation in the United States with that in presidential Latin America and in parliamentary Europe. I find that the division of essential power resources between the executive and the legislative branches is indeed peculiar to the United States. Furthermore, the nature of the party system impacts on this balance. In the end, hence, the foundation of the special US party system becomes an object of analysis.