Blog of the International Journal of Constitutional Law

Tag: Presidentialism

  • The Perils of Presidentialism (and the Lessons of the United States)

    —Miguel Schor, Professor of Law, Associate Director of the Drake University Constitutional Law Center, and the Class of 1977 Distinguished Scholar [Editor’s Note: This is one of our ICONnect columns. For more on our 2024 columnists, see here.] Presidentialism has a comparatively poor democratic track record.

  • “La Muerte Cruzada”: How Ecuador’s President Lasso ended an Impeachment Attempt by Decree

    –Adwaldo Lins Peixoto Neto, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Presidential impeachment is a democratic but turbulent instrument of removing presidents who committed misdeeds without breaking the political and democratic system. In Ecuador, this institution has now worked adequately under the last constitution, and the Constitution promulgated in 2008 set a new institutional design for impeachment. 

  • Introduction: Book Roundtable on Margit Cohn’s A Theory of the Executive Branch: Tension and Legality

    —Rivka Weill, Harry Radzyner Law School, IDC Professor Margit Cohn’s A Theory of the Executive Branch: Tension and Legality, published by Oxford University Press, could not have been timelier. It arrives on the bookshelves as democratic backsliding and the spread of Covid-19 redefine the relationship between the rule of law and executive power.

  • Old Wine in a New Bottle? A Response to Bruce Ackerman on Presidentialism in Brazil

    —Luiz Guilherme Arcaro Conci, Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo; João Vitor Cardoso, University of Chile; Estefânia Maria de Queiroz Barboza, Federal University of Paraná; Glauco Salomão Leite Correio, Federal University of Paraíba; and João Paulo Allain Teixeira, Federal University of Pernambuco In his analysis on the backsliding of Brazilian democracy, Professor Bruce Ackerman not only speculates about what sort of outcome is likely to succeed the Bolsonaro government, suggesting what kind of constitution drafting process the country should adopt in order to redeem itself, in reference to Chile, but also goes one step further by suggesting that Brazil should adopt parliamentarianism, in reference to the Spanish model.

  • Why Replacing the Brazilian Constitution Is Not a Good Idea: A Response to Professor Bruce Ackerman

    —Thomas da Rosa Bustamante, Emilio Peluso Neder Meyer, Marcelo Andrade Cattoni de Oliveira, Federal University of Minas Gerais; Jane Reis Gonçalves Pereira, Rio de Janeiro State University; Juliano Zaiden Benvindo and Cristiano Paixão, University of Brasília In a provocative piece that was first published in Portuguese and then in an English version on ICONnect, Professor Bruce Ackerman not only suggests the need for a new Brazilian constituent assembly, but also sets a date for it: 2023.

  • Navigating Constitution Building and Political Transitions in Sri Lanka

    —Dian A H Shah, National University Singapore Faculty of Law [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts.

  • On the Protests and Riots in Chile: Why Chile Should Modify its Presidential System

    —Sergio Verdugo, Centro de Justicia Constitucional, Universidad de Desarrollo (Chile)[1] There are many ways to approach the demands behind the protests in Chile, and I do not aim to replace or disprove those perspectives. Instead, this essay shows that part of the problem relates to the existence of an unresponsive government and that the explanation for that unresponsiveness can be partly understood by the political dynamics that resulted from a set of institutional arrangements passed by recent political reforms.

  • The Party Fragmentation Paradox in Brazil: A Shield Against Authoritarianism?

    —Juliano Zaiden Benvindo, University of Brasília and National Council for Scientific and Technological Development Brazil features possibly the most fragmented party system in the world. At this current legislative term, there are 25 parties with representation in the Lower House, and 16 in the Senate.

  • Constitutional Design and Post-Soviet Presidential Succession: The Kazakh Model?

    —William Partlett, Melbourne Law School [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts.

  • Indonesia’s Pesta Demokrasi in the Face of Regressing Constitutional Democracy

    —Dian A H Shah, National University Singapore Faculty of Law [Editor’s note: This is one of our biweekly I-CONnect columns. Columns, while scholarly in accordance with the tone of the blog and about the same length as a normal blog post, are a bit more “op-ed” in nature than standard posts.