The Development of a Republican “Monarchy”: The Presidential System
14.1.1 The Crisis of Democratic Assembly-Based Governments
The American and French placed power in the hands of democratic legislatures: the Congress, in the case of the United States of America, and the National Assembly in France.
Both regimes, however, generated a situation of political instability that degenerated into chaos, especially in the case of France. Thus, after a more or less brief stage—4 years in the case of the United States and 10 in that of France— governments in which the legislative branch held virtually all power gave way to others featuring a one-man executive wielding greater power and heading up the government. We will see in this chapter how the Americans developed a system of government which combined the republican form of state with a strong executive power via a system which would prove to be very different from what Napoleon established in France towards the same end—something which we will examine in next chapter.14.1.2 The Resurgence of Executive Power
In the case of the United States, this solution was reached by consensus through a Constitutional Convention yielding a new founding document: that ratified in 1789, which fortified the union of the states through the creation of a federal bond between them. Thus arose a “super state” assuming a number of the powers which had previously lain with each one of the 13 states. The major new development was that, in addition to the legislative branch (Congress) there appeared a powerful Executive in the form of a president with wide powers, elected every 4 years, a feature for which the new system was named: “presidential”. In a way this development represented a return to monarchy (by concentrating power in one man’s hands), following Bolingbroke’s idea of a “Patriot King”,[718] albeit in this case with an elected leader who governed a republic for a limited period of time.[719]
14.2