Presidentialism and emergency government

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511552021.012

11 - Presidentialism and emergency government

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 August 2009

William E Scheuerman

Edited by

Victor V. Ramraj

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Victor V. Ramraj: Affiliation:
National University of Singapore

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Summary

Liberal democracy comes in many different shapes and sizes. We find presidents and prime ministers, strong courts outfitted with constitutional review authority as well as weak courts deferential to the legislature, written and unwritten constitutions, bicameralism and unicameralism and a seemingly infinite variety of complex institutional mixtures and compounds. Does this matter for emergency government? Of course it does. Has the post-9/11 debate about emergency power paid proper attention to institutional diversity within contemporary liberal democracy? Probably not. Too many recent attempts to formulate convincing liberal democratic models of emergency law neglect the special challenges posed by presidentialism. Especially in presidential systems, the executive possesses strong incentives to exploit, perpetuate and sometimes even manufacture crises. Any plausible model of emergency government not only must acknowledge the fundamental institutional dynamics of presidentialism, but also needs to figure out how to counteract their potentially deleterious consequences for the rule of law (11.1). Unfortunately, the otherwise provocative ideas of two of the most creative contemporary theoreticians of emergency government, Oren Gross and David Dyzenhaus, fail on this score (11.2, 11.3). Their critical and at times unfairly dismissive responses to those scholars who have at least begun to tackle the challenges of presidentialism obscure some of the crucial questions at hand (11.4).

Let me confess at the outset to at least a certain amount of intellectual and political parochialism.

Type: Chapter
Information: Emergencies and the Limits of Legality , pp. 258 - 286

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552021.012 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2008

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