Presidents and Prime Ministers

Организация:  American Enterprise Institute, Studies in Political and Social Processes

Издательство:  American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research

ISBN: 0-8447-3386-5

Presidents and Prime ministers, edited by Richard Rose and Ezra N. Suleiman, examines the ways in which eight major Western nations have organized political leadership. Two have a President as chief executive (the USA and France); five have a Prime Minister (Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Norway); and one a dictator (Franco Spain).

In a concluding essay on the significance of the European experience for Americans, Rose argues that the United Sates is distinctive in having an “unbalanced” system, in which politics (that is, the voicing of demands for particular policies) is overly strong in relation to government (that I, the capacity to reconcile conflicting demands and to act authoritatively on major collective problems). The results is that the United States is less able to cope with major collective decisions concerning national security, and energy than are other countries.