Matt Shugart (UCSD) posts about an interesting story from Romania, which he describes as a “Linzian nightmare.” The story is simple: in April, the Romanian parliament voted to impeach President Traian Băsescu by a ratio of 3-to-1; yesterday, a public referendum (w/ only 34% turnout) voted to reject the impeachement by a similar ratio (read the story on RFE/RL or Wikipedia).
This is, indeed, the kind of “nightmare” scenario that makes Juan Linz (Yale, emeritus) extremely skeptical of presidentialism (one of his most famous books is titled The Failure of Presidential Democracy
Keep in mind that Romania’s parliament is elected by a system of proportional representation (the most representative of electoral systems) in which 314 deputies are elected & another 18 are reserved for ethnic minorities.1 Part of the problem, of course, is that even though Băsescu won the presidency (by a slim 51-49% in a second round election),2 his party took less than 20% of the legislative seats.
So. Even in a formally “premier-presidential” system like Romania’s, we see an irresolvable tension between the two branches of government. More than likely, Băsescu will use his recent victory to launch sweeping constitutional reforms meant to strengthen his own position against his opponents. Sound familiar?
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1 Here is an overview of Romania’s electoral system (from IPU).
2 Băsescu placed second in the first round of presidential voting in December 2004, w/ only 34% of the vote; his challenger (Adrian Năstase) won 41% (ed.: for an additional note, see first comment below).
