… tend toward dictatorship. Discuss.
The imminent dispute between George Bush and Congress over the funding of the Iraq war couldn’t happen in a parliamentary system.
If in such a system the head of government was pursuing a war that the majority in the legislature did not support, either side would call a vote of (no) confidence. The head of government would lose the vote, and the governing party would either find a new leader who could command a majority in parliament by dumping the war, or call an election and there’d be a new leader with a similar mandate 4 weeks later.
1789 and all that (Best of Both Worlds)
Refresher course from the UNDP: Governing Systems and Executive-Legislative Relations (Presidential, Parliamentary and Hybrid Systems)
Wikipedia: Presidential system
Related:
Why have the members of Congress been so timorous in the face of the steady encroachment on their constitutional power by the executive branch? Conversations with many people in or close to Congress produced several reasons. Most members of Congress don’t think in broad constitutional terms; their chief preoccupations are raising money and getting reelected.
Power Grab (New York Review of Books)