The Controversial Features Of Presidential Electoral Systems

The conventional literature has often conflated the features of presidential elections with presidential electoral systems. Often times, these features are explained in the margins of plurality and runoff systems or at times one (or few) electoral feature is picked to explain how presidential systems operate generally. For example, Juan Linz, Arend Lijphart and Alfred Stepan draw attention on the zero-sum game and candidate-driven features of presidential elections to suggest that presidential systems are unfit for coalition building. Donald Horowitz and others have put emphasis on presidential elections being one-seat elections and prone to pre-electoral coalitions to suggest that presidential systems are conducive to coalition building. This article suggests that they are all indeed features of presidential elections but because they operate differently, none of these features alone can explain the conduciveness (or lack thereof) of presidential systems to coalition building. Therefore, to understand how they influence coalition building in a

Examining the presidential electoral features, this article argues that they do not have unidirectional impacts on coalition building: some electoral features incentivize the formation of cross-ethnic coalitions, others hinder their institutionalization. Therefore, while some function as constructive features of presidential elections, others are obstructive to coalition building. Revealing the multidirectional impacts of presidential electoral features, this article explains why cross-ethnic coalitions have had glamorous starts, but followed by short lives in Afghanistan. Although initially popular and promising, these coalitions grow weak and prone to dissolution. As is detailed later, most coalitions do not endure beyond a single presidential