Types of executive

The legislature, executive and judiciary are the three organs of government. In a parliamentary system, the executive and legislature are interdependent: the legislature controls the executive, and the executive in turn guides the legislature.

What is the executive? In any organisation, someone must take decisions and see that they are carried out. In government, the executive is the branch responsible for implementing the laws and policies adopted by the legislature, and it is often involved in framing policy too.

• The political executive: heads of government and their ministers, who carry overall responsibility for government policy.
• The permanent executive: the civil servants responsible for day-to-day administration.
• Titles vary: some countries have presidents, others chancellors or prime ministers.

Types of executive:

• Presidential system: the president is both head of state and head of government, and is very powerful in theory and practice; the president is not accountable to the legislature in the parliamentary sense. Examples: the United States, Brazil and most of Latin America.
• Parliamentary system: the prime minister is head of government; a president or monarch is the nominal, mostly ceremonial, head of state; the prime minister and cabinet hold effective power. Examples: Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, Portugal; Canada is a parliamentary democracy with a constitutional monarch.
• Semi-presidential system: there is both a president and a prime minister, and the president may have significant day-to-day powers; the two may belong to the same party or to rival parties. Examples: France, Russia, Sri Lanka. In France the president appoints the prime minister and ministers but cannot dismiss them, as they are responsible to parliament.

So having a president does not by itself make a system presidential: the key question is where real executive power lies, and to whom it is accountable.

Example (new): in a country where the king opens parliament and signs laws but every decision comes from a cabinet that must keep parliament's support, the system is parliamentary despite the crown.