Imperial Presidency
Imperiale presidential ( English imperial presidency ) referred to in the political science a shift of legislative powers toward the executive in presidential democracies .
According to Arthur M. Schlesinger, there is an imperial presidency if the system of checks and balances is out of whack , in that the president - especially in the area of war powers - has illegally appropriated powers of the legislature, decisions of the executive are increasingly secret and without transparency and emergency laws are used against the political opposition and the people.
Schlesinger first used the term in 1973 in a book about the Imperial Presidency in connection with US Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon . The role of US President George W. Bush in foreign and domestic policy after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 is also seen by political scientists as that of an imperial president. Critics counter that the negative term is inappropriate here because the president is only exhausting his constitutional rights. A usurpation of legislative rights - according to Schlesinger an elementary characteristic of an imperial presidency - does not take place.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Peter Rudolf , Imperial Illusions. American foreign policy under George W. Bush , Baden-Baden: 2007, p. 21 f.
- ↑ Peter Lösche, Power and Powerlessness of the Executive, Political System of the USA, Information on Political Education (No. 283), Federal Center for Political Education: Bonn, 2004.
- ↑ See Rudolf, 2007.
- ↑ See e.g. B. Söhnke Schreyer, Back to the Imperial Presidency? - Political parties, President and Congress Post 9/11 , Frankfurt a. M .: ZENAF work and research report 3/2003, p. 19 ff.