Week 7 — Political Institutions I: Legislatures & Executives

Why this matters

A business major watching a company board replace its chief executive and a neighbor wondering why one city council can remove its mayor and the next cannot are both asking how leaders are chosen and how they can be removed.

In plain language

This week is about the machinery of government: who makes the laws, who carries them out, and how the two are wired together. The legislature (the elected assembly that makes the laws) can have one chamber or two, and you will read a real count of how many countries choose each. The executive (the people who carry the laws out) can split its jobs between two offices or hold them in one. You will meet three designs, parliamentary (the leader comes out of the legislature), presidential (the leader is elected separately), and semi-presidential (a mix of both), and one question that tells them apart: how would a failing government be removed? You will not be told which design is best; you will be shown how to compare them fairly.

• Already covered: Week 5 sorted regime types; Week 6 asked what constitutions do.
• This week: legislatures, executives, head of state versus head of government, and three designs.
• How they connect: a constitution creates the machinery; this week you see two ways to wire it.
• Where we're going next: Week 8, Midterm Review & Exam.

Focus

How is a government born, how does it work, and how does it fall?

By the end of this module, you should be able to:

• [ ] name a legislature's three jobs and read the parliament count
• [ ] tell the head of state from the head of government, by office
• [ ] classify a constitution with the removal test
• [ ] state Linz's worries and the replies without picking a winner

To-do

Plan your week

1. Read Chapter 7 (45 minutes), then the lecture and slides.
2. Do the lecture tutorial (60–90 minutes) and practice set (20 minutes).
3. Do the Political Analysis Workshop (90 minutes), the discussion, and the assignment.
4. Take the quiz.

This week's checkpoint: sort one made-up constitution as parliamentary, presidential, or semi-presidential by asking how its government would fall.

You've got this

Take it in order, and ask your instructor early.

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