Comparison of American, French and Russian presidencies

Résumé du document

Presidential regimes are not the same through the world. People give their presidents certain powers but also enable other body to control or remove the president in case of need through a constitution and by the way of elections. We discuss about three presidential regimes in this document: American, French and Russian. The president is the head of the executive vested with some special powers. However, their roles are also subject to certain national variations. In addition to the official powers and the written ones, we do not have to forget the implied ones or the power that being president gives one in those countries. We often tend to think that the farther East we go, the less democracy we meet. Does this imply that bigger powers are given to the presidents in the East? We analyze these aspects in this document.

Extraits

[...] The French president is very powerful in theory but quiet reluctant to use all of the powers because of de Gaulle model but also because of public opinion. This leads us to our second part. We indeed explained that those three presidential regimes give a lot of powers to the heads of executive but what about the check and balance existing in those regimes? USA, France and Russia are democracies and so elect their presidents. But Constitutions also give power to other bodies in order to control the presidents. [...]

[...] Ashford, Manchester University Press Ability of the president to withhold information from the public, Congress and the courts in matters of national security. [...]

[...] Thanks to his personality, he designed a presidential function tailor-made for him and his current circumstances; he also uses all the powers at his disposal. Since him, no French president uses powers as he did. However, being president is embodying the State and for that, he is free of constraint regarding responsibility. Indeed, every act signed by the French president should be counter signed by the Prime Minister or another minister. He is virtually independent of other branches of the government. [...]

[...] But presidents also share power with their relatives even if they have no official status. In the French presidency, relatives aren't apparent. They mainly belong to the business area and changes with the presidential change. In USA, the relatives are known as the presidential campaign gets long and asks for more money but are more or less the same as in France. In Russia however, relatives belong to the oligarchy, are close to the president and their economic interests appears in politic strategy since Yelstin's presidency. [...]

[...] But, between those persons, two legs are moving: removal from the third economist which criticized Putin way to conduct Russian economy and which was simply erased from the tape but not in total. So powers of Russian president go that deep in relation with media. We talked about the theoretical powers of the presidents then about their counter powers but what about the examples of abuses of power and sanctions? As far as US are concerned, the most known abuse of power is the try to use executive privilege[1] by Nixon during Watergate scandal. He tried to retain information from the Court in order to avoid troubles. [...]