Correcting Arend Lijphart’s Hybrid VI: the case of Guyana

ABSTRACT

In Patterns of Democracy (Second Edition, Yale University Press, 2012), Arend Lijphart offered eight forms of government-one parliamentary, one presidential and six possible hybrids. He deemed Types IV and VI problematic because a legislative vote of no confidence in the popularly elected executive would be seen as defiance of the popular will. He felt that these two would be acceptable if the no-confidence motion permitted the executive to dissolve the legislature. In 1980, Guyana created an executive presidency elected directly by the population and since 2000 removable by a parliamentary vote of no confidence which now satisfies Lijphart's Hybrid VI.

KEYWORDS:

• Arend Lijphart
• constitutional amendment
• executive presidency
• Guyana
• Hybrid systems of government
• parliamentary no confidence

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge the feedback that I received from members of the audience when I presented this article as a paper at the Fourteenth Workshop of Parliamentary Scholars and Parliamentarians at Wroxton College, Wroxton, Near Banbury, Oxfordshire on 27th July 2019.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Hamid Ghany is the current Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies, The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago and a former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the same campus.

Notes

1 Jud. Commonwealth (Latimer House) Principles on the Three Branches of Government, pp. 18–19. Published by the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, the Commonwealth Legal Education Association, the Commonwealth Magistrates’ Association and the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association, February 2009.

2 Laws of Guyana, Act No. 17 of 2000, s. 5.

3 Laws of Guyana, Act No. 2 of 1980.

4 Laws of Guyana, Act No. 2 of 1980, s. 106.

5 Laws of Guyana, Act No. 2 of 1980, s. 70.

6 Joint Press Statement from APNU and AFC – ‘Cummingsburg Accord’, Georgetown, Guyana, 15th February, 2015.

7 Parliament of Guyana, Official Report, Proceedings and Debates of the National Assembly, Thursday 3rd January, 2019, pp. 4–7.

8 [2019] CCJ 10 (AJ).

9 [2019] CCJ 14 (AJ).

10 [2019] CCJ 10 (AJ), para. 27.

11 Ibid., para. 41.

12 Laws of Guyana, Act No. 22 of 2007, s. 2.

13 [2019] CCJ 10 (AJ), paras 50 and 51.

14 [2019] CCJ 14 (AJ), paras. 5, 6 and 7.