The Parliamentary Detour: Agenda 21 in a presidential and parliamentary context

Abstract

In the debate between adversaries of either presidential or parliamentary democracies, many possible theories are given to explain the relative shorter lifespan of presidential democracies. Two of those variables, the ‘veto-player composition’ by George Tsebelis and the ‘chain of delegation’ by Kaare Strøm, are used in this thesis for an in-depth case study of the perils and virtues of either systems in the field of (sustainable) policymaking. The United States and Netherlands are compared in their implementation of the United Nations sustainability action-plan Agenda 21. The results yield the observation that the presidential system (United States) had to take a ‘parliamentary detour’ to facilitate policy congruence and an adequate implementation.