Presidential or parliamentary system: what hinds an ethnic conflict?

Ethnic conflict management includes a set of institutional and non-institutional features for preventing and resolving ethnic conflicts. Among the large number of measures of national states and other political actors, one can especially figure out - the optimal organization of government system, which can calm ethnically colored conflicts, up to violence, armed warfare and civil wars. This article discusses the problem of the relationship between forms of government, on the one hand, and ethnic conflicts, on the other. That causation received small attention in political science. The authors answer the question of which form of government - presidential or parliamentary - creates risks of ethnic conflict. The purpose of the article is to identify institutional elements that pose a threat to ethnic peace and harmony, as well as show the positive features of presidentialism and parliamentarism that to calm ethnic conflicts. The authors chose neoinstitutionalism as the main methodological approach, which determines the central place of political institutions in explaining the nature of ethnic conflicts. The authors' conclusions are based on a comparative analysis of the theoretical and empirical results of studies of ethnic conflicts. The authors conclude that the presidential system creates more favorable conditions for calming ethnic conflicts that the parliamentary system do. In order to “smooth out” the negative consequences of the presidential and parliamentary systems, national governments conduct institutional “experiments” to modernize classical institutional models. The article discusses atypical systems and atypical elements of systems that help solve problems inherent in a “pure” presidential and “pure” parliamentary system. The article also assesses empirical studies that providing research on causation between government and ethnic conflicts.

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