ABSTRACT
Critics of presidential systems typically concentrate on the possibility of such systems producing ‘minority presidents’, where the majority in the parliament does not reflect the political views of the president. This can then result in political deadlock. This assumption seems to be appropriate when describing the case of the Kim Dae-jung administration. However, recent scholarship (Cheibub 2002; Cheibub and Chernykh 2008; Cheibub and Limongi 2002; Cheibub et al. 2004; Elgie and McMenamin 2008; Kim 2008 b, c; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997) questions the extent to which deadlock is structural in the cases of minority governments or coalitions in presidential systems. In fact, the above-mentioned scholars contend that minority governments do not necessarily face deadlock and coalition governments are not necessarily unstable.
