대통령제 민주주의 위기의 조건: 정치적 해결경로와 제도적 견제 능력

초록

When and under what conditions does a president attempt to challenge the constitutional order? Existing discourses on the incompatibility between the presidentialism and democracy broadly fall into two positions: one that views the problem as excessively concentrated presidential power, and another that sees the problem as the president's inherent structural vulnerability. These two opposing diagnoses fail to explain why democracy deteriorates at specific points in time, or why not all vulnerable presidents attempt to undermine democracy. As an attempt to bridge the gap between these conflicting causal analyses and theoretical gaps in existing research, this study conducts a two-dimensional cross-analysis between the variables of political resolution pathways and expectations regarding institutional checks' effectiveness. The selective environment for the Korean presidential system created by the varying combinations of these two variables is suitable for theoretical analysis concerning the incompatibility between the presidential system and democracy, not as an exceptional case but as a general one. This paper argues that as long as expectations that institutional checks on the president will function are maintained, political crises do not transform into systemic crises surrounding the constitutional order. Conversely, attempts to suspend the constitutional order can only emerge when the political resolution pathway closes and expectations regarding the functioning of checks become shaken.

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