Random Thoughts: Directly-Elected Executives Vs. Legislatures?

The US Senate in all its impotent glory.

While commenting on one of Warren Kinsella's older articles
(comment has not appeared as of this writing due either to
connection failure or queuing) I pointed out that when a
country has a directly-elected executive the executive tends to
win in any disputes it has with the legislature. Thinking on this
I realize that while there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence
to support this position I haven't seen a published study on the
matter. Sure, directly-elected presidents have been shown to
​lower voter turn out for legislative elections and be less
willing to consult the electorate than either indirectly-elected
presidents or constitutional monarchs but do they cause
other harmful effects? Is an executive that has an advantage in
any fight with its legislature a bad thing?

And there is an advantage. The US President tends to be vastly more popular than Congress which gives them an
advantage in public disputes. My question is whether this imbalance in public goodwill is cause for concern. Well, cause
for concern for other countries. While our politicians actually have comparable levels of public goodwill to their US
counterparts (ie little) they don't have a directly-elected head of state to put the squeeze to them. They instead have an
executive appointed by the Crown made up of their peers which if it misbehaves ​badly enough can be tossed out. The
Prorogation Crisis illustrates this point. Harper had to work (lie) quite a bit to get the public on his side and he still had to
remove the contentious proposals from the budget bill to get it passed. I wonder if legislatures that have to deal with
directly-elected presidents can do as well. 

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