President and Prime Minister. The Difference?

[zombie1000]

What is the difference between a President of a counrty and a Prime Minister? I am thinking specifically of France here.

[raysparx]

You could also add dictator like Mr Blair appears to be at times,as far as I can see Democracy rules as long as you do what I want

[WoWo]

The president is the countries figure head, used to lead the country in international affairs as well as a focal point in the political affairs for the country. He doesn't get invloved in the day to day running of parliment.

The Prime Minister is the head of the government, responsible for making political and policy decisions.

The difficulty comes in that here in the UK the Prime Minister covers both roles, with the Queen doing her bit on offical non-political buisness.

[Gnisy]

Hm. I thought you call the governing leader 'President' in a country where there is no royalty/monarchy rule whereas the title of 'Prime Minister' only stands in countries under the rule of a King, Queen or anyone else royal.

[Drusilla1S]

The present French political system was established in 1958 and made the President more powerful than he had previously been and took power away from the National Assembly, which is like a parliament.

The President of France is directly elected by the people for a 7 year period.
The Senate is made up of just over 300 members and they are elected for a nine years period by an electoral college system.
The National Assembly which is where the day to day work is carried out is made up of 577 members. They are all directly elected by the people and serve for 5 years.

The President is the Head of State, like our Queen and appoints the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister is usually chosen from the most powerful political party in the National Assembly and it was expected he would be of the same party as the President. However, in 1986, the Socialist President Mitterand had to appoint Chirac as Prime Minister and Chirac watered down the socialist agenda considerably.

Presidents can get frustrated by this process, but are much more powerful, politically than the Head of State in the UK (Queen), who is merely a figurehead in our system of democracy. The French Prime Minister is not as powerful as a British Prime Minister, but is still a force to be reckoned with in the internal politics of France.

[shaneystar2]

Among other things, President today is a common title for the head of state of a republic, whether popularly elected, chosen by the legislature or a special electoral college. It is also often adopted by dictators.
Prime minister is a politician who serves as the head of the executive branch of government in a parliamentary system.
Having a monarchy has nothing to do with it. France and Germany have no monarchy for example but still have a president and a prime minister.

[jno]

a prime minister is the head of government; a president (or a king) is the head of state. The sharing-out of powers varies according to what country you're in. The US president has more power than the queen, which is only proper as he's elected by the public; there's really no prime minister there. Germany and France have prime ministers (chancellor, in the case of Germany); but Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, has rather wider powers than Dominique de Villepin, French prime minister, especially in foreign affairs - in France, President Chirac does most of the foreign work, and is mroe likely than Queen Elizabeth to sack his prime minister if he doesn't like the way he's doing the job. Each country makes its own rules.