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In a PRI story about the criticism that has followed President Obama’s executive action to shield as many as 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, Dartmouth’s John Carey talks about executive actions in other parts of the world. Carey is a professor of government, chair of the Department of Government, and the John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences.

“If you look around the world at presidential systems—at places where there’s a directly elected president that exercises real authority, it’s actually more common ... for executives to make law by decree in most every democracy than in the U.S.,” Carey says.

What one thinks of such actions, says Carey, reflects “which side of the aisle you’re on, no matter what the country: If I like his policy I call it more democratic. If we agree with the decree it’s a democratic action. If we don’t agree with it, it’s a usurpation.”

Read the full story, published 11/21/14 by Public Radio International’s The World.