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The electoral fun presently going on over in the UK has made me wonder: what if the United States had been a parliamentary republic all of these years instead of adopting the presidential system? That is, having “a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch are drawn from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined,” to quote yon Wikipedia. The President would merely be the head of state, usually a rather ceremonial position, while the Prime Minister, Premier or Chancellor is one who actually runs the government. How would this have effected things over the course of US history? For example, western expansion, the era leading up to the Civil War, tariffs and trade, etc.?