A N A LY S I S DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS ON THE PERILS OF POPULAR PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS Fernando Casal Bértoa (University of Nottingham) December 2020 Preparing a constitutional overhaul in 2021, Armenia currently mulls the re­introduction of direct presidential elections. This is a bad idea. Popularly elected presidencies might not directly lead to the collapse of democracy, except if coupled with strong powers, but can certainly put the healthy functioning of a democracy in peril. More importantly, given the different logics characterizing the presidential and parliamentary arenas, popular presidential elections constitute an impediment to the development of a strong, stable and predictable party system, essential for the consolidation of democracy in the long run.