Heads of state: Does a country actually need one?

The alternative to this model is allowing unlimited time for the group to arrive at a decision. This may work well enough in situations where indecision and drift are acceptable products of the political machinery. That's the situation most of the time.

However, in wartime, or when the state is under similar stresses that may be fatal to it, decision and action of any sort can be preferable to drift and inaction. The modern, western, post-industrial state may be durable, but it is not indestructible. Having one identifiable head of state acts as a failsafe mechanism for the preservation of the state during its intermittent crises. Between times you can fill the office with a particularly handsome breed of dog and still be OK.

All very well, but in many, possibly most, democratic countries the head of state does not have this kind of power. There is no sense in which, say, the Irish or German Presidents or the Dutch or British Queens would break a political deadlock by the application of their will.

Now, whether the Irish or Dutch state will ever come to grief as a result having a figurehead-of-state will depend entirely on chance circumstances. Its lack may never be a decisive factor. Or it could, conceivably. There's no way to predict.

That said, I think your post displays a worrying US-centricism - assuming that because the USA has an executive HOS then any country that doesn't is weird and more likely to fall into chaos.

getting back to this question, yes - in many countries heads of state play a part in government formation after elections, by nominating someone to try and form a government. this is not always the case. In my own country the president can refuse the premier's request for a parliamentary dissoluton if she thinks that someone else could form a government, and also has the option to refer bills to the supreme court if their constitutionality is in doubt.

That's not much, I grant you.

Nope. Strong heads of state can cause quite a lot of chaos, too. In fact, as I read history, governments guided by 'strong' heads of state have lead their nations into far worse straits far more often than 'weak' governments with shared and diffuse executive power.

I was answering the question as written, which was whether a strong head of state was ever needed. I was merely pointing out that in certain rare circumstances one can come in handy. I was rather explicit about the rarity of those circumstances, as I recall.

It's funny, I think in parliamentary systems, there is almost never the idea that the head of state would work like you imagine - as someone who steps in during a crisis to exercise emergency powers. Either the president is always very important (France, USA, all of South America) or they are are always almost purely symbolic (most or Europe). Maybe this is because presidents in parliamentary systems are typically auld lads who have been kicked upstairs after years of long service, and you don't want the senile old bats suddenly stepping in and messing things up. Or maybe the fear is that if you give the non-executive head of state emergency powers, they will just declare an emergency and lock everyone up. I think this went through Lech Walesa's point frequently in the early 1990s.

Aimless OTM re: tie-breaking power, or at least moral suasion (although the latter can depend on the individual). Italy would've been much better served in their recent elections if the president could've stepped in at a certain point and said, "The results are in, Prodi please form a government" thereby forcing Berlusconi to concede. (Perhaps this might've happened this way if the outoing president's term wasn't just about to end. Poor planning.)