Incompatibility implies a limitation of access to representative positions that has no bearing on an essential problem of the right to passive suffrage, but instead the possibility of a person who already holds one public position gaining access to another. This may be owing to a position held by the elected person beforehand or to a subsequent election or designation. In either of the two cases of originating or ensuing incompatibility, the problem lies in the difficulty or impossibility to perform effectively, with sufficient guarantees of dedication, impartiality or neutrality.
The extent of incompatibility varies from one country to the other, reflecting the peculiarities of integration among the various powers and institutional levels. The separation between the executive and legislative powers is obviously stronger in presidential systems, manifested in the radical incompatibility between the presidential and the parliamentary functions. Even belonging to the government and to either of the chambers, becomes incompatible, very much in contrast to the parliamentary systems. Within the legislative branch, the upper house of one part of two-chamber systems takes on a territorial representation, which means that their members can be representatives of the regional chambers at the same time. The general rule in the executive branch, though, is that it is incompatible to hold government posts on more than one level (municipality, regional and national government), but exceptions do exist, such as the possibility of accumulating these capacities in France.
When this kind of incompatibility is encountered, the normal consequence is the obligation to choose either one or the other within a certain period of time from when the incompatibility occurred.
