It seems that most national democratic government s are based on some sort of opposition that is supposed to “hold the government to account” ( or something of that nature). And in court trials we have the prosecution battling it out with the defence.
Are these actually effective and/ efficient methodologies?
Who TF else would do things that way? I was in the Navy for 30 years and civilian industry for 10 and if I imagine having a ship’s captain and an opposition captain, or a project manager and an opposition project manager, where the opposition captain and project manager holds the captain and project manager “to account” just seems utterly absurd, but we run our countries that way.
And in the legal context ISTM that this just encourages the opposing sides to dig in to the greatest extent possible so that they can be the winner rather than determining the truth. If the prosecutor (or DA for the US) wins, and wrongly convicts someone, that seems irrelevant and, in addition to locking up the wrong person, also leaves the perpetrator free.
I’ve tried explaining this to friends, and suggesting, in the government context, a government in which there are no parties, and the various representatives sole job is to represent their constituents, as well as to debate and ultimately vote on different bills. My friends’ responses usually suggest that I have no idea of what I am talking about.
The difficulty is that approach generally only works in relatively small bodies, like the governments of the NWT and Nunavut, or a lot of city and town councils.
The Founding Fathers for the US, for example, abhorred “factions” and were confident that a well-run republic wouldn’t need them. Well…
There’s two different things going on. One is just organisation. Once a deliberative body gets past a certain size, the members need to organize internally to get things done. And once that threshold is reached, you start having disagreements about how things are done. And then you have different groups form, with different thoughts on what should be done. And you’re well on your way to parties.
The other thing is that “representing constituents” is not a defined term. There can be very different ideas about what best serves one’s constituents ’ interests. Some representatives might say their constituents are best served by a light-hand on government regulations of businesses. Some representatives might say their constituents are best served by a government that regulates the labour and safety standards of businesses. Both would say, with all sincerity, that they think they are representing their constituents’ interests.
A representative who takes the first view will naturally gravitate to representatives in the assembly with that same view and will try to get legislation passed that supports that view.
And a representative who takes the second view who similarly gravitate to representatives who share that view and will try to get legislation passed to support that view.
And again, you will start to have parties form. One representative, by themself, cannot get legislation passed. It can only get passed by collective acton.
May I ask what you mean by “sole job is to represent their constituents”? That might help the debate.
On this one, it’s a bit different. The court system is designed to get people to settle, because a settlement is more likely to stick than an imposed order. Something like 95% of all civil actions settle. The pre-trial process includes mediations, it includes full discovery, it includes pre-trials; all designed to encourage the parties to find a way to settle their case.
But, the reality is that when things start in court, it’s because the parties are in dispute of some sort, and haven’t been able to settle it themselves. They only go to the cost of a lawyer when they truly haven’t been able to settle. The reason for separate lawyers is that representation of interest thing - each person needs to be confident that their position is being put forward properly.
But your captain is held to account, right? Through things like the chain of command, review boards, and court martials, in extreme cases? True, you want the captain to have clear orders. At the operational level, you wouldn’t want an opposition captain.
But how did the captain get those clear orders? Isn’t there a process higher up where the military commanders have to decide what orders to give? And isn’t that the result of discussions within the military system? And the orders in turn have to be consistent with the policy choices made by the government. And at those big picture levels, there may not be a clear policy choice.
“Should we send our troops to country Z on a peace-keeping mandate?” Will every one automatically agree with the government’s decision, whatever it is? Fat chance. And the people who disagree with it have to have the ability to question it, to express their opinions, through their elected representatives. It’s because on major policy issues there are no clear-cut answers, there will be different views expressed by the representatives. You can’t suppress dissent.
25 years ago I was in an Ottawa community organization and spent some time in the then-Regional Headquarters (at the time there were two levels of municipal government - the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton (RMOC) and then the various city halls (eg Ottawa, Nepean, Gloucester etc pre-amalgamation). RMOC had a “Regional Chair” (there was no mayor for RMOC) and a bunch of Regional Councillors. I believe their role was to look after the interests of their constituents such as “regional” roads, bike lanes and other facilities.
And in session, the Regional Chair would chair the sessions and preside over debates and votes.
Except that there isn’t suppression of dissent. The difference is that my elected representative can vote as he or she thinks is most appropriate based on his or her understanding of constituent needs or wants, instead of voting the way Justin, Jagmeet, or Jason tells them to.
Right now the situation IMO isn’t as bad as it could be because AFAIC the Tories are becoming mini-me Republicans so there’s basically no choice anyway; I’ll vote liberal or NDP regardless.
The reason for influencing or prescribing the votes of representatives in your party is to facilitate cooperation between factions. If there is no majority for doing anything at all, the government grinds to a halt, and one way to get past that is to vote against your personal preference in one area, because of a deal to get a higher priority for you (or more likely your party) passed with the help of representatives prioritizing that other issue.
Do you think it would disappear if parties lost some power over their representatives, rather than just becoming more chaotic and individualized?
Ok, setting aside labels (parliamentary vs congressional vs whatever) for a moment, we would vote for our PM (or whatever you want to call him or her) and for your respective MP (or again whatever you want to call him or her). Still have the debates and/or discussion, but ditch the BS theatre, and then have a vote.
Maybe it would be unworkable; I can’t say obviously, but our current system seems cumbersome and inefficient.
no, the labels are important. Right now, we don’t vote directly for the PM, only for MPs. If we go to a system of directly elected PM and individual MPs, that is the American system, with little to no party discipline to get things through.
From my perspective, that would mean that looking out for the best interests of constituents would mean that every MP would need something in the budget specifically for their riding, or they wouldn’t vote for it. Fiscal discipline becomes impossible. One of the strengths of a parliamentary system is that if there is political will (as there was under Chretien and Martin), there can be strong fiscal discipline. Without party discipline, it becomes much, much more difficult, as each rep can vote for their own fiscal policies.
But getting back to your question about the need for an institutional basis to hold government to account, yes, it is fundamental. What is happening now in Russia is the counter-point - that is what happens when there is no accountability, both through elections (macro) and accountability to another branch of government (micro), plus the criticism of a free press. You get terrible decision-making, coupled with institutional corruption, starting at the highest level and working its way down through the system.
The institutional mechanisms for accountability in government have a counterpart in the market. There, the accountability isn’t direct, but by means of economic competition. Having two stores operating in the market is better than one, because the pressure that the competitors put on each other creates efficiencies and service. The Opposition in a parliamentary system plays much the same role, only in their case, they want to take over the government. It’s a competitive check on the existing government
But you are, if you’re suggesting that the PM is chosen by vote. If there is no party discipline, that is the only way to choose your executive. Party discipline is what makes a parliamentary system work.
Perhaps this is where you’re going off the road. The larger and higher the governmental body is, the larger and more conceptual the issues they must tackle are. They deal with fundamental rights and the construction of a safe, workable society more than they do roads. Look up the issues the U.S. Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of Canada deal with. They are very far from the basic nuts and bolts that you are thinking of.
Even those need to be placed in a larger context. How do you determine the balance between construction and maintenance? How do you determine who pays for the system? What other costs and needs must be considered? Do you make these decisions ab initio each time or lay them into a coherent theory of government?
Government is monumentally complex. In democratic societies, the courts are not there to “hold the government to account”, the people are through elections. In U.S. history, a furious debate has waged since the founders: are the representatives there to decide upon issues to the best of their understanding and consideration or are they there to vote the way they determine that the majority of their constituents want? No answer is possible, of course, and any individual might waver between the two over the course of a term. Lately, in the U.S. and elsewhere, most representatives slavishly follow the overall determination of a party. Most commentators tend to deplore this, but it’s a logical outcome when constituents and parties converge on a set of common opinions of how the system should function.
So does every representative write their own proposed budget bill? If not, then wouldn’t groups of like-minded representatives work together to create budget bills (and other bills)? And wouldn’t we call those “political parties”?
The Canadian party system is quite different from the US party system. Just condemning them all as “parties” doesn’t really distinguish their strengths and weaknesses. the American system is much closer to what you seem to be describing, in that their is very weak party discipline there, and individual members are much more likely to do their own thing, historically (we don’t know yet if the current partisanship is a permanent change to their processes).
That is a feature, not a bug. You also have a neutral judge or jury who makes the final decision or “determines the truth” not the advocates. And when you have both sides fighting hard to give their very best argument for their side, the neutral decision maker can decide who has the better of it.
Thanks for all the responses and this has been really interesting food for thought, especially bringing to light things that I obviously didn’t consider.