Or, as in NZ under the MMP form of proportional representation, vote for our own representative (electorate MP - 65 seats are determined this way) and vote for a party, contributing to that party’s overall percentage of the house (the remaining 55 seats are party % based, and given to the party’s publically published “List MP” hopefuls).
Yes, here at least there is an assumption that the “Leader” of party X will end up as PM should party X end up as the government… I suppose that a party could run a bait and switch, but I don’t think the electorate would thank them for it.
On the question of how does a government lose it’s majority there are essentially two ways. Firstly they were not an absolute majority in their own right to begin with i.e. it was a coalition, or a minority government and the strings that held the government together get unravelled.
The other mechanism is by-elections. During the 4 year term of a parliament the numbers can change. It’s usually marginal in Australia, it can involve greater numbers in the UK. Australia’s Federal parliament is 150 seats, the UK it’s 650.
When a parliamentarian resigns or dies there is (usually) an election to replace them. Sometimes when the instance is close to a general election the by-election is not held.* (Also in our upper houses (Senate, State Legislative Councils etc) where the voting is proportional across the state the resignation creates a casual vacancy which is filled by a nominee of the same political party.)
*
In the by-election the seat may change party. Most by-elections are considered an opportunity for a protest vote against the government. On average there’s be a swing of 3-5%. Bigger than that often sets the hounds running.
The loss of a few by-elections can either remove a governments majority or weaken a coalition agreement.
In the current Australian government is hung. The last Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is the Foreign Minister (because that keeps him out of the country as much as possible). There is continual white anting and leaking on Rudd’s part against the Gillard leadership group. There is a rationale behind this sour grapes in that Gillard’s polling is now worse than Rudd’s when they deposed him.
If Gillard had a working majority, she’d simply sack him. If he resigned que sera, sera. But given the numbers, if Rudd resigned Labor would lose the by-election resoundingly and the numbers would tip to a no confidence motion being sustainable.
Under the rules of the House of Commons in Canada, there is a set number of formal motions of non-confidence that the Opposition can bring in any particular session.
However, there are three other things which are motions of non-confidence in practice, although they are not called that:
The motion on the Speech from the Throne - although the Gov Gen gives the Speech, it is prepared by the government of the day and sets out their legislative agenda for the upcoming session. If the Opposition defeats the motion to accept the Throne Speech, that’s a mark that the gov’t doesn’t have the confidence of the Commons, because the Commons has rejected their legislative agenda.
Supply (money bills). The most basic requirement of the government is to keep the government running, and that takes money. If the government loses a vote on a money bill (a bill to tax, or to appropriate money for a particular purpose, whether the general budget or more specific purposes), that’s usually considered a lack of confidence.
Matters declared to be a matter of confidence by the PM - even if a bill isn’t a money bill, the PM may declare that it is so crucial to his government’s policies that all of the gov’t MPs have to support it. If that type of bill fails to pass, it’s a mark of non-confidence.
Just to clarify this slightly, the government must hold the confidence of the House. The Prime Minister is very much the head of that government — but s/he can be replaced (by resigning, or by his/her party appointing a new leader) without confidence being lost.
As a result of the previous point, it is (I think around the world) more common for a ruling party to sack their leader, not have an election. In Canada, there’s a bit of an expectation that the new prime minister should call an election soon, but that’s not In The Rules or anything.
10 Prime Ministers were defeated at a general election.
21 changes of Prime Minister without an election.
5 PMs lost the confidence of their own party and were deposed without an election.
6 PMs lost no-confidence motions (Deakin twice) though none since WWII
Of the others 6 retired, 3 died and Gough got the boot by the GG.
The office of Prime Minister is an example of how government in Britain operates according to established convention as much as actual written rules. Despite the PM being unquestionably the de facto political leader of the country, there is surprisingly little mention of the office of PM in British law, or political parties for that matter. From the point of view of the law, Parliament is to a large extent just a bunch of MPs. How they organise themselves is their business.
This is a critical point. The unwritten conventions form a major underpinning of how this works. The Australian constitution does not mention the office of Prime Minister, and indeed the executive authority is vested in the GG, who appoints ministers to perform it. There is only one small place where political parties are mentioned (see below). Again, by convention, the GG appoints ministers on the advice of the PM. But the constitution gives him power to appoint anyone at all. (These people need to become members of the parliament within three months, but nothing in principle stops a GG from appointing a new set of otherwise unelected people. However the only way money to run the government can be allocated is via the parliament, so a dictatorship isn’t actually viable.)
The actual transfer of power between Prime Ministers is interesting. The GG will take the advice of the incumbent PM. Even if that PM has “lost” an election, they still have the position, and will formally advise the GG to call on the leader of the winning party to form a government. This is convention. In the last Australian and UK elections this would have been fun, as the actual outcome of the alignment of the minor parties was not known for some time.
Convention of course does not have force of law, but in some ways is actually more powerful. And some things are best left unwritten. One time a convention was breached was the replacement of a senator. Convention was that a senator be replaced by a person from the same party. However the state Premier (the equivalent of state governor) of Queensland decided to appoint a mate from his party instead. The amendment to the constitution to stop this is wordy, messy, and has had (probably) unintended consequences.
In fact, there is no mention at all of the PM in the Canadian constitutional, so far as I am aware. This does create some issues, in that the Supreme Court cannot rule on issues of convention, and the Governor General lacks the legitimacy to be a sufficient referee when Parliament gets dysfunctional. But to reiterate my point, you can have a change of prime minister without it bringing up any confidence issues (specifically, by the ruling party appointing/electing/etc. a new leader), because the government itself has not lost confidence.
IANAL, but I was under the impression that appropriate court could rule on convention, in so far as they can rule on almost anything - making law as they do so. However they may well be very reluctant to do so - especially from the making law bit. Historically courts have ruled that time and convention have extinguished obsolete law, and have ruled that time and convention have established new law. In the face of clear deadlock over convention the courts would probably have no choice but to rule. But they would also probably work hard to try to avoid needing to do so.
Does a Prime Minister have individual powers that derive from his office? Or is his power solely from his political following?
I remember, for example, that during World War II, Churchill did not have the same power as Commander-in-Chief that Roosevelt had. And it’s the monarch (or Governor General), not the Prime Minister, who has the power to issue pardons.
I don’t know the details, but my guess is that the PM has very few formal powers. The most important powers derive from convention:
(1) the power to advise and the right to be consulted by the monarch (or the vice-roy);
(2) the right to chair cabinet meetings – noting that the cabinet is really an extra-legal body in its own right;
(3) the power to give directions to the Secretary of the Cabinet (who will be a senior civil servant, not a politician);
(4) the power to give directions to individual ministers, subject to cabinet decisions – and to advise the dismissal of a minister if directions are not followed, or the minister otherwise misbehaves;
(5) the duty to represent the executive government in the lower house of the Parliament, including answering questions from MPs on government policy and actions.
As discussed above, the PM has no powers not given to him by the monarch or GG. In Australia the constitution is clear on this point. The GG is the commander in chief. The constitution gives the GG the power to appoint and delegate, but there is no mention of a PM in the constitution, and no intrinsic powers accrue. Oz don’t do pardons, and in the UK pardon can only be granted by the monarch, but - again by convention - are now only granted under advice from the Home Secretary - who is the minister responsible.
In some ways the underlies the mechanism and history. From the Magna Carta down, the monarch has agreed (sometimes under duress) to devolve power. But the root of all power is still the monarchy. The UK monarch is the commander in chief, head of the church, and appoints the executive. By agreement and convention they devolved and delegated this power, to the modern day point where, by convention, they exercise none of it. Here in Oz, we essentially assume the same structure, and the power chain goes all the way back to the same monarch, who appoints our GG, who has his powers defined by a written constitution, and acts by convention in manner significantly less powerful than the constitution might make you imagine.
I couldn’t think of any place to get you a good cite (though Wikipedia does mention that there is no legal sanction for breaking a convention, I thought a Wiki cite would be lame), but then it occurred to me that the SCC rulings are searchable online. …and now I’m not sure if I was wrong, but I am sure I’m getting confused. Here’s what I mean: in this 1982 ruling, they quote (with approval) the comment, “There is, if not general agreement, at least weighty authority, that the sanction for breach of a convention will be political rather than legal.” But then they spend the rest of the ruling explicitly considering whether a specific convention exists. Anyway, you can do a search for “convention” on the site and see what turns up. I don’t know of any Canadian lawyers on the Dope to help us out, but you never know…
IIRC, the 5 year rule for Canada (at least before the constitution) was how long parliament could sit. The government has extraordinary powers during times when parliament is not sitting; we went almost 2 years without a budget passing once and the cabinet used orders in council. When Trudeau was sure he was going to lose the next election (1979?) there was talk that he could actually wait until 5 and a half or 6 years because he had a while after parliament expired before he needed to call an election.
Several Canadian governments - federal and the provinces - have passed “must hold an election on this date” laws. I’m not sure if any have been followed yet, generally due to early elections from minority governments.
Note that Canadian election law heavily favours the established central parties’ offices over individual candidates, especially in the tax treatment of donations; and you cannot be a candidate for a party without the approval of the central party, no matter how you get the nomination from your grass roots. So the national/provincial party organization has a lot more clout here than one would with American congressional or state candidate. As a result, breaking ranks is a bold and serious move if the matter is one of party policy. When the brass says “raise taxes” or “no new taxes” nobody questions it.
I like the British system better than the Canadian system. In Canada, there are just over 300 MP’s. A majority, like now, is 160+ MP’s. 40 or 50 of those are cabinet ministers, party whip, committe heads, etc. An equal number are deputy this-or-that. That leaves maybe 50 or so MP’s as plain-assed backbenchers. Most of them spend their time jockeying and toadying to be noticed so they can move up in the next cabinet shuffle. They are generally too chicken-shit scared to speak against the policy of a strong-willed, nasty or vindictive Prime Minister and his inner circle, and Canada has/had its share of those.
The same math applied to Britain leaves a majority of 350 or so with 200-plus MPs who are plain backbenchers. This leaves a hundred or more facing the fact that they are never going anywhere and more capable of raising crap in or out of public. A Canadian MP who disagrees with party policy public quickly becomes an independent and loses the next election, while the same action against a British backbencher could trigger a revolt by 50 or more unhappy MPs in solidarity and bring down the government or at least the PM. (This is my understanding what happened with Thatcher?). There is more room within the party for factions.
That raises an interesting point. When Catholics were granted the right to hold political office in Britain, one argument opponents made was that it would open the possibility of a Catholic becoming Prime Minister and therefore having the power to appoint the heads of the Church of England when vacancies arose. This obviously wasn’t true - it would have been the monarch who was officially appointing the church leaders and who could have vetoed any blatent attempt at a Catholic takeover.
While this is for the most part true, I feel obliged to point out that the current and previous Canadian Prime Ministers managed to lose explicit votes of non-confidence in the House (i.e., not just failing to pass the budget or something.) One (Martin) lost the ensuing election, and one (Harper) won a majority in the ensuing election. Honestly, Canadian politics has been kind of weird for the past ten years or so.
