Referendums are much more common in (much of) the US than they are in the UK. The only ones that have been held have been about major changes to the structure of the political system (joining the European Community, changing the voting system, creating legislatures for Scotland and Wales, etc.) Referendums are also at the whim of parliament and the government. There is nothing for which a referendum is required, and there is no initiative process by which a group of citizens can circulate petitions and force a referendum on some issue.
With a name like that I was expecting some insights into the upper house…
Although this may have changed recently, my understanding is that in the mid-20th century not just the Prime Minister but all Ministers had to be Members of Parliament. However they could be in the House of Lords rather than the House of Commons. Sometimes an unpopular man was ennobled so that he could serve as Minister without standing for election.
In May 1940 as German armies advanced, Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax was a top candidate to succeed Neville Chamberlain as P.M., but he deferred to Winston Churchill on the grounds that an elected Commoner would be better for national unity.
Parliament has other traditions that may have merit. IIRC, the Speaker of the House of Commons is chosen from a different Party than the P.M. It is my understanding that the Cabinet has major legislative authority with Parliament’s power more of veto than bill writing.
I clicked a URL recently (linked to via SDMB?) to read an academic paper claiming that Presidential systems of government tend to be less stable than Parliamentary systems, with the U.S.A. something of an aberration.
Yesterday having been the centenary of the said legislation, the 1911 Parliament Act, receiving the royal assent.
Although there is a government-sponsored bill currently before Parliament to introduce fixed-term Parliaments, which is likely to be passed once the two Houses return from the summer recess.
It is however worth stressing that the largest single category of life peers are neither non-political notables nor party donors but simply ex-MPs. A grant of a peerage is an easy way for the main parties to reward prominent, loyal or merely long-serving MPs on their retirement. As professional politicians, they already know the ropes and also tend to be keener to turn up. A peerage can also be a way for parties to bring in politicians from local government or to give a seat to candidates who have, for whatever reason, failed to get elected to the Commons. There are also quite a few non-political public officials, from the Cabinet Secretary to the Chairman of the BBC, from the Governor of the Bank of England to the Chief of the Defence Staff, who are conventionally given peerages on retirement.
Not necessarily. In fact, what becomes evident every time a new Speaker has to be elected is that there are actually no clear conventions on the matter. Equally plausible claims are always made for alternating between the two main parties or, because they have MPs to spare, for choosing a candidate from the government side. What actually determines the outcome is therefore either tactical political calculation or the genuine popularity of the winning candidate.
As to recall elections, the reason there is no need for them is that there are no fixed term elections; that is, there must be elections within 5 years of the last one, but it is not like the US where presidential elections are predictably held on a particular date identified well in advance. If you have the US system of appointing an election date, and you have the degree of separation of the legislature and the executive that typically obtains in the US, you have to have a recall power to deal with an executive that goes off the rails.
In the UK system, the PM decides when the election will be (within the 5 years prescribed). But more importantly for present purposes, the PM only holds office if he has the votes in his party to remain the leader. If his party has the majority in the House, they can change PM if they want, and this regularly happens if the PM starts to stink up the place through incompetence or whatever. And further, if the margin by which the majority party holds that majority is close, independents or minor parties can hold the balance of power, and they might change allegiance within the 5 year election cycle causing the government to change hands to another party.
If you tranposed the UK system to the US, Eric Cantor would be the Prime Minister and leader of the government. There would be no president. George Washington’s great great great etc grandson would be dragged out for ceremonial purposes and to formally sign off on legislation for the sake of having someone to do it, but he would have no real power.
Party discipline in the House of Reps and the Senate would accordingly become much more rigid.
If you wanted someone like Barack Obama to run the country, he would run for the House of Reps as a congressman, and get himself voted the leader of his party in the House. If his leadership was attractive enough, people would vote for his party, which would win the majority of seats, making him Prime Minister.
It all works remarkably well, cynicism aside. There are sensible arguments that it has strengths that the US system does not have (and weaknesses as well), but this is not a pissing competition.
As to the appointment of officials, it depends on which officials you are talking about. Executive government is run by huge government departments, such as education, health, the home office, defence, etc. The head of each of these departments is a Cabinet Minister (there are some ministers who are not Cabinet ministers, but let that pass for now). A Cabinet Minister is a member of Parliament like the PM. There are about two dozen of them, who meet regularly and essentially run the high level decision making of government. Unlike the US Cabinet, they are therefore elected and exposed to scrutiny in Parliament, particularly at Question Time.
Other officials are not elected. Judges, for example, are appointed nominally by the Queen, who always accepts the advice of the Attorney-General of the day. Senior public servants are also appointed in a similar way. Traditionally, when the government fell, the public service departmental officers abided, unlike in the US system, but that tradition is eroding with time.
Just to add as a side note. Although the Lords Spiritual all come from the Church of England, it has become recent tradition to grant a (Lords Temporal) peerage to the Chief Rabbi. Some other religious leaders have also been given peerages from time to time on their individual merit (eg some Scottish clergy). There are no Catholic bishops who are peers but this is because Canon Law prevents them from holding government office.
The power of the monarch is interesting. Technically, she makes the calls - she appoints the prime minister, signs bills into law, appoints peers, etc. In fact, she does what she is asked to do by the government. Over the years, since James II (?) was run out of the country for the temerity of having an heir while being Catholic, the parliament has more and more dictated what the monarchy is allowed to do.
the Queen basically has a nuclear option. SHe could refuse to do something, she could refuse to sign a law, even force a general election… but like Daffy Duck says, “I can only do it once.” Odds are she would pull such a stunt only if it were an incredibly socially divisive issue. If so, the government risks her wrath at their peril, since she can force them into an immediate election - but if they win, or the politicians in general feel threatened by an “activist monarch”, they would quickly pass laws limiting her future abilities.
This is, IIRC, what happened in the ealy 1900’s; the House of Lords blocked legislation to liberalize the parliamentary process and prevent the lords from stopping bills, so the government threatened to ask the king to make enough new peers to pass the law; if the king refused, they would have an election, and if they won with say, 80% or 90% of the vote, they would then pass laws unanimously and if necessary declare the monarchy and house of lords finished… Nuclear option all around, do you really want to find out who wins? So the Lords gave in, passed the laws and all was well in the land.
The 2010 election was covered pretty prominently in the United States, in both serious news sources, such as The New York Times, and in comedy news, like The Daily Show, on which John Oliver did several segments on the election with Jon Stewart.
Primary and secondary schools in the United States rarely teach much about other countries’ political systems in any detail. In college, you won’t get it either unless you choose to take courses in that topic area.
But, really, we’re not that isolated from information about other countries. We have very good sources of information in our easily accessible media sources. C-SPAN, a free basic cable channel, broadcasts prime minister’s question time every week.
The real issue is not the lack of availability of information about, say, the British political system, but, rather, the general lack of interest on the part of individuals in consuming information about politics or even news in general within the United States or outside it.
There is incredible choice in today’s world regarding the type and volume of information that we can expose ourselves to. The basic fact is that most Americans choose not to be exposed to information about other countries.
Your thinking of a different concept here: impeachment.
The US has no recall elections at the federal level. The President can be expelled if Congress impeaches (and convicts) him. Members of Congress can be expelled by a vote from their fellow members of the same chamber. Also, a state governor or legislature can remove one of their state’s representatives from Washington and replace him with an interim representative until the next election.
Recall elections, which are triggered by the public, exist in some US states but not others, and they only apply to politicians of those particular state governments. Each state government also has mechanisms for removing people that usually mirror the federal ones. (For example: Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois, was impeached by his state’s legislature.)
Members of the US cabinet are not elected officials, true, but they do have to be approved by a majority of the US Senate before taking office. They can also be compelled to appear before Senate hearings when the Senate is investigating something.
One thing I’d contend about the UK is that the prime minister and his allies have much more power over UK policy than anyone does over the US. If our current prime minister wanted to pass a reform of our healthcare system comparable to “Obamacare”, technically he can pretty much just do it. You only need a majority to get it through Parliament and on important issues your party’s MPs are told how to vote anyway. The courts have very little power to challenge it.
It sounds insidious but in practice it’s worked better than it sounds when you write it down like that. Unlike in the US, where trying to make major changes to anything involves a long, gruelling process that often fails - and where the minority party can stifle the majority’s agenda - in the UK you elect a party, and they carry out their agenda mostly unhindered, other than by internal disagreement and concerns about public opinion. If they go too far with it, you kick them out and the other side (easily) repeals it. The level of power the majority party gets, and the fact they bear total responsibility for everything, ironically often means they have to be seen to be moderate or the public will turn on them. (The current coalition government did in fact introduce controversial health care reforms a few months ago, for instance, but they voluntarily scrapped them when there was a public backlash, despite having the power to pass them if they wanted).
Not only that, I run across people here (U.S.) all the time that have only the vaguest notion of how our own government works. Some of them even run for office, e.g. Sarah Palin and her conception of a “Department of Law”, The Bachmann dame promising that if elected she would personally cut gas prices in half in 30 days…
One of the more outspoken “conservatives” on this forum recently ranted at length about the uslessness and inefficiency of the federal goverenment, than as an example, whined about how long he had to stand in line at the DMV to get his driver’s liscense. He seemed to be blissfully unaware that motor vehicle liscensing has nothing whatever to do with the federal government…it is strictly the jurisdiction of the individual state.
I could go on & on with examples, but you get the idea. Far too many people are totally incurious about the way things actually work.
SS
I agree that this is true, but isn’t that more a function of party discipline than the particular way parliament is structured? I mean, nothing really forces the majority party’s MPs to vote the way the party wants them to other than the party structure.
One could imagine British political parties that are as fractious as American political parties, with backbencher MPs needing constant pork injections for their districts to bribe enough them into grudging party compliance to get anything done, or American political parties composed of congressmen and senators who will vote the party line every time. Is there something about the parliamentary system that encourages party discipline more than the American system does?
Whips are the ones who (in theory) ensure that MPs toe the party line.
The strong party system in Britain is supported by a variety of factors, including that voters tend to vote on a party basis rather than for the individual candidate, that parties can punish wayward members and essentially end their political careers, that the residency requirements for standing in a district are significantly looser than in the United States, that there are no primaries (candidates are chosen by the party, not by voters), etc.
All-in-all, I believe it makes for a much more responsive political system than ours. With our weak party system, no candidate is ever really held to any particular policy program and thus we can never really be sure what we’re voting for.
There’s the fact that you can only get to the upper echelons of power, i.e. the cabinet or maybe even Number 10 itself, through being an MP. There are rebellious MPs who don’t always toe the party line. Some of them are fine, respected parliamentarians. But they don’t tend to get top cabinet jobs.
And then there’s the relative lack of “checks and balances” in the British system. A Prime Minister with a thumping majority, which they often have, can safely ignore a few rebels on his/her own side.
What if an MP is into that sort of thing?
There’s a lot more structural factors to it than that. There’s no separately-elected President with veto power. There’s no de facto ‘supermajority’ requirement like there is in the US Senate: you pass something with 51% of the vote, it’s law. There’s only really one house of the legislature, not two like in the US. It’s something like if the US House of Representatives alone could make or repeal laws - no Senate, no President, no real Supreme Court review. Nancy Pelosi could’ve easily passed “Obamacare”, and John Boehner could now easily repeal it.
Judicial Review has existed in English law for centuries. While it is true that an Act of Parliament cannot be challenged in Court (except since 2000 on Human Rights grounds) the Courts have for centuries mitigated the worst excesses through their role in interpretation.
As explained upthread we have two. The House of Lords is essentially a revising body, but Parliamentary time is limited so if the Lords objects, it is taken very seriously.
Um, no they can’t. Once you become a member of Congress the only way to be removed from office is by a 2/3rds vote in the relevant chamber. In most (but not all) states the governor can appoint an interim senator who serves until the next general election or until a special elections. House of Representatives seats can only be filled by election, not appointment.
Before 1913 senators used to be elected by state legislatures, but those legislatures never had the power to recall them. That didn’t stop some from trying to instruct their senators as to how to vote anyway. States haven’t had the power to recall their congressional delagates since the Articles of Confederation.
I can attest to Americans not learning how other governments work in school. I had a high school social studies teacher who had a rather flawed idea of how the British government worked (as well as the distinction between England & the UK). Among other things he thought that when the Queen personally disapproves of legislation she signs it on the side of the document rather than at the bottom. He also thought that everyone had to pay tithed to the Church of England and if you weren’t a member your taxes were higher. And that you couldn’t hold public office without being a member. He kinda made a bit of an ass of himself when were had visiting students from the UK and tried explaining how their government worked.