You’re making a point, support it with examples.
Human Rights Act, for example.
I’m sure there’s plenty in the US who would love to abolish the First Amendment.
On the other hand, it’s frustrating that the US Second Amendment is so stuck.
What about it?
Um, the fact that it could be abolished with a simple majority, which would not happen so easily in the US? Are you actually reading my posts?
Look, I’m just pointing out that there’s positives and negatives to both systems.
Right to silence.
I think the one thing we can all agree on is that any system like the one in that show House of Cards is clearly broken. Look at how that guy just swept himself into power. I know it was fiction, but I’m casting my vote for whatever the other system is.
House of Cards was, of course written around the British Westminster system, and subsequently reworked to fit the U.S. constitutional framework. (Presumably the OP meant ‘the US presidential system’. There are plenty of countries where the President has very little power other than being Head of State.)
France has something close. Yes, they have a Prime Minister in a parliamentary legislature, but the true executive power is held in their directly elected President.
Turkey right now is a fantastic example of this.
Thanks. Be sure to let me know if you have any jokes you want someone to explain when you tell them.
Thinking about it, that’s the one thing about the US remake which makes it feel far-fetched - the backstage scheming of a career politician making it to the White House without having to face the votes of the general public for the post.
As it was written for the original, a senior politician scheming his way into number 10 without a general election is entirely plausible (watch out for Boris!)
Hell, that’s how May did it.
Gerald Ford, of course, became President without even being voted in as either President or Vice President, just as Frank Underwood was.
The difference is that Ford didn’t scheme himself into that position out of spite. But I suppose one could.
She just had to bide her time and wait for the usual suspects to cancel each other out.
Not really. The hallmarks of parliamentary systems are that the parliament is multi-party, and the executive is responsible to it.
That’s not how it worked in the Soviet Union. Yes, there was the Supreme Soviet, which selected the Council of Ministers, which looks sort of like a parliamentary system.
However, the Supreme Soviet was a uni-party body, controlled by the Soviet Communist Party. Indeed, the role of the Communist Party was enshrined in the Constitution:
[QUOTE=Constitution of the Soviet Union, 1977]
**Article 6. ** The leading and guiding force of the Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organisations and public organisations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU exists for the people and serves the people.
The Communist Party, armed with Marxism-Leninism, determines the general perspectives of the development of society and the course of the home and foreign policy of the USSR, directs the great constructive work of the Soviet people, and imparts a planned, systematic and theoretically substantiated character to their struggle for the victory of communism.
All party organisations shall function within the framework of the Constitution of the USSR.
[/QUOTE]
The highest decision-making body in the Soviet Union wasn’t the Council of Ministers, which was the de jure head of the Soviet state. Rather, it was the Politburo of the Communist Party which had the de facto control. The decisions of the Politburo, a party organization, were implemented by the Council of Ministers and other organs of the Soviet state.
That power of one party to determine the policy of the state in all aspects, with the formal institutions of the state rubber-stamping the decisions of the party, is completely contrary to parliamentarian systems of governments.
This is the better answer. But note that Turkey is in the process of changing to a presidential system, precisely because a presidential system allows for greater concentration of power in the hands of the president, as opposed to a prime minister and cabinet.
<off-topic>
Well I’d certainly love to see Prime Minister’s Questions with Trump at the despatch box. There’d be an A Few Good Men meltdown every week.
Those are the hallmarks of one that’s working well, yes.
A hallmark of a presidential system is that the President is subject to the rule of law and held to account accordingly. If he’s not, the system will fail, but I wouldn’t no-true-Scotsman that into “well, it’s not a presidential system if it fails.” The point of the OP is being missed if you handwave away every system that doesn’t work out.
I can’t think of a best Executive system for this reason.
Elected high-power president? Potential for going rogue.
Ceremonial president? Why even elect them then?
Semi-ceremonial president? Always itching for more power than simply to form a government and declare “emergencies”.
Monarchy? Fine until you get a bad one.
One role of the Prime Minister is analogous to that of the Speaker of the House. But the PM wears two hats: (s)he is the head of the legislature and the chief executive, and the latter role is directly analogous to that of a President.
But did the Soviet Union ever actually have free elections? It’s one thing to say that a parliamentary system which has democratic elections and winds up an authoritarian dictatorship is “authoritarian,” but you can’t really say that if it was never democratic in the first place.