Firstly, the fact that in a parliamentary system there is not an effective branch to veto the power of the legislature does not prove that the parliamentary system is more balanced; in fact, it suggests the opposite.
Secondly, checks and balances are not the same thing. They are two very different concepts that are thought of as identical words meaning the same thing (a check is not a balance and vice versa.)
Now that I have the semantics out of the way, we can move on to my actual argument.
It is foolish to suggest changing the entire government for one reason, which is obviously distaste for Bush.
There are several important facets to our system of Government, and I am going to lay them out below:
- There is a fundamental balancing act to any government adhering to democratic principles:
A) Democracy is a fundamentally preferable situation; the people have a right to decide their own fate. Unfortunately, pure democracy cannot work on the large scale, because of a nasty little creature called majority faction. A majority faction is a majority that rises up, seizes government, and is harmful to a minority or society as a whole (example: the Nazis, they satisfy both aspects actually.)
B) To restrain majority faction, there must be certain limits placed on the people’s direct will. There must therefore not be direct democracy, but a government that respects the ideals of the people, and allows the people the right to vote, but a government that also restrains the voice of the people enough so that a majority faction cannot rise up and take over the government.
C) The balancing act is this: Too much direct influence from the people will allow majority faction to infringe on the rights of the minority or cause harm to society, too much restraint from the government will infringe on the people’s voice in government so much that democratic principles are not being adequately expressed.
- It is my opinion (and just my opinion, but one I feel I can support) that the United States Constitution creates the best answer to how to balance the problem of majority faction. I think the British system does extremely well, and for that matter most of the systems of Western Europe do fairly well (well, except for the EU, which I don’t feel does a good job of representing the feelings of individual Europeans.)
The reasons I feel the USC does this job the best are:
A) The USC was written and designed from the very start to solve the problem of majority faction (read the Federalist Papers.) The British system was developed over a long period of time out of a nearly absolute monarchy. Basically I believe it is better to build a house right the first time than to build a poor house to start with and try to fix all of its problems along the way, or more appropriately, it is better to build a house suited for its times as opposed to trying to upgrade a 15th century manor house to a 20th century post-modernist home.
B) In solving the problem of majority faction the USC starts right at the beginning with a vertical division of powers. State and Federal powers are divided clearly; the right of both governments to exist is absolute and inviolable. The U.S. Congress cannot declare the State of Virginia nonexistent anymore than Virginia can do that to the Federal Government.
This is an important division of powers that does not exist in the British system. While Wales, Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland have certain innate rights to existence, the individual county, borough, district et cetra have no inviolable right to existence.
C) In addition to the vertical division of powers, there is a horizontal division of powers. Governmental power is divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches.
D) Furthermore, the terms and means of election for all the different branches are different, which most importantly makes it very difficult for a majority faction to take over the United States government.
The entire membership of the House of Representatives is up for election every two years. This is the part of Government that is most likely to be taken over by majority faction.
The Senate is staggered, 1/3 is up for election every 3 years. So a majority faction would have to rise up and stay around for SIX YEARS to effectively take over both the House and Senate. Also, originally the Senate was elected by the State Legislatures, which meant that back then, a majority faction would have to stay in power for six years in 51% of ALL state legislatures. However as the years have progressed the people have decided to remove this check on majority faction in favor of a stronger balance to democracy, it seems to have worked out fine.
The Presidency is elected every four years. So the majority faction would have to rise up and stay around for at least four years to take over the Presidency. Originally the Electoral College chose the President. This was a restraint on majority faction because a majority faction would have had to set up and win 51% of the State Elector positions to take over the Presidency. But this system has been curtailed in all fifty States for a more democratic approach where the electors are figureheads, and again, the removal of that restriction on majority faction has proven to work out okay.
The United States Supreme Court is unelected. The nine members serve life terms. To effectively gain control of the Senate, the House, the Presidency, and the USSC a majority faction would have to exist and stay in power for around 12 years (a figure based on the average turnover rate of Supreme Court Justices.)
And that is just the Federal government. For a majority faction to completely take over the United States, it would have to seize power in a significant majority of the important states, because State government is also significant and if a majority faction didn’t have control of lots of key states like New York, California, Texas et cetra, it could effectively be stopped by the power of the collective State governments.
- In the British system a majority faction would basically just need to win what, 51% of the seats in Parliament? I profess some ignorance of the British system so I’ll need to research somewhat the full powers of a majority in Parliament.
However one thing the British system certainly does not have is a vertical division of powers. Central and local government is not divided in a permanent fashion. The central government can abolish any lower government, rearrange it et cetra. I’m speaking more generally of Parliament’s powers in England itself, because with the regional legislature in Scotland now I don’t know how it interacts with Parliament in London.
Furthermore, there is no division of powers in the United Kingdom, that is a fallacy and it is not true.
All power is essentially vested in the Legislative branch, and the legislative branch is even worse, unicameral (which isn’t necessary in the Parliamentary system in general), which means there is even fewer checks on government power.
There is no separation of powers between the executive and the legislative because the executive branch does not exist independent of the legislative. The Chief Executive of the nation is completely a creature of and is in fact a member of the legislature. He can be removed at any time by a legislative move (the no confidence vote), and the office changes hand as seats in the legislature change hands.
There is no review power in the judiciary. There is no possibility of an executive veto because there is no real executive, the executive is part of the legislature and if anything ever passed that he really did not want to, he wouldn’t be the executive anymore. The only real protection involved is the hope that you don’t have a majority faction in power.
So, one branch gets to 1) write and agree upon laws, 2) execute laws and 3) determine if the law is constitutional.
- The matter of debate.
In the Parliamentary system, debate concerning a law is not nearly as involved. There is strict party discipline, if the bill comes to a vote and doesn’t pass, the Prime Minister is basically cooked.
In the American system there must be a majority agreement in BOTH fully functioning Houses of Congress. And then, another branch entirely, the Executive, must agree upon the bill. Obviously the executive can be circumvented, but that takes a two-thirds majority in both houses and only has a 10% historical success rate.
There must be a strong and clear consensus for a law to pass in both houses. Because even if one party controls the White House, House of Representatives, and Senate, they would have to control the Senate by a 3/5 majority because opposition Senators can still conduct a filibuster. I mean, look at the judicial nominations during the Bush administration. The Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House, but the Democrats can still force them to come to the bargaining table.
Can a minority party in a parliamentary system do that?
And then of course there is the Supreme Court, which can overrule ANY law passed by Congress. And the only way to counteract that is to pass a constitutional amendment, something that has only happened 27 times in the history of the United States (and only once in direct response to a USSC decision.)
The increased debate forces consensus and moderation on virtually every issue. A bonus of the American system outside of its advantages in balancing the restriction of majority faction and the restriction of governmental power.
I don’t mean my post to be a complete dismissal of the Parliamentary system. For one, there are vast differences between the different parliamentary systems out there. The British example is actually an exception in several import aspects to what is the general trend throughout Europe.
In rereading my post, there are certain aspects that refer more specifically to the British system as opposed to the parliamentary system in general. However, the thread in general has focused heavily on the British system as opposed to parliamentarianism in general, so that set the tone for my response.
The Parliamentary system obviously has advantages as well. There is certainly a lot of debate, even in the UK where typically one party rules with a majority and follows the lead of the PM. There is lots of internal discussion within the party in power (or coalition in power, which is the more common situation on the Continent) that has much of a moderating effect.
I do ultimately assert the superiority of the United States system. But to be more specific, the superiority of the United States system in the context OF the United States and our unique history, I don’t hold it to be universally applicable or preferable.
