It must be be really terrible for countries like France or Ireland to have no tourist industry at all. So sad. 
With this particular president, somehow I find it difficult to regret anything that keeps him away from the serious duties of his job. Some things are even worse than neglect.
What? You are aware that the Prime Minister is an actual member of Parliament? If he decides that the United Kingdom should change its law, he’s one of the few hundred people in the country that can actually do something about it. He can go to work and introduce a law. As an elected official he has the power to create a law (obviously he must act in concert with other members of Parliament). The President does not have this power in any way, shape, or form. If he wants a law to be changed he has to do the same thing you or I would have to do - he has to ask a member of Congress to do it for him.
Of course, the President has considerably more clout than the average joe. As a practical matter if he proposes a bill, no matter how outlandish, somebody in Congress who shares his party affiliation is going to introduce it for him.
:rolleyes:
The same could be said about Bill Gates - but that doesn’t mean he has any official power. George Bush does have official powers obviously but he cannot make a law. Gordon Brown, Stephen Harper, John Howard, and Nancy Pelosi can; they’re all the chosen heads of the majority party in their national legislature. There are certainly differences between their positions - but don’t deny there are also similarities.
Well, that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s saying that only monarchies have a tourist industry, any more than anyone’s saying that only countries whose capitals feature a large, puddled-iron latticework communications tower erected for a World’s Fair have a tourist industry. Could we stay on task, please?
If it continues to be all right to drag in tourism as any kind of supporting reason for the continued existence of a monarchy, then it seems reasonable to respond that no, a royal family is not necessary for that. Heck, tourists wander around to look at empty castles anyway.
Human beings have this small organ, I think it’s called an appendix. Anyway…
They are like inches in the US: relics of the past, that people like, and don’t have much of an incentive to get rid of, and if you started a modern country from scratch you would not institute them.
Was I a bit too subtle? The Eiffel Tower is a tourist attraction, even though cities that do not possess an Eiffel Tower nevertheless manage to have tourist industries.
Of course a Monarchy is not necessary for a sucessful tourist industy - but it helps.
Going back to the OP:
This seems to pre-suppose that a constitutional monarchy is somehow, necessarily, anti-democratic and anti-liberal - I don’t think this is true at all. A parliamentary system with a hereditary Head of State can be just as democratic as a Presidential system and in many cases is clearly more “liberal”.
From my point of view, as a supporter of the monarchy in Britain, there are many reasons to stick with what we’ve got and not many for making a change. Most of the reasons have already be listed: holder of reserve powers that you do not want to go to a political figure, group of people to carry out ceremonial duties, lack of an attractive alternative, etc, etc. I particularly approve of the sense of continuity, of something more permanent than a government that has to stand for election every few years.
A case in point would be the Remembrance Day ceremony at the Cenotaph in London yesterday where the Queen represents the nation as a whole in remembering the victims of all the conflicts we have been involved in over the years - without worrying about the unpopularity of wars the current government have led us in to.
One thing that occurs to me is to ask whether Americans get this same sense of continuity and stability from their reverence for both the office of President and for the written Constitution?
I was hoping you’d weigh in, Cunctator. Reading your post, I wondered: was there any exploration of the alternative of making major changes to the powers of the Queen/GovGen in the Australian Constitution, or was that option considered too difficult?
I noticed a news article a while ago quoting the leader of the Australian Labor Party, saying that if Labor wins office they will re-visit the issue. Is there much popular interest in this issue?
This is an important point, and reminded me of one of the examples of just such an issue with the U.S. Constitution: the Electoral College. One of the reasons it was included in the Constitution was that the drafters did not want a popularly elected President - they thought an indirect election was a superior way to choose the President, by electors chosen by the state governments. One explanation for this approach has been that the drafters were republicans, not democrats, (I’m using the terms in their descriptive, non-partisan senses), and did not think that such an important decision should be made by the people directly.
Nowadays, by a series of workarounds, this principle has been subverted. The President is essentially elected by popular vote, through the mechanism of popular election for slates of Electors committed to voting for a particular candidate. It’s been that way for close to two centures now. So why doesn’t the U.S. abolish the façade of the Electoral College and pass a constitutional amendment implementing popular elections for the President? The regional balance aspect of the Electoral College could be maintained by continuing to have votes allocated by states, as now, just have the voters vote directly.
I assume that there are three reasons why this 18th century anachronism continues to exist:
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The workaround of voting for a slate of electors satisfies the democratic principle: it is a popular vote for President in all but name;
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Changing the system would require a constitutional amendment, which is intentionally difficult;
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As soon as you open up the issue of what to replace it with, you’re creating a major political issue that has no clear outcome, creating considerable uncertainty, and the possiblity to change the current political system, so why would a federal politician touch it?
Every country needs some kind of political system to designate a head of state. Ours designated George Bush. We’re in no position to point fingers.
A side issue but I dislike this meme that the terms republican and democratic somehow have exclusionary meanings. They’re describing two seperate political ideas. The United States is a republic and a democracy. The United Kingdom is a democracy but not a republic. Cuba is a republic but not a democracy. Saudi Arabia is neither a democracy nor a republic.
In February 1998, about eighteen months before the referendum itself, a Constitutional Convention was held in Canberra in Old Parliament House to debate the form of the proposed republican model to be put to the voters. The delegates to the convention were a mixture of elected and appointed ones. They found it hard to reach agreement because:
- the monarchists didn’t want any change at all;
- the “soft” republicans wanted very little change (essentially the *status quo * but with a President appointed by Parliament and doing all the same things that the GG currently did);
- the “hard” republicans wanted significant change and pushed for a directly elected President, with significantly increased powers. Their favoured models tended to range from the Irish to the American one.
The result of the Constitutional Convention was a compromise republican model that pleased nobody (except the monarchists) and failed to gain voters’ approval when the actual referendum itself took place in November 1999. There was plenty of speculation that this was the outcome that the PM, John Howard, had intended from the beginning.
A minority of people are passionate on the subject. But I think that for most people it’s very low down the list of priorities and many argue that it’s ridiculous to waste time and money on the question when so many more important issues need to be addressed.
The major arguments of the republicans are that the change would be symbolic of Australia’s maturity: we’re no longer governed by the British; we’re an independent country; it’s embarrassing that we don’t yet have our own head of state; other countries get confused when they hear about the Queen of Australia etc etc. But the republicans haven’t helped their own cause by being unable to agree among themselves on an appropriate model. The “soft” republicans want to maintain the primacy of Parliament and don’t like the idea of an elected President, with a popular electoral mandate, sticking his nose into the legislative process and diluting the government’s power. Their model would have required something like a two-thirds majority of both houses of Parliament voting for the new President - thus pretty much ensuring that the President would not be elected by Parliament unless the government of the day approved of the person. The “hard” republicans want much more significant change and play strongly on the idea of “don’t let those bastard politicians decide the issue for you. The people should vote in any election for a President”. This attitude goes down well, since most Australians loathe all politicians and don’t like giving them any more power. So there’s an immediate disconnect between what the experts suggest would actually work and what the people will be prepared to vote for.
The monarchists, while of course delighted by the republicans’ internal disagreements, are not themselves fully united. Some of them simply run the “tradition” argument and point to the supposed failings of other republics around the world (with examples generally drawn from Africa and South America). But other monarchists realise that tradition, while important, isn’t going to be a valid argument for ever. “Because we’ve always done it this way” is never a particularly cogent philosophical position to take. And the traditional argument is especially vulnerable to being undermined as Australia’s population becomes more and more multicutural and fewer people recognise or indeed even care about our historical ties to the UK. So there’s been an attempt by the monarchists to run a sort of cost/benefit argument: changing the current system would be hugely expensive and a very risky step into the unknown. The republicans simply haven’t put enough **real ** reasons (as opposed to **emotional ** ones) on the table to justify the change. Our system does work well - we’ve been a prosperous, first world country since federation in 1901 and we’re free, democratic etc. The one time when the current system was seriously put to the test (the 1975 Whitlam sacking) showed that the system worked very well. After a bit of hot air and windbaggery we had elections, got rid of a very unpopular government, and the whole thing panned out very well in the end.
I’m not sure what the opinion polls say at the moment. I don’t think that there’s any doubt that a majority would like an Australian head of state. But there’s a significant minority who are very happy with the current system. On all sides there’s a great deal of respect for Queen Elizabeth II and no republic of any sort will get up in her lifetime. The current Liberal/National government, if re-elected on 24 November (and I wouldn’t be putting too much money on that outcome), won’t do anything more while John Howard is PM. His view is that we had a referendum back in 1999 and the Australian people have already spoken. But John Howard has also signalled that, if re-elected, he’ll retire during the next term. His deputy, Peter Costello, leans towards republicanism and perhaps could give the idea a bit of a push along, were he to succeed to the premiership (not itself a sure thing). The ALP, if elected, is far more likely to have another crack at the issue. I think that republicanism is technically part of the party’s policy. But Kevin Rudd, the current Opposition Leader and PM-in-waiting is very conservative on social issues. I can’t see him putting the question of a republic at the top of his “To Do” list if the ALP wins.
In any event, the main problem still remains. The whole thing is stymied until the republicans can get their act together and come up with a model that has both popular appeal and a sufficient balance between parliamentary and presidential powers. Easy to say, of course, but devilishly difficult to do.
And we won’t even mention the fact that severing the relationship with the Crown would, in practice, really have to be done at both the Commonwealth and state levels. So it’s not just a question of one referendum, but seven…
As far as the British system is concerned “If it aint broke dont fix it”.