Letter time: Would the US be better off under a parliamentary system?
In response to my critique of the parliamentary system I received a lengthy letter from an American reader, which I have posted in full after the jump. He defends the system on a number of grounds I find quite interesting, since, as an American, he has the privilege of being able to view parliamentary government through fairly neutral eyes.
Check out his thoughts, into which I have interspliced my various responses.
I first would like to compliment you on maintaining an excellent site: I eagerly read just about anything you ever post, and your latest rant on the woes of the parliamentary system was no different.
Speaking as an outsider, I guess my comments might sound like a “the grass is always greener” type of thing, but the advantages to the parliamentary system, (at least in theory) and the fact that it’s actually quite natural for a de facto parliamentary system to develop, makes the system — while by no means the best option — certainly better than a presidential system.
The thing I like most about the parliamentary system is that there’s no doubt who’s really in charge; blame can’t reasonably be shifted to anyone but the premier and his government. In the United States, for example, when the Democrats came to power in 2006, people would have understood that “Prime Minister” Pelsoi was the one who was really in charge of setting bad government policy, or in 1994, “Prime Minister” Gingrich and his government would have gotten proper credit for more than a decade of prosperity. It would be impossible to reasonably blame the figurehead president for anything, because anyone with half a brain cell would note that his role was effectively limited to cutting the ribbon at the new Wal-Mart or pinning medals on one-legged soldiers.
It’s true that one of the great flaws of the American system is that no one really gives the right people the right credit. There’s a sort of cult around the president where he is considered to be all-powerful and all-responsible, and such an analysis is quite unfair to Congress. But we don’t give the Supreme Court enough credit either, and the Congress tends to go overboard in slagging them. But it’s ultimately our responsibility as citizens to understand the power divisions of our constitution, so what is being complained about is really just a failure of the political culture, rather than the system itself.
And you talk about emergency elections like they’re a bad thing. Under a parliamentary system, when the Democrats lost their mandate (as they most certainly did when they passed the health-care law) they would have lost power; they wouldn’t have had the opportunity to cling to power for seven or eight extra months, costing the electorate more and more precious time and tax dollars; and Prime Minister Boehner and his new government could have used the time to put austerity measures in place to try to combat the financial crisis.
See, this is the problem. Democrats would argue the passage of the health care bill strengthened their mandate to govern. The whole business of defining when the legislature has “confidence” in the executive is such a vague duty it inevitably becomes defined in the most rigidly partisan way. In any case, an emergency election couldn’t be called in that situation anyway, since the Pelosi Congress passed the bill with majority votes in both chambers. A better analogy would be President Bush’s failure to push comprehensive immigration reform through the Congress in 2007. In the parliamentary system that would have almost certainly triggered an emergency election, and who knows what would have been the result.
Your other points make sense, such as how the system is fundamentally elitist. There was an op-ed on the Daily Telegraph’s website, asking: “Did anyone else notice that the Lib Dems lost?” I recognize how much of problem it is when the party that placed third gets to determine who wins. The Tories clearly won and yet the idea of Labour clinging to power in a coalition with the Lib Dems, SNP and Plaid Cymru could actually be floated and seriously considered. This isn’t so much a problem with the parliamentary system as it is one with having viable third parties. Coalitions open up the disturbing concept of parties loosing but still ending up in power, but do they really come with the package?
It’s a good point that a viable two party system (which is to say, a weak party system) is almost as necessary for stable, predictable government as any formal, constitutional institutions. If the American Congress gained a powerful third, or fourth party tomorrow, it would wreak all sorts of havoc on the traditional leadership structures, and could in fact lead to strange coalition systems that would cause a breakdown in public legitimacy the same way coalition governments in parliamentary systems do.
For example, say something goes crazy and the 2012 election produces a House of Representatives with 209 Republicans, 208 Democrats, 10 members of the Socialist Party of America, and 8 people from the Tea Party Party. Who would become Speaker and what party would enjoy majority status? A number of different outcomes could occur, but the public has lost control of the process at this point.
But even then, the president is still elected independently in a direct popular vote, so the executive branch of government is able to retain public legitimacy even when the legislature does not. The problem with the parliamentary system is that the entire government is determined via legislative wranglings, instead of merely the legislative side of it.
And isn’t the whole point of a parliamentary system to violate separation of powers? Isn’t the whole point to combine all three branches of government into a single ambiguous — but more accountable to the electorate — mush? That’s the beauty of it! When there’s an incompetent and unpopular Home Secretary you can unseat her in the next general election just to make sure the Prime Minister can’t put her back on his frontbench. You can theoretically unseat the Prime Minister, too, and see how his party likes being without a leader. Making the cabinet vulnerable during a general election is a very useful tool: Do you know just how much the American public would appreciate the ability to get rid of Hilary Clinton simply by coaxing a few thousand people in rural New York to vote against her? I know I would love to personally cast a vote against Janet Napolitano, my state’s former governor, now Secretary of Homeland Security. (I’m well aware how rare this actually is in practice — I don’t think it’s ever actually happened in the UK, Canada or anywhere else for that matter — but I’m enamored with the idea, that it’s possible, and it wouldn’t be difficult to make even common place if the election of individual MPs was structured the right way).
A better analogy would be the electoral removal of Nancy Pelosi. Obviously that would never happen, since she comes from a very liberal district in San Fransisco. And that’s largely the principle behind cabinet ministers in a parliamentary system — they tend to come from extremely safe districts where there is almost no possibility they will ever be voted out of office during their cabinet tenure. Stephen Harper himself comes from an ultra-conservative riding in Alberta that votes something like 90% Conservative. If you live in a country that uses a proportional-representation style electoral system the situation is even worse. Since MPs are chosen from a ranked list, the first 10 or so MPs to be seated will always represent the top party leadership. So it becomes impossible to vote for the party and against the leadership in any circumstance, since the system is rigged to insure the leadership always gets in, regardless of how unpopular they may be personally, independent of the party they represent.
Also, I would disagree that the parliamentary system explicitly wants to eliminate the separation of powers between branches of government, even though that is obviously what happens in practice. The mythology of parliamentary government is that the executive, though drawn from the legislature, is still independently accountable to the parliament, which theoretically means the two institutions are sovereign from each other, and enjoy a mature relationship of accountability based on that sovereignty. It’s true in a limited sense in a minority parliamentary government, where the executive does not control an outright majority of seats in the legislature (as is the case with the present Canadian and British governments), but even then, the parliament can still be dissolved or suspended by the executive, which again, provides a convenient escape-hatch (or threat of instability) to be utilized in times of partisan difficultly.
The problem with highly disciplined caucuses, with it being front page news whenever a backbencher defies the government whip, just as with coalitions putting losers into power, is that it’s something that’s going to happen anyway. In the US, as you may know, in the last six or eight years the way parties operate has suddenly shifted from the old “rules” of the last hundred and fifty years. During the Bush years the Democrats became far more ideologically pure than they’ve ever been in the past, finally eliminating any centrist or right-wing elements still lingering about. It stands in sharp contrast to the Republicans, who didn’t get the memo, and are still pretending it’s 1926 and party affiliation has more to do with region and the current winds than actual ideology or substance (which is odd, considering that their voting bases are transposed in that respect compared to their office holders ). Looking at the current congress’s “achievements” — the stimulus, Cap and Trade, health-care — it isn’t the parliamentary system, per se, which makes the passage of the ruling party’s agenda a forgone conclusion, it’s more “whoever has control of the lower house of the legislature can do whatever the hell they want.”
I think both parties have gotten far too ideologically purist in the US, and delegated too much authority to their Congressional leaders. This has made the contemporary US Congress resemble a traditional parliament in quite a dramatic way, and illustrates how non-constitutional actors — such as political parties — can warp an otherwise good system in all sorts of weird and wild ways never originally intended.
I have yet to research this fully, and to back it up with empirical data, but I have a theory that many of the features of a parliamentary system are going to happen anyway. Things such as the lower house of the legislature being the body that’s really in charge, and the development of a distinct head of government, may just be the by-products of time and democracy and other factors. The idea that a distinct head of government will emerge anyway, regardless of any legal or constitutional provisions for one, is an idea that I’m very certain of as a “law of nature” type of thing
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, whether anyone will admit it or not, is the de facto Head of Government in the US. While the prominence of the office varies considerably from holder to holder and current situation to current situation, the office is basically the same as that of a prime minister under a semi-presidential parliamentary system. The Speaker has control over the House’s agenda, over time, etc, which can be used to further his party’s agenda (in addition to the power that comes with presiding over the House). Is this situation a good one? I can’t say. Is it avoidable? Probably not. But just because the Constitution provides for a Speaker similar to the UK’s Speaker of the House of Commons obviously didn’t stop it from evolving into what it is now. Some stuff just happens anyway — without regard to the law.
I think the parliamentary system creates strong political parties, but strong political parties can also create a parliamentary system. The latter is what is happening in the US right now. The American political culture presently views political parties and ideologies as the most important elements of government. And the more obsessed with ideology the parties become, the more power will be delegated to party leaders to keep everyone thinking the right thing and voting the right way. Which is a recipe for parliamentary-style rule.
Again, I speak as an outsider, and I admit that my observations of how great a parliamentary system would be might be just be a sort of “the grass is always greener” type of thing, but I do think that, with all its problems, it still beats a pure presidential system.
Personally, if someone asked me to devise a system of government, I would mix the two, with separate but overlapping powers divided between an executive that’s actually involved with government and a prime minister and government drawn from the legislature. With the other quirks ironed out, and safeguards in place, most of the problems you pointed out can be — if not eliminated — deadened to a point where it’s reasonable. There’s just too many advantages to quite give up on the system: Sure, it sucks in the context of a limited monarchy (which I have separate issues with) — but what about “régime semi-présidentiel?”
I hope what I had to say make sense, I probably need to work on these arguments more, but I think that just because most current implementations of the parliamentary system are flawed doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea in of itself. Some of the problems you mentioned come from or are worsened by other things, like Proportional Representation; some of them come with any conceivable arrangement of government — elitism being the primmest example — but none of them exactly poison the well.
I don’t really like the term “presidential system” because it defines the government through the presidency, as if it were some sort of very executive-heavy model. Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a “presidential system,” since the presidency was the only institution that mattered. A system akin to what they have in the United States is better described as a “separation of powers system,” because that’s the defining characteristic of the model.
While the American system is obviously not perfect, I think it’s more right in theory than the parliamentary system for the simple reason that it recognizes the democratic importance of giving each branch of government strong institutional sovereignty, while also allowing for formal procedures of accountability to be exercised between branches. Removing elections from partisan control is also hugely important.
The US could probably handle a so-called “mixed system” without compromising too many of the constitutional elements that make the government work well in the first place, and, as discussed, has probably been evolving in that direction for quite some time anyway. The biggest problem with such an evolution, however, is that it formally entrenches the power what I believe to be some of the worst elements of the present US political culture, namely the strong political parties and their leadership structures.
October 5th, 2011 at 9:35 am
A great post, with painfully bad examples! Thanks!