Britain takes the lead on parliamentary reform
Whenever I write an article criticizing the parliamentary style of government, I’m surprised at how many American readers rush in to defend the system. I think it really highlights the under-acknowledged American propensity to glamorize the politics of other countries as somehow more calm or rational than their own. Despite their commonly caricatured portrayal as swaggering, egocentric supremacists, I find many Americans actually possess a very naive affinity for foreign institutions simply on the basis that they’re not American. It’s a bias that plagues conservatives as well as liberals.
Dick Morris, the former Clinton adviser-cum-conservative talking-head, offers a good example of this kind of thing in a recent article lamenting the decline of the British parliamentary system under Prime Minister Cameron’s coalition government. “The changes that the parties have agreed to will transform the British government from a decisive decision-making machine into a morass of compromise, half-measures, and deadlock,” he writes. “Gridlock will be exported across the ocean to the UK.”
We tend to observe the benefits of foreign systems only so far as they appear to offer solutions to domestic problems. I personally respect the separation-of-powers congressional system because of the way it enshrines the independence of individual legislators, but many Americans seem to respect the parliamentary system for precisely the opposite reason, as Morris describes:
Right now, the Prime Minister can dissolve Parliament anytime he wants forcing new elections. He is also obliged to order new elections if he loses a vote of confidence. This power holds the members of his parliamentary majority in check and restrains them from turning on their leaders since, should they succeed in a vote of no confidence, it would plunge them into the uncertainty of a new election which would imperil their own seats.
The new rules would bar the Prime Minister from dissolving Parliament during its five year term and vest that right in a 2/3 majority of parliament. In other words, Parliament would have to vote itself out of office – something likely never to happen.
So, under the new rules, if a government loses a vote over a major legislative item — or fails to survive a no-confidence motion – it must resign, but there need not be new elections. Instead, Parliament can refuse to order new elections and just re-form a new government out of the old Parliament.
Lacking the escape hatch of emergency elections, “deadlock could just go on and on without resolution,” he concludes.
Deadlock is of course the great sin of the American system, and efficiency the great virtue of parliamentary ones. In a nation like Canada, the very idea of a prolonged legislative debate over an immigration bill or financial regulation bill is extremely foreign. As Stephen Harper himself once pessimistically put it, in a parliamentary government you have “the same majority vote on every issue,” because the fear of triggering an emergency election through a “loss of confidence” necessitates that members of the majority party always vote as a united bloc. For all the conservative pundits (like Morris) who decry President Obama’s desire to “transform America,” it’s worth remembering how much more transformed the country would presently be if Obama could simply decree laws through the unquestioning, unanimous approval of his party’s majorities in the House and Senate. Though it can sometimes be hard to tell where meaningful debate ends and deadlock begins, anyone skeptical of the power and priorities of government would be wise to err on the side of the latter.
A more legitimate concern is the whole business about forming a “new” government out of the old parliament, even in the face of a vote to dissolve. In one of my earlier articles about parliamentary governance, I described this as one of the most fundamentally anti-democratic attributes of the system, since it removes any clear correlation between what the public votes for and what sort of government they wind up getting. Right now, Cameron’s government is a coalition of Liberals and Conservatives, which arguably no one in Britain really voted for. But if Parliament votes by a two-thirds majority to dissolve that government, the Conservatives could simply form a new government by themselves, or with the Labour Party, or some other random arrangement. Without the possibility of an emergency election to intervene, the politicians are even freer to govern without public accountability.
The question becomes, “how wrong does a government have to be before it loses the authority to govern?” I think a lot of Americans are partial to the belief that there should be some line in the sand, which is why the idea of emergency elections, triggered by, in Morris’ words, a failed “vote over a major legislative item” has some currency in the US.
I personally continue to think, though, that emergency elections ultimately do more to solidify mindless partisanship than alleviate it. If parties can simply non-confidence vote each other and force special elections the second they get tired of cooperating (or even attempting to cooperate), then the political culture essentially becomes one giant game of legislative chicken. Everyone is always blackmailing everyone else, party leaders rule by fear, and the timing of elections is manipulated by partisan intrigue.
Cameron knows this, and it’s why I think his efforts to reign in careless confidence votes are a brave step in the right direction. As Morris notes, it was a reform taken at the expense of prime ministerial power, though I regard this outcome much more favorably than he seems to.
Not all of Cameron’s parliamentary reforms are great, of course. If you read the full Morris piece you’ll see he offers strong criticisms of some of Britain’s proposed changes to their electoral system, which is a whole other can of worms I’ve been equally eager to denounce. But overall, the PM deserves praise for tinkering at all, which is something not many political leaders — who far too often view the status quo system of government as an end in itself — are willing to do.
In Canada, we tend to speak of the “Westminster style of government” as a very static, unchanging thing, with finite traditions and practices. It’s this sort of ingrained, conservative thinking that has ensured the Canadian parliamentary system has undergone almost no meaningful reforms since the 19th century. For Canadians interested in real reform of their staid legislative system — or Americans in favor of changes to theirs — Prime Minister Cameron’s actions across the Atlantic should serve as an inspiring reminder of the fact that political traditions are not permanent, and the rules can in fact change. All it takes is some courage.
