parliamentary government

[cellio]

I've never lived under a parliamentary government, and watching them from the outside can sometimes be confusing. Most of my "information" comes from watching Israeli politics, with occasional supplements from Canada; I realize these aren't the only such governments and that each country presumably has its own quirks. But there are some things I wonder about, including wondering which ones are inherrent properties and which are quirks.

I infer that creating new political parties -- that have standing to run in national elections, I mean -- is fairly easy. Israel has a plethora of parties. Sharon is quitting his own party to form a new one, and the last election saw a new party that was one of the top three vote-getters. In the US this is hard; there are lots of parties, but the Democrats and Republicans have privileged access to both the ballot and tax-funded campaign money, so it's not a level playing field. From the outside, it looks like Sharon's new party will occupy the same niche as that new party from last time (Shinui) -- but presumably it would be a sign of political weakness for him to just join the party he ran against, while the cost of starting a new one is low, so he forms his own. Because it's a coalition government, he and those other guys may well end up in the same voting block anyway.

Is that sort of thing the reason that there are bunches of small parties, most of which secures its 3 or 4 seats in a 120-seat parliament? Do parties ever die off? Do prominent players ever change parties, as opposed to creating new ones? Or, alternatively, do you get a lot of one-off parties, ones that are formed for one election and then fade away?

I find the idea of proportional seats in government (based on the vote split) to be interesting. It's a stark contrast to what we have in the US, where in each race the winner takes all. The only thing that keeps the ruling party from running roughshod over everyone -- when anything does, I mean -- is that there are lots of these races. I wonder how different US politics would be if Congress were made up of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, Constitutionalists, and whatever else in rough proportion to their distribution in the population, with the president being not individually elected but the head of the party that got the most votes. (I perceive that our president has roughly the powers of a prime minister in the parliamentary system.) On the other hand, in a system like Israel's the elected representatives aren't individually accountable to the voters, so it can be hard for the people to remove someone they don't like.

The ever-changing bedfellows of parliamentary governments can get hard to follow without a score-card. I sometimes wonder how they get anything done. (But that can be a feature. :-) )

Speaking of getting things done, I couldn't find an answer to this at Wikipedia: between the time the parliament is disolved and the time elections are held, how does governance happen? For example, the Israeli parliament was dissolved today and elections will be in February or March; who makes decisions in the meantime? Or does this mean they're in a mode of "administration but not law-making"? (Is that a relevant difference? Which category would contain the budget?)

Comments

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

And in Canadian parliamentary news, today (as expected) the three opposition parties co-operated to pass a resolution asking the Prime Minister to dissolve Parliament the first week of January and call a general election for mid-February. Since the Liberal government is a minority, the resolution passed.

Of course, it's non-binding, and the government has said they'll do no such thing, because the resolution doesn't meet the test for a non-confidence motion. They say the opposition is trying to shift the blame for a campaign over Christmas. The opposition parties plan to introduce a real non-confidence motion, which will be debated Thursday and voted on a week from today.

At that point, it is assumed the government will be defeated Nov. 28th with an election being called for early-to-mid January.

As I say, this has been expected for a few days or so, so on Ottawa Morning, the morning show on CBC radio in Ottawa, the host joked that "A Parliament has been dissolved, an election has been called -- and it isn't in Canada!"

[cellio]

Of course, it's non-binding, and the government has said they'll do no such thing, because the resolution doesn't meet the test for a non-confidence motion.

I assume this was a test balloon, then, so they wouldn't have to pay the political price if an attempt at a no-confidence vote failed for some reason? I thought such things were usually worked out through back channels so you'd know how many votes you have going in.

At that point, it is assumed the government will be defeated Nov. 28th with an election being called for early-to-mid January.

Well, it'll give you something other than Christmas (excuse me, "holiday") music to listen to on the radio. :-)

[cafemusique.livejournal.com]

I got this in my inbox tonight, as the LJ mail server finally gets rid of the comments that didn't get delivered at the end of November.

I assume this was a test balloon, then, so they wouldn't have to pay the political price if an attempt at a no-confidence vote failed for some reason? I thought such things were usually worked out through back channels so you'd know how many votes you have going in.

Not a test balloon. They knew they had the votes. There had been much speculation by the party leaders about the reactions of Canadians to an election campaign over the holidays...and so this was an attempt to make it harder for the government to say "It's the opposition's fault we've got this election now." (Because the opposition can say it's because the government wouldn't agree to call the election in January.)

Of course, by now, it seems to be a non-issue. (At least, that's my guess...with my satellite radio now, I haven't been listening to much news, especially because XMs sole Canadian news outlet sounds worse (if you can believe it) than RealAudio did over a 14.4 modem connection. It took me a couple of times to be certain that the voice was human and not a text-to-speech reader.)