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

I could write about this stuff for HOURS, literally

[sanpaku.livejournal.com]

Sharon's party will be quite different from Shinui, I think. Shinui was designed to be a secular voice, agnostic about the peace process. Sharon's party will be all about national security within the framework of Sharon's guidance. I think it will gain a lot of the same voters, so that Shinui will shrink, but it's not the same animal.

Splitting from a party and striking out on one's own are endemic to Israeli parties. Both Labor and Likud contain so many former parties -- remember Labor was called "One Israel" a few years ago? and Likud was always called "the Likud bloc" when I was growing up, because it contained a number of factions who dissented from Labor hegemony. Both Labor and Likud have seen lots of leaders bolt over the past ten years. Then they do get welcomed back. The need to get 61 MK's means you can't hold your grudges too deeply if you want power. In this case, though, it's hard to envision a Likud with Netanyahu rejoining a Sharon coalition. The Likud will become an irredentist rump allied with the NRP (settlers) and some of the other religious parties in opposing anything that seems to distinguish the territories from Israel proper, i.e. disengagement. In that respect it will return to part of its roots: remember that one component of Likud was founded on the idea that the _East_ Bank of the Jordan should be part of the Jewish state. As we now remember, that wasn't Sharon's background.

I think the real question is what you raised, about how long this formation will hold. Center parties are unstable, and this one will be very much dependent on Sharon's health and personality. It's hard to imagine anyone else doing what he's doing. Then again, not so very long ago it was hard to imagine Sharon bolting Likud or antagonizing the settlers.