Political Science Two

The first form, presidential government, is a little complicated, so it shall be saved for another summary. The second, parliamentary government, is the simpler of the two, and is found in most democracies. Parliamentary government is a set of people chosen to represent other people, usually with some geographic focus, and consists of four basic principles. The first states that citizens of a parliamentary state elect the parliament of representatives for their state. The second states that the cabinet,consisting of members of parliament who take on executive responsibilities on top of their legislative ones, is elected by the established parliament to manage state affairs. The third condition under which a parliamentary government functions is that this cabinet can only exist if it consistently acquires the majority of votes in the parliament, or as long as the parliament has confidence in the cabinet. The fourth and final basic principle states that the parliament can actually be disbanded by the head of the cabinet, resulting in a new election and a new separation of powers.

Following basic principles, there are certain advantages to having a parliamentary government. One such advantage is the unified power that parliamentary governments possess. This unified power lets the government respond to change quickly. Additionally, if something does go wrong, policymaking has a clear line of responsibility. This gives voters the means to blame a specific person, which makes elections much more important than they may be in other forms of government. As in all nearly every aspect of politics, the disadvantages are rarely far behind the advantages. Though there seem to be very few drawbacks to parliamentary government, they do exist. For example, the use of coalitions has the potential to produce a very unstable government. Coalitions are established in a cabinet when no one party has a clear majority over the others. These coalitions allow two, or even more, parties to split up positions in the cabinet among themselves.

With all this talk of cabinets and parliaments, some clarification is probably necessary. A cabinet is elected by parliament, but retains the power to bring down said parliament at any time. Assuming all is running smoothly, a cabinet is established to control happenings in parliament and to propose legislation, which is then debated by parliament. All executive and legislative parts of the parliament are expected to cooperate in order to make legislation. While parliament intensely scrutinizes any bills that the cabinet tries to enact into law, it also provides a forum for the public debate of these bills. Additionally, parliament keeps an eye on the cabinet’s administering of public policy by allotting question time. This allows members of parliament to regularly question various members of the cabinet regarding the running of their ministry. Parliamentary committees are another structure of parliamentary government. These committees, or smaller groups of legislature, are designed to carefully review proposed legislation and propose resulting actions to the full legislature.

Though institutions that divide political power of the state may compromise the principle of parliamentary supremacy, most systems have successfully incorporated them. The extreme exception to “pure case” parliamentarism is known as consensus parliamentarism, in which a more muted distinction exists between the government and its opposition. Unfortunately, consensus parliamentarism loses the clean accountability found in “pure case” parliamentarism. However, there are some benefits. In exchange for this loss of accountability, the government gains more stable solutions, which allow policy to remain consistent over change. Additionally, since all parties participated in policymaking, all are equally responsible.

The End.