Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems. It was the introduction of another unnecessary decisionmaking entity, very common in the veto point-heavy US system, that created the crisis in the first place.
This is no trivial matter. Efficient passage of legislation has huge humanitarian consequences. It makes measures of planetary importance, like carbon taxes, easier to get through; they still face political pushback, of course — Australia's tax got repealed, after all — but they can be enacted in the first place, which is far harder in the US system. And the efficiency of parliamentary systems enables larger social welfare programs that reduce inequality and improve life for poor citizens.
Government spending in parliamentary countries is about 5 percent of GDP higher , after controlling for other factors, than in presidential countries. If you believe in redistribution, that's very good news indeed. The Westminister system of parliamentary democracy also benefits from weaker upper houses. The US is saddled with a Senate that gives Wyoming the same power as California, which has more than 66 times as many people.
Worse, the Senate is equal in power to the lower, more representative house. Most countries following the British system have upper houses — only New Zealand was wise enough to abolish it — but they're far, far weaker than their lower houses. The Canadian Senate and the House of Lords affect legislation only in rare cases.
At most, they can hold things up a bit or force minor tweaks. They aren't capable of obstruction anywhere near the level of the US Senate. Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man.
Generally speaking, in a parliamentary system, you need a head of state who is not the prime minister to serve as a disinterested arbiter when there are disputes about how to form a government — say, if the largest party should be allowed to form a minority government or if smaller parties should be allowed to form a coalition, to name a recent example from Canada.
That head of state is usually a figurehead president elected by the parliament Germany, Italy or the people Ireland, Finland , or a monarch. And monarchs are better. Monarchs are more effective than presidents precisely because they lack any semblance of legitimacy.
Indeed, when the governor-general of Australia did so in it set off a constitutional crisis that made it clear such behavior would not be tolerated. But figurehead presidents have some degree of democratic legitimacy and are typically former politicians. That enables a greater rate of shenanigans — like when Italian President Giorgio Napolitano schemed, successfully, to remove Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister due at least in part to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's entreaties to do so.
Napolitano is the rule, rather than the exception. Oxford political scientists Petra Schleiter and Edward Morgan-Jones have found that presidents, whether elected indirectly by parliament or directly by the people, are likelier to allow governments to change without new elections than monarchs are.
In other words, they're likelier to change the government without any democratic input at all. Monarchy is, perhaps paradoxically, the more democratic option. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower through understanding.
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By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Besides the strong familial and cultural ties between Great Britain and her American colonies, inclusion within the British Empire offered a number of benefits. With the British Navy protecting American shores, there was little chance of France or another European power attacking America.
This powerful navy also extended its protection to American shipping which could sail the oceans of the world with little fear of being attacked while flying the British flag.
Staying within the British Empire also held certain economic benefits for Americans. While most Americans disliked the economic system of mercantilism imposed on them by the British government, Americans enjoyed the fact that it was the people of Great Britain who bore the great expense of the protection afforded by the British military forces and the government services rendered by the British Government.
When the Patriots adopted their bill of civil rights before they adopted their form of government, they showed how important individual liberties were to a people who were fighting against what they felt was the oppressive government imposed by the king and Parliament. In both its bill of rights and its constitution, North Carolina—like the other states—showed a deep distrust of government.
Tar Heels believed that personal freedoms needed to be stated in writing. They believed that each branch of government had to be independent of the others so that a single individual or group could not have too much power. In creating the new government, revolutionary Americans reached their greatest achievement. They decided that sovereignty would lie with the people of the nation, not in any single person such as the king or institution such as Parliament. Democracy would be the ideal.
The system devised was not perfect then, nor is it perfect now. But the ideal of "government by the citizens and for the citizens" was the fuel that fired the revolutionary vision of a just society. It is the ideal that allows for change when the people desire change. For example, in those days, only free men who owned a certain amount of property were allowed to vote. But since then, the requirement of owning property has been dropped. Women are allowed to vote. Slavery was abolished.
Now all adult citizens of the United States with the exception of those who have committed serious crimes are allowed to vote. Expanding suffrage—the right to vote—to a greater number of people means that citizens have greater power over their own government. Many Tar Heels living in would be horrified to see that everyone has the right to vote. Other revolutionaries of the time would be pleased that the democratic government they created has become strong and works so well. The great legacy of the American Revolution is that a government was established that allowed for debate and differences of opinion.
This government is able to develop and improve as society progresses. It seems strange and wrong to us today that the men at Halifax could talk about personal freedom and a better government while holding African Americans in slavery and denying voting and other rights to women and to men without property.
But the dramatic fight for constitutional rights in the s was staged by an all-white, all-male cast. However much we may question the ideas of some of the founders, we must acknowledge the importance of what they achieved. They adopted the United States Constitution, which created a government based on written principles with the possibility of amendments. Thus, they established a method to achieve fundamental changes in the future, such as the abolition of slavery and the expansion of the right to vote.
North Carolina Civic Education Consortium. Flickr user: Visit Hillsborough. Josiah Martin Photograph no. Resources in libraries [via WorldCat].
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America Needs to Get Back to Facts.
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