Comparing Cabinets

Why is cabinet government so resilient? Despite many obituaries, why does it continue to be the vehicle for governing across most parliamentary systems? This book answers these questions by examining the structure and performance of cabinet government in five democracies: the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Australia. The book is organized around the dilemmas that cabinet governments must solve: how to develop the formal rules and practices that can bring predictability to the daily business and allow consistent decision making; how to balance good policy with good politics; how to ensure cohesion between the factions and parties that constitute the cabinet while allowing levels of self-interest to be advanced; how leaders can balance persuasion and command; and how to maintain support through accountability at the same time as being able to make unpopular decisions. All these dilemmas are continuing challenges to cabinet government, never solvable, and constantly reappearing in different forms. We ask how traditions, beliefs, and practices shape the answers. The different practices between the democracies examined show there can be no single definition of cabinet government. This comparative approach provides analysis and insights into the process of cabinet government that cannot be achieved in the study of any single political system. We better understand the pressures on each system by appreciating the options that are elsewhere accepted as common beliefs.

Conclusion

The chapter summarizes the findings, first in a series of empirical observations drawn from the five countries. It looks at the impact of party alignments, access to parliament, the benefits of stability, and finally the usefulness of comparative lessons. Then it revisits the theory to show how an interpretivist, agency-centred account can provide insights into the choices the actors make, and how resilience and flexible practices allow them to operate within accepted traditions. This flexibility can explain why cabinet government survives, even if not without challenge, as a dominant mode of government in parliamentary systems. Myths, traditions, and beliefs coupled with rules and precedents can provide a powerful framework.

Are There “Sources of Resilience” When the Separation of Powers Breaks Down?

Jacob Levy describes three variants of the separation of powers in the 31st Annual McDonald Lecture in Constitutional Studies, only one of which is germane to this reflection. The first variant he describes is based solely on the independence of the judiciary from both the executive and legislative branches of governments; consequently, this variant encompasses both presidential and parliamentary systems under its conceptual ambit. Another variant, which Levy attributes to Montesquieu, envisages the separation of powers between executive, judicial, and legislative branches as a way of allowing for the “pooled”1 rule of “the one” (i.e. monarch), “the few” (i.e. aristocrats), and “the many” (i.e. the people). Levy also describes a distinctly American variant of the separation of powers undergirded by a system of checks and balances. This variant was designed to ensure “mutual monitoring between executive and legislative”2 and it vests the legislative branch with the power to impeach the executive in order to “maintain effective limits on the political power and the political ambition of the president.”3

DINAMIKA DALAM PENERAPAN SISTEM PEMERINTAHAN PESIDENSIAL DAN PARLEMENTER DI INDONESIA

The implementation of democracy in each country takes different forms between one country and another, sometimes in a country in carrying out democracy it takes the form of a parliamentary system, likewise sometimes a country runs a presidential system in order to realize democracy. Meanwhile, in the context of the Indonesian state, the implementation of a government system whether it uses a presidential or parliamentary system is still a dynamic and debate until now among experts in constitutional law and politics that the Indonesian government system adopts what form of government system. Some experts have argued that when the 1945 Constitution had not been amended, the style of Indonesian government was often said to be a semi-presidential system. However, in practice the Indonesian government system is closer to a parliamentary style as was the case during the constitution of the Republic of the United States of Indonesia (RIS) and the UUDS in 1950, and after the amendments to the 1945 Constitution, the Indonesian government system became a pure presidential system. Several other experts stated that the Indonesian government system adopted a presidential system of government because it was of the opinion that the president's accountability to the MPR was not the responsibility of the legislative body. In this case he added, the President's accountability to the MPR should not be equated with a cabinet's accountability to parliament (in the parliamentary system). Therefore, it is very important to trace the implementation of the government system in Indonesia to date, whether it is adopting a pure presidential system or a mixture of presidential and parliamentary systems. Abstrak Implementasi demokrasi dalam setiap negara mengambil bentuk yang berbeda-beda antara negara yang satu maupun negara lain, terkadang dalam sebuah negara dalam menjalankan demokrasi mengambil bentuk sistem parlementer, demikian pula terkadang suatu negara menjalankan sistem presidensial demi untuk mewujudkan demokrasi. Sementara dalam konteks negara Indonesia, penerapan sistem pemerintahan apakah menggunakan sistem presindesial atau parlementer masih menjadi suatu dinamika dan perdebatan sampai sekarang dikalangan para pakar hukum tata negara dan politik bahwa sistem pemerintahan Indonesia menganut sistem pemerintahan yang berbentuk apa. Beberapa pakar mengemukakan bahwa ketika UUD 1945 belum diamandemen, corak pemerintahan Indonesia sering dikatakan sebagai sistem semi presidensial. Namun dalam prakteknya sistem pemerintahan Indonesia justru lebih mendekati corak parlementer seperti halnya dalam masa konstitusi Republik Indonesia Serikat (RIS) dan UUDS tahun 1950, dan setelah amandemen UUD 1945 sistem pemerintahan Indonesia menjadi sistem presidnesial murni. Beberapa pakar lain menyebutkan bahwa sistem pemerintahan Indonesia menganut sistem pemerintahan presidensial karena berpendapat pertanggungjawaban presiden kepada MPR bukan merupakan pertanggungjawaban kepada badan legeslatif. dalam hal ini menambahkan, petanggungjawaban Presiden kepada MPR tidak boleh disamakan dengan pertanggungjawaban kabinet kepada parlemen (dalam sistem parlementer). Karena itu, menjadi hal sangat penting untuk menelusuri pelaksanaan sistem pemerintahan di Indonesia hingga sekarang ini, apakah menganut sistem presidensial murni atau campuran sistem presidensial dan parlementer.

Parliamentary Accountability and Reform

The assertion that the Irish parliament, Oireachtas Éireann, or more specifically its lower house Dáil Éireann, is poor at if not incapable of fulfilling its constitutional role of holding the government to account is an established feature of the study of Irish politics. In this chapter, the development of parliamentary accountability is examined in constitutional and comparative contexts. This is achieved by first looking at the idea of accountability and its manifestation within the Westminster family of parliamentary systems, including the Oireachtas. The chapter examines the three principal methods through which executive accountability to Dáil Éireann has been pursued, namely debates, questions, and, more recently, committees. An analysis of the parliamentary reforms that have been proposed and introduced to address perceived accountability deficits is then presented. In a final section, important changes that resulted from the outcome of the 2016 general election for the operation of parliamentary accountability are examined.

Pandemic Parliamentary Oversight of Delegated Legislation: Comparing the Performance of Westminster Systems

The COVID-19 pandemic is testing parliamentary systems of governance across the world, especially in relation to oversight of executive actions. Observers in multiple jurisdictions have already noted the proliferation of delegated legislation during the pandemic and the shortcomings in legislative oversight of the same. To date, however, no close analysis has been conducted of the way in which legislative oversight mechanisms have broken down during the pandemic. This paper provides such an analysis, using examples from Westminster systems adopting the ‘legislative model’ of providing extraordinary powers. Looking at individual examples from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the analysis seeks to identify and explain the failures, and relative successes, in different mechanisms for parliamentary oversight, including parliamentary scrutiny committees (pre-existing and ad-hoc), disallowance, and sunset clauses. Although primarily descriptive, the comparative approach analysis permits preliminary conclusions to be drawn as to the way each jurisdiction may improve its methods of parliamentary oversight of delegated legislation. These comparative lessons will be of use both during and beyond the pandemic.

Federal Institutions and Strategic Policy Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic

This essay examines the policy response of the federal and regional governments in federations to the COVID-19 crisis. We theorize that the COVID-19 policy response in federations is an outcome of strategic interaction among the federal and regional incumbents in the shadow of their varying accountability for health and the repercussions from the disruptive consequences of public health measures. Using the data from the COVID-19 Public Health Protective Policy Index Project, we study how the variables suggested by our theory correlate with the overall stringency of public health measures in federations as well as the contribution of the federal government to the making of these policies. Our results suggest that the public health measures taken in federations are at least as stringent as those in non-federations, and there is a cluster of federations on which a bulk of crisis policy making is carried by subnational governments. We find that the contribution of the federal government is, on average, higher in parliamentary systems; it appears to decline with the proximity of the next election in presidential republics, and to increase with the fragmentation of the legislative party system in parliamentary systems. Our analysis also suggests that when the federal government carries a significant share of responsibility for healthcare provision, it also tends to play a higher role in taking non-medical steps in response to the pandemic.

Negativity and Political Behavior: A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Negative Voting in Contemporary Democracies

Recent developments in Western societies have motivated a growing consideration of the role of negativity in public opinion and political behavior research. In this article, we review the scant (and largely disconnected) scientific literature on negativity and political behavior, merging contributions from social psychology, public opinion, and electoral research, with a view on developing an integrated theoretical framework for the study of negative voting in contemporary democracies. We highlight that the tendency toward negative voting is driven by three partly overlapping components, namely, (1) an instrumental–rational component characterized by retrospective performance evaluations and rationalization mechanisms, (2) an ideological component grounded on long-lasting political identities, and (3) an affective component, motivated by (negative) attitudes toward parties and candidates. By blueprinting the systematic relationships between negative voting and each of these components in turn, and suggesting multiple research paths, this article aims to stimulate future studies on negative voting in multi-party parliamentary systems to motivate a better understanding of the implications of negativity in voting behavior in contemporary democracies.