Comparative Government and Politics

For advocates of the parliamentary system, cabinet government has the advantage of encouraging more deliberation and collective leadership than occurs in a presidential system. When Olsen (1980: 203) wrote that ‘a Norwegian prime minister is unlikely to achieve a position as superstar’, many advocates of parliamentary government would have regarded his comment as praise. Finland provides a clear case of cabinet government at work: by law, the Finnish State Council (the cabinet) is granted extensive decision-making authority, prime ministers are mainly chairs of Council meetings, and it is at these meetings that decisions are reached and compromises made. Meanwhile, both the prime minister and individual ministers are subject to constraints arising from Finland’s complex multi-party coalitions. But the system works best in smaller countries; in many larger countries, the number and complexity of decisions means they cannot all be settled around the cabinet table.

As regards prime ministerial government, the guiding principle is hierarchy rather than collegiality. Germany has an arrangement known as a ‘chancellor democracy’ in which the Bundestag (Germany’s lower house) appoints the chancellor, and accountability to the Bundestag is mainly through the chancellor’s office. The chancellor answers to parliament, while ministers answer to the chancellor. The strong position of Germany’s chief executive derives from the Basic Law (the German constitution) which says that the ‘chancellor shall determine, and be responsible for, the general policy guidelines’.

If the paradox of the presidential executive is weakness amid the appearance of strength, the puzzle of parliamentary government is to explain why effective government can still emerge from the mutual vulnerability of legislature and executive. The solution is clear: the party provides the necessary unifying device, bridging government and legislature in a manner that presidential systems are designed to prevent. Where a single party has a parliamentary majority, government can be stable and decisive, perhaps excessively so. But majority governments are increasingly rare, with the result that the typical parliamentary executive is a coalition government or a minority administration. Looking in more depth at different kinds of coalitions provides more insight into how parliamentary executives work.

The key to the system’s stability is the party discipline that turns the cabinet into the master of the Commons, rather than its servant.The governing party spans the cabinet and the legislature, ensuring domination of the parliamentary agenda. The cabinet is officially the top committee of state but it is also an unofficial meeting of the party’s leaders. As long as senior party figures remain sensitive to the views of other Members of Parliament (MPs) (and, often, even if they do not), they can control the Commons. The government may emerge from the parliamentary womb but it dominates its parent from the moment of its birth.

How does the ruling party achieve this level of control? Each party has a Whip’s Office to ensure that MPs vote as its leaders require. Even without the attention of the whips, MPs will generally toe the party line if they want to become ministers themselves. In a strong party system such as Britain’s, a member who shows too much independence is unlikely to win promotion. In extreme cases, MPs are thrown out of their party for dissent and are then unlikely to be re-elected by constituents for whom a party label is still key. Whatever their personal views, it is in the interests of MPs to show public loyalty to their party.

Coalition and minority governments. It is quite usual in parliamentary systems (particularly those using proportional representation, discussed in Chapter 16) for no single party to win a majority after an election. In this situation, the tight link between the election result and government formation weakens, and government takes one of three main forms:

• A majority coalition government in which two or more parties with a majority of seats join together. This is the most common form of rule in continental Europe.

• A minority coalition or alliance in which parties, even working together, still lack a parliamentary majority. Minority coalitions have predominated in Denmark since the 1980s.

• A single-party minority government formed by the largest party. These are common in Norway and Sweden.

Figure 9.2 shows the party composition of West European governments in the second half of the twentieth century, revealing that majority coalitions were the most frequent, followed by single-party minority governments, minority coalitions, and single-party majority governments. So unusual are single-party majority governments that many national constitutions explicitly specify the hurdles a new government must clear before taking office. Some demand that the legislature shows majority support for a new government through a formal vote of investi-ture, a requirement that encourages the formation of a majority coalition with an agreed programme.

Others, however, do not require a majority vote for a new administration. In Sweden, for example, the proposed prime minister can form a government as long as no more than half the members of the Riksdag object (Bergman, 2000). This requirement is to avoid majority opposition rather than to achieve majority assent. Where constitutions say nothing on the procedure for approving a new government, as in Denmark, the new administration takes office – and continues in power – until and unless it is voted down by the legislature.These less demanding conventions facilitate the formation and survival of minority governments.

FOCUS 9.2 Heads of state in parliamentary systems

No analysis of parliamentary executives is complete without saying something about the distinction between the head of state and the head of government. The classic analysis was offered by the Victorian British commentator Walter Bagehot (a one-time editor of The Economist). In his book The English Constitution, he wrote of the two key elements of constitutions (boldface added):

first, those which excite and preserve the reverence of the population – the dignified parts, if I may so call them; and next the efficient parts – those by which it, in fact, works and rules ... every constitution must first gain authority and then use authority; it must first win the loyalty and confidence of mankind, and then employ that homage in the work of government. (Bagehot, 1867: 6)

Unlike presidential systems, which combine the offices of head of state and head of government, parliamentary systems separate the two positions. Dignified or ceremonial leadership lies with the head of state, while efficient leadership is based on the prime minister. Heads of state possess few significant political powers, and their job is primarily non-political, and to act as a unifying influence. Prime ministers, meanwhile, are the elected political leaders with executive power. This separation of roles creates more time for prime ministers to concentrate on running the country, and also helps to separate government and state in the public mind. Heads of state are not entirely non-political, however, and sometimes play a role in the formation of governments. In India, for example, the president had to oversee the formation of a caretaker government in 1979 that governed until new elections in 1980; stepped in on three occasions between 1996–7 to identify the party leader best placed to form a new government following indecisive elections; and was involved in 2004 in naming Manmohan Singh as prime minister after Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi turned down the job.

Heads of state are typically either monarchs who inherit their position, or presidents who are appointed or elected (see Table 9.3). Eight European countries – Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg (a duchy), the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom – have a constitutional monarchy, while Malaysia’s supreme head of state provides a rare contemporary example of an elected monarch. Some former British colonies, such as Australia and Canada, have a governor-general who stands in for the monarch. Most monarchs are reluctant to enter the political arena in democratic times, but royal influence can occasionally be significant, especially in eras of crisis and transition. King Juan Carlos helped to steer Spain’s transition to democracy in the 1970s, for example, while the King of Belgium played a conciliatory role in his country’s long march to federal status between 1970 and 1993.

Elsewhere, heads of state in parliamentary systems are presidents, and are elected either through a popular vote (e.g. Ireland), by parliament (e.g. Israel), or by a special electoral college, often comprising the national legislature plus representatives from regional or local government (e.g. Germany).

TABLE 9.3: Selecting the head of state in parliamentary democracies

The characteristic form of the executive in hybrid and authoritarian regimes is presidential, but as we saw in Chapter 4 the term president takes on a quite different meaning from what we find in democracies. Presidential government in authoritarian settings provides a natural platform for leaders who seek to set themselves apart from – and above – all others. In such systems, the president operates without the same constitutional restraints faced by the chief executive of a liberal democracy. Instead, presidents use what they define as their direct mandate from the people to cast a shadow over competing institutions such as the courts and the legislature. Excepting the simplest systems, though, they do not usually go so far as to reduce these bodies to completely token status.

Authoritarian leaders seek to concentrate power on themselves and their supporters, not to distribute it among institutions; it is this lack of institutionalization that is the central feature of the authoritarian executive. Although developed in the context of African politics, the idea of personal rule developed by Jackson and Rosberg (1982) travels widely through the authoritarian world. Politics takes precedence over government, and personalities matter more than institutions: there is, in other words, a feast of presidents but a famine of presidencies.

The result of personal rule is often a struggle over succession, insufficient emphasis on policy, and poor governance. In particular, the lack of a succession procedure (excepting hereditary monarchies) can create a conflict among potential successors not only after the leader’s exit, but also in the run-up to it. Authoritarian leaders keep their job for as long as they can ward off their rivals. They must monitor threats and be prepared to neuter those who are becoming too strong. Politics comes before policy.

In the Middle East, personal rule remains central to those authoritarian regimes that survived the Arab Spring of 2011. The absolute monarchs discussed in Chapter 4 continue to rule oil-rich kingdoms in traditional patriarchal style. ‘Ruling’ rather than ‘governing’ is the appropriate term. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, advancement within the ruling family depends less on merit than on proximity to the family’s network of advisers, friends, and guards. Public and private are interwoven, each forming part of the ruler’s sphere. Government posts are occupied on the basis of good behaviour, as demonstrated by unswerving loyalty to the ruler’s personal interests.

Such systems of personal rule have survived for centuries, limiting the development of strong institutions. The Arab Spring revealed their weaknesses, as frustrated populations in several Arab states protested against the absence of opportunity in corrupt, conservative regimes headed by ageing autocrats. But the challenges of switching from autocracy to democracy were also revealed. In the case of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak was ousted from office in 2011 in the wake of demonstrations against his 30-year regime, and in 2012 the country’s first ever truly competitive elections resulted in the victory of Mohamed Morsi. But because he came from the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, nervous-ness grew abroad, particularly in the United States. And when Morsi started showing signs of authoritarianism, he was removed in a July 2013 military coup. Military leader Abdel Fattah el-Sisi then reinvented himself as a civilian, won elections held in May 2014, and quickly showed an unwillingness to tolerate opposition. After a brief and hopeful flirtation with democracy, Egypt was soon back to its old ways. This was not what most Egyptians wanted, and opposition to the el-Sisi regime began to grow; the point, though, is that Egypt’s other political institutions were too weak to resist a return to personal rule.

The theme of the president operating without the constitutional restraints found in democracies is illustrated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Formally, Russia is a semi-presidential system arranged along French lines, with a directly elected president coexisting with a chairman of the government (i.e. prime minister) who is nominated by the president and approved by the Duma (the lower chamber of the legislature).

In some minor respects, the Russian president’s position is only slightly stronger than that of a US president. Both are limited to two terms in office, but the Russian leader can stand again after a term out. Both are subject to impeachment but the threshold is more demanding in Russia: the US requires only a majority of members in favour in the House of Representatives, while Russia requires a two-thirds majority in both parliamentary chambers plus confirmation by the courts.