On Fri, 16 Nov 2001 18:57:34 +0100 Markus Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> the german constitution says that only when the parliament > rejects a vote of confidence the chancellor has the right > to ask the president to dissolve the parliament. The aim > of Schroeder's tactics was to provoke such a rejection and > then to have early elections in February 2002. > > To my opinion, the best way to make this kind of tactics > unattractive is to introduce the Swedish option. The Swedish > option says that when the parliament is dissolved then the > new parliament doesn't get a new full term, it gets only the > rest of the regular term of the old parliament. I think that the popular wisdom in the English speaking world is that early elections occur because the parliament is no longer able to govern. This is the criticism implied when people criticise Italy for having so many elections. It isn't so much the frequent elections, as the belief that government in Italy has routinely broken down. This is also, it seems to me, the main reason for allowing early elections. In fact, many countries actually encourage them, by forcing them in certain situations, or requiring that the government has majority support. The belief is that legislatures have a natural tendency toward being unable to govern, and that the best solution is to allow, and encourage, such legislatures to be dissolved. Presumably the legislature will be replaced by one that can govern, though I don't see why. I suggest, however, that any majority in the legislature will always have incentive to enact policy that that majority supports. And there is no reason that a legislature can't elect members of the executive, as long as an absolute majority isn't required. So I don't believe that governments break down. Instead, my view is that early elections usually occur because a majority of the legislature wants this to happen. Some parties can expect their fortunes to go up, and some to go down after an election. About half the time, we would expect that a majority feel they are on the upswing. More if they are overly optimistic, as politicians usually are. It isn't surprising then, if elections are frequent. In my opinion, the way around this problem is to set fixed terms for elections. The legislature should be no more able to have the election early than have it late. The Swedish option is a good step in the right direction. However, it will only work in a country where the expectation is for full terms. If people have come to expect an election a year, then it won't really matter if an early election doesn't give the legislature another full term, since no one expects that it would last that long anyway. --- Blake Cretney
