5 Things You Need to Know About Parliamentary Systems

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We’re breaking down what you need to know about parliamentary systems around the world.

  1. Parliamentary systems have a long history that spans the globe.

  2. The key feature of a parliamentary system: the legislature is supreme!

  3. Parliamentary systems depend on strong parties and accountability.

  4. Like all systems, parliamentary systems have pros and cons.

  5. In the US, we don't have a parliamentary system, but Congress acts like we do.

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Episode Resources

Transcript

Beth [00:00:00] This system is in place all over the world with a lot of different components arranged around it. It is the dominant form of government among developed democracies and it is much more popular than the presidential system that we use in the United States. 

Sarah [00:00:22] This is Sarah. 

Beth [00:00:23] And Beth. 

Sarah [00:00:24] You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:00:26] The home of grace-filled political conversations. 

Beth [00:00:48] Hello and thank you so much for joining us for today's episode of Pantsuit Politics, one of our core values is curiosity. And one way that we try to prioritize curiosity is through our Five Things episodes. Today, we're going to talk about the five things you need to know about parliamentary systems. And next week, we'll follow up on this discussion by talking about the snap election that just took place in Canada and the upcoming election to replace Angela Merkel as chancellor in Germany. 

Sarah [00:01:16] Because most of our listeners are here in the United States with us, we felt like this would be a good time to level set on the differences between these elections and our presidential contest. And we also know that many of you are listening in countries that use parliamentary systems. And we welcome all of your notes, additions, and challenges to what we share today and will be sure to share your feedback. 

Beth [00:01:35] We try to keep our five things episodes short and shareable. So this is a difference from some of our other episodes in terms of the short piece. We tend to steer clear of too much opinion in these episodes because we know that there are teachers using them in their classrooms and company leaders sharing them with employees. And we so appreciate that and want to honor it. We are really trying to today share our research with you here, raise some interesting questions, and then you'll hear more of our opinions when we follow up next week. 

Sarah [00:02:04] Before we dive into parliamentary systems, it's an exciting time for us here because our fall book club boxes are rolling out. The theme of this box, which we felt was appropriate for the approaching holiday season, is connection. The boxes will include Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger. The Deal of a Lifetime by Fredrik Backman, plus Anne Bogel's My Reading Life journal. It's such a good box, you guys. 

Beth [00:02:37] It's a really good one, Anne's reading journal is phenomenal. 

Sarah [00:02:41] It's so good like you listen, you hear reading journal and you think you know what it is. And let me just emphasize, you do not understand what it this it is so much more than just a place to write down the books you've read. 

Beth [00:02:51] So we're really excited about this box. It is not too late for you to get it. We would love for you to order it by October 1st. That's really our cutoff date. So go now. The link in the show notes is here. You can go to our website, to the book club page, click on the menu and Choose Book Club for more information. But we would love for you to join us in this great reading. 

Beth [00:03:22] So five things we want you to know about parliamentary systems, beginning with the fact that they have a long history that spans the entirety of the globe, and there is a lot of debate about where the first parliamentary system was used. Scholars see evidence of the kind of democratic governance that parliaments are supposed to facilitate taking place under a king back in ancient Mesopotamia and ancient India. There are other scholars who quibble with that, and they say this was really like an oligarchy. But we do want to give credit beyond the U.K., which tends to get the credit for beginning parliaments. Ancient Athens also gets a lot of credit as the cradle of democracy. But it's important to remember that was not a representative form of government. And parliamentary systems are really about representation. In the year 930, Iceland convened its Althingi, which is recognized as the oldest surviving parliament in the world. And the king of what is now Spain convened three states in 1188 in a parliamentary format. So this has been around a while. 

Sarah [00:04:23] Well, and it's just an important reminder that first things don't start one place and then we all give them credit for it being the first. Like we've learned that a million times. It was evolving in multiple places at once. And, you know, as much as kings and queens wanted to cite God as the source of all their power, I think we see throughout history that there was politics at play even when you were put there by God. And that's where you see these consultations, these groups that were the real beginnings of parliamentary systems, as we're going to talk about in the U.K. But it won't surprise the French speakers to hear that the word parliament comes from parler, which means to talk. Also, is it ringing any any social media bells, remember parler, the conservative app?

Beth [00:05:11] I do. It's "par-lay" Right? "Par-lay" is how you say it in French? And I love that the social media app went with parler as well, like I think, right? Oh, to talk. They're talking over there. 

Sarah [00:05:20] The word originally described after-dinner discussions among monks and in 1239 an English, monk Matthew Parris used the word to describe a council meeting with Earls and Barons. And later it was used to describe a meeting called by Pope Innocent IV in France that resulted in Emperor Frederick II being deposed and excommunicated. That was quite a talk. 

Beth [00:05:40] And so then in Great Britain, we saw King Edward I doing exactly what you talked about, Sarah. He convened these joint meetings of basically the clergy and the economically powerful. To come together to solve problems that weren't being solved in the courts and that led to the development of the model parliament in 1295, and some historians say this is really where we got our first representative parliament that set the stage for what we see in countries today. The Lords in this group would debate in one chamber and the Knights and the Burgesses in another, and the king and his council would be there to bless what they had decided by the fourteen hundreds. You had monarchs reliant on these types of parliaments to make the laws. You rarely got just proclamations from the monarchs themselves. 

Sarah [00:06:30] Well, because they needed cover. They needed political cover. Because, again, even if you're put there by God, things get a little rough. People were getting, you know, forced out. You had family members creeping around all the time trying to undermine you. So it just this evolution makes a lot of sense to me. And this history is helpful to understand because that evolution was flexible and it can fit into a lot of different countries and a lot of different cultures, depending on what those political needs were. Generally, when we're talking about a parliamentary system, we mean that a legislature is the most powerful branch of government and the line between the legislature and the executive tends to get a little blurry. Usually, a prime minister in a cabinet is what we're talking about when we're talking about that executive branch. Now, we said courts, which is confusing when you talk about that medieval evolution, because you also had the courts with the ladies and lords in the royal court. But the judiciary, as in how we usually use the word court today, usually resolves disputes surrounding laws. But in many parliamentary systems, the judiciary does not have the kind of authority and power you see in US courts, which have the power to exercise judicial and constitutional review of legislative acts. So we're not we don't see those powerful judiciaries in parliamentary systems the way we do in the US. 

Beth [00:07:55] So today, zooming forward from the Middle Ages and before parliamentary systems are used in at least fifty-one countries, it is hard to get an exact count because it is such a flexible form of governance. There are parliamentary democracies like you see in Australia and federal parliamentary republics like Ethiopia and federal parliamentary democracies like Canada, self-governing parliamentary democracies like the Cook Islands, parliamentary constitutional monarchies like the UK, federal parliamentary constitutional monarchies like Malaysia, and parliamentary democratic dependencies like Bermuda. And I don't mean to give you that list to just kind of make everyone's eyes glaze over, but to show that this system is in place all over the world with a lot of different components arranged around it. It is the dominant form of government among developed democracies, and it is much more popular than the presidential system that we use in the United States. 

Sarah [00:08:50] And because there's such variety, we're going to have to talk about parliamentary systems in a very general way. Please understand that there will be nuances and exceptions for almost everything we discuss, and you can even hear it in that list Beth just gave. The goal here is to help those of us who don't live in countries with a parliamentary system to understand the structure enough to understand what's coming up in the news. 

Beth [00:09:10] So the second thing you need to know is that, as Sarah said, the key feature of a parliamentary system is legislative supremacy. We have a tendency, I think, in the United States to analogize a prime minister to our president. Those are extremely different roles with extremely different powers. And the power in a parliamentary system comes from the legislature, not the people directly. That's what it means when you hear talk about people forming a government, the political party with a majority of seats in the legislature. So the people select the legislators and then the legislators through their parties, choose the prime minister and the prime minister's cabinet. Now, we got a question about how party leaders are chosen that really depends on the country and the party. In most places, the parties themselves have their own rules for how they conduct leadership elections. 

Sarah [00:10:04] Well, and it's like the media coverage, especially places like UK. It is confusing. Like you see their election and the way it's covered, especially in the United States, is like a presidential election. Like, well, here's the prime minister for this party. Here's the prime minister of this party who's going to win? But that's really not the process that's involved. And I think with global leadership and with NATO and G7 and they're all standing up there on the stage side by side. So you're like, no, they're the same. Right? But no, it's a very, very different system. In the US, the president derives power from the Constitution. In a parliamentary system. The executive, usually the prime minister, derives power and legitimacy from the legislature itself. 

Beth [00:10:46] And that means that we do not have the kind of check and balance system that we have in the United States. The executive branch is not a check on the legislative branch or vice versa, the roles are intertwined. The prime minister and the cabinet serve as long as the legislature has confidence in them. And when it doesn't, then they don't anymore. 

Sarah [00:11:19] So parliamentary countries often have many parties, so if the parties play such a central role in electing the prime minister, then what the parties are and how many there are is pretty important. So sometimes voters will elect their legislators and there won't be a clear majority party. And when you have that result, it's called a hung parliament. Two things can happen. So the party with the most votes, recruits smaller parties to work with them until they have a majority. And through negotiations, you might be able to form a government with a coalition, a coalition government. We hear that a lot. Right? Or a minority government forms the winning party doesn't have an absolute majority, but goes for it anyway. And it's a really fragile situation. We've been seeing that play out across the globe many times as particularly in Israel we saw over and over, and that Netanyahu's party would get the most votes, but didn't have a majority of seats in the parliament. And so they were going back and forth and back and forth until they could find the coalition in order to get the majority. You also saw that in Canada, the snap election where Justin Trudeau's party was trying to get to a majority. And so this is a really important part of the process. 

Beth [00:12:23] Now, there are countries, somewhat confusingly, for those of us in the United States that have presidents alongside the prime minister and the cabinet or some other form of head of government. There can be a monarch in the picture, as we're kind of accustomed to in the U.K, but there can also be a president. In those countries, the president does tend to be elected directly by the public. And usually that person is going to be focused on the kinds of things that our secretary of state does in the US: national security, foreign policy. Again, it varies widely across the world. But just hearing that there's a parliamentary system does not exclude the possibility of the president. It should just have those of us in the US thinking, OK, well, I need to know more about what that person's role is. 

Sarah [00:13:05] Well, and then you have Vladimir Putin coming in and being like, I'm the prime minister, I'm the president and the prime minister and the president. I'm going to forever around all the power here until I could just keep staying to make it extra confusing for the rest of us. OK, so the third thing we want you to know is that parliamentary systems depend on strong parties and accountability. Forming a government, as we've seen in Israel and other places, can be really difficult. But once it's formed, it's usually a very effective and responsive form of government in most parliamentary systems. It is very rare for individual members of parliament to break with their party, and the minority parties have almost no power. They object to absolutely everything. And the majority or the coalition government just goes on with what it wants to do. They just barrel forward and ignore the minority party. 

Beth [00:13:53] And the majority party has to do that cognizant of the fact that if an individual minister in some systems receives a no-confidence vote, that minister has to resign. And usually, if the prime minister receives a no-confidence vote, the whole government has to resign and you'll get a new election. So let's talk about snap elections, which are called before a scheduled election when there is a pressing issue or something unusual happening with public opinion or some kind of opportunity. This is kind of the inverse of a no-confidence vote. The incumbent government itself can call a snap election because they want to strengthen the majority party. This is what we saw with Justin Trudeau in Canada. And sometimes that works and it often happens that it backfires on the incumbent. And so we'll talk more about that next week. But if you're thinking about the ways that a government can dissolve in a parliamentary system, you can have a no-confidence vote where the opposition is trying to take that government down or a snap election where the existing government is saying, we think we can be stronger going forward. 

Sarah [00:14:57] The fourth thing we want you to know about parliamentary systems is they have pros and cons just like every system. Right. It's very hard to define the pros and cons given the highly specific designs of these systems, country by country. But let's take a crack at it. Let's talk about some possible pros of a parliamentary system, Beth. 

Beth [00:15:15] So, again, depending on your perspective, the pros are that these systems encourage frequent elections. So theoretically, they should be very responsive and very accountable to the public. 

Sarah [00:15:27] I feel like if you live in Israel, this is not going to be in the pro category considering their recent history. But overall, I think it's a pro.

Beth [00:15:33] Well and it's hard here in the United States to think more elections sound great, just difficult to embrace that. But that idea that the public has an opportunity just about at any time to dramatically rethink things is a feature of these systems. You also have that multiparty opportunity. There are some structural reasons that are really complicated and we won't get into today why presidential systems where the president is directly elected by the people and is a check on the legislature, those systems favor two parties, parliament's favor multiple parties. And so you have the chance for more people to participate in government and that tends to increase cooperation and compromise. So you see less polarization in these systems. 

Sarah [00:16:20] It's so interesting because the emphasis on coalition is sort of in opposition to our idea of bipartisanship through the lens of majority-minority. So like what we said, right? They're not working with the minority party or parties at all, almost ever, but they are working in a coalition, which I think is an interesting way to sort of view that polarization or no polarization. I mean, I think you can look at Britain and there's a lot of people who are going to say we have polarization. It's just a different kind. 

Beth [00:16:52] Mm hmm. 

Beth [00:16:54] You can also pass laws faster than you can in a presidential system because parliamentary systems are, by design, pretty well gridlock proof. Once you have the majority, you do what you want. And the minority party opposes that at every turn. But the minority party knows that what it's trying to do is convince the country that in the next election, your vision is the better vision. And everybody just understands that from the beginning there are also some possible downsides. And Sarah, I see those as mostly all the things we just listed. They can act in more negative ways as well. 

Sarah [00:17:28] Yeah, frequent elections can be overwhelming. They can lead to just if that's what it felt like in Israel, like it was just the same election coming to the same result, the same election coming to the same result because it was like Netanyahu had formed some sort of presidential role and they couldn't shake him, but they were able to form a coalition once. They did. But then and again and it's the same thing with the coalition, the bipartisanship even down to the party system. Yeah, you might have multiple parties, but, you know, as we're going to talk about in the German elections, you do, but not really right. You have like the big players and there might be smaller parties, but no one really thinks they're ever going to get close to the majority. 

Beth [00:18:09] And the only real break that you have on the majority party is that vote of no confidence. And so if you are not in alignment with the majority in this system, you can't rely on something like the filibuster or people crossing the aisle to vote against the majority. It is just you just are going to have to take the whole government down to move forward in a different direction. 

Sarah [00:18:41] So, many scholars and researchers describe parliamentary systems as overall more conducive to stable democracy, and recent research suggests that parliamentary systems tend to produce better economies than a presidential system. Ninety-one percent of the best global performers, those countries with better than average growth and below-average income inequality use parliamentary systems. So how do we think about our own system through that lens? 

Beth [00:19:02] Well, that's the fifth thing that we want you to know about these systems. We do not have a parliamentary system in the United States, but our Congress tends to act like we do. So there's a lot to take apart here. For several years, we've had commentators remarking that members of Congress operate more like parliamentary members. You see less independence exercised, more hard-line party tactics. Now, I don't know that this analysis holds up very well in the current administration. I think the current Congress is deviating from this trend a little bit, especially as you see more. I hate to use the word infighting, but there is definitely more independence among Democratic lawmakers than we've seen for a couple of years right now. The issue is we are only getting the downside of that parliamentary behavior instead of the upside. And that is because everything surrounding it, like the infrastructure of how people get to Congress, differs from most parliamentary systems.

Sarah [00:20:01] We still have winner take all single-member districts with way too few people in Congress than most parliamentary systems. Look like this is the meat and potatoes for me. We just have too few people in Congress. I think we too have too few people in state legislators, for what it's worth as well. In many countries where you use a parliamentary system, you have proportional representation. If a minor party's candidates receive four percent of the votes, they get four percent of the seats. Obviously, that is not the case in the United States. 

Beth [00:20:31] We also have a really unique campaign finance system in that it's a real free-for-all all here compared to other countries. I read an article where a scholar was being interviewed and she was asked, can you think of a comparable campaign finance system to the United States in any parliamentary country? And she said I can't. Not sitting here today, I cannot think of one. So it's very, very different. And we have all of these breaks on the majority party. You cannot govern with just a majority in the United States. We have a president with veto power. We have a filibuster. We have a court system that can declare your laws unconstitutional or say that you exercised your authority improperly. So you must have some cooperation outside of your party in the United States to get anything done. And Sarah, I thought it might be interesting here to just think about if we were in a true parliamentary system, I don't think we would ever have a conversation about the debt ceiling. It will just pass and move on. 

Sarah [00:21:29] Move on. I mean, I don't think it's a fix-all. I had a college professor who definitely presented parliamentary systems as a solution to all of that ails us in America. But I don't want to do that thing that we tend to do that leads to such harmful conception of the news, which is to think like, well, if somebody is out there doing it perfectly and if we could just get there, it wouldn't it would be so much easier. And that's not the case. 

Beth [00:21:55] I think that's right. And I look at our Congress and don't today think, well, I wish I wish that Congress was taking more power and authority over foreign policy, for example. I do think it would be interesting to see what our Congress looks like in a system that doesn't allow Congress to skirt so many issues. I mean, that's the big problem right now, because you can't govern with just a majority in our Congress. A lot of members of Congress have kind of vocally given up on trying to do real legislative actions, and they see their roles as more communications, more sort of public relations. And I don't think a parliamentary system would allow that. There's a really interesting thought experiment from 2018 in The New York Times that will link in the notes imagining what it would look like in the United States if we had a parliamentary system with proportional representation in how we elect members. They imagined that we would have a center-left party that's socially liberal and fiscally moderate. They said this is probably where most of today's Democratic leadership would fall. Biden for sure. Schumer, they said Pelosi would probably be the outer left edge of that center-left party. And then they imagined a progressive left that would be more of the Sanders, Warren, AOC kind of caucus. There would probably be a Green Party. There is in almost every parliamentary system. And then they imagined like a MAGA party that has this strong opposition to immigration and favoring a strong military and low taxes and very, very, very traditional values. And then they said, making me kind of sad, that you'd probably get like a teeny tiny Never Trump party that has some of those, like old school Republican ideas and very little power in this system. So I thought that was interesting to just look at. I think some of those dynamics have changed since 2018, but that still seems like a fairly good representation to me of how it would break down in a parliamentary system. 

Sarah [00:23:49] Well, I feel like the Democratic Party does a lot of coalition-building more than the Republican Party. The Republican Party, I wish did a little more of that coalition building. I wish looked at the lay of the land and said like, no. Well, the MAGA party, we need to give them proportional power to their support instead of feeling like circling the wagons about whatever they think is the winning campaign strategy. I feel like the Democratic Party, for better or for worse, does a lot more coalition-building and a lot more like, well, that might work, but you might be a loud member of this coalition. But we need to give you power proportional to your representative support. 

Beth [00:24:25] And again, all of that goes way down from should we have a parliament to how are we doing our elections? Because I don't even know what the United States Congress would look like. Put aside the challenge of like amending the US Constitution to completely reframe how our government works. I think we could get a lot of the benefits of a parliamentary system here if we just looked at some of our election practices and that representation district by district that you talk about a lot, Sarah. 

[00:24:54] Well, thank you so much for joining us today. As we mentioned at the top of the show, we announced the three books in our final book club Box of the Year this week. That information has gone out on social media to our premium members. It'll be on our website, Zeehan. So if you want to get news like that, make sure that you are plugged into those communities. And if you aren't already an extra credit book club subscriber, we would love to have you reading with us. Just follow the link in the show. Notes get signed up before October 1st so you don't miss this very special box. We'll be back with you here next week. Have the best weekend available to you. 

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Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:25:52] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

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