Llewellyn

King

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March 12, 2009

The Many Hues of Democracy

Politicians frequently remind us that the United States is the freest country on Earth. Certainly, we are right up there on the big freedoms – worship, assembly, movement and speech. We have the Bill of Rights and a nifty Constitution written by some really wise coves.

Pity the English, for example. They claim to have an all-encompassing Constitution (a matrix of precedents, legal decisions and laws), dating back to Magna Carta in 1297. They have all the things we have from time to time, like constitutional crises; High Court rulings and, on top of them, decisions by the Law Lords (lawyers in the House of Lords); and the rather quaint Privy Council, which advises the Queen. But, er, the Constitution was never written down. 

Occasionally there is talk of writing it all down, but it is a daunting task and produces troubles of its own. For example, what about Scotland, which has a different legal system and its own parliament, but is part of the United Kingdom and has only been such for a mere 300 years? Would you jettison the English Constitution to write a British Constitution? And what would you do about the monarchy and the aristocracy? They would have to be in there, too.

Charles de Gaulle, who famously said, “L'etat, c'est moi” (I am the state), nonetheless thought it would be a good thing to have a new French Constitution that enshrined his job in government as the president of France and left all the messy domestic bits to the prime minister of France – a lesser individual than a regular prime minister in normal parliamentary government.

De Gaulle's Constitution of the Fifth Republic, which was approved in 1958, is a very good blending of two democratic political systems and worthy of study by people who are interested in the theories of democracy. It also got around the problem of the titular head of state – in most countries a relic of monarchy, copied from Britain. The idea is that the head of state is above politics and the head of government is the prime minister, a distinction that has baffled protocol chiefs at the White House over the years. Australia, Canada and New Zealand have as their heads of state governors general, appointed by the Queen of England to this day.

African countries seized on De Gaulle's idea that you could have a president and a parliament, but they distorted it to grant one person extraordinary power, as has happened in South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Israel has managed well with a distinguished citizen serving in the role of president and all of the power resting with the prime minister. The Israeli system and the Italian system, as well as some others like Ireland, use proportional representation. It is intended to give minorities (not necessarily racial ones) a shot at a voice in government. But in Israel and Italy, it has distorted the will of the majority.

Every Israeli and Italian prime minister in order to govern has to form coalitions with groups they would rather not give time of day. In Israel, potential prime ministers have to make deals with religious parties. And in Italy, socialists have to bed down with communists, as in the case of the former prime minister, Romano Prodi and the current one, Silvio Berlusconi, with near fascists. Ireland has not had a problem with this, but the potential is there.

When Tony Blair's Labor Party came to power in Britain, it favored  proportional representation but backed off quickly when the specter of, say, an Islamic party holding the balance in the House of Commons was raised. Proportional representation is one of those schemes that is wholly appealing until you implement it.

Anyway, in the United States, shifting alliances often take care of particular groups. Sadly, as party discipline has increased, the independent lawmaker here – one of the aspects of the presidential system that I have most liked through the years – is endangered. Cal Dooley, a former conservative Democratic congressman from California, now head of the American Chemistry Council, told me that as his many terms in Congress drew to a close, party discipline, often exercised by friends of the party in the media, had robbed the individual House members of their ability to act as they saw fit.

At this very moment, there are Republican forces working to undermine Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and other members who have worked with the Democrats. One has to doubt that much deviation would be tolerated in the Senate before Democratic pundits raise a hue and cry. Heretofore, the very looseness of our parties in Congress has been part of the genius of our system.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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