historical thoughts
Oct. 28th, 2008 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swan_towerI'm randomly on Wikipedia, reading the entry on the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and it's sparking some interesting thoughts.
I suspect Americans have a hard time grokking the UK system of government because to us, it looks kind of haphazard. The government of the United States was designed; if you sit down with the Constitution and read the first three or four Articles, you know more or less how we work. The UK Constitution isn't even a document; it's a collection of documents and conventions and general force of habit, accumulated over the centuries. You could graphically represent the difference by putting maps of Washington, D.C. and central London next to each other. One of these was planned; the other happened by accident.
So you can't easily say who the first Prime Minister was, because nobody ever sat down and created the office. Walpole kind of was, in terms of the power he held, but people fought about the term for over a hundred years, and apparently no two lists of PMs are alike, because the criteria for inclusion vary. It's interesting to me, though, that the office grew out of the Treasury. I suspect -- and this is probably me re-inventing the wheel of some Marxist branch of historical study -- that you can view the growth of modern democracy as a process wherein the root of political power shifted from control of armed force to the control of money. (And there's probably an interesting comparison in there somewhere, between the West and Third World military dictatorships. I'm beginning to feel like I ought to have majored in history after all.)
It makes me realize, too -- given the season we're in right now, over here in the U.S. -- how amazingly stable our government has been. I don't hold with whatever dude it is who declared that history's over, that we've arrived at the final, triumphant form of government; democracy on this scale is still the new kid on the political block, and might not have as much staying power as that guy thinks. There are dynasties that lasted longer than the United States of America. But when I compare the succession of U.S. presidents with that of monarchies or Prime Ministers, it's kind of impressively . . . boring. In a good way. The biggest weirdnesses we have are: FDR with his four terms; Grover Cleveland with his non-consecutive terms; a small handful of male relatives who occupied the same office. A couple of assassinations and deaths in office, whereupon their successors picked up and kept going. And the Civil War, but even then, all that happened politically was that part of the country seceded and formed its own country. I don't think we've ever had, say, two rival Presidents running around, both claiming their Cabinet and Congress are the real ones. Or anything to even approach the Wars of the Roses.
(Yes, most of my comparisons are to British history. For obvious reasons. But I've studied other countries, too.)
(Okay, my brain just offered up Emperor Norton. Who is entertaining, but not exactly mainstream American history.)
So, yeah. As contentious as our elections have been lately, and as freaked out as some people are by the possibility of a black man* leading our country, on the whole? We still have an awfully rational and stable thing going on over here.
I have other, unrelated political thoughts to post, but it occurs to me that if I put them here, one half of the post or the other will probably get all the attention in the comments, so I'll save it for a separate entry later on.
*By which we signify a half-Kenyan black, half-Kansas white guy born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia. Don't you love how modern American society still boils everything down to one-word reductionist evaluations of skin shade?
I suspect Americans have a hard time grokking the UK system of government because to us, it looks kind of haphazard. The government of the United States was designed; if you sit down with the Constitution and read the first three or four Articles, you know more or less how we work. The UK Constitution isn't even a document; it's a collection of documents and conventions and general force of habit, accumulated over the centuries. You could graphically represent the difference by putting maps of Washington, D.C. and central London next to each other. One of these was planned; the other happened by accident.
So you can't easily say who the first Prime Minister was, because nobody ever sat down and created the office. Walpole kind of was, in terms of the power he held, but people fought about the term for over a hundred years, and apparently no two lists of PMs are alike, because the criteria for inclusion vary. It's interesting to me, though, that the office grew out of the Treasury. I suspect -- and this is probably me re-inventing the wheel of some Marxist branch of historical study -- that you can view the growth of modern democracy as a process wherein the root of political power shifted from control of armed force to the control of money. (And there's probably an interesting comparison in there somewhere, between the West and Third World military dictatorships. I'm beginning to feel like I ought to have majored in history after all.)
It makes me realize, too -- given the season we're in right now, over here in the U.S. -- how amazingly stable our government has been. I don't hold with whatever dude it is who declared that history's over, that we've arrived at the final, triumphant form of government; democracy on this scale is still the new kid on the political block, and might not have as much staying power as that guy thinks. There are dynasties that lasted longer than the United States of America. But when I compare the succession of U.S. presidents with that of monarchies or Prime Ministers, it's kind of impressively . . . boring. In a good way. The biggest weirdnesses we have are: FDR with his four terms; Grover Cleveland with his non-consecutive terms; a small handful of male relatives who occupied the same office. A couple of assassinations and deaths in office, whereupon their successors picked up and kept going. And the Civil War, but even then, all that happened politically was that part of the country seceded and formed its own country. I don't think we've ever had, say, two rival Presidents running around, both claiming their Cabinet and Congress are the real ones. Or anything to even approach the Wars of the Roses.
(Yes, most of my comparisons are to British history. For obvious reasons. But I've studied other countries, too.)
(Okay, my brain just offered up Emperor Norton. Who is entertaining, but not exactly mainstream American history.)
So, yeah. As contentious as our elections have been lately, and as freaked out as some people are by the possibility of a black man* leading our country, on the whole? We still have an awfully rational and stable thing going on over here.
I have other, unrelated political thoughts to post, but it occurs to me that if I put them here, one half of the post or the other will probably get all the attention in the comments, so I'll save it for a separate entry later on.
*By which we signify a half-Kenyan black, half-Kansas white guy born in Hawaii and raised partly in Indonesia. Don't you love how modern American society still boils everything down to one-word reductionist evaluations of skin shade?
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 11:34 am (UTC)I won't argue the failings of a two-party system, but I don't think my point would be much different if we had three or four parties. To get a president into office requires the influence of a national party, or at least one that commands enough support across the nation to beat the others to the finish line. You can't win from D.C. alone. I suppose if we had (say) four political parties, New England or the Deep South or whoever might be able to scrape together 30% of the vote and beat out the other three splitting the remaining 70%, but that doesn't look like much of an improvement to me, since coalition government (at least of the sort formed after the elections) doesn't exist here. So we have national parties, and the presidential primaries give people a say in who gets put up for that office.
Do your parties have nominations? It occurs to me the primary argument could be tossed out if five Republican candidates could all run for the same office in the general election, instead of the party putting its backing behind a single candidate. But man, that sounds like it would be chaos.
It boggles me, though, that people say our two major parties don't look too different. On the level of individual candidates, I may agree, and admittedly the political winds have led to a certain amount of rhetorical see-sawing on particular points, especially wrt economics. But when you get past the rhetoric (we need to educate our children! and protect American workers! and end corruption in government!) and start looking at the intended policies, I find it hard to see much similarity between the two. It might be better to say there isn't a single dominant philosophy in either party, that shapes all their positions on the various issues; that, I could agree with.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 11:56 am (UTC)He has to choose them from the Commons. If there aren't enough people in Commons that he can trust to work with him, he can't form a working government.
As for your comment about the Deep South ... that's the inevitable consequences of having so many cultures lumped under one government and then having that government being a democracy. It's great if you're part of the majority and the majority is also fairly tolerant. Otherwise ...
Do your parties have nominations? It occurs to me the primary argument could be tossed out if five Republican candidates could all run for the same office in the general election, instead of the party putting its backing behind a single candidate. But man, that sounds like it would be chaos.
Not in the way you guys do. The PM-to-be is the leader of the dominant party (or head of the coalition of parties; I don't think there's an reason we could have an indepentent PM chosen as a neutral and unifying force in a suitabley hung parliament) and the members of the party, both rank and file and high ranking, select the leader. The main body of the party, MPs and the like, normally divide supporting one or more candidates who're then voted upon by everyone. Once a leader is selected, the party is then expected to support them until a reason for them to be replaced appears.
It boggles me, though, that people say our two major parties don't look too different.
It looks like a choice between far-right and centre-right, neither too hot on civil liberties, and both pretty imperialist in their foreign policy. The main difference is that the Democrats seem to have fewer nutjobs who believe that God whispers to them, telling them what to do or that the world was formed in 4004BC. A gross simplificiation, I know, but most people I know here regard the Republican/Democrat divide as one between the lesser of two evils.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 07:39 pm (UTC)I have a hard time envisioning how someone with enough influence to be at the head of a party that's won the majority could end up in this situation, but okay.
Re: primaries -- I was thinking more of downticket races than the PM. Does Labour nominate a candidate for a seat, and the Conservatives nominate theirs, and so on? Or are those races free-for-alls, with each candidate advertising their party without being directly backed by it?
I guess, regarding our own parties, that I tend to be viewing the Democrats from a point of view planted further to the left (though not so left as to impress Europe, I suppose), so I see a party that's more than center-right. But due to the aforementioned tendency toward building coalitions before the elections, the party has to draw in enough centrist types to have some influence, and that muddies the picture. The problem lately, though, hasn't been ideology so much as spine. Democrats keep voting for things I consider to be stupid and/or morally wrong, simply because they let themselves be pushed into it. But we're fixing that, slowly but (I hope) surely.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 08:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 08:29 pm (UTC)Each party puts forward a candidate, and there's decision as to which candidate to put forward is a matter for internal arrangement. That said, parties don't always put forward a candidate, and in a seat where they're particularly weak, they'll often put forward a no-hoper. For instance, in the recent kerfuffle when David Davis resigned his position to force a by-election over the 42-day detention malarkey, neither Labour nor the LibDems ran against him, and he was reelected. Additionally, anyone can run for MP, provided they can prove a certain minimal support and stand the deposit. We've not had many independent MPs lately, but they do happen. I don't know how many votes the Monster Raving Looney Party get each election, but we have had worryingly large numbers of people vote for the BNP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party) before now. This page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPs_elected_in_the_UK_general_election,_2005) shows that a fair few parties are represented.
I have a hard time envisioning how someone with enough influence to be at the head of a party that's won the majority could end up in this situation, but okay.
Independents used to be more common, the British parties are just as divided internally as any others, and if you end up in a coalition and can't satisfy your backers, you're screwed. Add in the fact that anything the PM wants passed has to go through Commons and without a decent majority, you're even more screwed. Ted Heath is a good example of that.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-29 11:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-30 08:15 am (UTC)Lords can't veto a bill, they can only delay it for a time and bounce it back to Commons. Also, apparently (and this is weird, since I clearly knew it because of all the figures I've seen come and go, it's an odd blindspot) Cabinet is not solely limited to MPs but may also include Lords as well.