Comparing legislatures
This op-ed piece from The Economist is a good opportunity to ask your students to outline the argument and evaluate the conclusion. It's an interesting assessment of Britain's Parliament with some comparative comments.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, the mother of parliaments is working better than ever"Judging by newspapers and talk shows, the public has decided: the repute of the mother of parliaments is roughly equal to that of the Millennium Dome; MPs' status has fallen lower than that of estate agents, and maybe even journalists...
"It is easy to see why. First there are the amateurish financial controls that have permitted dodgy accounting, generous loopholes and brazen nepotism... Then there is the fact that the green benches in the Commons are often very green indeed, because very few people are sitting on them... MPs who do turn up are often outnumbered by the schoolchildren in the public gallery, who are also better behaved...
"[The Speaker,] Mr Martin has in the past been accused of undue partisanship (like all speakers he is an MP, in his case a Labour one). That too reflects a general problem with the House he chairs. Since the birth of modern political parties, the partisan loyalty of MPS (on pain of not being promoted) has hobbled the Commons in its supposed job of holding the executive to account...
"Important debate takes place inside parties—and in the media... The one parliamentary set-piece that commands attention—prime minister's questions (PMQs)—has, under the pressure of television, and of the mutual loathing of Mr Brown and Mr Cameron, become a weekly yelling match (badly policed by Mr Martin)...
"Here comes the “but”: all of that is sad and bad, but little of it is new, and most of it has been worse. “The scene of noise and uproar which the House of Commons now exhibits is perfectly disgusting,” reported Charles Greville in 1835...
"The same is true of MPs' sycophancy: they are in fact much less docile than in the past... Though Labour's big majorities have disguised the sedition, the MPs of Tony Blair and Mr Brown have by post-war standards been peculiarly rebellious...
"Parliament isn't only less woeful than it used to be: in some ways it is even actively good. MPs spend more time than ever helping their constituents... Meanwhile, although House of Commons select committees are neither as powerful as congressional ones in America nor as independent as they could and should be, they are increasingly well resourced and influential...
"But the biggest and least-noticed improvement has been in the House of Lords... [T]he affiliated Lords are now more fairly spread among the parties... They are also more effective and assertive in rejecting and improving bills...
"Easy as it is to excoriate it, the mother of parliaments is not as senile as its many detractors, and the run of recent scandals, suggest. On the contrary: she is in finer fettle than ever."
Labels: concepts, legislature, theory
posted by Ken Wedding @ 7:15 AM
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