Transcript A Novel Approach to Politics

7
Institutions:
Meat and
Potatoes
Institutions
• The U.S. presidency provides a perfect example
of how we have built up an ideal and impossible
image of a political institution.
• Since the New Deal and World War II, the nation
has expected a great deal out of its presidents,
far more than is realistically possible.
• Although officeholders are bound to disappoint,
the institution of the presidency as an executive
structure remains.
Institutions
• Americans have tremendous respect for the
office of the presidency and, consequently,
presidents begin their terms with a great deal of
public support.
• The reality of everyday politics eventually takes
its inevitable toll.
– partisan decisions
– state of the economy
– world events
• Even as individual presidents disappoint,
Americans keep faith in the institution of the
presidency.
Institutions
• Institutions, in part, become institutions by
lasting over time.
• They are larger than the people who
occupy an office at a particular time.
• The institution of the presidency, like all
governmental institutions, includes all
formal and informal powers, the offices,
the staffs, and the historical precedents
that define the institution.
Hello Mr. Smith
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a film that portrays an
idealistic, but naïve, senator who gets caught up in realworld politics.
• That senator engages in a one-man filibuster of a graftladen public-works legislation.
• The filibuster is a tactic used by a senator or a group of
senators who, by indefinitely talking about a bill, intend to
frustrate the proponents of the bill.
• Ultimately the senator is victorious as he sheds his
naiveté to embrace a political tactic.
• Even idealists must sometimes use political methods to
achieve their goals (boycotts, civil disobedience, interest
group pressure, etc.)
Hello, Mr. Smith
• Ideal institutions must be adapted to the reality
of the challenges that people face.
• Even the perfect institutions we imagine for a
country bend our loftier ideals along the way.
• The ideal of democracy in our conceptualization
of a legislature is a perfect example.
• Legislative institutions in non-democratic
countries do not represent the public’s interests
the same way as democracies.
• They still serve valuable political functions.
Hello, Mr. Smith
• For example, debates in the Chinese
parliament, even if scripted, offer
explanations to the public for why laws are
being enacted.
• Even across most democracies people are
ambivalent in their feelings toward their
legislative institutions.
• Is the filibuster a democratic technique?
Comparing Parliamentary and
Presidential Systems
• Do you prefer a presidential system or a
parliamentary system?
• This is tantamount to a waiter asking if you want
your eggs scrambled or sunny-side up.
• The fundamental difference has to do with to
whom that executive is immediately responsible.
• In a presidential system, there is a separation of
legislative and executive institutions (the yolk is
separated from the whites).
• In a parliamentary system there is a fusion of
legislative and executive (scrambled eggs).
Comparing Parliamentary and
Presidential Systems
• In presidential systems the executive is separately elected
and need not answer to the legislature; there is an
independent base of democratic support.
• In parliamentary systems the executive is part of the
parliament.
• Prime ministers get the position by first winning election to a
seat in the legislature and then being elected by fellow
members of parliament (MPs).
• In presidential systems the executive is elected independently
of the legislature.
• The executive leaves office only after a fixed term or through
a special removal process called impeachment.
• In parliamentary systems prime ministers serve until the next
scheduled election or until a simple majority of MPs votes
them out.
Sí, El Presidente
• Presidential systems can make the executive
stronger in relation to the legislature.
• With no need to worry about being voted out on
a moment’s notice, the executive can afford to
stand independently.
• Independence from the legislature makes
presidential systems more stable.
• The primary purpose behind the design of a
presidential system is the prevention of tyranny
either by the masses or by a popular individual.
Sí, El Presidente
• Into separation of powers, the framers of the U.S.
constitution added the notion of checks and balances.
• This basically means that everybody is always minding
everybody else’s business, e.g., the president’s veto, the
congress’ approval of the budget, etc.
• Checks and balances can also make it very hard to get
anything done, particularly if it means challenging
entrenched interests.
• There are so many ways to obstruct things that even a
small minority can usually find some way to prevent
changes to the status quo.
Yes, Minister
• Prime ministers are members of parliament and the
leaders of the winning party in the parliament.
• This makes their job shepherding legislation through
the system far easier.
• Parliamentary political parties are far more likely to
vote cohesively.
• Parties have a great deal of control over who gets
placed in a seat after an election.
• In some parliamentary systems any failure of a
piece of legislation automatically dissolves the
government.
Yes, Minister
• The votes of party members in presidential
systems are far less predictable and far more
difficult to control.
• American presidents cannot necessarily count
on all the members of their political party for
support.
• Many a presidential proposal has been defeated
by a margin afforded by the members of the
president's party.
Legislatures
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Perhaps the most impressive fact about
legislatures as institutions is that they remain
viable institutions.
The value of legislatures is often debated.
Legislatures serve many functions; among the
most important are:
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lawmaking
representing
checking
legitimating
educating
Lawmaking
• The root of the word legislature, is "legislate," and we
expect our parliaments to make laws.
• It is often not done the way that one would expect.
• Many think that members spend the majority of their time
debating.
• The reality is quite different; relatively little time is spent
on floor debate.
• There are a number of other activities that consume
representatives’ time, e.g., giving speeches, helping
constituents, meeting with leaders, going to committee
meetings, fundraising, etc.
Lawmaking
• Bills can come from the minds of legislators, but they can
come from, among other places, constituents, interest
groups, the executive branch, or the legislature’s political
leadership.
• In most legislatures, the real law-making work goes on in
committees.
• Committees and sometimes subcommittees are used to
do research on, hold hearings on, debate, write, and
amend bills.
• Committees are also used to whittle down the number of
bills that get introduced in the parliament or congress
during any given session, to write the precise, legallyeffective wording of the laws, and to allow members to
specialize in specific areas of policy.
Representing
• A legislature with two houses is called a
bicameral legislature, while a legislature
with one house is referred to as a
unicameral legislature.
• Bicameral legislatures can make it more
difficult to get things done.
• Bicameral legislatures can provide
representation for different segments of
society.
Districts or Proportional
Representation
• There are two major methods for how seats are
divided in a legislature:
– geographic representation
– proportional representation
• With geographic representation, the legislature
is divided according to districts with each
legislator representing a particular region.
• People can specifically identify their
representative and they know who to contact
with their opinions.
Districts or Proportional
Representation
• With geographic representation, representatives must
maintain contact with the voters who will decide whether
they return to the legislature.
• Only the candidate who garners a plurality can win in the
most frequently used first-past-the-post system.
• This system favors moderate political parties that can
create coalitions to gain sizeable amounts of voters.
• The result is usually a two-party system.
• Two-party systems tend to provide greater stability to
governments.
Districts or Proportional
Representation
• Under proportional representation (PR), people
do not vote for a person.
• They vote for the political party with which they
most agree.
• Each political party submits a list of names prior
to the election.
• A party will get roughly the same proportion of
seats in parliament as the proportion of the votes
it received in the election.
Districts or Proportional
Representation
• Proportional representation promotes
ideological representation.
• Rather than represent an area, legislators
represent people's beliefs.
• Because people have diverse ideas,
proportional representation tends to
produce multi-party systems.
• Some countries try to combine the benefits
of both systems.
Delegate or Trustee
• Individual representatives have different views of
their relationship with their constituents.
• A delegate is a representative who attempts to
do exactly what her constituents want.
• Delegates believe that they should vote the way
that their constituents want them to on every
piece of legislation.
• In reality, most legislators are politicos.
• Depending on the situation, they sometimes act
like delegates and they sometimes act like
trustees.
Checking
• The checking function involves the degree to
which different institutions in a government have
a responsibility to watch over the rest of
government to make sure it is performing
correctly.
• This function is also called oversight.
• Legislatures use many means to carry out this
function, including:
– investigative hearings
– shadow governments
– Question Hour
Legitimating
• The more people believe that parliaments
answer to them and that their parliament is truly
representative, the more easily they can perform
a legitimating function.
• People are more likely to feel that there has
been some consideration of their view.
• Even if they disagree with the ultimate decision,
they can still believe that the policy was put into
place after their perspective was heard.
• People are more apt to believe that they should
follow the law, that is that the law is legitimate, if
the legislature supports it.
Education
• Legislatures and their members also educate
the general citizenry.
• This process is often facilitated by the media.
• Legislatures use committee hearings, open
debate, and television appearances to educate
the public.
• Members with geographic constituencies often
keep their districts informed of important events
and important pieces of legislation.
• Legislatures can also initiate important national
discussions on issues.
Executives
• In a presidential system it is very easy to
identify the chief executive.
• The U.S. president plays two roles, head
of state and head of government, a
ceremonial and a functional role.
• In many, if not most, other democracies,
however, these two fundamental roles of
the executive are split up and spread
around.
Head of State
• The role as head of state involves serving as the national
symbol, the personification of the country and its people.
• Heads of state can take different forms in different
countries.
• The head of state can be a monarch, an elected
president, or the person with the most troops.
• In some countries the head of state will be a king or
queen or even the king or queen of another country
altogether.
• In parliamentary systems that lack a monarch, there is
usually an elected president.
• These presidents can be either elected directly or they
might be chosen by the parliament for the position.
Head of State
• The head of state can add legitimacy to a government.
• If the symbol of the country, e.g., a monarch, gives her
blessing to a government, that blessing can strengthen
the government's standing with the people.
• In some parliamentary systems, the head of state can be
the one who formally authorizes the winning political
party after an election to try and form a government.
• Some heads of state can call for parliamentary elections.
• The heads of state generally do not have any influence
over specific legislation or actions of government.
• They can affect the country’s overall direction by helping
or hindering diplomacy or by lending support to a party
or government.
Head of State
• Not all heads of state are created equal.
• Dictators and strong monarchs may be heads of
state with weak or powerless legislatures.
• Less powerful monarchs (like those in Western
Europe) are mere figureheads working within
constitutional monarchies, where the parliament
has all of the real political power.
• Among presidents in parliamentary systems,
there is a great deal of variety in the amount of
power wielded depending on the nation’s
political structure.
Head of Government
• If the head of state is the public face we see on
advertisements, the head of government is the
manager that actually handles the day-to-day
work.
• In parliamentary democracies the head of
government is usually the prime minister.
• The prime minister is responsible for, among
other things:
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getting bills passed through the parliament
overseeing the running of the bureaucracy
dealing with disasters
commanding the military
Head of Government
• Prime ministers can only stay prime ministers as long as
they maintains the support of a majority in the
parliament.
• One becomes the prime minister by being the head of
the party that wins a majority of seats in parliamentary
elections.
• If no party wins a clear majority, the head of state usually
asks the head of the party that that won the most seats
to try to form a a coalition with one or more of the other
parties that won seats.
• A potential prime minister must try and make some deals
to bring a coalition together that includes more than half
of the members of parliament.
Head of Government
• It is technically true that the prime minister is nothing
more than the first minister.
• Parliamentary governments are actually made up of
many ministers that form the cabinet.
• Other ministers may include the foreign minister,
treasury minister, defense minister, etc.
• In an effort to form a government a potential minister
may offer other parties a chance to have one of their
members serve as a minister in exchange for joining and
supporting the overall coalition.
• Once a majority coalition is constructed, however, the
new prime minister also has a governing coalition, which
is expected to pass laws.
Head of Government
• One advantage of executives in most presidential
systems is that they are both the head of government
and the head of state.
• That puts a lot of political power in the hands of one
individual.
• The executives in presidential systems are usually
selected directly by the people, although there can be
variations.
• In most democracies, the chief executive is the civilian
head of the military.
• These executives are also usually responsible for foreign
relations.
Head of Government
• Heads of government oversee much of the government’s
bureaucracy, make sure that government services are
provided, and implement and enforce laws.
• The chief executive is also expected to make certain that
laws get passed through the legislature.
• Prime ministers formulate a legislative agenda and
attempt to shepherd that agenda through the parliament.
• Presidents have a more difficult time because of the
separation of powers.
• In most democracies, people expect the chief executive
to effectively manage the nation's economy.
• Chief executives are also the heads of their parties; they
have purely political roles.
The Bureaucracy
• The word bureaucracy is derived from the
French word for desk.
• Its adoption as a political term reflects the
idea that it is the position within the
administrative political structure, not the
person behind it, that defines the role or
function to be performed.
• In other words, the role was defined
separate from the person performing it.
The Bureaucracy
• Bureaucracies serve many functions; they regulate,
license, procure, distribute, observe, preserve,
encourage, police, study, and manage.
• In the United States, the Postal Service (USPS) delivers
the mail, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gathers
revenue, the National Science Foundation (NSF) funds
research proposals, the Citizenship and Immigration
Services (USCIS) police the borders, etc..
• The simple truth is that the vast majority of what
governments do is done by bureaucracies.
• This is true regardless of the form government takes
(democracy, theocracy, monarchy, or whatever).
We Really Want Bureaucracies?
• No.
• But, bureaucracies are indispensable.
• Bureaucracies take on functions that
would waste the time and effort of elected
and unelected leaders.
• Bureaucracies do pretty much everything
that actually gets done by government.
The Ideals of Bureaucratic
Governance
• The German sociologist Max Weber (1864–
1920) recognized that modern nation-states
needed professional bureaucracies.
• He argued that the ideal bureaucracy should be
efficient and rational.
• It should function like a machine, with each of its
parts playing a well-defined role.
The Ideals of Bureaucratic
Governance
• Weber argued that there were a few critical
elements for achieving this ideal:
– Clear assignment of roles: In order to fit together and
function in unison, each of the parts in the
bureaucratic machine must know both what it is
supposed to do and how it fits within the larger
organization.
– Rules, Rules, Rules, and More Rules: For both
efficiency and fairness, decisions and choices made
by bureaucrats need to be impersonal and consistent.
The Ideals of Bureaucratic
Governance
– Hierarchy: bureaucracies are strictly
hierarchical, each person should have only
one immediate supervisor, and each
supervisor should have only a limited number
of subordinates.
– Professionals: Most importantly, the selection
of persons to fill roles within the bureaucracy,
must be done on the basis of merit.
Policymaking versus Administration
• As bureaucracies grew in size and number,
there has been constant concern that they might
assume the roles meant for elected officials.
• People feared that they would move from
implementing laws to actually making the laws.
• This would be particularly disturbing because
they were not designed to be responsive to the
people.
Policymaking versus Administration
• Woodrow Wilson wrote an essay declaring that
there should be a strict dichotomy between
politics and administration.
• Frank Goodnow picked up this theme and
argued that there should be a sharp distinction
between the political branches making the laws
and the bureaucracy implementing them.
• In reality completely severing politics from
administration would be a disaster for
democracy.
Bureaucratic Roles
• Bureaucracies are involved in service, regulation,
implementation, and policymaking.
• Governments provide many services; they run hospitals, carry
out welfare programs, run public schools, operate parks, etc.
• Administrative agencies also regulate; The FBI regulates
personal behavior, the Food and Drug Administration
regulates medicine, the Securities and Exchange Commission
tries to regulate Wall Street, etc.
• Agencies are also primarily responsible for implementation;
they make sure that the laws that legislatures pass get put
into place.
• The bureaucracy is also responsible for making public policy;
legislatures often pass laws that are general, and they will
leave the specifics to the expertise of bureaucracies.