Shared Power and Parliamentary Sovereignty

The Westminster model is also based on two other important principles; those of shared power and parliamentary sovereignty. Shared power refers to the fact that the elected legislative assembly is not the only parliamentary actor. The Crown and the House of Lords are also part of Parliament and the approval of all three actors is necessary for the final approval of legislation. As we shall see, while the powers of the House of Lords and the Crown have weakened over time, they retain a role in the parliamentary process.

Parliamentary sovereignty is based on the assumption that the powers of Parliament are unlimited.

In theory, there is no higher authority than Parliament (in reality, than the House of Commons) and no external limits on what a Parliament can do. However, in recent years, a number of factors have resulted in some limits being placed on the authority of parliaments.

Questions:

Based on your readings, see if you can answer the following questions. If not, read the commentary over again to find the answers.

1. What are the three units that make up a parliament based on the Westminster model?
2. What does the term 'Responsible Government' mean?
3. What are the underlying assumptions of Parliamentary Sovereignty?

Source: various sources.

Legislature

A legislature is a type of representative deliberative assembly, lawmaking branch of a government, with the power to adopt laws. . Before the advent of legislatures, the law was dictated by monarchs. Early European legislatures include the English Parliament and the Icelandic Althing (founded c. 930). Powers of legislatures may include passing laws, establishing the government's budget, confirming executive appointments, ratifying treaties, investigating the executive branch, granting the government the right to raise taxes, impeaching and removing from office members of the executive and judiciary, and redressing constituents' grievances.

Legislatures are known by many names, the most common being parliament and congress, although these terms also have more specific meanings. In presidential systems, the executive and legislative branches are clearly separated; in parliamentary systems, members of the executive branch are chosen from the legislative membership.

Chambers

The primary components of a legislature are one or more chambers or houses: assemblies that debate and vote upon bills. A legislature with only one house is called unicameral. A bicameral legislature possesses two separate chambers, usually described as an upper house and a lower house, which often differ in duties, powers, and the methods used for the selection of members. (Much rarer have been tricameral legislatures; the most recent existed in the waning years of white-minority rule in South Africa.)

In most parliamentary systems, the lower house is the more powerful house while the upper house is merely a chamber of advice or review. However, in presidential systems, the powers of the two houses are often similar or equal. In federations it is typical for the upper house to represent the component states. For this purpose the upper house may either contain the delegates of state governments, as is the case in Germany, or be elected according to a formula that grants equal representation to states with smaller populations, as is the case in Australia and the modern United States.

Systems of parliamentary government vary according to the constitutional role accorded to parliament and the electoral and party systems which determine their composition and political organization. Most parliaments face constitutional constraints. In Germany, for example, the national parliament's powers are limited by the federal constitution which ensures autonomous legislative power for individual Länder (provinces). A constitutional court exists to ensure that the parliament passes no law that is contrary to the written constitution.

The greatest challenge to national parliaments in the modern era comes from the increasing international economic and political interdependence that orientates governing elites to more supranational processes of decision-making. This is starkly revealed in the case of the European Union (EU) , where collaborative decision-making between national leaders has been joined with an EU legislative process that assumes EU law to be superior to the law of each member state. Such a development challenges, for example, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty. At the same time, however, concerns over the lack of democratic accountability in the EU law-making process may lead to continued expansion of the powers of the European Parliament, meaning that the focus of the study of parliaments may simply move from the national to the supranational context.

Nations with bicameral legislatures. Nations with unicameral legislatures. No legislature.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 694