RETURNO JLP

Legislatures are structured differently in parliamentary and presidential systems. The key difference is that in the former the executive is drawn from the assembly and requires continued parliamentary support to remain in office: it is an agent of the assembly. In the latter, the executive is directly

elected and the president does not require continued congressional support to remain in office: it is an independent institution, checking and checked by, the assembly.111 The members of the majority party in a parliamentary system have good reason to unify, because if they divide, at least on questions of confidence, the government falls. Legislative coalitions in presidential systems have less reason to unite, because the legislators are not solely responsible for legislative outcomes or for good

government, and the interests of the executive and the party leadership in the legislature may often come apart or be directly opposing.

Polsby distinguishes transformational legislatures from arenas. The former are:

… legislatures that possess the independent capacity, frequently exercised, to mould and transform proposals from whatever source into laws. The act of transformation is crucial because it postulates a significance to the internal structure of

legislatures, to the internal division of labour, and to the policy preferences of various legislators.112

Arenas ‘serve as formalized settings for interplay of significant political forces in the life of a political system’.113 That is, arenas are talking shops, where politicians continue electoral politics; they are not primarily concerned with legislating and, Polsby asserts, the real legislative power resides elsewhere.114 The classic example of an arena is the United Kingdom Parliament and the classic example of a transformational legislature is the United States Congress.115 Polsby argues that Parliament is an arena by noting that it arose not to forge details of legislation, but to assert rights against the sovereign.116 Further, there is no real internal structure to Parliament, he asserts, save that which is for the convenience of the government.117 Polsby argues that the legislature will be more transformational if the majority coalition is fractured, unstable, and less subject to party leadership.118

Mezey adopts a similar distinction to Polsby, arguing that one should classify legislatures by reference to their capacity to constrain the executive, with active legislatures being able to veto proposals altogether or perhaps extract concessions.119 Norton finesses Mezey’s distinction, distinguishing policy-making capacity, in which the legislature may modify or reject government

policy and substitute an alternate policy, and policy-influencing capacity, in which the legislature may modify or reject but cannot substitute its own policy.120 He argues that the advantage of this finer distinction is that it better explains the divide between Congress and Parliament, because even if Parliament is active, it still lacks the independent policy-making capacity of Congress.121

The problem with each of these distinctions is that they take the executive in parliamentary systems to be a body apart from the legislature, whereas of course the defining feature of such systems is that the leading legislators hold executive office.122 It is no good to consider the legislature’s capacity to make decisions and to ignore the subset of the legislature, the majority party leadership, best placed to decide. In a parliamentary system, the government’s proposals are those formed and advanced by the majority party leadership. The government is a subset of the legislature, not a separate body, and one should not conclude that parliament only decides when it acts in defiance of that subset.

The legislature’s capacity to decide does not reduce to the likelihood that majority party unity will fracture. Leading legislators hold executive office, form the cabinet, and control the legislative

agenda. Most parliamentary time is devoted to government business, and ‘to a large extent, parliament is a place for debating, amending, and passing government legislation’.123 This unequal focus is not objectionable. The majority party has the responsibility to govern and it is therefore important that it has sufficient time to place its legislative proposals before the assembly. The voting unity of the majority further warrants disproportionate plenary time, because proposals that issue from the

minority have relatively little, which is not to say no, prospect of success. The minority is, however, constantly active in plenary time, questioning and engaging with the majority’s programme.

Parliamentary government is not unitary and cabinet does not draft legislation. Instead, most legislative proposals are first initiated by departments under a particular minister’s jurisdiction. Laver argues that this means there is a two-stage agenda-setting process: the minister proposes policy to cabinet and that which emerges from cabinet is government policy that sets legislative agenda.124 The majority authorizes its leaders, ministers, to set the agenda and to frame particular proposals. Ministers need backbench support—especially votes, but also morale—if their legislative programme is to succeed, while backbenchers need ministers to provide leadership, to share information, and to initiate action.125 The parliamentary majority is thus two coalitions—the government coalition

(ministers) and the parliamentary support coalition (backbenchers)126—and ‘the most important practical politics between elections in parliamentary government systems takes place inside the

majority legislative party.127 The primary political aim of the opposition is to fracture the

parliamentary support coalition, defeating proposals that would otherwise enjoy a majority and, more rarely, building a majority for an alternative proposal.128

In presidential systems, the president’s legislative role is critical. He may have authority to propose bills to the assembly, to veto legislation, to set the assembly’s agenda, and to control the reversionary policy, perhaps through authority to issue decrees.129 The executive’s capacity to act independent of legislative support means that party unity in the legislature is likely to often fracture, because legislators are not directly responsible for stability and good government.130 While Congress is often taken to be the paradigm assembly in a presidential system, the United States president is relatively weak—he has no power to dismiss Congress, limited capacity to set its agenda, and very limited capacity to legislate by decree. At the same time, there is little Congress can do to control the President.131 Other systems feature much greater presidential powers.

structure.132 Thus, the United States legislature has a proliferation of veto-players, with capacity to block many proposals, while the United Kingdom has unified, decisive majority control. In both cases the internal structure of the legislature was settled by the legislators, who it seems chose procedures consistent with their constitution’s separation of powers. Agenda-control in presidential systems is thus likely to be more widely distributed than in parliamentary systems. Congressional committees exercise considerable control over legislative proposals in their jurisdiction, especially early in the process, and are very often able to block bills proceeding. Party leadership has more control at later stages. The allocation of agenda-control to committees and parties means that each may check (or frustrate) the other.133 The more widely veto power is distributed, the more difficult it is to enact legislation. This has two consequences. First, veto-players are able to demand concessions and this means legislation is more likely to be private regarding. More centralized agenda-control means fewer veto-players and more public-regarding legislation.134 Second, the proliferation of vetoes raises the political cost of enacting legislation, which means that the legislature is less able to make a decision, but the decisions that it makes are harder to change later. There is a trade-off between a legislature being decisive and resolute.135