Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Ted Cruz

7 (6.5%)

Rick Santorum

16 (14.8%)

Michelle Bachmann

13 (12%)

Chris Christie

23 (21.3%)

Rand Paul

49 (45.4%)

Total Members Voted: 107

[Helgoland]

"I did not have congress with that woman."

"I did, however, do some executin' with my branch"

BOOM headshot?

I need to improve my sense of humor...

[SealyStar]

"I did not have congress with that woman."

"I did, however, do some executin' with my branch"

BOOM headshot?

I need to improve my sense of humor...

No, he just 'executed' some moves on her.

[Sheb]

None of the state legislatures operate on a parliamentary system. /nitpick

What do you mean? They look like parliament to me.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

None of the state legislatures operate on a parliamentary system. /nitpick

What do you mean? They look like parliament to me.

All of the major US legislatures are essentially smaller versions of Congress, in that they function as a Presidential system rather than a Parliamentary one. While the most loose usage of parliament could theoretically apply to them, I have never heard them called this.

[aenri]

None of the state legislatures operate on a parliamentary system. /nitpick

What do you mean? They look like parliament to me.

All of the major US legislatures are essentially smaller versions of Congress, in that they function as a Presidential system rather than a Parliamentary one. While the most loose usage of parliament could theoretically apply to them, I have never heard them called this.

I'm pretty sure Congress is the same as parliaments in other countries from separation of powers standpoint. I think parliament word usage is pretty spot on.

EDIT: Welp, yeah if you are talking about systems, than of course US has presidential system of government (but that doesn't mean it doesn't have parliament). Or it could be some kind of semantical problem with legislature/parliament (which I see as the same thing really).

[Loud Whispers]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/14/kansas-republican-lawmakers-criticise-anti-gay-marriage-bill
Kansas is kansasing. The tl;dr is that there's heavy support for a bill that would allow individuals to deny whatever service they're providing to homosexuals because they're homosexual.

[Dutchling]

I thought that bill got killed today. Businesses/Senators didn't want it or something.

[Flying Dice]

None of the state legislatures operate on a parliamentary system. /nitpick

What do you mean? They look like parliament to me.

All of the major US legislatures are essentially smaller versions of Congress, in that they function as a Presidential system rather than a Parliamentary one. While the most loose usage of parliament could theoretically apply to them, I have never heard them called this.

I'm pretty sure Congress is the same as parliaments in other countries from separation of powers standpoint. I think parliament word usage is pretty spot on.

EDIT: Welp, yeah if you are talking about systems, than of course US has presidential system of government (but that doesn't mean it doesn't have parliament). Or it could be some kind of semantical problem with legislature/parliament (which I see as the same thing really).

The last thing you mentioned is key: In Europe you pretty much can equate "parliament" with "legislature", but the U.S. system is decidedly not parliamentary, in terms of division of executive power, allocation of seats in the legislature (the U.S. doesn't do proportional representation; no such things as party list candidates), etc. It's like people in the U.S. associating "president" with "chief executive", which is blatantly incorrect in parliamentary systems, where you've usually got the split between the administrative and symbolic heads of state.

[GlyphGryph]

The difference between a parliamentary and a presidential/congressional system is fundamentally that there is no separation of executive and legislative powers in a Parliamentary system - in a parliamentary system, the parliament either directly or indirectly controls both the legislature AND the executive branches of government. This is why you can get situations of "coalition governments" or even "no governments" - something to which the Congressional/Presidential system is immune. (Legislation can get gridlocked, but this has no real effect on the running of the government - though the government can end up spending a lot of time trying to maneuver around whatever congress IS fucking up, which we saw not too long ago...) Most of the other things you listed are... completely irrelevant to that - seat allocation can be handled multiple ways in both systems. It's perfectly possible to have a proportional system in Congress.

You can "equate "parliament" with "legislature"" wherever you wish, but it would always be wrong to do so - a Parliament is a legislature, but it's also quite a deal more.

The US Presidential role is Chief Executive combined with Commander in Chief (Military). Personally, not so sure that conflation of powers is working out for the best, honestly...

[Sheb]

And Head of State. Most European countries have a head of state separated from the chief executive.

[GlyphGryph]

That's not particularly relevant to the Congressional/Parliamentary divide, though, I think.

[Strife26]

I thought that bill got killed today. Businesses/Senators didn't want it or something.

Absolutely everyone


As soon as any particular supporter gets questioned about it (minus a few lawyers who have been purely talking about how well written the bill was) immediately has to back pedal hard, because it's such a ridiculous piece of legislature as written.

[Max White]

minus a few lawyers who have been purely talking about how well written the bill was

Oh fuck you I literally almost threw up laughing that hard. Now even an joking.

[Flying Dice]

That's not particularly relevant to the Congressional/Parliamentary divide, though, I think.

It really is; one of the most important things distinguishing Congress from parliamentary systems is the fact that there's no PM. As for the idea of combining the role of administrative head of government with the role of head of state, yes, it is a distinctly poor idea, and IMO has played a not-insubstantial role in the instability that's plagued a lot of newly-formed democracies that adopted presidential systems (specifically, the tendency to backslide into authoritarianism). In a lot of ways the U.S. got very lucky with how things played out, between things like the Marshall court basically strongarming judicial review into existence (thus giving the SCOTUS a great deal more influence over policy than it otherwise would have had), presidents that went out of their way to avoid abusing power (Lincoln's remarkably ethical use of the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, Washington deliberately avoiding the trap of setting the presidency up as a cult of personality--though that's gone downhill over the decades, etc.), all of that helped to establish a tradition of true balanced powers and not abusing executive authority. That's the past, though...

But yes, for new democracies, a parliamentary system is far better than presidentialism, primarily because it's more difficult to concentrate power. Democracy, after all, is the political art of doing as little as is practical for as long as possible. :V

[aenri]

In my opinion, there is this group of parliaments which consists of Congress, National Assemblies, Duma, Parliament, Diet, Knesset and whatever name can country call their parliament (it basically is the representative body of people formed by elections - at least one chamber of parliament).

It doesn't really matter if the system is parliamentary or presidential (even semi-presidential or that special one they have in Switzerland). In all of the countries, this body has a legislative function (so it is called a legislature). Then you can distinguish the systems where even if you have parliament (Supreme People's Assembly in DPRK) it doesn't really have legislative function (or such function is just nominal).

Heads of state and heads of government can also be pretty diverse, like you mentioned presidents, monarchs, prime ministers and so on. Sometimes is HoS and HoG the same - like in USA or Switzerland, sometimes not like in Sweden, UK or Germany (where they have HoG as Prime ministers or Chancellor for Germany). There are even countries like Russia or France where president and prime minister coexist, but President is the HoS and HoG, and he has the upper hand in executive and representative matters.

Whole another thing is electoral system in country. You can have proportional, plurality or mixed electoral system (and a few more, but they are pretty obscure) in both presidential and parliamentary government systems. There you have plurality elections for parliament in presidential (USA) or in parliamentary system (UK for example). Also you can have proportional elections for parliament in presidential system (Costa Rica) or in parliamentary (Austria).