[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Blake Cretney]

On Fri, 16 Nov 2001 18:57:34 +0100
Markus Schulze <markus.schulze at alumni.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> the german constitution says that only when the parliament
> rejects a vote of confidence the chancellor has the right
> to ask the president to dissolve the parliament. The aim
> of Schroeder's tactics was to provoke such a rejection and
> then to have early elections in February 2002.
> 
> To my opinion, the best way to make this kind of tactics
> unattractive is to introduce the Swedish option. The Swedish
> option says that when the parliament is dissolved then the
> new parliament doesn't get a new full term, it gets only the
> rest of the regular term of the old parliament.

I think that the popular wisdom in the English speaking world is that
early elections occur because the parliament is no longer able to
govern.  This is the criticism implied when people criticise Italy for
having so many elections.  It isn't so much the frequent elections, as
the belief that government in Italy has routinely broken down.

This is also, it seems to me, the main reason for allowing early
elections.  In fact, many countries actually encourage them, by
forcing them in certain situations, or requiring that the government
has majority support.  The belief is that legislatures have a natural
tendency toward being unable to govern, and that the best solution is
to allow, and encourage, such legislatures to be dissolved. 
Presumably the legislature will be replaced by one that can govern,
though I don't see why.  

I suggest, however, that any majority in the legislature will always
have incentive to enact policy that that majority supports.  And there
is no reason that a legislature can't elect members of the executive,
as long as an absolute majority isn't required.  So I don't believe
that governments break down.

Instead, my view is that early elections usually occur because a
majority of the legislature wants this to happen.  Some parties can
expect their fortunes to go up, and some to go down after an election.
 About half the time, we would expect that a majority feel they are on
the upswing.  More if they are overly optimistic, as politicians
usually are.  It isn't surprising then, if elections are frequent.

In my opinion, the way around this problem is to set fixed terms for
elections.  The legislature should be no more able to have the
election early than have it late.  The Swedish option is a good step
in the right direction.  However, it will only work in a country where
the expectation is for full terms.  If people have come to expect an
election a year, then it won't really matter if an early election
doesn't give the legislature another full term, since no one expects
that it would last that long anyway.

---
Blake Cretney