[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Markus Schulze]

Dear Blake,

you wrote (18 Nov 2001):
> 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.

Even in Italy the parliament has a regular term of 5 years and an
average term of 4 years. So even in Italy the expectation is for
almost full terms.

Sometimes early elections are the unique way to solve a conflict
peacefully. For example: The coup d'etat in Russia in 1993 was mainly
motivated by the fact that neither the parliament could hold early
presidential elections nor the president could hold early parliamentary
elections.

Therefore, to my opinion, early elections shouldn't be made completely
impossible. The Swedish option makes it sufficiently unattractive to
use early elections to "corriger la fortune". In Sweden the Swedish
option has been introduced in 1865. Since then there were only 3
extraordinary elections: in 1887, in 1914 and in 1958.

Markus Schulze