[EM] German parliament votes for military support

[Blake Cretney]

Dear Markus and Olli,

Markus wrote (in response to me):
> > 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.

I guess you're right about that.

> 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.

In Russia, the parliament was elected during the communist regime, and
therefore had questionable legitimacy.  I agree that it would have
been better if free parliamentary elections could have come earlier
without Yeltsin violating the old constitution.  But how do you and
Olli extrapolate from that to a country where the parliament is
democratically elected?  As well, so far we have been talking about
the situation where a parliament can dissolve itself.  This would have
been of no advantage in Russia.

Olli wrote:
> An old edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
> mocked Americans for letting the stars decide the date of the
election and
> for a long time after I read that it was difficult for me to take
fixed
> terms seriously.

Considering that "the stars" determine so much of our relationship to
government, from when we start voting to when we do our taxes, I don't
find this argument persuasive, even if it is delivered with dry
British wit.

The simplest argument on behalf of fixed terms, as against the British
system, is that the government's goal is to stay in power as long as
possible despite unpopularity.  Any government can stay in power as
long as it is popular, but by cleverly timing elections it can hold on
a long time even after the public sours on it.  Of course, the public
has the opposite goal, to have governments it likes.  The stars are
neutral with respect to the two goals, and therefore their choice of
dates is more likely to be in the public's interest.

That isn't an argument against the Swedish system, just the British
one.

---
Blake Cretney