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Opposition and Legislative Minorities: Constitutional Roles, Rights and Recognition
Opposition and Legislative Minorities: Constitutional Roles, Rights and Recognition International IDEA Constitution-Building Primer 22 Opposition and Legislative Minorities: Constitutional Roles, Rights and Recognition International IDEA Constitution-Building Primer 22 Elliot Bulmer © 2021 International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance International IDEA publications are independent of specific national or political interests. Views expressed in this publication do not necessarily represent the views of International IDEA, its Board or its Council members. The electronic version of this publication is available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the publication as well as to remix and adapt it, provided it is only for non-commercial purposes, that you appropriately attribute the publication, and that you distribute it under an identical licence. For more information visit the Creative Commons website: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/>. Design and layout: International IDEA DOI: https://doi.org/10.31752/idea.2021.67 ISBN: 978-91-7671-443-0 (PDF) Created with Booktype: <https://www.booktype.pro> Contents 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................ 6 2. What is the issue? .................................................................................................. 9 2.1. The principle: democracy and dialogue ........................................................... -
In Contemporary Jamaica There Are Two Major Political Parties
Rex McKenzie The Party & The Garrison Aug 2005 Introduction This work is intended to be a scholarly contribution in the area of Caribbean Political Economy. It is premised on the notion that the peculiar history of Jamaica, the slave plantation origin through to the colonial, neocolonial and post colonial forms of economic organization tend to the formation and reproduction of the total institution as a system of social organization.1 RT Smith in the original application of the Goffman concept of the total institution to plantation society describes it as a bureaucratically organized system in which blocks of people are treated as units and are marched through a set of regimented activities under the close surveillance of a small supervisory staff. 2 With regard to the social system and the corresponding social relations causality is assumed to flow from the political system and the political culture. In the post independence period (after 1962) patron-client relations between the state, its institutions and sections of the urban poor emerge as the defining social relationships of the social system as a whole. But these relationships are rooted in the history of the island with the relationship between the plantation owner (or his representative) and the slave exhibiting similar pronounced patron-client features. In my formulation the post independence emergence of the garrison constituency is construed as part of the historical imperative toward culturally familiar total institution forms of social management. Figueroa 1 The idea of the total institutions comes from Goffman’s 1960’s work on Asylums. In it small socially recognizable groups drive a larger group in through the production process in a very regimented and differentiated manner. -
Legal Systems in Asean – Singapore Chapter 3 – Government and the State
Government and the State LEGAL SYSTEMS IN ASEAN – SINGAPORE CHAPTER 3 – GOVERNMENT AND THE STATE THIO Li-ann* A. INTRODUCTION: THE ADOPTION OF A MODIFIED VARIANT OF THE WESTMINSTER PARLIAMENTARY SYSTEM Upon attaining independence on 9 August 1965 after peacefully seceding from the Federation of Malaysia, Singapore retained a legal system that is essentially based on the British legal system, a colonial legacy, importing the common law and the Westminster model of parliamentary government, with some notable modifications, including a written constitution. Article 4 declares that the Constitution “is the supreme law of the Republic of Singapore”; hence any legislation which is inconsistent with the Constitution is void, to the extent of that inconsistency. The Westminster model of representative democracy is predicated on a bipartisan or multi-party system, where the ultimate political check resides in the ability of an opposition party to defeat the incumbent government at general elections and form an alternative government. This check of political turnover is absent in Singapore as the ruling party has a dominant majority in Parliament. B. PRINCIPLES OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT Separation of Powers Singapore has a unicameral Parliament which currently has 84 elected seats. 82 of these seats are held by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) while the other 2 are held by Chiam See Tong (Singapore People’s Party) and Low Thia Khiang (Worker’s Party). Government is based on a variant of the separation of powers principle, organised around the familiar trichotomy of powers: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. Unlike the UK Parliament, the Singapore Parliament is a body constituted under, and deriving powers from, the Constitution. -
Guide to Working with Parliaments ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
guide to working with parliaments ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This guide was developed by Stephen Hanmer, Specialist, Civil Society and Parliamentary Engagement, Programmes; and David Ponet, Consultant, Programmes; with support from Liza Barrie, Chief, Civil Society Partnerships; and under the overall guidance of Dr. Nicholas Alipui, Director of Programmes. Mark Young, Senior Health Specialist, provided direction on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 4 and 5 section in the appendix. Editorial support was provided by David Grosz and Karen Dukess as well as Catherine Rutgers. Certain sections of this guide have been excerpted/adapted from the 2004 IPU-UNESCO publication “A Guide to Parliamentary Practice: A Handbook.” Earlier versions of the guide were shared for feedback with all UNICEF country, regional and headquarters offices. There are more than 70 examples from UNICEF offices in - cluded throughout the publication, which could not have been developed without their support and input. Particular thanks goes to the following country and regional offices: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bolivia (Plurinational State of), Botswana, Brazil, Burundi, Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States Regional Office (CEE/CIS), China, Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO), Ecuador, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, The Americas and the Caribbean Regional Office (TACRO), Turkey, United Republic of Tanzania, Viet Nam, Uruguay, Yemen and Zambia. Feedback was also provided by headquarters — in particular Programmes; Policy and Practice; Private Fundraising and Partnerships; and the Innocenti Research Centre — and UNICEF Brussels. UNICEF National Committees also provided input. -
The Singapore Parliament: Representation, Effectiveness, and Control”, in Y
Tan, Kenneth Paul (2013) "The Singapore Parliament: Representation, Effectiveness, and Control”, in Y. N. Zheng, L. F. Lye, & W. Hofmeister (Eds.), Parliaments in Asia: Institutional Building and Political Development, Routledge. 3 The Singapore parliament Representation, effectiveness, and control Kenneth Paul Tan Introduction Parliaments, when conceived as an embodiment of the will of the people, are institutionally at the heart of representative government in modern democratic systems. In modern democratic societies, people think of liberty not so much in the classical sense, which highly valorizes the duty of free citizens to engage in direct face-to-face interaction in the public sphere. Rather, in the more liberal sense, liberty is to be found in the private sphere where individuals are free to produce, earn, exchange, and consume according to principles that they themselves are free to determine through critical thought and rational communication. If, as observed in classical notions of direct democracy, everyone was expected to participate in public deliberation and government, then such public duties would cost the modern individuals their much more greatly cherished private liberties. Therefore, modern individuals are happy to delegate these duties to representa- tives whose authority would be based on their ability to understand and act in the individuals’ interests, the public and mass media scrutiny that holds them accountable when they act against these interests, and the regular general elec- tions that threaten to replace -
The Shadow Cabinet in Westminster Systems Modeling Opposition Agenda Setting in the House of Commons, 1832–1915∗
The Shadow Cabinet in Westminster Systems Modeling Opposition Agenda Setting in the House of Commons, 1832{1915∗ Andrew C. Eggersy Arthur Spirlingz Abstract We consider the emergence of an informal institution vital to the functioning of West- minster polities: that the shadow cabinet is a `government-in-waiting'. We compare the evidence for two theoretical accounts of its timing: a `procedural' theory wherein the shadow cabinet is a solution to internal organizational issues in the House of Commons prior to widespread working class voting, and a `competition' theory that predicts that suffrage extension acts as a key stimulus for shadow cabinet organization. Gathering a dataset of almost a million utterances in parliament between the First and Fourth Reform Acts, we provide a novel method for identifying shadow cabinet members using the surges in term use from their speeches. We argue that the `competition' hypothesis is the most plausible version of events and that the opposition responded to the new `party orientated electorate' by strategically re-organizing in a way that mimicked the cabinet's structure. ∗First version: January 2014. This version: September 17, 2015. Audiences at the American Political Science Association, Midwest Political Science Association, the Princeton Political Methodology seminar, New York University and Nuffield College, Oxford provided helpful feedback. Comments from Karen Jusko and JF Godbout are greatly appreciated. yAssociate Professor, Nuffield College, University of Oxford. [email protected] zAssociate Professor, Department of Politics and Center for Data Science, New York University. [email protected] 1 1 Introduction Informal institutions are \socially shared rules, usually unwritten, that are created, commu- nicated, and enforced outside of officially sanctioned channels" (Helmke and Levitsky, 2004, 727; see also Lauth, 2000). -
Report on the Role of the Opposition in a Democratic
Strasbourg, 15 November 2010 Study no. 497/2008 CDL-AD(2010)025 Engl. Only EUROPEAN COMMISSION FOR DEMOCRACY THROUGH LAW (VENICE COMMISSION) REPORT ON THE ROLE OF THE OPPOSITION IN A DEMOCRATIC PARLIAMENT adopted by the Venice Commission, at its 84th Plenary Session (Venice 15-16 October 2010) by Ms Angelika NUSSBERGER (Substitute Member, Germany) Mr Ergun ÖZBUDUN (Member, Turkey) Mr Fredrik SEJERSTED (Substitute Member, Norway) This document will not be distributed at the meeting. Please bring this copy. www.venice.coe.int 2 CDL-AD(2010)025 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction 3 2. The scope of the study 3 3. The parliamentary opposition – role and functions 6 4. Legal protection of the parliamentary opposition and minorities 10 4.1. Introduction 10 4.2. Legal protection in the wide and narrow sense 11 4.3. The subject of legal protection 12 4.3.1. Legal rights and position of the individual MPs 12 4.3.2. Legal rights and position of the party groups (factions) 14 4.3.3. Legal rights and position of qualified minorities 15 4.3.4. Legal rights and position of the opposition as such 17 4.4.The legal level and form of protection 19 5. Rules regulating the parliamentary opposition or minorities 22 5.1. Introduction 22 5.2. Participation in parliamentary procedures 23 5.3. Rights of parliamentary supervision and scrutiny of the executive 24 5.4. The right to block or delay majority decisions 26 5.5. Constitutional review of laws and other acts of parliament 28 5.6. Minority protection against persecution and abuse 28 6. -
Quantitative Measurement of Parliamentary Accountability Using Text As Data: the Canadian House of Commons, 1945-2015 by Tanya W
Quantitative measurement of parliamentary accountability using text as data: the Canadian House of Commons, 1945-2015 by Tanya Whyte A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto c Copyright 2019 by Tanya Whyte Abstract Quantitative measurement of parliamentary accountability using text as data: the Canadian House of Commons, 1945-2015 Tanya Whyte Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto 2019 How accountable is Canada’s Westminster-style parliamentary system? Are minority parliaments more accountable than majorities, as contemporary critics assert? This dissertation develops a quanti- tative measurement approach to investigate parliamentary accountability using the text of speeches in Hansard, the historical record of proceedings in the Canadian House of Commons, from 1945-2015. The analysis makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the comparative literature on legislative debate, as well as an empirical contribution to the Canadian literature on Parliament. I propose a trade-off model in which parties balance communication about goals of office-seeking (accountability) or policy-seeking (ideology) in their speeches. Assuming a constant context of speech, I argue that lexical similarity between government and opposition speeches is a valid measure of parlia- mentary accountability, while semantic similarity is an appropriate measure of ideological polarization. I develop a computational approach for measuring lexical and semantic similarity using word vectors and the doc2vec algorithm for word embeddings. To validate my measurement approach, I perform a qualitative case study of the 38th and 39th Parliaments, two successive minority governments with alternating governing parties. -
Jamaica II a Political Overview
NOT FOR PUBLICATION INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS Kings ton, Jamaica April 25, 1970 FJM-- 21 Jamaica II A political overview Mr. Richard Nolte Executive Director Institute of Current World Affairs 535 Fifth Avenue New York, N.Y. 10017. Dear Mr. Nolte: Traditionally, Jamaica has been recognized as the touchstone of West Indian (British Caribbean) politics. Sister states throughout the region have followed Jamaica's historic slave rebellions in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The popular uprising in Morant Bay in 1865 and the labour strikes begun at Frome in 1937 also created reverberations throughout the Caribbean. Indeed, there is great significance in the fact that Jamaica was the first British Caribbean Territory to gain full independence in 1962. (Only recently has Jamaica's paramount place been challenged by Trinidad's ardent regionalists and radical activists who are setting the direction for political patterns of the future.) Further, such historical presence in the politics of the region has been naturally re-enforced by Jamaica's relative economic wealth, size and population when compared to the Eastern Caribbean. As a result, Jamaican politics are first characterised by an ingrained sense of arrogant nationalism, a nationalism which accounts for the island's political insularity and its reluctance to fashion any binding ties with the rest of the Caribbean. This Jamaican nationalism is critically recognized though grudgingly accepted by the other Caribbean states. And no better tribute has been made to that nationalism or its effect on the nine other Caribbean states than Dr. Eric Williams' remark on learning of Jamaica's withdrawal from their aborted Federation "Ten minus one equals zero." Another pair of historical factors are perhaps more pertinent to contemporary Jamaican politics. -
The Conservatives in Crisis
garnett&l 8/8/03 12:14 PM Page 1 The Conservatives in crisis provides a timely and important analysis incrisis Conservatives The of the Conservative Party’s spell in Opposition following the 1997 general election. It includes chapters by leading academic experts The on the party and commentaries by three senior Conservative politicians: Lord Parkinson, Andrew Lansley MP and Ian Taylor MP. Having been the dominant force in British politics in the twentieth century, the Conservative Party suffered its heaviest general Conservatives election defeats in 1997 and 2001. This book explores the party’s current crisis and assesses the Conservatives’ failure to mount a political recovery under the leadership of William Hague. The Conservatives in crisis includes a detailed examination of the reform of the Conservative Party organisation, changes in ideology in crisis and policy, the party’s electoral fortunes, and Hague’s record as party leader. It also offers an innovative historical perspective on previous Conservative recoveries and a comparison with the revival of the US Republican Party. In the conclusions, the editors assess edited by Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch the failures of the Hague period and examine the party’s performance under Iain Duncan Smith. The Conservatives in crisis will be essential reading for students of contemporary British politics. Mark Garnett is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Politics at the University of Leicester. Philip Lynch is a Senior Lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester. Lynch Garnett eds and In memory of Martin Lynch THE CONSERVATIVES IN CRISIS The Tories after 1997 edited by Mark Garnett and Philip Lynch Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Copyright © Manchester University Press 2003 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors. -
Parliamentary Boycotts in the Western Balkans
Parliamentary Boycotts in the Western Balkans Western Balkans Democracy Initiative Parliamentary Boycotts in the Western Balkans 2 1. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................................................................... page 3 2. CASE STUDY: ALBANIA .......................................................................................................................................................... page 7 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................................ page 10 2.2 A brief background on the history of parliamentary boycotts from 1991 to 2019 ........................................................... page 12 2.3 Boycotting in Albania: A final analysis of issues and bottlenecks ................................................................................... page 19 2.4 Conclusions ......................................................................................................................................................................... page 29 3. CASE STUDY: BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA ..................................................................................................................... page 30 3.1 Background ......................................................................................................................................................................... page 33 -
Political Culture of Democracy in Jamaica, 2010
Political Culture of Democracy in Jamaica, 2010 Democratic Consolidation in the Americas in Hard Times By Dr. Lawrence A. Powell Centre for Leadership and Governance, Department of Government, UWI, Mona Balford A. Lewis Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, UWI, Mona Mitchell A. Seligson Scientific Coordinator and Editor of the Series Vanderbilt University Centre for Leadership & Governance, University of the West Indies, Mona This study was done with support from the Program in Democracy and Governance of the United States Agency for International Development. The opinions expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of the United States Agency for International Development. January, 2011 Political Culture of Democracy in Jamaica, 2010 Democratic Consolidation in the Americas in Hard Times INVESTIGATIVE TEAM Investigation - Lawrence Powell, Centre for Leadership and Governance, Department of Government, UWI, Mona Centre for Leadership & Governance, University of the West Indies, Mona - Balford Lewis, Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, UWI, Mona Sample Design and Fieldwork Coordination -Roy Russell, Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work, UWI, Mona Research and Editorial Support - Paul Martin and Kenisha Nelson General Coordination - Dominique Zéphyr LAPOP Research Coordinator and Data Analyst Centre for Leadership & Governance, University of the West Indies, Mona Vanderbilt University, USA Political Culture of Democracy in Jamaica, 2010: