I was thinking of Suazzaprodi’s comment rather than your own.

Sadly there was a time when I was young and brash enough to think that disrespect to the monarchy would have been a good thing. Happily I am now older and perhaps wiser.

On the other hand a surprising number of monarchies (Japan, Thailand, Spain, Scotland and PNG spring to mind) where the parliament ‘designates’ a candidate who then presents themselves to the sovereign for formal appointment. In Sweden where the speaker has become, as Tom notes, a sort of standing informateur, the formal change of government takes place in the sovereign’s presence.

Tom @14: Parliament was dissolved early in 1948 to allow a constitutional amendment. In ’58 a gov’t fell, was briefly followed by a rump cabinet and then elections in ’59. Something similar happened in ’66-’67. Before ’67, many gov’ts fell outright or at least had crises, but most these issues were resolved (sometimes through establishment of a new cabinet). This sort of ‘gluing’ was later eschewed in favour of the practice of resigning and calling new elections. Really, if you’re interested, the website I linked to has much better and more detailed info!

South Africa imposes an automatic dissolution after 30 days if the national assembly fails to elect a president. The ANC’s dominance in national elections makes it an automatic process but the same rule has worked in provincial legislatures electing premiers, including the opposition provinces of Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

@Tom

While I’m afraid I disagree about the convergence of traditional parties in most democracies it is perhaps a matter for another thread.

I once read-ed someone writing around 1970 – Dorothy M Pickles, perhaps – claim that despite having unfixed terms, The Netherlands had only (at that point) had one early election, and all the others were pretty much exactly on the fourth anniversary of the previous election. JD, is this accurate, or at least was before 1998? Or does collapse of a govt not entail a fresh election?

> “In America they have the Republicans who are rather like our Liberals, and then they have the Democrats who are rather like our Liberals.”

Someone around 1987 explained to me that the US Republicans correspond closely to the Australian Liberals in all their glory (a wide spectrum, from Chris Puplick and Rosemary Kyburtz to Ross Lightfoot and Bill Heffernan) while the Democrats correspond to all the other Australian parliamentary parties – Labor, the late Australian Democrats (never, interestingly, adjectivised as “Democratic” but always as “Democrat”), and the Nationals. But now that the Zell Millers and the Jay Rockefellers and Jim Jeffords-es have re-sorted out more along ideological lines, I think it is fair to say that the US parties are pretty distinct.

Dutch society has an unusual number of divisions that are reflected in the parliament. I would not think papering over those divisions by moving away from proportional representation is necessarily a very good idea.

In most parliamentary systems the traditional parties have seen their share of the vote reducing for some time. There was an old ) joke in Australian politics where someone was explaining the US party system.

‘In America they have the Republicans who are rather like our Liberals, and then they have the Democrats who are rather like our Liberals. The joke no longer works because the economic policies of the traditional parties in Australia, as elsewhere, have become very close to indistinguishable.

The popular response appears to be the emergence of new parties who actually have different policies.

I know I go on about this a bit, but I believe elections are about electors, not candidates or parties. Simply disregarding some electors by a threshold mechanism seems to me seriously wrong.

If the parliament elects the prime minister, then can one say that this parliamentary democracy requires an affirmative majority for the government to stay in power, and thus make minority governments (Germany) less likely then say a parliamentary democracy where the chief of state chooses a prime minister that has the support implicitly (Denmark). There is no need for a formal confidence vote, as long as the opposition does test that support.

Parliamentary Democracy is an amazingly beautiful system of government. It is so flexible, and dynamic and much more interesting when proportional representation is used.

What I was talking about here in my comments is that the Dutch party system has fragmented so much, that it seems to me that difficult but needed decisions are put off. I was saying that should an electoral threshold be introduced to reduced this fragmentation. Would the Dutch ever agree to something like this? It also seems that no party would ever want to take part in government ever again, when they could prop up the government from the outside, and not take responsibility like the Party of Freedom did.

Parties have to govern, but it seems to me that this system of PR that the Dutch have seems to have forced the two largest parties to form a coalition. This seems to deny voters a choice, and there isn’t much of an opposition to check the government and improve legislation when all the rest of the parties are just testimonial parties or tail waggers.

It would be better if the parties in an election campaign announced from the outset who they are forming a coalition with. The Irish STV system to allow and encourage parties to do such a thing. The Dutch party system because of the electoral system is so unstable that parties ended up having to please both ends, until they haemorrhage themselves becoming all things to all people, and appealing to no one.

Yes, after a general election. If however the chief vacates mid-term (for whatever reason, sometimes rather Jeremy Thorpe-like if I recall), the Presiding Officer (not the Queen or a vice-regal representative) appoints the acting First Minister until the full Parliament can meet to elect. Ironically, I believe the PO was David Steel last time this happened. Anyway, that was what I was thinking of. In Sweden, of course, in all course the Riksdag Talman gets up to four chances at putting a name forward for approval.