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Zoost

the role of parliament

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Just want to know.

Parliament is there to control the governments policy making. But what exactly does parliament control?

1. Do they control that each law is not conflicting with the constitution?
2. Do they control the spending of the government (effective and efficient policy making)?
3. Do they control moral/ethical issues?
4. Do they control that government do what they said they where going to do?

I live in the Netherlands and I have no clue what the task of parliament is, and doubt they know. Who can enlighten me?

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Well, I've heard a lot of people suggest recently that the role of parliament is to ratify illegal wars.

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pritch said:

It differs from country to country. Are you asking about the USA?


I'm asking what within a democracy the role of parliament is/should be.

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pritch said:

It differs from country to country. Are you asking about the USA?


/me slaps pritch around a bit with a large trout

We don't have a parliament. We have the Congress. According to the way it's supposed to be, Congress is part of a trilateral system of checks and balances. Congress discusses and votes on various laws brought to them, before it goes to the president. The president can approve or veto a law. If it's vetoed, it can go back to Congress where they can attempt to overturn that veto. Usually it's congressmen that bring such bills and laws to the table in the first place.

Congress also does various other things.

Based off the list at the top of this thread, they do number 1 and 2, they make decisions affecting number 3, but can't ultimately control it themselves, and not even the almighty Congress can control number 4.

I could be wrong on some aspects, as I'm pulling this out of my ass from high school history, which is now 5 years behind me.

That doesn't answer what exactly a parliament would do but I believe it's similar in many respects. Thankfully, for such answers there's always Google.

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Zoost said:

pritch said:
It differs from country to country. Are you asking about the USA?


I'm asking what within a democracy the role of parliament is/should be.


Heh, 0wned! :)

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The Netherlands is a parlementary democracy, with the Queen as official head of state.

The national administration consist of the First Chamber (Eerste Kamer) and Second Chamber (Tweede Kamer). The First Chamber is a token institution that checks if passed laws are in accordance with other laws and the constitution. This Chamber usually consist of older politicians who have withdrawn from active politics, and chosen from the 2nd Chamber.

The Second Chamber is where the power lies. Here reside the elected people from all parties, aka Parlement. After elections a coalition is formed between several parties so that they make up a majority in votes. The parties involved are usually those who have won in the elections; with the biggest party usually delivering the Prime Minister. The parties involved in the coalition make agreements about several important issues they intend to keep until next elections, which is four years. Non-compliance with these agreements usually lead to the fall of the coalition and subsequent new elections. Ministers are chosen from the parties involved in the coalition. Ministers plus Prime Minister are referred to as the Cabinet. They make and present laws to the Parlement to vote on.

The official head of state is the Queen. This is a token, mostly ceremonial position and she has no responsibility. All government decisions are taken by Parlement. All actions of the Royal family are the responsibility of the government, which translates to the government having the last say on their actions. The Prime Minister is the real head of state.

Beneath the national administration there is the elected Provinciale Staten, which govern the individual provinces of the Netherlands and is presided over by the Commissaris Der Koningin (Commissioner of the Queen, aka Governor). The Commissioner is appointed by the Queen after referral by the Cabinet. The cities are governed by the elected City Council, who in turn elect for a Major referred by the Cabinet.

There is a movement for electing the Commissionar and the Major directly by the electorate. This is probably going to happen in a couple more years. There are also a few people who wish to remove the Royal family altogether from the administration (because whatever way you look at it it's not very democratic, even as a token position), and either stick with the Prime Minister as official head of state or go back to a Republic like we used to have before Napoleon and with an elected President as ceremonial head of state. This is not going to happen, as the Royal family is still very popular.

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Zoost:
3. Do they control moral/ethical issues?

That is not really their task, however the current Prime Minister; Balkenende sees it as his duty to incorporate more Christian morals in the (multicultural) Dutch society :-/

Mordeth:
The official head of state is the Queen. This is a token, mostly ceremonial position and she has no responsibility.

I'd like to add that it is the queen who appoints the Prime Minister. This real power makes her more than just a token.

...go back to a Republic like we used to have before Napoleon...

Are you dutch aswell Mordeth?

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Mordeth said:

How dutch democracy is organisated


Thank you very much Mordeth for your extensive answer. Allthough it did not answer my question. It is possible that my question is not clear enough therefore I will rephrase.

Q: Against what set off rules does a parliament or congress (the elected people within the democracy that has as their main task to control the policy makers) control governments? This question is a not related towards any country. Just for parlemantary democracy in general.

I'm asking this question because I really don't have a clue what they should look for when controlling a government.

taken from: a document called "The New World Order, Incorporated: The Rise of Business and the Decline of the Nation State I see this quote:

the traditional role of parliament as a forum for the vigorous debate of ideas



So not to control government? I'm clueless! even after an extensive search with google I still have no idea.

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m0l0t0v said:
I'd like to add that it is the queen who appoints the Prime Minister. This real power makes her more than just a token.


Heh, not really. She cannot refuse the choice of Prime Minister the coalition has made, nor can she refuse to sign laws that have been passed in Parliament. (BTW, I'm suddenly confused how to spell 'parlement' in english :).

This did indeed happen in Belgium not that long ago. The Catholic king refused to sign an abortion bill that was passed in Parliament, saying it went against his beliefs. Although his signature is purely ceremonial, it is required. So, they actually de-throned the king for one day, made themselves a republic and signed the bill themselves, then re-instated the monarcy the next day :)

BTW, the Queen does have a role when choosing the "Informateur", ie. the guy who is going to start negotiations on her behalf with the parties after elections, to see who can/will form a coalition. So, in the hypothetical situation that there are a large number of coalitions possible the Queen can influence the outcome by choosing an "informateur" (sorry, wouldn't know how to translate that) who has a preference for a particular coalition because he would start negotiations with those parties first.

Are you dutch aswell Mordeth?


Yes.

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Heh, not really. She cannot refuse the choice of Prime Minister the coalition has made...

hmm... you're probably right.

Although if I recall correctly Balkenende was already accepted as the 'new' Prime Minister before the current coalition (CDA, VVD and D66 aka Balkenende 2) was formed...

It seems like Dutch politics have gotten more and more complicated over the years...

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Mordeth said:

I'm asking what within a democracy the role of parliament is/should be.

Heh, 0wned! :) [/B]

I can't be doing with this. Democracy is not something you can trivialise. In the UK given a substantial majority you arguably get elected dictatorships anyway. IMO in a proper democracy there's no parliament, as the public would vote on everything themselves, but that's just my vision of a democracy that sadly 99% of the worlds population is either too stupid or too ambivalent ever to realise.

/me slaps Manc around hard.

Do me a favour. I studied the American electoral system at A-Level/first year uni and I've had quite enough of it thanks, I was about to explain the American version of democracy but whatever :P

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pritch said:

IMO in a proper democracy there's no parliament, as the public would vote on everything themselves, but that's just my vision of a democracy that sadly 99% of the worlds population is either too stupid or too ambivalent ever to realise.

Yeah, but look at how busy the parliamentarians are. Do you really expect people to vote on a close-to-daily basis, let alone take the time to thoroughly read up on subjects they have no clue about, and most important of all - manage to ignore media influence? Wouldn't think so.

Voting directly might be a good idea locally, but it wouldn't work on a national level.

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Fredrik said:

Yeah, but look at how busy the parliamentarians are. Do you really expect people to vote on a close-to-daily basis, let alone take the time to thoroughly read up on subjects they have no clue about, and most important of all - manage to ignore media influence? Wouldn't think so.

Voting directly might be a good idea locally, but it wouldn't work on a national level.

No I don't expect it, but I wish our lives were structured in a way that we could. This is one of the reasons, aggravated by modern lifestyles, that I'm losing a lot of love for democracy lately.

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Parliament is the place where fat tory landlords take good ideas, process them, beat the shit out of them and smash them about and rape them of all that was good, figure out a way to make money for themselves out of it and then unlesh the idea to the public as law, a pale and useless shadow of it's former self.

Ever better, over here we have an additional parliamentary gut to disolve decent and fair laws and shit out some more retarded. We called this the House of Lords, which fat tory MPs get elected into by other fat tory MPs once they reach a certain weight and have eaten enough babies.

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In Canada it's something like this:

The House of Commons (aka. parliament) makes up laws. If they pass these, they go to the senate (a bunch of old apathetic guys who spend all their time in Mexico). These senate guys almost never stop a bill cause they don't care as lot as they get paid. They're not even elected. The PM appoints them. If they do reject a bill it can go back to the other guys so they can fix it though. Then they pass the thing and get the Governor General (the Queen's representative in Canada) to sign it. I think technically that guy can reject it but that never happens.

I don't even know why we bother electing half the politicians. They just vote the way their party leader tells them to most of the time. Party leaders have a habit of punishing those who don't.

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darknation said:

Parliament is the place where fat tory landlords take good ideas, process them, beat the shit out of them and smash them about and rape them of all that was good, figure out a way to make money for themselves out of it and then unlesh the idea to the public as law, a pale and useless shadow of it's former self.

Ever better, over here we have an additional parliamentary gut to disolve decent and fair laws and shit out some more retarded. We called this the House of Lords, which fat tory MPs get elected into by other fat tory MPs once they reach a certain weight and have eaten enough babies.

I hope you're not suggesting there's anything wrong with this divine system?

It lets valuable members of society like you and I spend our time in the pub care-free.

Besides the tories have been replaced with Blairite champagne socialists. Same process, different spongers.

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