Boris Johnson, the superiority of parliamentary systems and the future of American democracy

It looks like the UK will have a new prime minister in the coming months. After another scandal and multiple cabinet officials jumping ship, Boris Johnson has agreed to resign as prime minister. He will stay on for a little while longer until a successor is named. Who that will be, I have no idea. There are several names floating, none of whom I know anything about. Johnson is a great example of just how quickly political fortunes can change. It was not too long ago when it looked like he would be in charge for a long time to come.

Regarding Johnson, I cannot say I am passionate about him one way or another. In 2019, when he became prime minister, I was glad because the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn being in charge was so horrifying. By getting Labour to dump Corbyn and become sane again, that alone made Johnson worthwhile. As far as how good a leader he was on policy, I cannot say. I do not know anywhere near enough about UK politics to speak on that matter.

Regarding the scandal that brought Johnson down, it is almost funny in that it did not directly involve conduct by him. A member of his staff had allegedly gotten drunk at a party and groped two men. Johnson was aware of those accusations and did not mention it. He had gotten in trouble before, most notably for Partygate, where he violated his own pandemic rules. But it was the alleged groping by another person that did him in.

I almost have to laugh at how quaint that feels given how here in the US our standards are approximately non-existent now. A leader being held accountable for their behavior! How un-American. The scandals that Johnson was guilty of were a lot closer to Clinton than Trump. Even then, he was much less scandalous than Clinton. I am not aware of any infidelity accusations against him, let alone sexual assault. Needless to say, I am not at all worried that he will incite a mob to storm parliament.

Parliamentary systems are better

What the whole episode helps to illustrate is why parliamentary systems have so many advantages over presidential systems. For those who do not know, the US is almost alone in the developed world in having a pure presidential system. Almost all other developed countries have pure or hybrid parliamentary systems. Parliamentary systems involve voting for parties, not candidates. Candidates do not get elected, parties do. If a party gets a majority of the vote, they pick a prime minister. Everyone else in parliament is referred to as a member of parliament or MP. If no party gets a majority, then two or more parties have to agree to form a coalition to get a majority.

In the US, we have districts and states. Many parliamentary systems have proportional representation, i.e., Israel, where the number of seats a party gets in parliament is determined by the percentage of the vote they get. In the UK, they have districts just like we have in the US although they do not have states.

With that crash course out of the way, I want to talk about why I think parliamentary systems are better overall. I not only prefer parliamentary systems, but also prefer proportional representation. One major difference between the two systems is that parliamentary systems have very few veto points. Once a party gets a majority or forms a coalition, technically, they can pass the entirety of their agenda. That is not nearly as revolutionary as it sounds, but parties do have the ability to try to govern and enact what they campaigned on. If a ruling party/coalition enacts something that tanks the economy or causes unrest, they will probably be out of power very fast. That is what keeps radical changes from happening even though they technically could. That is why left-wing parties in Europe and elsewhere do not push for nationalizing whole industries and right-wing parties do not push for laissez-faire.

Not only is the ruling party/coalition expected to govern, but if any legislation they propose does not get passed, that is essentially a death knell to their rule. If that happens, a new election will either be called or the current prime minister will be replaced. In presidential systems, legislation gets voted down or withers on the vines all the time and nobody resigns because of it. This feature is neither inherently better or worse when it comes to each system, but it is a notable difference between the two.

Parliamentary systems are much better at ensuring accountability. Parliament can only be controlled by one party/coalition at a time. The opposition party(ies) cannot do anything to stop them so the ruling party/coalition has no excuse for failure. There is no confusion as to who is in charge. When it comes to filling cabinet positions, the ruling party/coalition can fill up positions by snapping their fingers. They just pick someone and they are there. If an MP has a scandal, the party/coalition just snaps their fingers and they are replaced. The greater accountability feature is why Boris Johnson is gone. If his party agreed on someone to replace him now, they would take office in five minutes.

Presidential systems make removing problematic leaders much harder. Anyone with even a tiny fraction of one percent of the scandals Trump had would have been removed in a flash in a parliamentary system. If those scandals had come forward before the election, they would have been replaced immediately. In the case of the US, we have impeachment if the president commits “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but no president has ever been successfully removed. After inciting an insurrection, Trump was still not convicted. I think it is safe to say that impeachment is dead for all intents and purposes.

In Congress, if a member has a scandal, they can try to tough it out. If not, they can resign, but that means holding a special election that happens sometimes months later and can cost a small fortune. A member can be expelled, but that is only for the most extraordinary of circumstances.

When it comes to substantive issues, because people vote for parties in parliamentary systems, they vote largely on issues. Presidential systems are candidate centric, meaning some people vote on issues, but others vote on personality, culture or tribalism of some sort. Often times, particular candidates have cult-like followings, especially presidential candidates. In the US today, candidates can matter at the margins, but most of us are partisan and will vote for the party we identify with for any number of reasons virtually all the time.

In parliamentary systems with proportional representation, it is the best of both worlds in my view. Not only are issues the dominant factor that people vote on, but so many problems created by having districts are not present. Because districts do not exist, there is no need to worry about gerrymandering. Everyone who is elected to parliament can take a national view of their role and not just be about “bringing home the bacon” as the saying goes. Too often with districts, members will do things that benefit their districts or states, but are bad for the country. Think of any kind of protectionism. Without districts or states, nobody has to deal with the tension of doing what is good for the country versus doing what is good for a district or state.

To be sure, proportional representation is hardly foolproof. In the case of Israel, they have had difficulty forming a governing coalition and have had multiple elections in just a few years. Still, I would hardly call it a nightmarish hellhole and I am pretty sure people there are doing alright. Although having dozens of parties is probably a little chaotic, it is certainly representative. Anyone with any viewpoint can probably find a party to their liking. With two party systems, both major parties are a motley crew of many different and sometimes conflicting groups.

By promoting gridlock via veto points, presidential systems would seem to be more stable. In fact, they are not. Presidential systems, particularly in Latin America, have been much more susceptible to coups. A reason for that is dual legitimacy. A president and legislature are separately elected. Both can claim to be have mandates to govern. When they are controlled by different parties, as has happened in Latin America, military power is often sought by one of them to beat the other. The result is a coup and a dictatorship, i.e., Chile and Brazil.

Some might argue that making it difficult to pass things is good. That argument is frequently invoked by those who oppose government action in general. Gridlock certainly has a strong intuitive appeal for those of that persuasion. But there is a flipside. While presidential systems make passing things harder, they make repealing things even more difficult. In the US, it is hard to pass things, but once they pass they quickly become entrenched and gain passionate supporters who fight for them. The US has a smaller social safety net compared to almost all other developed countries, but we have never repealed any of it either. Programs like Medicare and Social Security are as entrenched as can be. Those who wish to reduce spending on those programs face almost insurmountable barriers. While such programs are extremely popular and would be hard to cut in any democratic system, the odds of them being cut would likely be much greater in a parliamentary system.

Presidential systems run the risk of having a minority of the country hold on to power.* If a majority of a country is heavily concentrated in a few areas, they can find themselves out of power despite being more numerous. That can lead to people seeing the government as illegitimate. In the case of the US, we have an electoral college that can allow the loser of the popular vote to win, a Senate giving equal representation to each state no matter how many/few people they have and a House whose districts can be drawn to favor one party over another.  

Whatever the merits of creating such a system were in 1787, nobody in their right mind would create a system like that today. In fact, the US has encouraged other countries to adopt parliamentary systems when helping to build democracies abroad, i.e., Germany, Italy and Japan. Consciously or not, we are acknowledging that our system is not one to be replicated.

In contrast with presidential systems, I am not aware of any developed country with a parliamentary system that has had a successful coup (maybe Japan and Italy in the 1920s). The Nazis are probably the most famous example of a democracy becoming a dictatorship, but they did it all legally. Hitler was given power knowingly and willingly. He did not violently overthrow the government although he had unsuccessfully tried to in the early 1920s.

Parliamentary systems have another advantage in that new leaders are installed very fast. For example, Australia had an election in May and the ruling party lost. Within days, a new prime minister took over and has now been in the job for more than a month. In the US, we have a more than 2 month lag between the election for president and the taking of office. It used to be even longer (see the 20^th Amendment). That is normally not a huge deal, but when the losing president refuses to acknowledge they lost and does not cooperate it can be a real problem.

Presidential systems are informally based on norms, particularly compromise. High levels of partisanship and refusal to compromise are their kryptonite. Veto points are supposed to encourage consensus and working together. Often times, that means not many things get passed. It is one thing though for there to be gridlock and another for there to be paralysis. When parties in a presidential system refuse to cooperate at all and both have some power, the government cannot function, which can lead to a coup. The US has been fortunate to avoid that despite our many problems, but we have had some needless government shutdowns and nearly defaulted on our debt payments in 2011.

Where is American democracy headed?

The good news for the US is because we have such a long tradition of peacefully handing over power and have developed strong institutions over 200+ years, we are much better prepared to deal with things that other countries were not able to handle. For example, our military would not aid a president who refused to leave office. The same cannot be said of some other countries. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro has pre-emptively claimed that the election will be stolen from him and now has the military backing those claims. If he loses, as polls suggest he will, he most certainly will not concede and then the question becomes whether the military will aid him. There was never any danger of the military backing Trump if he had refused to leave. In fact, the joint chiefs put out a statement condemning the attack on the Capitol on January 6.

The US has a presidential system and that is not going to change. As far as the future of American democracy goes, I am not nearly as worried about it as many on the left are. They are not nearly as worried about it as they claim. If they were, they would be making very different decisions than they are now. For example, they would be minimizing their differences with Republicans to try to reach as many of them as they could to fight off Trump and his ilk. I see almost nobody on the left willing to do that. In fact, I see most of that crowd doing everything possible to drive people away. “Our democracy is dangling by a thread!” “Okay, how do we save it?” “Abolish private health insurance, decriminalize border crossings and say latinx.” That is only a slight exaggeration.

What the future holds for American democracy, I don’t know. Nobody knows what will be happening in just a few years. Anyone who projects with any confidence that they know what will happen should not be listened to, especially if they went to an Ivy League school and have a degree in economics. The US has survived many brushes with death before, but as they say, maybe, “This time is different.” Let’s hope not, but who knows?

Instinctively, I tend to be a believer in, as Jeff Goldblum would say, “Life finds a way.” That is to say if I had to guess I would think we get through this rut. It may require some near-death experiences, including some violent episodes, but it would not be the first time we have been through that. Nothing is set in stone and I would be lying if I said I have no worries at all. Still, I would bet on the US making it through and stronger coming out of it.

We are very polarized now, but not so much over ideology. We were arguing vehemently over the size of government not too long ago. Today, that debate is on a hiatus and Trump is largely to thank/blame for that. It is hard to have another civil war when there is no big ideological clash. We are also older and that will only continue to be more true going forward. It is hard to imagine a bunch of octogenarians leading a gun battle on the streets of pick your favorite city. Maybe we will have a civil war on social media or cable news, but I doubt we will have anything like that in real life.

I think the polarization over identity is bad and potentially dangerous. Unlike disagreements over policy issues, it is not something that can be compromised on. Still, it may be a passing phase that we just have to muddle through. It would not be the first time we went through something like that. I think it would be better for the country if we were arguing over substantive issues like how much to spend versus how much to tax. We may be forced to do that again if we are finally confronted with a fiscal crisis that deficit hawks have been screaming about for decades. Higher interest rates will make that more likely. That will involve tough tradeoffs, but it would be much better and healthier for the country to be arguing over that than identity.

*Parliamentary systems are not immune to this either. Any system that is not proportionally representative runs that risk. Presidential systems though have separately elected legislatures and presidents, which increases the odds of that happening. I am not aware of any country that has an electoral college, which makes the US unique in having so many potential pitfalls regarding anti-majoritarianism.