Executive and the legislative rapport

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An analysis of the rapport between the Executive and the Legislative must take into

consideration the constitutional provisions that regulate the roles and constraints of each branch,

The balance of power between the Legislative and the Executive is extremely important in liberal

democracies, because government accountability is paramount to a real democracy, and there can

be no legitimate form of democracy- absent some form of effective parliamentary check. (Helms,2008:6)

The constitutional provisions regarding executive-legislative relations are extremely important as

they condition the ability of the Legislature to perform its traditional functions: deliberation,

scrutiny and checks and balances. In France, the Constitution itself empowers the Executive to

bypass normal legislative procedures as it has several methods at its disposal to push legislation

through. The main point of the Fifth Republic Constitution was to create a strong Executive that

cannot be hampered by the Legislative. Article 38 allows the Executive to legislate through

ordinances, if given the assent of a majority of the National Assembly; it can make a bill a

question of confidence and in this case, the Legislature has to pass a motion of censure approvedby an absolute majority within 48 hours in order for the bill to be defeated-the guillotine

provision that will also result in government failure and parliamentary election (Article 49.3);

Article 45 enables the Government to declare legislative proposals urgent, which limits the time

that the Legislative can spend debating the bill; Article 44 introduces the notion of package

voting, in which case the Parliament cannot propose amendments. (Hewlett,2005:103) The Rules

Committee in the US can also restrict the number of amendments that can be added to a piece of

legislation, or forbid amendments altogether, in its assignment of rules for debate.

(http://www.rules.house.gov/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=1&RSBD=4)In Spain, the constitutional

architects had the same idea of designing a powerful executive, or better said a powerful

President whilst the Parliament was supposed to encourage negotiation and consensus driven

policy decision-making. Furthermore, there is no clear separation of powers set in the

Constitution but the government is meant to integrate both the Executive and the Legislative.

(Heywood, 1991:99,110) As opposed to the two countries discussed above, the architects of the

US`s constitution always had in mind a system that would ensure that no single branch can

dominate the government; hence only Congress can enact law, but the president can veto them, a

veto that can be overturned by a two-thirds majority in each chamber. (Janda et all,1999:73)

Because their legislative and expenditure functions have been declining, Legislatures have been

trying to compensate with performing efficient monitoring functions. (Hague and Harrop,

2007:317)

The Spanish Cortes has appropriate mechanism of scrutinising the Government at its disposal but

they have been largely ineffective so far because of the dominance of the executive in the

political system in general, and its party or coalition within Parliament in particular.

Parliamentary groups and members of the House can ask written and oral questions but the time

allocated to these is limited, the questions have to be previously delivered to the ministers, and
http://www.rules.house.gov/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=1&RSBD=4http://www.rules.house.gov/singlepages.aspx?NewsID=1&RSBD=4


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he can choose whether to answer or not. The small parliamentary victories, such as the 1993

Congress vote that compelled the vice-president-Narcis Serra to stand before Parliament and

explain how the government was addressing the economic crisis. (Gibbons,1999:71) In France,

there are oral and written questions, ministers can only know the person who is asking the

question, and equal time is granted to the majority and the minority. Since broadcasted on

national television, they have served as a tool in mobilising public opinion against the

government. (Lazardeux, 2009:301)

In the US, Congressional investigations are powerful tools in the hand of the Legislative

especially because of the high publicity that they generate, and they can compel the Executive to

sway its policies. In 1987, President Reagan had to abandon the Administrations efforts to

negotiate with Iran when Congress exposed his arms-for-hostages deals; (Zeigler and

Dye,2000:365) The Spanish Cortes can also set up investigative commissionsbut they need a

majority vote, which means that the government body enjoys a veto over such designs.

(Gibbons,1999:71) In France, the commissions of inquiry have slow, but steadily gained

efficiency: their period of work was enlarged in 1997, they were made public in 1991, and

because most propositions of setting up commissions come from the opposition, some of them

are ran in a bi-partisan manner. The National Assemble also provides for evaluation missions

and delegations, which are meant to assess policies in their respective domains- they are ran in a

bi-partisan manner but they are still quite weak. (Lazardeux, 2009:296) The main instrument

against Governments in Parliamentary democracies is the vote of no-confidence (Spain) or the

vote of censure (France). In Spain a vote of no confidence presupposes the support of an

absolute majority and it must provide the name of an alternative candidate.(Keating, 1996:376)

Following basically the same principle, the vote of censure in France is immediately followed

governmental resignation and general elections.(Lazardeux, 2009:295) Despite the fact that theyhave hardly been successful in overthrowing the government they do generate public debates and

bring the Opposition into the media spotlight which enables it to denounce governmental failures

so it still functions as an oversight tool for the Legislature. (Hayward, 2004:86)

The institutional dynamics set by the Constitutions underline the need for intra-party and inter-

party bargaining; the leaders of the executive have to be capable of either maintaining loose

alliances, on the right or on the left- France (Marian,2006:259), reconciling differences amongst

factions-France and US (Janda,1999:383) or compromising and negotiating deals with regional

parties-Spain (Keating, 1999:379). According to Philip Norton this amounts to inter-party and

intra-party modes of parliamentary opposition and serve as a check on the executive. (Norton,2008:239)

Parliaments, especially in Western Europe, have been downgraded in their functions. In France,

the removing of ministers from Parliament shifted the focus of political life, and the direct

election of the President also served to enhance its prestige in relation to

Parliament.(Keating,1999:168) In Spain the investiture procedure did the same thing for the

Prime Minister, plus, the lack of any effective or strong opposition party from 1982 onwards,


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signatures are allowed. (Keating, 1999:378) As they need the approval of both of the government

and the Chamber, unless the bill is favoured by the government it does not really have a chance

of success. (Gibbons, 1999:107)

One of the main arguments used to justify executive domination in political systems is the need

for efficiency and ability to govern. Nevertheless, coalition governments and even dividedgovernments in presidential systems have demonstrated in several occasions that they are

perfectly capable of sustained democratic performance. Concerning the United States, Peterson

and Greone studied the amount of congressional activity in relation with the increase of periods

of time characterised by divided government and they found no negative effects on their

performance. (Peterson and Greone,1998:38) Mayhew also finds that congressional

investigations, which are qualified as high-publicity inquiries are quite close in numbers: 15

under strong government and 14 under divided government (Mayhew,1993:32) Marian

demonstrates the same thing for the case of France: the Jospin government was perfectly capable

of ruling France- running a loose coalition and having to publicly fight the criticism of president

Jacques Chirac. (Marian, 2006)

In Spain the Government controls the legislative agenda through the urgency procedures which

ensure that governmental initiatives are given priority and it also follows the policy process in

detail, which means that there is hardly any opportunity for individual members to intervene or

to rebel against the party direction. (Gibbons, 1993:104) In France, only a day a month can the

Legislative decide the agenda (Stevens,2003) In the US however, the dominant party is the one

that dominates the legislative agenda. (McKay, 2009: 178) Strong committee systems ought to

enable members from the opposition to affect policy; hence it adds inputs into the debate and

incorporates different views in the decision-making process, which is good for democracy. In the

US Legislature, committees enjoy a great deal of power, especially because of their prerogatives

to: either dismiss a bill by majority voting or just ignoring it, and to amend it to an extent that it

becomes a new policy proposal; also, it is the Committees that decide which bills are to be

considered by the whole House. (Zeigler and Dye,2000:347) Nevertheless, occasionally,

Chairmen have succeeded in containing the committees within the party policy-agendas,

speeding through the legislation without allowing for opposition inputs. Hence the importance of

this depends on the dynamics of each committee (English,2006:98). In France, on the other hand,

committees are large and difficult to manage, but most importantly, the government is not

obliged to accept their amendments; furthermore their composition reflects the composition of

the House so they have no incentive to create difficulties for the executive (Bell, 2004:539). Thesame situation occurs in Spain but in addition, Ministers are allowed to attend and speak at the

Committee meetings. (Gibbons, 1999:103)

With its legislative, expenditure and deliberative functions being undermined by a dominant

executive, Parliaments are struggling to maintain their prerogatives of criticising and scrutinising

governmental policies. With little access to resources, a media bias in favour of the executive,

party dominated politics, the prospects for Parliamentary resurgence are slim.

Documents

Executive and the legislative rapport