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Member of Lok Sabha Dr. Sashi Tharoor recently leveled severe criticism towards the Parliamentary System in India again. He laments hasty, sloppy legislative processes, meaningless debates in Parliament, the power of party-bosses, too many Ministries, Parliamentarians without expertise becoming Ministers and too much power for unelected Prime-ministers. Dr. Tharoor lends his voice to a chorus of pundits demanding a switch to the Presidential System.
Despite reservations by Raju Ramachandran or Dr. Baxi, he’s right! The problem lies in the strong dependency of Parliamentary Systems on political parties. The duty of Members of the Legislative Branch to check each other and the Executive is undermined, because politicians are shackled to not hold fellow party-members accountable. Party-bosses fill the system with minions, that are beholden to them personally, giving little thought to the ethics or qualifications of those minions, who in turn demand their loyalty be rewarded. Those minions then create non-performing government institutions and too many, mostly sloppy and contradicting laws. Sure, in any system quality of government will rise and fall with the people in this system. However, bad systems attract bad people, whereas good systems attract and leverage good people. Prof. Khaitan rightly cautions, that every wanna-be-autocrat seeks the Presidential System, but that can only mean the people better install their own system to serve the people before the autocrat installs the one that serves the autocrat. Parliamentary Systems didn’t prevent the rise of Meloni, Ben-Gvir or Orban. Today this debate remains academic, but who knows?! Some of India’s neighbors switched to the Presidential System with disastrous outcomes. That in turn has some individuals voice their preference exclusively for the US-system for its alleged stability and balance of power supposedly not found in other variations.
These unimaginative gullible copycats seem ignorant about serious flaws in that system. Numerous politicians, officials, supreme-court-judges, academics, Prof. Lawrence Lessig sounded alarm over ethics and qualifications of elected officials, political dynasties, tweedism, gerrymandering, voter-disfranchisement, vote-bank-politics, biased judges, undemocratic therefor illegitimate legislative processes, the power of parties in a 2-party-duopoly, politics as performance-art, carnevalistic election-campaigns. Due to the electoral-college policies are shaped to unduly benefit swing-states, thereby effectively ignoring the interests of the rest of the Union. The 2-year-election-cycle created a standing election-industry incentivized to keep the Electorate angry and politicians in a permanent campaign-mentality. Politicians spend over 6 hours daily raising money to contest ever more expensive elections, resulting in them not finding time to communicate with their constituency, read or understand bills, attend debates or hearings. Corporatist anti-free-market policies deliver for the affluent donor-class and politicians’ stock-portfolios, but regularly fail society. Many politicians have occupied the same seat for decades, preventing generational turnover. US debt piles up. The US-system simply boasts the wrong incentive-structure for the political actors.
Those clamoring for the US-system seem interested in the pomp and spectacle, not in better governance, small goverment or less power for party-machines; it’d be cosmetic change, not reform!
Smart people don’t imitate, they innovate! Stop romanticizing the US and pick another system, one with correct incentives. Download and share description from https://docdro.id/suNmiAR and graph from https://postimg.cc/2Vwy0WYT. It’s a call to come up with new ideas and separate snake-oil from actual solutions.
The aim here shouldn’t be celebrity politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, glamorous too-big-to-fail corporations or Keynes, but thriving citizens, grassroots-democracy, mid-sized competitive companies and Hayek.
One objective should be a thorough legislative process: Good-governance requires careful deliberation over speed. Government activism is more harmful than helpful. Contrary to popular beliefs, nations don’t rise because of decisive visionary leadership. States succeed where they offer a credible legislative process and election system, control implementation of programs and spending by the Executive, enforce a small set of meaningful rules, run an honest independent Judiciary, build functioning institutions, emphasize local Government, eliminate vested interests and overall protect liberty. Citizens succeed, where they are allowed to pursue their own interests and ambitions without undue interference. Therefor Politicians must personally face accountability.
Business-as-usual is not a viable option, not even for the well-to-do. Public dept is mounting again. The economy remains uncompetitive. India’s companies are haunted by bad news. The best and brightest are leaving this country and lose any loyalty to their ancestral homeland. Employers in other countries may welcome immigrants from India for now, however backlash from their citizens is all but certain; especially Indians in the golf are frequently abused as cheap labor. The CCP is eyeing Indian Territory: In this conflict nobody will side with India. Public trust has eroded with the Taliban returning, Pakistan dissolving, Sri Lanka failing, the environment collapsing. Politicians incite communal violence to distract from their incompetence.
Dr. Tharoor, please don’t buy American margarine, buy butter!
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