Lecture 3 Flashcards
What is the seperation of powers?
- Montesquieu, 1748
- Trias politica
- Judicary, legislature (Parlement) & excutive
Of who does the excutive branch exists:
The political executive (president vice-president, cabinet) and the Civil service (Ministers)
What is the political excutive?
Often also called ‘government’
on its own
> But government contains
BOTH parts of exec. branch
- to govern a country by making policy.
Its task is to set strategic priorities,
develop policy initiatives, draft corresponding legislation,
issue government orders, mobilize support, and oversee
policy implementation
- The institution that translates
voter choices into policy. - It is the nexus by which
democracies funnel representation into governance. - composition differs by
constitutional format.”
What are the diffrent politcal excutive constitutional formats in Europe?
- Parliamentary:
Voters in parliamentary democracies are represented by
parliament alone, to which the government is exclusively
responsible - Semi-presidential:
Semi-presidential democracies can be defined as systems where a
popularly elected president complements the government and
prime minister who are responsible to parliament”
Diffrence: One has a popularly elected president within
political executive, one has no
What is a “flaw” with semi-president democracies?
The balance of power between the president and cabinet on the
one hand, and the president and parliament on the other, can vary
with the political and institutional context.
Some semi-presidential democracies make the
president so powerful that he or she has constitutional primacy over the prime minister as formal head of the executive. France is a case in point.”
How is a constitution fundamental dependenent on the legislative branch?
> “Parliament delegates to government the power to devise
policy and oversee its implementation, subject to
parliamentary accountability” – p. 146
> “In parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies, the
government is dependent on the confidence of parliament. If
a government loses a vote of no confidence in parliament, it
must resign (see Chapter 9). That means that in order to form
and to stay in office, a government must command the
support of a legislative majority” – p. 146
What is the mordern, different view on the exctie branch?
- The political executive
NOT
> Different formats in Europe:
> Parliamentary
> Semi-presidential
BUT,
> Members:
The prime minister/chancellor/(minister-)president
Cabinet
Consists of ministers that lead ministries, i.e. large
institutions of public administrators
“The role of cabinet ministers is to develop policy
proposals [legislative initiative] and to oversee their
implementation”
What is the civil service?
The political executive is supported by non-elected civil servants who staff government departments and
implement government policy.
> Unlike cabinet ministers, the bulk of the civil service
remains in position after general elections and after
government changes.
> Civil servants are expected to serve multiple
governments of different political orientations
professionally and impartially”
- Think of teacher, beleidsmedewerkers and doctors
What is the traditional view of civil service?
Traditionally thought of as bureaucracy
What is bureaucracy?
• Bureaucracy is organized hierarchically;
• Relationships within hierarchy are formal and functional
• Position attained is based on merit (talent and experience);
• Social & economic differences are not important;
• Servants receive a salary and don’t work with favoritism/nepotism/the like;
• A civil servant does his/her job professionally and not ‘on the side’;
• Importance on texts/laws/forms that regulate;
• In a clear, unambiguous & uniform
manner;
MAX WEBER
What is mandate theory?
> Election results are the legitimation of the ensuing governance
This is how “translating voter choices into policy” works in the
mechanisms of modern democracies
Which also means: this is the process that makes governance
democratically legitimate
No mandate = no legitimacy
Votes -> Legislative branch -> Forming of governments
(i.e. the political executive) -> Governance (which civil
servants implement) -> Accounted for in parliament
What is the idea of the excutive branch?
The political executive tells civil
servants what to do, without hearing back from them again.
Linear relation: politics -> public administrators
What is chaging about the excutive branch?
Power shift occuring from the legislative branch to the executive branch.
Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, states
assumed responsibilities beyond defence and law and order for
infrastructure, strategic industries, public services, and eventually
public welfare, so that the range and complexity of the policies
managed by governments grew
This is called the growth in compplexity
in short: militralism chanched into wlefare state.
What are the two cpnsequences of growth in excutive branch complexity?
- empowerment of the political executive
“It led to the empowerment of the political executive as parliaments and MPs delegated the increasingly complex task of making coherent policy across the growing range of government functions to the cabinet”
- Expansion of the institutional capabilities of the executive.
It led to the expansion of the institutional capabilities of the
executive, as states built sizeable bureaucracies to manage and
implement policy in an expanding array of policy areas.
EG:
Civil servants UK 1900: <100,000
Civil servants UK 1945: 800,000
= Introduction of Welfare State!
What is presidentialization?
Strengthened the executive vis-à-vis parliament and the
prime minister within the executive
