Constitutional reengineering: Dialogue's migration from Canada to Australia

Stephenson, Scott

doi:10.1093/icon/mot041

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Gardbaum (2014: 636) also notes that Australia is "one of the few countries to resist constitutionalization and judicial review of rights" and suggests that its bicameralism may help to explain this fact. The Senate exercises real legislative power and actively scrutinizes government legislation, primarily through its Standing Committee for the Scrutiny of Bills (Stephenson 2013), and this capacity to hold governments accountable is strengthened by the use of proportional representation for Senate elections. Gardbaum contrasts this situation with that in Italy, where similar electoral systems in both chambers diminish the Senate's role as an agent of accountability.…”

Section: Weak(er) Judicial Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Beyond Presidentialism and Parliamentarism

Ganghof¹

2021

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In a democracy, a constitutional separation of powers between the executive and the assembly may be desirable, but the constitutional concentration of executive power in a single human being is not. The book defends this thesis and explores ‘semi-parliamentary government’ as an alternative to presidential government. Semi-parliamentarism avoids power concentration in one person by shifting the separation of powers into the democratic assembly. The executive becomes fused with only one part of the assembly, even though the other part has at least equal democratic legitimacy and robust veto power on ordinary legislation. The book identifies the Australian Commonwealth and Japan, as well as the Australian states of New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and Western Australia, as semi-parliamentary systems. Using data from 23 countries and 6 Australian states, it maps how parliamentary and semi-parliamentary systems balance competing visions of democracy; it analyzes patterns of electoral and party systems, cabinet formation, legislative coalition-building, and constitutional reforms; it systematically compares the semi-parliamentary and presidential separation of powers; and it develops new and innovative semi-parliamentary designs, some of which do not require two separate chambers.

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Section: Weak(er) Judicial Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%