Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok. There’s no “great” answer to this that I’m aware of but it has been a viable compromise.
Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok. There’s no “great” answer to this that I’m aware of but it has been a viable compromise.
Apolitical? Hardly. They are literally politicians, just unelected. It’s all the worst aspects of elected officials with added nepotism and no ability to remove them.
It’s monarchy-lite.
They are not political appointees, so have a lower chance of being correlated with whatever movement of the moment and so serve as checks and balances. The fact that they can’t be replaced is a feature.
Are you talking about a specific example or a hypothetical?
I’m referring to the House of Lords. They are affiliated with political parties.
In terms of them not being swayed by ‘movements of the moment’, you are quite right. They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female.
https://www.democraticaudit.com/2018/10/02/audit2018-how-und...
>>They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female.
If you excuse me, I just don't understand the implication here - if they were exactly representative of British racial demographics and exactly 50/50 men and women, they would not be stuck in the past?
I’m not intending to imply anything, I’m trying to state it.
Having political control of the country being hereditary, male and white is something that does not represent the make up of Britain. It represents the way Britain was run a long time ago and the current political infrastructure is not a strength.
If political control was actually democratic and representative of the country, I don’t think the situation would be worse.
It’s a non sequitur and not with engaging with. The purpose of a second chamber is temporal representation, as in the makeup is “stuck in the past” (more of a moving average) and not subject to the whims of the day. Some idea of forcing it to be composed based on arbitrary and irrelevant personal characteristics would accomplish nothing for the state and would be as stupid and in democratic as trying to do something like that for elected officials.
Ironically the the post appears stuck in 2021
How is a hereditary representative of anything other than a narrow gene pool?
You can’t think of anything better?
Why have anyone elected at all?
> Some idea of forcing it to be composed based on arbitrary and irrelevant personal characteristics
I can't think of a more arbitrary or irrelevant personal characteristic than being born to a family that inherits a political post.
> In terms of them not being swayed by ‘movements of the moment’, you are quite right. They are stuck in the past. 6% aren’t white. 26% are female
You think this is an argument against the lords but for the people on the other side they think you are supporting them with these points.
Britain was white country for the last 12,000 years and had primogeniture for the last 1,000+. The UK today is a proverbial pale blue dot on the timeline
Let's go even further back. Why not to when we were wearing skins and foraging for food. Or even further, when we were plain slime.
And if skin color and political decisions of people 1000 years ago controlled us today, this might be a reasonable point.
But they don't so it's not.
> so have a lower chance of being correlated with whatever movement of the moment
Correct, they instead have a 100% chance of being correlated with what is good for the aristocracy.
Technically they are mostly affiliated with one or other political party. It's even a convention for the internal elections that select which peers sit in the Lords, to only have candidates from the same party as the one being replaced, to maintain the ratio set by New Labour in the nineties.
Was that always the case? I took from TFA that some number are purely hereditary and that all of them used to be before a recent reform.
Or was it that one has to be a hereditary peer in order to be a government appointee?
Either way, the greater the barrier to the house of sober second thought being stacked by whoever is currently in power, the better. I’d also favor people being randomly appointed for life.
Yeah it was 100% hereditary peers plus some bishops before the 1999 reform act:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Lords_Act_1999
Labour had campaigned for years to abolish the Lords but when they got the chance Tony Blair decided on a watered down reform instead. Now the bloody place is just packed with political stooges and party donors. Over 800 of them. It's corrupt as hell.
The hereditary peers are now a much smaller bunch, apparently there are 92, elected from the larger number of 800ish who are theoretically eligible.
Before 1993 all of them could hold seats.
The majority of the house these days is made up of life-appointed peers, who are nominated to the house by the commons. There are also 24 bishops.
There are moves afoot to remove the last hereditary peers, though I’m not sure of the current status of that bill.
If Labour get re-elected in a few years, they have made muttering about further second-house reform, but no plans or commitments at present
I was speaking purely of the 92 hereditary peers.
> Having an apolitical (or unelected) and slow changing second chamber is a useful counterbalance to elected officials running amok.
Then just have people chosen at random from birth to become lords. That makes as much sense, unless what you're interested in is a mechanism that helps powerful families to remain powerful
Another compromise in the same vein was (until 1913) the U.S. Senate, elected by the state legislature rather than direct election and for terms 2.5x as long as that of a House rep
To me (a non-American), that actually makes a kind of sense. Have people in the federal Congress whose job is to speak for their respective state governments. Instead of duplicating the House of Representatives with different electoral boundaries.
Quite like the European Council. Well if it was the state governors flying in to DC once a month, so maybe not exactly like it.
A hot take I support is that switching to popular election of Senators was a mistake. We should go back to the state legislature method.
3 times as long (6 years for the Senate vs 2 years for the House)
The USA's Fedederal vetocracy gauntlet is composed of Senate, POTUS, and SCOTUS.
I'm very curious about comparisions between governing systems. But am noob, so haven't gotten very far.
I too value -- without evidence pro or con -- some balance between fast, slow, and middling.
Senate was designed to counter balance the House. I'm very skeptical of its benefit; both in principle and in practice.
Our State's patchwork of arrangements is probably informative, in the small. Somehow rank States by legislative output, (their) Supreme Court's actions, lag time in pivoting to adopt norms (marriage equality), or some such.
There's a Harvard researcher (on mobile, can find cites later if needed) who concluded that most all national (democratic) govts eventually adopted norms. On the time span of decades and generations. Regardless of their system. Strongly suggesting that public pressure and need to maintain legitimacy do matter.
I've since wondered if we're just too impatient. I certainly am. Or if that thesis is even true. For example, the USA's Jim Crow era endured for 100+ years. And still remains contested.
Would appreciate any insights any has to share.