Eidelberg vs. Burke?

In response to what he sees as the self-destructive incoherence of Israeli political leadership, Paul Eidelberg has proposed the establishment of an independent presidency, broadly along American lines though with significant differences. Eidelberg's president would be nominated by a senate, but would be independent of that senate because he would be entitled to automatic re-nomination until defeated in a direct popular election. The separation of executive and legislative powers would thereby be incorporated into a system which at the same time (if the senate was functioning properly) would prevent political adventurers from winning presidential nomination. Cabinet members would be prohibited from sitting in parliament. They would basically be appointed by and and responsible to the president, though they would in addition have to be confirmed by the senate—a safeguard also built into the American constitution. Thus, the cabinet would no longer be made up of the representatives of a number of small parties.

Eidelberg has stated that the most powerful argument against a coalition cabinet government is Alexander Hamilton's: "plurality in the Executive tends to conceal faults and destroy responsibility." The main advantage he concedes to parliamentary or cabinet systems is that they usually produce a well-identified shadow cabinet, so that the voters have a better idea of whom they would be electing in place of the incumbent government. But this advantage is lost under Israeli-type proportional representation, with its unpredictable coalitions.

To those accustomed to the British parliamentary tradition Eidelberg's solution to the problem of a divided executive may seem too drastic. Nowadays, party discipline in British-based political systems is so tight that the executive scarcely seems to be a plural one at all. (Since New Zealand has adopted PR, one has to exclude it here from the category of British-based political systems.) Multi-party coalition government has become foreign to these constitutions through lack of familiarity, so that, for example, the current Canadian cabinet is made up entirely of Conservatives, despite the Conservatives' lack of a majority in Parliament. Parties were looser organizations in Westminster in the nineteenth century, but even then the parliamentary system, combined with the principle of collective cabinet responsibility, seems to have produced sufficiently strong Prime Ministers. The key here seems to be that the "first-past-the-post" electoral system tends to produce a House of Commons that is made up predominantly of political centrists, rather than representatives of the full spectrum of political views. Such MPs should be capable of cooperating with one another, at least from the point of view of policy objectives. Nowadays, these centrist MPs are usually also compelled to belong to large, tight-knit political parties; but even if the MPs were more independent of party, as in the nineteenth century, they would probably still be capable of forming sufficiently cohesive parliamentary coalitions to produce strong government.

Is it necessary, then, to establish a presidential system in a case such as Israel's—or would it be enough to revert to a single-member-district scheme of representation in the legislature, thereby producing a cabinet system resembling the British one? Not being very familiar with Israeli politics, I will not attempt to answer this question. My interest here lies more with whether Eidelberg's proposals might have some relevance to addressing the flaws in the Westminster constitutional model.

It appears that in terms of Mansfield's interpretation of Burke, Presidential government is an attempt to institutionalize rule on the pattern of the great statesman, without regard for whether such a statesman actually exists (or has succeeded in winning the highest office). An American-type constitution apparently allows the President to be relatively independent of his party. His cabinet may be largely composed of technocrats; while if the opposing party happens to be stronger in Congress, he may have to be more concerned with cooperating with that party than with his own. As a result of this independence the President's personal views become tremendously important, and there is presumably a risk that a President either not up to his job or, as Burke might put it, untrustworthy, may do great damage. This is also true of the contemporary presidentialized Westminster-model executive (especially in view of the absence of any effective legislative check on that executive); but the presidential Prime Minister represents a deformation of the traditional Westminster constitution.

Burke, Mansfield points out, was opposed not just to Bolingbroke's idea of a King wielding real personal power, but even to the idea of a Prime Minister (op. cit., Ch. 6).

That form of government, which . . . has left its whole executory system to be disposed of agreeably to the uncontrolled pleasure of any one man, however excellent or virtuous [!], is a plan of polity defective not only in that member, but consequently erroneous in every part of it.

Burke's government is a collegial one of ministers. The ministers would be chosen by the King, though they would also have to be acceptable to the House of Commons. That the ministers were appointed by the King, rather than by a close-knit majority party in the Commons, would preserve "the stern confrontation of the legislature and the executive" also found in presidential government (p. 144). The chief means by which the ministers would be held accountable to the Commons would be removal from office by impeachment, somewhat as in ancient city-republics, rather than by partisan votes of non-confidence. The Commons would serve as a kind of higher jury of the people, delivering verdicts not only on outright lawbreaking by ministers and other high officials, but on "offenses within the area of discretion that the laws permit" (p. 147).

Such an ideal of collegial government was also typical of ancient republics, where it was always feared that concentrating powers in the hands of one man, other than for limited periods under emergency conditions, would lead to tyranny. It is still seen today in Switzerland, whose constitution in some ways resembles those of the city-states. There is a specifically modern reason, too, why collegial, cabinet government might be preferable to presidential rule: the modern state is so large and complex that it is beyond the capacity of a single person to administer.

Rule in the presidential style is surely necessary where a state is under some threat and must act swiftly and decisively to preserve itself. (This may have some relevance to the garrison state of Israel.) But it is far from clear that it represents an ideal outside of national emergencies.

The great attraction of an American-type constitution, from the point of view of someone living under the contemporary Westminster model, is that it has preserved an independent legislature able to check the power of the executive. In parliamentary systems, the strength of the parties has led to the virtual fusion of the legislature with the executive, and to a party dictatorship where the electoral system favours a majority party. This is not a sustainable political system in the long run. But is a presidential model the only way of dealing with this, or might it be possible to weaken the parties under something resembling the Westminster constitution?

(Added 03/08: It is now not clear to me that Burke explicitly opposed the institution of a single executive in the form of a Prime Minister. In the quotation given above by Mansfield, from the Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents, Burke appears to be criticizing not so much the concept of a single executive as that of any executive not "controlled" by Parliamentary oversight. At any rate, he is giving no convincing reason why the "uncontrolled pleasure" of several executives should be preferable to the "uncontrolled pleasure" of a single executive. It would, however, be surprising if Burke had supported the formal institution of a Prime Minister, given Burke's general opposition to constitutional innovations.

At the same time, neither is Hamilton's argument, in the Federalist number 70, in favour of a single executive as straightforward as it seems at first sight. After arguing in apparently incontrovertible fashion that a plural executive is bound to lack "energy", Hamilton then somewhat ruins this argument by claiming that a single executive, ambitious to amass power, can also be "confined" more easily. He gives the example of the Roman Decemvirs: these "were more to be dreaded in their usurpation than any one of them would have been", apparently as a result of their "united credit and influence". Apparently a small executive group can act with greater overall effect, when it is united in some project.)