ASSEMBLIES

Key Issues
• Q1: What is an assembly?
• Q2 (parallel to Q3 of Chapter 13): How do parliamentary and
presidential ones affect the role of the assembly?
• Q3: What are the main functions of assemblies?
• How are assemblies organized, and how do their internal structures differ?
• What are the principal determinants of parliamentary power?
• Why have assemblies declined? Does this decline matter?
 Concepts

• Parliamentary government
• Separation of powers
• Responsibility
 Q1: Structure of assemblies
Assemblies are called:
Congress (USA), national assembly (Turkey, France), house of representatives
(Japan), parliament (Singapore), congress of deputies (Spain).. They are
usually classified as legislatures (though assemblies rarely monopolize law-
making power) or parliaments (assemblies are, above all, debating chambers).
• In terms of strengthening checks and balances within assemblies and
between executives and assemblies, bicameralism has usually been seen
as a central principle of liberal constitutionalism
• The representative advantages of bicameralism are particularly important in
federal states, where the sharing of sovereignty creates a constant danger of
irreconcilable conflict between the centre and the periphery.
• However bicameralism can lead to legislative fragmentation.
• Committee structures have become increasingly prominent in legislative and
executive branches of government, as deliberative and consultative forums
and also as decision-making bodies.
 Q1: Assemblies
Assembly government: executive and legislative power is vested in the
assembly. (1924 Constitution in Turkey, under Robespierre and the Jacobins
during the French Revolution)
•Most liberal democracies have adopted some form of parliamentary
government.
Historical development of the Westminster-style system (UK parliament)
• In the 13th ct, knights and burgesses were incorporated into the king’s court.
•During the 14th ct., separate chambers (the House of the Commons and the
House of the Lords) were created to represent knights and burgesses on the
one hand, and the barons and the churchmen on the other.
•Parliament’s supremacy was established after the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
•Its capacity to call government to account was recognized with the gradual
emergence of a democratic franchise during the 19th ct.
 Q2: How do parliamentary and presidential
government affect the role of the assembly?

Parliamentary government (or system or executive):

1) governments are formed as a result of assembly elections

2) the personnel of government are drawn from the assembly (the legislative
and executive branches are fused)
3) the government rests on the assembly’s confidence and can be removed if it
loses that confidence
4) the government can, in most cases, ‘dissolve’ the assembly
5) parliamentary executives are generally collective.
 Q2: Role of Assemblies
Parliamentary government: Effective and responsible government:
Government is effective in that it rests on the confidence of the assembly and
ensures that its legislative programme is passed. Government is responsible in
that the executive can govern only as long as it retains the confidence of the
assembly. In theory, the assembly has the upper hand because it has the
ultimate power: the ability to remove the government.
Criticism:
•Parliamentary government is often associated with the problem of executive
domination. Parliamentary systems may allow parliaments to become little ore
than ‘talking shops’, and may reduce their members to mere ‘lobby fodder’.
•Parliamentary systems have also been linked with weak government and
political instability. This usually occurs when the party system is
fractured, an it is often associated with highly proportional electoral
systems. (E.g. post-WWII Italian politics: a polarized multi-party system led to
the establishment of no fewer than 59 governments between 1945 and 2001.)
 Q2: Role of Assemblies
Presidential government
Separation of powers (Montesquieu): the principle that each of three functions of
government should be entrusted to a separate branch of government. Fragmentation of
government should serve to defend liberty and prevent tyranny. Assemblies and executives
are formally independent from each other and separately elected. There should be no overlap
of personnel between the branches. However, it also implies interdependence in the form of
shared powers to create a network of checks and balances.
Checks and balances: internal tensions within the governmental system that result from
institutional fragmentation. The purpose is to protect individual rights and liberties. Example
from the USA:
•Congress, the US presidency and the Supreme Court are separate institutions. No overlap
of personnel is permitted.
•However, they can constrain one another’s power. While Congress has the ability to make
law, the president can veto it. The Congress can, in return, override this veto with a two-thirds
majority in both houses. Moreover, although the president has the power to make senior
executive and judicial appointments, these are subject to confirmation by the upper house,
the Senate.
•Congress has the right to declare war and raise taxes, the Senate must ratify treaties and
confirm presidential appointments, and the two houses can combine to charge and impeach
 Q2: Role of Assemblies
Presidential government

Criticism:
•These systems of government may be ineffective and cumbersome because they
offer an ‘invitation to struggle’ to the executive and legislative branches of
government.
•Since the system allows the president to propose and Congress to dispose, it is
nothing more than a recipe for institutional deadlock, or ‘governmental gridlock’.
•When the White House (the presidency) and Capitol Hill (Congress) are controlled
by rival parties, this gridlock is highly likely to occur. The same gridlock can occur
when both chambers are controlled by the same party (e.g. Carter administration,
1977-1981).
•A similar problem can occur in semi-presidential systems when the president is
forced to work with a hostile prime minister and assembly (‘cohabitation’).
 Q3: Functions of assemblies
To classify assemblies simply as legislatures, debating chambers or representative
bodies obscures their true significance.
The principal functions of assemblies are:
•Legislation: assemblies rarely monopolize legislative authority ([Link]
law, law by decree passed by the executive, right to veto by presidents, statutory
instruments of ministers in the UK); assemblies exercise little positive legislative
power(legislative proposals usually emanate from the executive); the negative
legislative power of the assemblies (the ability to reject or amend proposed laws)
are also limited. ‘Legislation is passed through assemblies, rather than by
assemblies.’
•Representation: 18th ct. slogan adopted by the 13 American colonies that rebelled
against British rule: ‘no taxation without representation.’ The parliaments stood for
the people themselves (i.e. democratic government). ın practice, we see both
trusteeship style of representation and party discipline (mandate doctrine). The US
Congress is commonly dominated by ‘pork-barrel’ politics; in the USSR the
assemblies resembled the larger society. Last but not the least, party systems offer
interest groups access to represent their interest.
 Q3: Functions of assemblies
• Scrutiny and oversight: the ability of assemblies to constrain or check executive power.
Institutional mechanisms to deliver responsibility or accountability are: regular oral or written
questioning (used by the House of Commons in the UK); interpellation, a process of oral
questioning followed by a vote to establish confidence of the assembly in the answers given
(Germany and Finland); standing committees of the US Congress scrutinize the executive.
Weakness: 1) a monopolistic party can block scrutiny, 2) due to party discipline, especially in
parliamentary systems, the job of scrutiny passes to the opposition parties which have no
power to scrutinize effectively. 3) the ability of the assembly to extract information from the
executive might be limited. 4) oversight of the executive requires that parliamentary
representatives be well resourced and have access to research services and expert advice.
• Political recruitment and training: Assemblies often act as major channels of recruitment,
providing a pool of talent from which leading decision-makers emerge. However, they can also
be inadequate since experience of politics means experience in rhetoric and ‘speechifying’; they
have few opportunities to run government departments and oversee the process of policy
formulation. Moreover, parliaments can corrupt politicians by socializing them into norms and
values distant from the needs of their constituents.
• Legitimacy: assemblies encourage public to see the system as ‘rightful’. This is why most
authoritarian states tolerate assemblies. Assemblies serve as popular conventions, they
perform more creditable educational functions. However, the propaganda/Educational role of
assemblies have been taken by the mass media. The status that assemblies enjoy increasingly
depends less on their constitutional position and more on the media attention they receive.
 Assemblies and policy-making

• Assemblies rarely make policy. More usually, they

influence policy or are executive-dominated.

• The amount of power an assembly has is determined by

a variety of factors. These include:

• The extent of the assembly’s constitutional authority

• Its degree of political independence from the executive
• The nature of the party system
• The assembly’s level of organizational coherence.
 Are assemblies in decline?

• The notion that good government requires a strong assembly is

questionable. Assembly power can certainly become ‘excessive’,
especially when it leads to immobilism and political stalemate.

• There is, however, general agreement that during the twentieth

century the power and status of assemblies changed as a result of:

• The emergence of disciplined political parties

• The growth of ‘big’ government
• The organizational weaknesses of assemblies, or lack of leadership
• The rise of interest-group and media power