I would like to draw your attention to an excellent post over at Europhobia, a discussion on whether the European Commission is more democratic than the US Presidency.
in the US, the people do not directly elect their president. Sure, they VOTE for the president, but it is the Electoral College which actually makes the final decision...The US president is the top dog of the US executive. The rest of the executive is led by his cabinet. Yet the US cabinet is solely appointed by the president - none of them are elected officials (unlike the UK where, as the executive is part of the legislature, the majority of members of the cabinet are democratically elected MPs). The president's choice of cabinet then has to be ratified by Congress.
In the US, cabinet appointees all have to be ratified by the (democratically elected) Congress, just as European Commissioners have to be ratified by the European Parliament. Yet, arguably, for the US cabinet to have the same legitimacy as the European Commission, each (democratically elected) government of each US state would have to have the right to appoint its own cabinet member. So instead of Condi, Rumsfeld and the like, we'd have a bunch of people appointed by the state governments of Wisconsin, Idaho, South Carolina and the rest all vying for the president's attention. That would, technically, be more democratic than the current system, where the president's mates get all the best positions whether they've ever held elected office or not.
Thought provoking, eh?
6 comments:
I went and checked out that post and responded with the below:
I'm no expert on the EU, so maybe I'm missing something here... I apologize if I am. Having said that, I think there's an obvious and important difference between the elections of the presidents.
In the U.S. system Americans do vote directly for the president. And, while the electoral college of each state hypothetically CAN ignore the will of the people, they don't. They vote for whoever the people of the state they represent chose. The fact that a majority of Americans voted for Gore and he wasn't elected is a non-sequitir.
The equivalent, in the EU, would be if the people of Britian, France, etc, voted directly on who the EU president would be, and THEN the heads of those various countries voted for the EU president based on the will of the people of the countries they represented.
My understanding of the EU is that this does NOT happen. There is a massive buffer between the EU commission and the people of the countries of the individual states. This creates a ruling class inured, to an unacceptable degree, to the will of the people.
I have always been unsure about who the Electoral College in the US are. Are they elected, if so who by and in what ways are they accountable? If they aren't elected then your analogy falls because the heads of state of the various EU nations ARE - and they therefore have a "mandate" from their populace including a "mandate" for their decision on who to send as a Commissioner. (See, you can't have the "mandate" thing both ways *smile*)
If they aren't elected, then doesn't that make the US Presidential election democratic only by accident ie not at all? There would be no necessary causal connection between the populace's vote and the eventual result. Just because it seems to (almost?)always come out that way doesn't make it democracy.
Regards, Cernig
from this site
http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/state_responsibilities.html
Electoral College Instructions
1. Appoint Electors
The United States Constitution and Federal law do not prescribe the method of appointment other than requiring that electors must be appointed on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November (November 2, 2004). In most States, the political parties nominate slates of electors at State conventions or central committee meetings. Then the citizens of each State appoint the electors by popular vote in the state-wide general election. However, State laws on the appointment of electors may vary.
But how these people are selected doesn't matter because they don't decide who will be president- they simply pass on to the Fed whoever the people of their state decide will be president. Regardless of whether they are forced to by law or not, that's how it works.
In the EU that is not how it works. The people of France have no say when it comes to who Chirac will vote for for EU president. The people of Britian have no say in who Tony Blair will vote for,either.
In other words, it would be analogous to the Governors of the US states voting to decide who would be President. I think I've got it now. :-)
The current US system is actually based on the way Scotland used to elect it's King before the Union with England, did you know that? The various Lords, the clergy, the middle class of the towns and the Guilds would each send people to a "Parliament" where the King of Scots would be decided. (Notice: of Scots, not Scotland...King of the People, but the land belongs to the people - it's why Scotland still has no trespass law) Not democracy, but a sort of early prototype. When time came for a system in the new US, it was all those Scots and freemasons wot done it.
Yep, trivia time at Newshog
But what about the Cabinet? In every European state (where each cabinet member is an elected representative of someplace in his own right - imagine only House members being able to be in the US cabinet), as well as in the EU as a whole, these people are more democratically elected than in the US, yes?
Very interesting about the Scots. So now I know that it not only is not Scotch- that's a drink, it is also not Scottish. :)
I'm not sure if the cabinet make up is more democratic or not. I could see how that would be a check on the exec, but that probably isn't necessary in our system.
There's a great post over at NewSisyphus about how these different systems resulted in the difference between America and Europe today. Basically it says that all the West had the same generation in '68, but that in America that generation couldn't take and hold power as well as it did elsewhere. I always thought it was a single man, Ronald Reagan, but according to the Newsysphus it was partly a result of the sytem. And, if anything, it argues that the parliamentary system is more responsive to the will of the people, at least in the short term.
That post is here:
http://newsisyphus.blogspot.com/2005/01/eu-dependence-theory-blame-canada.html
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