• frezik
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    25 days ago

    Weird in having a whole bunch of compromises between big and small states, and separating the power of the executive and legislature. Countries looked at both of those and picked the one that’s more chaotic, but less clumsy.

    • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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      25 days ago

      There’s no reason why the current government should be able to pick the date of the election. What’s the reason behind that besides “The Prime Minister wants it that way”?

      • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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        25 days ago

        I dunno, with the American system you have like 2 year long campaigning cycle for president. There’s almost no break and it’s exhausting. In Canada when an election is called the campaign is only about 6 weeks give or take a week.

        Also, if the government becomes dysfunctional, it can be dissolved and a new government elected. The US system doesn’t allow for that flexibility.

        • KevonLooney@lemm.ee
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          25 days ago

          If your campaign is only 6 weeks, you have to be campaigning all the time too. Do you think people just say “oh there’s an election in 6 weeks? Maybe I’ll run for office!”? They have to have everything ready to go immediately. All politicians are campaigning all the time.

          • Albbi@lemmy.ca
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            25 days ago

            It’s really different though. The politicians are expected to be working at the national capitol during normal sessions. While they are ‘campaigning’ in that they’ll be trying to score sound bites and such for the media, they’re not allowed to spend money on regular campaigning until the election season starts.

            How many rallies for president haver been held already with the election still 166 days away? How much money spent? It’s utterly exhausting.

      • OhNoMoreLemmy@lemmy.ml
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        24 days ago

        It’s a consequence of parliamentary sovereignty.

        Parliament can always dissolve itself and call an election, and it’s an important mechanism for getting rid of the government.

        The problem is that the prime minister also has a majority in parliament, and that means he can make parliament dissolve itself when he likes.

        This was actually a problem for Johnson. Initially, he didn’t have enough of a majority and it wasn’t clear he could call an election without Corbyn’s support.