Hey guys! Here in the US, the president has substantial power. They control foreign policy and can veto legislation passed by Congress (although this can be overridden) among other things. I was wondering how much power the executive has in your country? What can they do? To what extent can they act on their own? Are they directly elected by the People or by the assembly? Do they have a “bully pulpit” to bring attention to issues that they’re concerned about? Note I’m mostly asking about heads of government, not heads of state (if your country makes that distinction).
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In England and for UK foreign policy and some other issues. The executive has almost complete power. As long as it’s legal and passes through the courts, when challenged. Because our executive is basically made up of the party that has a working majority in the lower house. With the upper house and the monarch having minimal powers. So our Prime Minister is elected in the same way as you select the Speaker of the House of Representatives. With all of the cabinet being Members of Parliament (Representatives). So with our system, Kevin McCarthy would be your President. With the only people voting for him directly being California’s 20th congressional district.
Scotland has a devolved parliament which decides most Scottish only policies. But recently had a law about Gender Recognition/trans rights blocked by London.
Wales has a regional assembly which has some powers such as about health and some rather minor by-laws.
Northern Ireland has about 5 or so different parties. With it being required that the two biggest parties form a coalition together. Which is usually always the pro-Irish Sinn Fein and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party. Who rarely work together and will suspend the Parliament over any and every reason. Most recently it’s been suspended since February 2022. As Sinn Fein became the largest party and the DUP won’t work with them because they’re the largest party. It was previously suspended between 2017-2020 because the DUP had set up a corrupt subsidy for bio-fuel. Which saw their friends and family getting paid to heat empty farm barns.
Again its powers are strictly “domestic”.
Very little. The executive is a council of 7 people with equal voting power. The presidency is only ceremonial and rotates annually. So the executive always needs agreement amongst them.
Also we can vote on anything if you collect enough signatures, which isnt many.
The executive and legislative can of course decide things, but if the majority of the people dont like their decision, it can always be overruled by populat vote. So they only usually only make decisions that would survive a popular vote in the first place, giving the voters most power.
Republic of Cyprus has an overpowered and nearly unchecked executive branch. In addition to being a presidential system which companies the head of state and head of government in one directly elected office, it also does not require the support of the separately-elected parliament to govern because over the last decade or so a lot of the legislation coming from the executive took the form of ministerial decrees that do not require parliamentary debate and legislative efforts initiated by the parliament are routinely vetoed by the president in an endless game of ping-pong (e.g. there’s a parliament-initiated bill on postponing foreclosures on primary residences that is being send back and forth since 2013).
Effective checks and balances between the branches of government cannot be carried out, because the constitution envisioned a government with two parallel structures of power, one run by the Greek Cypriot ethnic group and one by the Turkish Cypriot ethnic group – and each ethnic group could veto the other ethnic group’s political decisions and that would be the primary way of balancing power. Since 1963 though, Turkish Cypriots stopped participating in the government of RoC, and all those provisions of the constitution that relied on their presence cannot be used.
The President of RoC may as well be a monarch for the duration of the presidential term.
Italy is a parliamentary republic with a bicameral system.
People vote for the composition of the chambers. Usually the majority party leader become first minister who on paper doesn’t have more power of other ministers.
Until the 90s parliament had a lot of power. Nowadays the executive have more power but nothing compared to the US executive.
The new government want to propose again to change the constitution to transform the system in a semi-presidential one with just one chamber, similarly to France.
This is something right wing governments would like to do since the ’70s more or less but for many reasons they never succeded.
In Germany, the executive branch (the Federal Chancellor) is decidedly *not* elected directly by the people, but instead by our parliament, the Bundestag.
That of course means that there are some major differences in comparison to the system in the USA:
First of all, it actually *never* happens that the majority in the legislative and the executive are from opposite sides. The parliament decides who gets to be chancellor, so he/she knows they’ll support their endeavours and they can and do work very closely together.
But on the other hand that also means that the chancellor is directly dependent on them. To get rid of a chancellor is (technically) ridiculously easy – there’s no need for an impeachment process or anything like that. Theoretically the parliament could get together tomorrow(!) and simply elect a new chancellor. From a legal standpoint it’s really not hard.
In Ukraine we have President directly elected via popular vote, unicameral parliament eleted with mix of fptp like in US/UK and proportional representation. Parliament and President than agree on Prime minister and ministers who actually government. Though President is important too, he vetos/signs laws, head of security and military.
Works well when President manages to have support in parliament (like now) and terrible when it is not the case. Fortunately, since 2014 we synchronized elections of President and Parliament so they more likely to be simmilar.
Probably, the most difference with us is that if parliament don’t create coalition (majority support for PM), President can dissolve it and trigger new election.
And parliament can at any time without much effort fire PM and install new without disturbing people with elections.
Impeachment is theoretically possible, but we yet to have one.