Has America turned into a parliamentary democracy?
By Frank Donatelli, opinion contributor — 09/03/19 06:00 PM EDT Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell passionately defends the filibuster as an important safeguard to protecting minority rights as envisioned by the framers of our Constitution. McConnell makes the important point that in our presidential system, change should be hard, not easy, and that any major change must have support broader than one election and 51 Senate votes.
The framers were concerned both about absolute executive power and untrammeled democracy where momentary majorities run roughshod over the minority. The result was the doctrine of separation of powers, which included an independent judiciary along with an executive with limited powers elected separately from a legislature composed of two houses, one representing individuals and one representing the states. The Senate historically has acted as a “unanimous consent†body on most matters with the filibuster as an additional guarantee to insure that change to federal policy is deliberate.
This is in sharp contrast to parliamentary democracies in Europe and elsewhere where the chief executive is elected by the majority party of the legislature. The result is an ability by the government to enact change far more easily and more sweeping, but without deliberation that is characteristic of debate in America. Such parliamentary systems spawn far more ideological parties, and hence these “negotiated majorities†among parties produce far less stable governments than our system.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/459793-has-america-turned-into-a-parliamentary-democracy
