Understanding the Parliamentary System and Social State

Posted on Dec 9, 2024 in Social sciences

**The Parliamentary System**

Also known as a doctrinal system, constitutional monarchy, Orleanist, or pure, this system of trust also means that the two sources of legitimacy are mutually respected.

Because the monarch is not responsible to Parliament, but the secretaries themselves, the custom of the King with his Prime Minister will also sign, so he built a set of ministerial endorsements. This will lead to the minister playing the roles of the executive branch while the monarch is symbolic.

It will produce a differentiation within the executive: the head of state and government.

This becomes the parliamentary system where governments are no longer the result of double trust and depend only on the confidence of Parliament.

Between the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century produced the definitive implementation of the parliamentary system. This means that governments exist because they are the result of their office by Parliament and that they remain in power because they still have the confidence of Parliament.

Fundamental Character of the Parliamentary System:

1. Existence of a body (Parliament) that represents popular sovereignty exercised by the legislature. Determines that the Government respond to it politically, which translates into three sites:

   • Inauguration of the head of government by the majority of Parliament. Without this requirement, a government cannot be formed; that is, governments derive their legitimacy from parliaments.
   • Motion of confidence. It is the way for a government to ensure that it retains the confidence of the majority of Parliament.
   • Motion of censure. Ability of Parliament to dismiss the invested government. The Prime Minister resigns, and his government ceases. In some countries, since the second half of the twentieth century, a constructive vote of no confidence has been established, meaning that the proposed motion must be accompanied by a proposal for a new candidate.

   These three elements are often summarized in the phrase “the government is politically answerable to the Parliament.”

2. An executive of dualistic nature that unfolds in:

   • A head of state, represented by a King or President of the Republic, who
     • Is politically irresponsible and acts as an honorable, representative character of the state and moderator.
     • Actions that the Head of State makes to represent the State must be countersigned by the first minister. The leaders are endorsing the act. The head of state acts that lack endorsement are considered null.

In parliamentary monarchical regimes, the head of state is exercised by the figure of the King. His position is held for life, and his succession follows the order of succession for traditional legitimacy. In parliamentary republics, the Head of State is vested in a President of the Republic, a temporary position whose provision is usually the result of an elective process.

II. Characteristics of the Social State

1. Economic Intervention

It is legitimate state action in economic and social life. It is a consequence of the demands that society makes on the state to get the existential minimum. This minimum is related to the existential concept developed by Forsthoff. For a person to lead a dignified existence, they must have their living space secured. But this space is very complex. It can be distinguished:

• Dominated Living Space: Is that segment of the living space, the achievement of which one enjoys and can be self-responsible for. It is the person that is able to provide their own living space.
• Effective Living Space: Is what the person actually needs, but it is not in their power to achieve it all themselves.

The difference between the two is what is called seeking existence.

In developed societies, there is an effective growth of living space but a reduction in the dominated, in contrast to less developed societies.

The formula of economic liberalism has made it so that society itself has been covering some of the attempts; however, it leaves out many aspects of this coverage. Hence the social demand to the State and the implementation of the welfare state, which aims to cover necessary aspects that have not been covered by the company. The state is asked for compliance:

a) Provide community facilities. These are all those infrastructures that man needs so he can enjoy a decent life. (e.g., roads).

b) Establish security. (e.g., man takes food from other countries. The existential need requires the guarantee of food safety).

c) Ensure benefits directly determined. The population of the state receives things that are part of the effective vital space that formerly belonged to the dominated living space (e.g., education, having something to eat, etc.). Since the specialization of labor makes most workers not directly generate food, the wage becomes an essential element for the purchase of them. Hence, the salary should be enough to survive.

Also, minimal benefits and services are required from the State (e.g., situations of disability, illness, unemployment, etc.). Here we speak of positive benefits and subsidies consisting of people who have trouble controlling their living space.

2. Framework of the State for Human Rights

All these situations result in changes in legal rules because there is greater importance of certain rights over others (e.g., association rights), a liberal philosophy that had rejected them and is now in constitutional terms. There has also been the weakening of rights over others (e.g., property).

The Social State allows state intervention in society and the economy and is used as a boundary and framework for the performance of the Welfare State (unlike totalitarian states).

3. Democracy

The emergence of the Welfare State coincides with universal suffrage and the establishment of mechanisms for democratic control of power.

4. Balance on the Issues Relating to Equality

With the emergence of the social state, it is noted that equality before the law is insufficient to ensure real equality, for the positions of the citizens are very uneven.

The Social State is entrusted to build real equality but without undermining legal equality. One of the mechanisms used for this is reverse discrimination, but carried to extremes, it would even break the foundations of the rule of law since it is determined that one of the requirements is a member of a minority, which is a violation of equality before the law.