In 2024 the French National Assembly initiated a trial period during which the country’s prime minister would answer questions in parliament alone, rather than together with their ministers, in a format similar to Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the House of Commons. In this post, Calixte Bloquet and Ruxandra Serban explain why French politicians decided to go ahead with the experiment, and how the format of the French version of PMQs compares to similar procedures in other parliaments. A second post will then discuss how the trial went, and what can be learned from it.
Continue readingTag Archives: Justin Trudeau
The Canadian Prime Minister’s request for prorogation was neither ‘illegal’ nor unconstitutional
On 6 January, the Governor General of Canada granted a request for a two-month prorogation of parliament. A legal challenge was soon launched to have it declared unlawful. Steven Chaplin argues that the prorogation is perfectly proper, that it is highly unlikely that a Canadian court will rule it to be unlawful, and that comparisons with the Boris Johnson prorogation request in 2019 and the subsequent ‘Miller 2’ case do not hold up.
Continue readingIs confrontational questioning bad for parliaments and democratic politics?
Parliamentary procedures such as Prime Minister’s Questions in the UK or Question Time in Australia are often criticised for their contentious style of debate. Ruxandra Serban compares questioning procedures in the UK, Australia, Canada and Ireland, and discusses whether a confrontational style has negative consequences for parliaments and for democratic politics.
Parliamentary questions are a well-known feature of politics, and procedures such as Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) in the UK, Question Period in Canada, and Question Time in Australia are at the centre of public perceptions of parliament. These procedures receive more attention than their European equivalents, which are considered less ‘interesting’ than the theatrical antics of PMQs. But they are also criticised for being too combative, with the implication that the confrontational dialogue seen during PMQs or Question Time is detrimental to parliament and for politics more broadly. Recently, the new Leader of the House in Canada also promised to change the adversarial character of Question Period. But how confrontational are these procedures, and why? Does confrontational questioning have negative implications for parliament and for democratic politics? And, importantly, what can be done about it?
How confrontational are different questioning procedures?
PMQs in the UK is notoriously conflictual, with numerous studies documenting face-threatening strategies, incivility, and personal attacks in questions and answers. But how does confrontational language at PMQs compare with similar procedures in other parliaments? To investigate this, I looked at four similar parliaments, during four comparable premierships: Enda Kenny in Ireland (2011-16), David Cameron in the UK (2010-15), Julia Gillard in Australia (2010-13), and Stephen Harper in Canada (2006-8). Taken in pairs, the four premierships are of a similar duration, with both Cameron and Kenny having a term of about five years, and Gillard and Harper of about two. All four led similar types of government: coalition governments in the UK and Ireland, and minority governments in Australia and Canada.
I sampled a set of 30 questioning sessions for each case-study, amounting to 3,212 parliamentary questions. Each question was labelled based on whether or not it included a conflictual remark, understood as explicit instances of an MP criticising the government, a political party, policy, or the Prime Minister.
During the periods analysed, the Canadian Question Period was the most confrontational, with 75% of questions including a conflictual remark. The Australian Question Time came second, with 44%, and the UK’s PMQs third, with 40%. Oral Questions to the Taoiseach was much less conflictual, with only 13% of questions including a critical comment. Although some of these patterns may be related to the context of each premiership, my new research shows similar findings apply to the Trudeau premiership, during which around 80% of questions to the Prime Minister included a conflictual remark. Ongoing conversations about excessively contentious questioning in Canada, Australia and the UK suggest that things have definitely not improved over time.
Continue readingTen things you need to know about a hung parliament
We know there will be an election on 12 December, but the outcome, in terms of parliamentary seats and who will form the next government, remains uncertain. Robert Hazell and Harrison Shaylor answer some of the key questions about what happens if the election creates another hung parliament.
With an increasingly volatile electorate, and uncertain forecasts in the polls, it is possible the 2019 election will result in another hung parliament. Although bookmakers currently have a Conservative majority as comfortably the most likely election result, and the Conservatives are currently polling around 11 points ahead of Labour, a hung parliament is by no means out of the question. It would be the third hung parliament in four general elections. This explains what lessons can be learned from our previous experience of hung parliaments at Westminster and around the world. It addresses questions such as how a new government is formed, how long formation of that government will take, what kinds of government might emerge, and what the most likely outcomes are.
How common are hung parliaments in other countries?
In most democracies across the world, single party majority governments are the exception. Whereas the ‘first-past-the-post’ (FPTP) voting system used in the UK has had the tendency to encourage adversarial two-party politics and majority government, this is far from a default setting. Proportional representation tends almost always to produce coalitions: many countries in Europe currently have a coalition government.
Recent years have shown that, even in countries using FPTP, hung parliaments can occur quite frequently. In Canada, whose parliament uses the same electoral system as Westminster, there were 10 minority governments in the 20th century. There have already been four since 2000, including the incumbent minority government led by Justin Trudeau, formed after the Liberals lost their majority in the October 2019 federal election.
What is the experience of hung parliaments at Westminster?
Westminster has more experience of hung parliaments than is generally recognised. There were 20 governments in Westminster in the 20th century: four were coalitions, and six were minority governments. But single party majority governments dominated after the Second World War. The 2010 coalition government was the first since 1945 and the product of the first hung parliament in 36 years. Since 2010, however, two out of three general elections have produced hung parliaments (and the fact that David Cameron’s Conservatives succeeded in obtaining an absolute majority in 2015 was a surprise). Continue reading
Updates from Canada: don’t call it constitutional reform
In October 2015 a Liberal government took office in Canada with commitments to both electoral and second chamber reform. In this post Andrew Cook provides an update. He reports that so far Senate reform has made the greater progress: following the introduction of a new appointments process, a plurality of Senators are now independents. Although a special parliamentary committee has considered options for electoral reform it remains unclear whether the government will be able to make good on its pledge that future federal elections will be conducted under a system other than first-past-the-post.
The government of Justin Trudeau came to power in October 2015 with a wide-ranging platform that included several propositions touching on the operations of the Canadian constitution. As was outlined on this blog at the time, the proposals range from introducing a dedicated Prime Minister’s Question Period in parliament, to reforms of the electoral process that would increase the autonomy of the Chief Electoral Officer and create an independent commission to organise leaders’ debates during election campaigns. The two most significant, and politically challenging, reforms proposed by the Liberal government were a focus of its agenda in 2016. Both electoral reform and reform of Canada’s second chamber, the Senate, have advanced since October 2015 but in different ways. It is worth reviewing the current state of reform in light of the recent developments on both these files.
Senate reform
Reform of Canada’s appointed Senate has long been discussed, and re-emerged as a key issue in the last federal election as a result of a Senate expenses scandal that eventually led to the resignation of then Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s chief of staff.
Harper’s own relatively modest proposals for reform were previously deemed fundamental to the country’s constitutional framework, and therefore requiring substantial provincial consent, so he abandoned them and simply stopped appointing Senators.
The recent return to constitutional debate, which dominated almost two decades of Canadian political life, has not brought with it a renewed interest in reforming the written constitution. Justin Trudeau has repeatedly stated that he does not want to re-open the constitution, which he rightly fears ‘would require protracted constitutional discussions with the provinces.’ Hence rather than considering large-scale Senate reform, such as introduction of elections, Trudeau has created an Independent Advisory Board on Senate Appointments – an attempt to move towards a non-partisan and merit based appointment process. The board selects five candidates for each Senate vacancy, with the Prime Minister making the final decision on who is appointed.
Because there were so many vacancies left by Harper (22 out of the total 105 Senate seats), new appointments by Trudeau resulted in a plurality of Senators being independents by November 2016. They will work together on matters of Senate rules and logistics but will otherwise vote independently. This new reality will have major impacts on both the operation, and role, of the Senate.