| Review of: | Westminster Legacies: Democracy and Responsible Government in Asia and the Pacific edited by Haig Patapan, John Wanna, Patrick Weller |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Alan Ward |
| Reviewed in: | Australian Journal of Public Administration |
| Date accepted online: | 25/09/2006 |
| Published in print: | Volume 65, Issue 2, Pages 110-124 |
Book Reviews
This book presents papers on countries that adopted the Westminster system of government to determine how that model has interacted with local circumstances. In their introduction, Patrick Weller and R.A.W. Rhodes concede that the notion of a Westminister system is contentious, but they settle on five components to assess: the concentration of power in a collective and responsible cabinet, ministerial accountability to parliament, a non-partisan and expert civil service, an opposition recognized as executive in waiting, and parliamentary sovereignty. They say all Westminister systems exhibit these five 'in varying degrees' (p. 7) but most Westminister systems have formal constitutions that substantially inhibit parliamentary sovereignty. Furthermore, a strong party system is not one of their components although the papers indicate that it strongly differentiates Westminister systems.
The editors include two settler countries with 'transplanted' Westminister systems, Australia and New Zealand, where the model was taken for granted, and a number of non-settler countries with 'implanted', or imposed, Westminster systems: Pakistan, Nepal, Malaysia, Singapore, Papua-New Guinea, Fiji, and assorted Pacific islands. The introduction says they were selected because 'they explicitly adopted the Westminster model and have a history of representative democracy' (p. 9). But why exclude, say, Canada, Ireland, and a number of Caribbean countries which are democratic successes, and include countries which are democratic disasters with little history of representative democracy.
For the most part the implant countries tell us very little about Westminster government because local conditions always distort, and even overwhelm, the model. Indeed, they would distort or overwhelm any democratic model. Why expect Pakistan to teach us anything about Westminister government when it has mostly had long periods of military dictatorship. Why include Fiji, which Margaret Palmer tells us is 'outside the ambit of Westminister democracy ...' (p. 222) A winner-take-all Westminster model could not possibly accommodate a deadly ethnic rivalry between native Fijians and Indian settlers. And in Nepal a couple of years of representative instability hardly count as a history of representative democracy.
In the implants where the Westminister government has at least nominally endured, the model's propensity to strong executive government has been congenial to authoritarian, or semi-authoritarian, regimes and one party governments. In Malaysia and Singapore, for example, the ruling party has never lost power. The model also provides a legitimizing myth for countries such as these. Not surprisingly, the tradition of an impartial public service has not implanted well in traditionalist societies, and Westminister notions have also clashed with traditional authority structures and ethnic cleavages in almost all the implants. As Peter Larmour points out, regime failures in the Pacific have come from breakdowns in community relations, not failures of Westminister government
The book is most interesting on two stable and democratic transplant states, Australia and New Zealand, although one wishes that the editors had started with on of their conclusions; that Westminister government is a variant of parliamentary government. Then they could have acknowledged that some developments, such as New Zealand's abolition of the upper house in 1950, are perfectly parliamentary without being Westminister.
It is odd to read, in John Wanna's chapter that New Zealand did not adopt a written constitution. In fact, its written Westminster constitution dates from 1852, and was amended as recently as 1986. It is true, however, that New Zealand's responsible government is based on constitutional conventions, not constitutional law. This could have led Wanna, writing on New Zealand, and Rhodes, too, writing on Australia, to speculate about why these Westminister countries appear incapable of writing responsible government into constitutional law when a majority of Westminster countries have done so quite easily, beginning with Ireland in 1922. The most interesting adaptation of Westminister that Wanna considers was the replacement of simple majority voting in New Zealand by the mixed member proportional system in 1996.
Writing on Australia, Rod Rhodes considers a range of traditions that have influenced Australian Commonwealth government: colonial self-government, responsible party government, federalism, and neo-liberalism. He assesses very well how these traditions affect the five Westminster components identified in the introduction. But he does not adequately consider that the Australian Commonwealth and four states operate Westminister government with extremely powerful un-Westminster upper houses that can destroy governments by rejecting money bills. The powers of the Commonwealth Senate, dating from 1900, certainly reflect federalism, as Rhodes notes, but they also reflect the non-federal powers of the then UK House of Lords and all the colonial upper houses. Westminister principles work in this setting because Australian upper house members accept the Westminster, not federal, notion of the primacy of the lower house in government formation and legislation, and thereby avoid deadlock.
All in all, this is an interesting book but it would have been more useful with a more judicious selection of case studies.