The Design of Parliaments Has an Impact on Politics | Hacker News Reader

The Design of Parliaments Has an Impact on Politics

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58 pointssethbannon18 comments

I was hoping for something slightly more substantive, in particular comparative of the different archetypes and showing how it affects the framing of debates.

I think it could be argued that the assignment pattern of seating has more of an impact. For example grouped by party instead of by location or even random drawing.

haha, yes, random bench partners might be really helpful

This isn't about seating exactly, but on the topic of grouping, I remember hearing about one particularly stark example from Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast. During the French Revolution, at one point the National Assembly moved, along with the King, from Versailles to Paris, and immediately became much more partisan and radical. Previously, when the delegates had arrived in Versailles, they had found living space with other delegates from their region of France; after the move to Paris, the party lines had been drawn and delegates moved in with their political allies instead.

As an aside, the Legislative Assembly, which followed the Nat'l Assembly appears to have had a horseshoe shape [1]. It didn't even survive for a whole year, although we probably can't blame that on the shape.

[1]: http://therevolutionofthefrench.weebly.com/uploads/4/0/5/4/4...

I live in the UK and have mixed feelings about the 'opposing benches' design of the British Parliament.

Government ministers and political leaders need to be interrogated regularly. I agree with the article that the 'opposing benches' design can facilitate this more easily than the 'classroom-style' design where leaders may appear out of reach for questioning.

However, the 'opposing benches' design can also encourage a combative, adversarial approach that doesn't always lead to substantive debate. For example, every week the Prime Minister takes questions from the opposition (Prime Minister's Questions or PMQs); because this is televised and often reported in the press and on TV, political leaders are judged by how clever their retorts or jabs are, not on whether they actually have anything substantive to say.

Here is a two-minute video clip of PMQs in session (from last week) to give you flavour of what it's like:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2016/sep/14/jeremy...

There was a deliberate choice to avoid this when the Scottish Parliament was designed, and they went for the semicircular layout.

I have a vague memory of them looking into the pros and cons of quite a number of layouts during early design. Wikipedia doesn't cite anything helpful, and is quite vague on the topic.

Wikipedia doesn't have anything because you haven't added it yet.

If you take the opportunity to express your right to visit the House of Commons when it is normally sitting (i.e. during office hours, not during recess and not during PMQs) you'll see very measured, fairly productive and often entirely non-combative debate.

PMQs is entirely accepted as a show that gives all MPs and the press a broad view, almost a caricature of the events and issues of the week and the positions of the parties.

If you had moved to the UK and had no idea of the current state of politics, you could very quickly get up to speed by simply watching a single session of PMQs.

Just for clarity, to attend a PMQs you need to get a ticket from your MP, in most cases a request in a letter is sufficient.

As you posted a link to a PMQ, I'll not miss this opportunity to post a link to when Hague met Prescott over the dispatch box in 2006. For those not in the know, when the PM is away the Deputy PM takes over (Who was in this case the famously brash and ineloquent John Prescott), and as is tradition the Deputy Leader of the Opposition asks the question (who was in this case the fairly forgettable and ineffective past-leader of the opposition William Hague). This is a great example of what is known as "Punch and Judy Politics".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBeOafTBoVs

> If you take the opportunity to express your right to visit the House of Commons when it is normally sitting (i.e. during office hours, not during recess and not during PMQs) you'll see very measured, fairly productive and often entirely non-combative debate.

It's also all on TV and live streamed on the internet, every day. You don't need to take time out to go and visit it, if you didn't know that.

http://www.parliamentlive.tv http://www.bbc.co.uk/tv/bbcparliament

Interesting. Someone should check out all 50 US state legislatures.

The nearby rooms are important. In the UK's parliament, much business is done in the halls outside the chamber. In the US, each party has their own "cloakroom" next to the House and Senate chamber. Those are hangout rooms, with couches, TVs, phones, and food. Maybe it's a mistake that there are separate ones for each party.

And in the UK the bars and some of the nearby pubs - apparently parliament looked at nationalizing a nearby pub (the red lion) for use when they have to move out for the refurbishment on the HOC.

I've not been in the Red Lion while parliament's been sitting for years, but it used to have a division bell from the Commons a quarter mile away plumbed in, so MPs could leg it back round the corner when called upon to vote.

I think that you are correct in it being a mistake, and further propose that many smaller rooms, incapable of holding more than 1/10th the total legislative body, would produce more nuanced outcomes.

Interesting observation about the Brazilian parliament. I do agree about the non-function and that there's almost no discussion but only single- person speeches.

So how do motions get passed ?

On average, the legislative representative has no clue about the motion but someone along its party said to vote yes or no and that is it...

To be fair, numerically most of the new laws pass in a "alternative" voting style where you have only the leader of a block of parties voting for all the block... And sometimes they even form blocks of laws to the voted in this style... So yes, no discussion at all...

You have to understand also that we follow the Roman Judicial System, so we have a hundred times more laws that the Anglo-Saxonic countries...

Do you know a good book or article which describes the differences?

Interesting subject - but correlation does not mean causation again.

"... Parliaments ... Funkadelic ..." Wonder how long the headline writer has been waiting to write that line? Just did a quick search and it's amazing how many George Clinton / Parliament albums since 1960 (when they were then known as The Parliaments)

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