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Comment by michaelt | Hacker News Reader

I have a theory that America's bizarre process is a result of their "checks and balances".

The US system has the senate, congress, presidency, and a bunch of committees - all of which can impede the others' work, and all of which can be under the control of a different party.

And every person who can block your bill is someone who can extract a concession. You want your bill to pass, and for a mere extra 0.3% pork you'll have my enthusiastic support....

With the result they get thousand-page bills, and a country dotted with more dams and bridges than they can afford to maintain.

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While you’re not wrong about what is typically referred to as negotiation. I won’t speak about countries I know nothing about, but favors always get called back. So maybe it’s not written in bills, but it exists.

As for checks and balances. Typically that refers to the Executive branch (Presidency and agencies), Legislative (House and Senate which have committees), and Judicial.

I’m not sure how this would be any different under a parliamentary system where you still have to work with various groups to form a coalition with enough votes?

In the US system you can have split control - one party has the house and the other the senate (or the presidency - you need a trifecta). If you don’t have all three then basically nothing gets done.

This can’t happen in a parliamentary system. There’s only one body, and elections are automatically called if no one can establish a majority coalition. Someone has to have a majority in parliament, and there isn’t any other body to contend with.

Parliamentary systems can almost always conduct business is hyperpolarized conditions; the US system almost never can.

This is just not true. In fact, this very article and thread talk about how various laws are added to a bill to garner support from people on various sides.

In fact you can actually see that the rate of legislation has been steadily increasing over the years.

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics

I won't make a statement about parliamentary systems, but believe it or not, the US system doesn't grind to a halt when the President's party is not in power, because the President doesn't just magically veto everything like a child might.

Your link says that the number of new laws was regularly in the 600s or 700s in the 70s and 80s; in the last decade it’s been down in the 300s (it crept above 400 once, for the 115th Congress, which was a Republican Congress under a Republican president).

Sure, the total amount of legislation in Congress has gone up (since the 80s - the 70s we’re far more prolific), but the bills don’t make it through. Bills that die in committee or get voted down don’t matter.

The president doesn’t need to veto things outright - leaders in Congress get the message and don’t bother passing bills if they can’t get enough support to override the veto.

For comparison, although the UK sometimes produces a two-party coalition government (including twice very recently) it's more common for there to be a single party with a parliamentary majority.

In which case essentially the only substantial "check" on the prime minister's power is the next election. They don't need to buy the support of anyone from another party - and they can count on the support of their own party.

Of course, UK governments will still spend lots of cash in marginal constituencies in hopes of buying the locals' votes. And there's still corruption, like ministers handing out lucrative PPE contracts to their personal friends; handing out honours in exchange for donations to their party; and retiring to highly paid do-nothing jobs in industries they previously regulated.

Yeah, a big bill is just bundling all the favors into the same legislation.

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