The Westminster system of the Executive Cabinet being embedded in Parliament grew from the need to route executive power away from the monarch while leaving the King with ceremonial authority. This is in contrast to the Washington system which separated the Executive entirely from Congress. The Westminster system, as practiced in Britain, also contains the upper house as a left over from the period when the King-Lord-Commons form of political philosophy dominated. Wentworth proposed this model for NSW when the colony was seeking self-government. Deniehy famously pilloried this illiberal model of government. Reform for the House of Lords in Britain is a common form of discussion, a new think-tank and advocacy group for a modern House of Lords has recently been formed, the Lords Reform Institute. They are proposing a sortitionist model.
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adam : Size: The various sortition proposals for the House of Lords were an inspiration for my suggestions as it happens. The Queensland Legislative Council is the only world parliament less powerful :)
The current House of Lords is larger than the House of Commons by about 100 members. It used to be much larger, with a kind of amateur idea that though the most political may be there full time, many peers would just drop in on the issues that interested them.
Seems to me the Tories could grab this issue of constitutional reform from Labour, and appointment by sortition might better suit their traditional conception of the house as an amateur venue (whilst obviously ditching the hereditary nonsense). There\'s plenty to criticise Blair and Labour with their half-hearted reform of purely appointed life peers - \"Tony\'s cronies\" seems to be the nickname. Last I checked though, the Conservatives\' policy was a 100 seat upper house inspired by the US Senate.
British Columbia is a Canadian province. In 2001 they set up a Citizen's Assembly on Electoral Reform where citizen's were chosen by sortition to put forward a recommendation for which electoral system voters should judge in referendum.
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