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Government Under a Book of Rules
A Citizens' and Politicians' Manual of the Constitutional Basis of Government in Australia, by John Pyke

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Chapter 1:
Constitutionalism - The Weak and the Strong Concepts

"Constitutional government" is generally taken to mean limited government, or government under law, in contrast to absolute government, tyranny, despotism, absolute monarchy or dictatorship. The late Darryl Lumb gave us as good a definition as any (in Australian Constitutionalism, 1983) - a constitutional system "is one where the wielders of state power or authority are subject to limitations (whether arising from a written or unwritten constitution) so that in the exercise of their authority... they are subject to principles and rules which govern the manner in which that power is exercised."

The notion of limited government under a constitution was very strongly developed - and argued over, and fought for - in England in the 17th century, and the concept has spread from there to the rest of the modern world. Yet a "constitution" and the notion of a constitutionally-limited government had, and still has, a more limited meaning in England than in the rest of the world.

The concept that became established in England is that although there are constitutional limits on the powers of the executive government, there are none on the power of the Parliament. Though the people trust that the Parliament will be nice to them (because it represents them, doesn't it?), in point of law it is sovereign, it "has the right to make or unmake any law whatever". Consitutionalism began its development in England, but after the triumph of Parliament in the Civil War, its development was, by other peoples' standards, frozen.

The other concept also originated in England, among the radically democratic elements during the Civil War, though it was first put into practice in the United States and we tend, therefore, to think of it as an American idea. That idea is that both the powers of the executive government and the legislature can be limited by rules of law, written in a special "rule book" called a constitution, and that these rules can only be changed in some special way, involving the consent of the people directly or indirectly. Though this is still a shockingly radical idea in England, it is now taken for granted in most other democracies. It is now the dominant idea in Australia (see Chapter 12), though traces of the idea of parliamentary sovereignty live on (see Chapter 14). Therefore we need to understand both ideas.

The Relevance of History

To understand these ideas, we need to understand their history - mainly English history, and a little American. The history taught in Australian schools used to be nothing but English history, which was clearly absurd. Not only did the focus on it mean that we learned nothing about our neighbours, but much European history now seems so pointless. All those wars between the British and the Spanish and the French, all the glorious victories of Drake and Marlborough and Wellington, and where did Britain and the other European powers end up? Apart from a few fly-speck colonies, Britain, Spain and France now rule over - just Britain, Spain and France respectively!

But the internal battles in England/Britain between King and Parliament - whether real civil war with blood everywhere, as in 1642-49, or just political standoffs resolved by the backdown of one party, as in 1834 - still have a point. They are part of the history of our political institutions (and since some English ideas were copied, and some of them even theorised about, in most of the democratic countries of the world, part of the history of international political concepts). So the next three chapters are about the bits of English/British history that left a permanent trace - the bits in which the institutions of modern government were developed.

Now see: The English versus Their Kings, Part 1 - The Subjection of Executive Power to the Rule of Law
Written by John Pyke, with a little help from DiDa!. Copyright reserved, but I licence any person to make a copy of this work for his or her own use, and copies for non-profit distribution to family or friends, and I licence teachers in schools or universities to make (or authorise the making of) multiple copies for non-profit distribution to their students, in each case subject to the condition that authorship is attributed to me and that this notice is fully included in the copy. First posted 5th February 2002.