Thinking About the Drafting for a Republic...
The Four Precedents - Introduction
This file serves as an introduction to a group of files that show how the Constitutions of four European republics - Austria, Iceland, Ireland and Portugal - deal with the following topics relating to the powers of the President:
1. Election and term of office
2. Presidents' powers, Ministers' powers and Ministerial Responsibility
3. Control of government spending by the legislature
4. Term of legislature and President's power to dissolve it
5. Council of State, if any
6. Temporary replacement of President in the case of illness, incapacity, absence, etc
7. Dismissal of President or other disciplinary measures
Collectively, they serve as an appendix to the Thinking About the Drafting page.
Why These Seven Topics?
Apart from the precedents as to the method of election of a President (pretty obviously something we have to think about), the other six topics have been chosen because they are relevant to the issue of the relative powers of a President and a Prime Minister in a republic. Opponents of direct election of a President in Australia allege that a President elected by the people will have so much prestige and legitimacy that s/he may not be restrained by our constitutional conventions, and may try to intervene in decisions that should be left to the Prime Minister and government. As I explain on the Antihysteria page, this is not likely to happen even if we make minimal changes in the drafting of the Constitution, but in any case we should draft the Constitution so as to spell out clearly who has what power. So I have extracted the relevant provisions from the Constitutions of these four republics where the President is intended not to be the head of the executive government, but simply to be a neutral, referee-like figure who appoints a government from people who are supported by the elected representatives in the legislature - and where that intention seems to have been successfully carried into effect - to show that direct election does not necessarily create a power-hungry President whose will overrides everyone else's.
The "precedents" are offered not as templates to be copied, but to show that other nations have managed to combine popular election of a President with responsible government in a way that works - and to suggest that we should be able to do it too.
I have tried to find every article of each Constitution that is relevant to my seven headings, but of course I can't guarantee that I haven't missed relevant bits.
Why These Four Republics?
The four republics have been chosen because they all have a President elected by the people combined with a government that depends on the support of the legislature (what the English call "cabinet government" and what we in the former English colonies tend to call "responsible government"), and have operated stably under their Constitutions for periods of between 25 and 75 years. Singapore is another republic on much the same model, but it is accused by some of not being truly democratic, so I have not included references to its consitution.
Many of the newer republics in the world - South Africa, East Timor and many of the former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe - follow much the same model, and if I find interesting innovations in their constitutions I amy add them to later versions of this site.
Sources:
I have used the best English translations of the four Constitutions that I could find on the Web, as follows:
Austria: An old (1983) English translation of the Constitution of Austria on the International Constitutional Law site. If anyone can find a more recent English translation please let me know!
Iceland: the Government's own web copy
Ireland: The Taoiseach's site - but I may have included some articles copied from John Walsh's site at Trinity College.
Portugal: The Parliament's site
Back to Thinking About the Drafting,
or to the Republic Debate index page
Written by John Pyke, with a little help from DiDa!. Posted 24th December 2003.