Talk Elections

Sometimes I came to wonder what could be good instead of the 5th republic that I don't really like. I came to something like this:

A fully proportional National Assembly.

A Senate with the election process of the National Assembly today.

So that we have an assembly fully dedicated to parties, and the other one to territories.

Some commissions debate the laws in each assembly, some amendments are made by each assembly, and in the end laws are voted in a Congress of both.

Terms of 5 years for each assembly.

Election of Senate is hold in the middle of the 3rd year of the term of the National Assembly.

A president is elected by the Congress just after the election of the National Assembly, it has also a term of 5 years. The president appoints its ministers, it can be fired if 75% of the Congress votes it.

Well, not sure for the president not to have a direct election, but by now, it is what seems to be the most interesting to me.

Would you have some ideas about this question?

My wet dream:

A federal republic based on federalism in Spain, Canada, US or even Germany (or, also Scotland/Wales devolution). Redraw regions to make real regions: get rid of regions which are entirely artificial Parisian bureaucrat's creation (aka, get rid of Pays-de-la-Loire among others) and create new regions which mean something (a Region Savoie, a unified Bretagne, a unified Normandie, Poitou including historically Poitevin Vendee).

Each region would have a directly elected (PR or MMP, maybe the Scottish system) unicameral legislature with tax-raising powers, healthcare, education, transport, internal policing and security (like Canadian provinces or the states). Each region would have a Premier from the largest coalition or party, whatever the case may be. Region Bretagne, Alsace, Corse, Aquitaine should have powers over regional languages, as should regions where the Occitan language is important.

Abolish departments and general councils, they'd be useless redundancies. Keep them if you want as purely administrative and statistical entities, like the current arrondissements in France and the city of Marseille. Transfer their competences (departmental roads, RSA) to the regions.

Local government should be organized clearly and elections to local government should be done under a MMP system to give local neighborhoods a representative but keep a proportional (a real one, no 50% majority bonus crap) system somewhere in it. Encourage all communities to organize into agglomerations (communautes de communes). The Greater Paris agglomeration could double up as a full-scale region like Normandie, Corse, Savoie etc.

The Senate should be a chamber of regions, similar to the Mexican/American Senate. That is, equal representation between the regions. Something like 10 Senators by region, but all equal. Elect them via full PR.

The National Assembly should be based on populations and elected via the German system. Non-gerrymandered districts and the rest of the seats being via PR, either 3% or 5% threshold.

Senate and National Assembly should have equal powers. They would meet in Congress as they currently do. They would have powers over foreign affairs, national finances, some aspects of transportation, agriculture and fisheries, defense, environment, immigration, public security. The Prime Minister would be head of government.

The President should be a relatively powerless head of state. This would be a federal parliamentary republic.

Abolish regions in all but name; redraw them roughly along the lines of the old provinces. Keep departments as administrative divisions only. Grant provinces far-reaching powers. Elect regional legislatures every three years, through straight PR. Elect regional Governors every four years through IRV. Grant Governors same powers as the President.

Unicameral Parliament, elected through straight PR to term of four years. Five-year Presidential term, elected through IRV. President mostly figurehead, but with power to appoint/dismiss ministers and dissolve Parliament.

Great topic. I love institutionnal issues so much...

Give effective power to a 800-members Nationnal Assembly, elected with a nationnal proportionnal voting system, with a very low threshold ( 1% if you absolutely want it ) and preference voting to reduce parties influence. Elections occur every 3 years

The Senate would have 300 members, which 100 of them elected by commune councilors, 100 by general councilors, 100 by regional councilors. However, he would have far less power than in the current system. It's half renewed every 3 years.

The President would be elected for 5 years with the Alternative Vote system. He would have almost the same powers than during Third Republic.

The Assembly elects the President of Council every 3 years, and can depose him with a censure motion. The PoC then nominate ministers, and then is officially confirmed by the Assembly. The government can do legislative proposals, but can not restrict parliametary debates, and voting occurs when deputies decide. Deputies can also do law proposals whenever they want.

Finally, the Constitutionnal Council has 18 members, which 12 of them elected by the Assembly and 6 by the Senate. Council is renewed as 1/3 every 3 years ( 4 by Assembly and 2 by the Senate ). His members are elected with the STV. It is necessarily consulted for every law that has passed in both houses, and a law needs more than 12 favorable votes to pass.

800 members is impossibly large. I dono't think there's a legislature in the world that large.

European Parliament had 785 members sometimes ago.

Yes, but it's Europe. 27 countries, not one country.

The population of a State has very few to do with the number of members of its parliament. USA are five times more populous than France, but have only 435 representatives !

And that is because a smaller legislature functions better.

No, that is because hundred years ago 435 members were relatively representative of the US people. But then the population has dramatically increased, and House of Representative doesn't represent anything. The poor number of parliamentaries in the USA are one of its greatest failures.

Hardly. In India, the Lok Sabha has only 552 members, because larger parliaments do not work.

Yeah, and that is ridiculous for the second most populous country in the world.
More MPs means population being represented better. Until you don't have 5000 MPs, it perfectly works.

800 egomaniacs/opportunists/crooks/party hacks and secretaries are not a good idea either.

800 people like this are less dangerous than 400, and 400 are still less dangerous than 1.
More people, more democracy.

http://icon.cat/util/elections/UvuGokJDFn

My god...


And with enough democracy comes idiocracy. France has enough idiots with their own party already...

Héhé. So surprising...

Well, well, well...

Actually, what you call real regions are things from the past, they mean more or less, and anyways more and more, nothing now. Actually, I support region redrawing but according to present criteria. If we had to take decisions according to how it was in the past, the best we would obtain would be stagnation.

For example, I understand very much that from your point of view, Pays de la Loire is an awful stuff, but well, I don't know the place enough to give a clear judgment, but it seems it has some geographical and economical coherence, it is the Loire valley, it has more or less the same agriculture, more or less the same cities, some complementary industries with the harbor of Nantes/Saint-Nazaire at the end.

The history/past is important for the coherence of a territorial identity, but we're in France in 2009, so, not that much here. First, France, so a country that killed its regional identities long time ago now, we're not in Spain, or UK, or Germany, or Italy, we're in France. Second, 2009, in the world of today, in our societies, these old regional identities miss of sens to say the least, that doesn't go over "pleasant" "reassuring"  folklore, that are more or less old nicely colored flags pleasant to watch, and to hear about their history...

As for the regional languages, I find it very interesting to keep them and why not to study them, but, like we do with Latin or Greek, as what they are, some more or less dead language. The hell I'm fed up to see on France3 Midi-Pyrénées the weekly news in Occitan, and all what tries to make live Occitan again, to make youngs speak it, and so on...

Let's stop to try to make live again some things that have been killed, it's impossible. Waste of time...

Piece of sh**t! We can be happy that the conservatists of cro-magnon societies didn't win!

I know, that can be hard to cut with the past sometimes, but, you're clever, you can do it... ;D

Well, back to the topic of this thread.

All of this make that concerning the regions, personally I don't care that much of historical borders. I would also suppress the départements as the political entities they are (when the hell will we do that?? At least!), keeping just the regions, and building the regions according to the coherence of their population, industry, agriculture, cities, well geographical criteria in short, just historical ones if some are still really vibrant.

Regions would earn the powers of départements while keeping their current ones, I don't think I would give them more.

All of this said, I haven't thought that much to all the changes that the net could carry/impose to such reforms on the more or less long term...

Now Hashemite will get mad and call you a Jacobin.

Let's be optimistic, he may have a... revelation...!

Honestly, though, I agree with him. Absent of a clear reason to break with tradition and split Brittany, we should not do so. I am Bengali, and bureaucrats in New Delhi and Islamabad have tried to suppress our language in favor of Hindustani. Linguistic cleansing is not something that appeals to me.

Yes, yes. And I do agree with that. But, you seem to know enough about France's history, so you may know a bit about the history of its region and its regional languages. The question here is not to kill something, as I said it has already been killed, the question is, as I tried to explain and I said why, whether or not we try to more or less resuscitate these things. In this, I just see stagnation.

And, well, beyond that, no matter whether or not the things have been killed, I think that sometimes we have to break with the past, to create and to watch toward future, of course, that are here general principles and it has always to be made when it makes sens.

::)

I'll keep it at that. I don't have time for Jacobin rhetoric.

Haha. "Jacobin". Actually the revolution took place 200 years ago. ;D

The attitude still prevails to this day. And always did and always will.

Héhé. See it the way you want, well, I gave arguments, free to each one to deal with it.

Luckily the conservatives of cro-magnon societies didn't win! ;D

Good for you.

I'm afraid we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'm not a flipflopper and nobody will convince me to change my principles, not you, not anybody.

And that's not my goal in life, I would have at least expose the arguments of my point of view and, as I said, of course everyone is free to deal with it.

Personally, I think regionalism could be a good thing, but not federalism. We definitely are one country and "federalism" will result in increasingsing inequalities between regions, when an united country ( not an ultra-centralized ne as in the 60's, but still a strong State ) could regulate things better.
That being said, I'm strongly Anti-nationalist and pro-european. I think today's nations are too small to weigh something internationally, but the right way to get rid of Nations in more unity, not more divisions.

Personally, I explain my point of view concerning regionalism. What you're talking about Antonio is rather regionalisation, something I'm not opposed to, if it isn't aimed with regionalist purposes...

Giving a little money to people outside of Paris to build little roads and have a cute little regional park isn't regionalisation.

Oh ya, I personally wouldn't be opposed to extended powers to regions, I could even be open minded to some more or less federalism. I'm just fed the hell up by "regionalism", by regionalism I mean the matter of old identities/cultures because I find it a waste of time to try to make live something that have been more or less killed, or just to try to make something survive just in order to make it survive, a waste of time and a miss of perspectives. Don't know whether this is to be called Jacobinism or not, but I think I already explained myself on that matter...

Totally agreed.