An unelected person is allowed to be PM?

steelcityblues

That is what Italian PM in waiting, Mario Monti, is according to his biography. He has recently been working as an advisor to Goldman Sachs and Coca Cola, yet has had no proper endorsement from the voting public.

This is no different to someone like Peter Sutherland or Dermot Gleeson taking over from Enda Kenny in the morning, over here. It sounds like something Mussolini would be proud of.

Anyone care to defend a measure that sounds deeply undemocratic?

HugoBradyBrown

steelcityblues wrote: »

That is what Italian PM in waiting, Mario Monti, is according to his biography. He has recently been working as an advisor to Goldman Sachs and Coca Cola, yet has had no proper endorsement from the voting public.

This is no different to someone like Peter Sutherland or Dermot Gleeson taking over from Enda Kenny in the morning, over here. It sounds like something Mussolini would be proud of.

Anyone care to defend a measure that sounds deeply undemocratic?

Historically it is not at all unusual, in Italy or in other countries. (Even in the Mother of Parliaments in recent times, Lord Home was appointed Prime Minister, despite not having been elected to the House of Commons. He then disclaimed his peerage and was for a time a member of neither house. He was subsequently elected to parliament at a bye-election. So, even in the best regulated parliamentary houses ...)

Monti will have to command the confidence of the Chamber to remain President of the Council. He is already a validly chosen member of the parliament, as a Senator-for-Life, in accordance with the constitutional arrangements, and with the practice of the Second Republic. And Monti may prove to be more a dyed-in-the-wool democrat that Berlusconi ever was in his heart.

steelcityblues

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Historically it is not at all unusual, in Italy or in other countries. (Even in the Mother of Parliaments in recent times, Lord Home was appointed Prime Minister, despite not having been elected to the House of Commons. He then disclaimed his peerage and was for a time a member of neither house. He was subsequently elected to parliament at a bye-election. So, even in the best regulated parliamentary houses ...)

Monti will have to command the confidence of the Chamber to remain President of the Council. He is already a validly chosen member of the parliament, as a Senator-for-Life, in accordance with the constitutional arrangements, and with the practice of the Second Republic. And Monti may prove to be more a dyed-in-the-wool democrat that Berlusconi ever was in his heart.

The Senator for Life is someone appointed on the whim of the President. The person does not necessarily have the approval of the general population, and this does not make it a great barometer of democratic sentiment.
The fact that Monti was only given this title the other day, raises further eyebrows.

As for a dyed-in-the-wool democrat, he will have to accept legitimate questions about what his role is, given the organisations he has worked for up until now.

HugoBradyBrown

steelcityblues wrote: »

The Senator for Life is someone appointed on the whim of the President. The person does not necessarily have the approval of the general population, and this does not make it a great barometer of democratic sentiment.
The fact that Monti was only given this title the other day, raises further eyebrows.

As for a dyed-in-the-wool democrat, he will have to accept legitimate questions about what his role is, given the organisations he has worked for up until now.

Places like the Commission, I suppose? Where he repeatedly took the FF-PD government to task in public and, even more so in private, for the undemocratic madness they were fomenting in the country, as they engineered its destruction through their cronies? Oh, that Mario Monti!

steelcityblues

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Places like the Commission, I suppose? Where he repeatedly took the FF-PD government to task in public and, even more so in private, for the undemocratic madness they were fomenting in the country, as they engineered its destruction through their cronies? Oh, that Mario Monti!

The FF-PD government was at least sworn in by the voting population, who gave them the mandate to be treacherous pieces of work in office.

Berlusconi might have been a boor, but a boor with widespread support.

But the people you defend here, 'know' better than the majority, right?

HugoBradyBrown

steelcityblues wrote: »

The FF-PD government was at least sworn in by the voting population, who gave them the mandate to be treacherous pieces of work in office.

Berlusconi might have been a boor, but a boor with widespread support.

But the people you defend here, 'know' better than the majority, right?

I think, steelcityblues, you have a personal preference for presidential rule, based on some popular personal mandate. My preference is for parliamentary democracy. Monti, if he gets a majority in the Chamber, will be as much a legitimate Prime Minister as any other who commanded a parliamentary majority. That has always been the only requirement in the Italian system since 1946, in both the 1st and the 2nd republics.

steelcityblues

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I think, steelcityblues, you have a personal preference for presidential rule, based on some popular personal mandate. My preference is for parliamentary democracy. Monti, if he gets a majority in the Chamber, will be as much a legitimate Prime Minister as any other who commanded a parliamentary majority. That has always been the only requirement in the Italian system since 1946, in both the 1st and the 2nd republics.

Again, if Monti put his money were his mouth is - and allowed the people to decide and won - I would recognise his right to serve Italy.

HugoBradyBrown

steelcityblues wrote: »

Again, if Monti put his money were his mouth is - and allowed the people to decide and won - I would recognise his right to serve Italy.

Sadly, after the Italians' self-indulgent experiment with an elderly man who consorted with girls a quarter his age, there is no time for such methods of identifying a candidate likely to command a majority in the Chamber. It is their fault that they elected such corrupt political parties, as it has been ours; electoral democracy is now being shown to those who treat it lightly to be a serious matter. Possibly to their surprise. And ours.

beeftotheheels

The thing which I am finding amusing is that this notion of "democracy" which is being "trampled on" and which should be "sacrosanct" is really only a baby in the grand scheme of things.

We've had fewer than 100 years of trying to run ourselves (and haven't we done a really great job), many of our peers something similar. Even if you look at the big democracies like the UK they didn't have universal suffrage and the political elite still come from a certain aspect of society (really how different is that to a technocratic government?).

So I think at the moment I can't express outrage because "democracy" as we know it is pretty much still in the lab in terms of its longer term viability, it is an experiment which seemed to display remarkable short term benefits yet is now causing significant longer term problems.

Perhaps in another hundred years historians will look back on this period and puzzle as to how we ever thought that allowing the man on the street to vote for a celebrity who promised him the world was a good idea.?.

amacca

beeftotheheels wrote: »

The thing which I am finding amusing is that this notion of "democracy" which is being "trampled on" and which should be "sacrosanct" is really only a baby in the grand scheme of things.

We've had fewer than 100 years of trying to run ourselves (and haven't we done a really great job), many of our peers something similar. Even if you look at the big democracies like the UK they didn't have universal suffrage and the political elite still come from a certain aspect of society (really how different is that to a technocratic government?).

So I think at the moment I can't express outrage because "democracy" as we know it is pretty much still in the lab in terms of its longer term viability, it is an experiment which seemed to display remarkable short term benefits yet is now causing significant longer term problems.

Perhaps in another hundred years historians will look back on this period and puzzle as to how we ever thought that allowing the man on the street to vote for a celebrity who promised him the world was a good idea.?.

my opinion on that would be that while democracy may not be perfect...it may be better than any alternative tried in the past and likely to be tried in the future......we will always be a mass of problems and contradictions, success and failure etc......it wouldn't be interesting if we were not

although.....perhaps a machine/computer (a real technocrat) could make the optimum decisions for us humans as a species:D......that is before we become superfluous to its survival

HugoBradyBrown

amacca wrote: »

my opinion on that would be that while democracy may not be perfect...it may be better than any alternative tried in the past and likely to be tried in the future......we will always be a mass of problems and contradictions, success and failure etc......it wouldn't be interesting if we were not

although.....perhaps a machine/computer (a real technocrat) could make the optimum decisions for us humans as a species:D......that is before we become superfluous to its survival

I myself believe that there is a lot of wisdom in Edmund Burke's view of the role of the elected member. If we returned to that theory of politics, we might again repose our full trust in our parliaments. I would particularly be wary of elective monarchies, on the line of the US, though.

steelcityblues

beeftotheheels wrote: »

The thing which I am finding amusing is that this notion of "democracy" which is being "trampled on" and which should be "sacrosanct" is really only a baby in the grand scheme of things.

We've had fewer than 100 years of trying to run ourselves (and haven't we done a really great job), many of our peers something similar. Even if you look at the big democracies like the UK they didn't have universal suffrage and the political elite still come from a certain aspect of society (really how different is that to a technocratic government?).

So I think at the moment I can't express outrage because "democracy" as we know it is pretty much still in the lab in terms of its longer term viability, it is an experiment which seemed to display remarkable short term benefits yet is now causing significant longer term problems.

Perhaps in another hundred years historians will look back on this period and puzzle as to how we ever thought that allowing the man on the street to vote for a celebrity who promised him the world was a good idea.?.

Given you see democracy as lacking any 'viability' today, we might aswell do away with nationalities, flags, parliaments.

I guess all of those for sincere reasons who fought against Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, to strive for a more democratic society, were fools for not thinking that ordinary citizens being free and allowed to have a say in their nation's affairs was a terrible idea.

The more zealous pro EU people who expect some from of utopia to be created with their project, fail to realise that human beings will make errors at times. More fool to them.

beeftotheheels

amacca wrote: »

my opinion on that would be that while democracy may not be perfect...it may be better than any alternative tried in the past

Is it though (and we certainly can't speak for the future)? Monarchies were stable for centuries, the Brehon system in Ireland and related tribal systems elsewhere ditto.

The French revolution opened a door (only a little bit) and then a coach and four got driven through it. But not in the same way universally.

In Ireland any old Joe soap can be elected "Taoiseach" (or not even elected to that role since he may take over the party leadership midstream) but we can't really pretend in the face of the evidence that we haven't retained at least an element of the old Brehon laws that the successor, while elected, should come from the same blood line (Dáil dynasties anyone?).

At the same time other democracies favored the graduates from certain schools (UK and France being obvious examples), which places them more in the technocratic leadership pool. Their leaders are people trained to be leaders, not people trained to be primary school teachers.

The difference between the understanding of democracy across the Western world is just staggering while the written rules applying to most are not dissimilar.

At the moment we generally tend to interpret democracy as meaning that, at a minimum, the people get a say in who leads them. But that was also true of tribal cultures, just you only got one say and then were stuck with the resulting leader. The flip side is that short of absolutely sociopathic leaders with absolute control over their armed forces, even dictators or monarchs needed to please the masses enough to avoid a revolution.

So which is better really, you need to please us so we'll put you in power, or you need to not p!$$ us off enough that we'll take that power away. I'm not really sure that they're all that dissimilar given what happened to FF in the last general elections.

beeftotheheels

steelcityblues wrote: »

Given you see democracy as lacking any 'viability' today, we might aswell do away with nationalities, flags, parliaments.

I guess all of those for sincere reasons who fought against Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, to strive for a more democratic society, were fools for not thinking that ordinary citizens being free and allowed to have a say in their nation's affairs was a terrible idea.

The more zealous pro EU people who expect some from of utopia to be created with their project, fail to realise that human beings will make errors at times. More fool to them.

What?

The EU is an experiment. Nothing more and nothing less. But for the last 50 years or so it has delivered European stability and peace. Which is a good thing. So I'm not necessarily proposing giving up on it just yet. Just as I have not proposed giving up on democracy just yet.

What I was suggesting is that we stop thinking of things like EU membership/ our low corporation tax rate/ or our current understanding of democracy as being deities which are incapable of being challenged. If any challenge is defeated then the belief is stronger than it was before, if the challenge is upheld then the thing being challenged should never have been afforded that status to begin with.

Given the current mess there is more than enough blame to go around, but some of that blame has to fall at the feet of nationalistic, short sighted, electorates.

Perhaps there is a better way, but we just haven't considered it yet?

amacca

beeftotheheels wrote: »

Is it though (and we certainly can't speak for the future)? Monarchies were stable for centuries, the Brehon system in Ireland and related tribal systems elsewhere ditto.

Monarchies may have been stable but many people suffered in much worse ways than they do now because of them imo

having said that.....in many ways I think we still have a version of the Brehon system here in Ireland

beeftotheheels

amacca wrote: »

Monarchies may have been stable but many people suffered in much worse ways than they do now because of them imo

Some, not all. From an Irish perspective we look at someone like Lizzie #1 and it was horrible. From a British perspective not so much, she made them rich by sponsoring people to go around the world capturing bits of it and then sending the wealth back to England. So her core electorate probably liked her policies (even though they were horrible for us).

How different is that to where we are now? Everyone looking out for their own short term interests, cash being king, might being right?

Plus ca change...

To quote another short Frenchman of Mediterranean origins

"Du sublime au ridicule, il n'y a qu'un pas!"

View

steelcityblues wrote: »

That is what Italian PM in waiting, Mario Monti, is according to his biography. He has recently been working as an advisor to Goldman Sachs and Coca Cola, yet has had no proper endorsement from the voting public.

This is no different to someone like Peter Sutherland or Dermot Gleeson taking over from Enda Kenny in the morning, over here. It sounds like something Mussolini would be proud of.

Actually it is fundamentally different as our constitution requires the Taoiseach (and the Tanaiste and the Minister of Finance) to be members of the Dail. Obviously the Italian Constitution - at the very least - does not contain any such prohibition and it may well, like the constitutions of some other member states in the EU, have an explicit provision allowing a person who is not a member of Parliament to be nominated to be Prime Minister.

Secondly, a Prime Minister and Ministers are members of the Government (i.e. the Executive) which has a different role to that of the Parliament - hence there is no obvious reason why a member of a Government must be a member of Parliament since the two bodies have different roles.

Indeed, we here at home have provisions in our constitution which allow for this as we could in theory have just shy of 30% of our government Ministers who were "unelected" to the Oireachtas.

Hence it is unreasonable to criticise others for making use of provisions in their constitutions which are similar to those of our own. Moreover it a bit pointless since I doubt you'd find many Italians who'd regard a standard provision of their constitution as "undemocratic".

amacca

beeftotheheels wrote: »

How different is that to where we are now? Everyone looking out for their own short term interests, cash being king, might being right?

well to me at least one difference from within the system would be you are not automatically a leader / unchallengeable (at least in the short to medium term) simply because of what family you were born into.....gives at least the illusion of choice/freedom to many more people + makes you think you can participate in said system

a second I would propose is that it is much more likely that a dissenting voice or voices will at least get some airtime in a democracy (even though they may have little influence on the eventual outcome) without running the risk of losing their voices by having their tongues removed or perhaps worse

a third may be the fact there are at least some rules of engagement in a democracy that elected officials/politicians have to at least work harder in order to bend the rules / manipulate the playing field to their own advantage not so for a proper monarch, as Louis XIV would have said "It is legal because I wish it"

fourthly and again just an opinion but it seems to me that with a monarchy (like a dictatorship) ... power rests with a smaller number of individuals usually related to each other ?(family) or very closely knit which of gives them carte blanche to do all manner of vile things to those that dont agree with them but more importantly makes them much more likely to do it.....at least in most democracies that I'm aware of at least power is somewhat more distributed which may make the decision making process slow or unwieldy in a time of crisis granted but at least has the desirable side effects to my mind of lesser numbers of people starving, being persecuted, slaughtered within the democracy (although not necessarily outside of it)....also it seems to me the little cartels/cliques of those with the power seem to die out quicker and are more fractious in nature than the ruling cliques/families in a monarchy/dictatorship arrangement..........................at least there is the option of regular changes in a democracy to break up a groups hold on the power

forgive me if the above could be worded more succinctly/elegantly..........tired...so tired.

Dominique de Villepin became PM of France despite never having stood for election.

He was a career diplomat and was appointed Foreign Minister, Interior Minister and then PM.

I guess part of it is the slightly different nature of French politics where the President is both head of state and head of government.

Villepin was a favourite of Chirac and his political career ended with his mentor.

He did try to get a nomination to run for president but his party picked Sarkozy - I don't think they wanted to back someone who has never had to shake hands etc.

The Corinthian

steelcityblues wrote: »

Anyone care to defend a measure that sounds deeply undemocratic?

An unelected technocrat is probably considered more trustworthy than a member of the political class by most Italians.

It is actually very difficult to really describe the cynicism sense of irrelevance, that most Italians have towards those who govern them, to non-Italians:

"Governare gli italiani non è difficile, ma inutile." ("To govern Italians is not difficult, but is pointless") - Benito Mussolini

easychair

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

I myself believe that there is a lot of wisdom in Edmund Burke's view of the role of the elected member. If we returned to that theory of politics, we might again repose our full trust in our parliaments. I would particularly be wary of elective monarchies, on the line of the US, though.

Indeed, it seems obvious to even the least curious student of modern politics that the system of whipping members through the lobbies allows prime ministers to do pretty much as they like.

It would be a more robust system where he had to convince and persuade his fellow parliamentarians, and the system of whipping is at the heart of all that is rotten with our form of democracy.

ciaranmac

The Corinthian wrote: »

An unelected technocrat is probably considered more trustworthy than a member of the political class by most Italians.

Just like the Irish they kept complaining about their politicians for years while they also kept re-electing them.

ciaranmac

amacca wrote: »

my opinion on that would be that while democracy may not be perfect...it may be better than any alternative tried in the past and likely to be tried in the future......we will always be a mass of problems and contradictions, success and failure etc......it wouldn't be interesting if we were not

although.....perhaps a machine/computer (a real technocrat) could make the optimum decisions for us humans as a species:D......that is before we become superfluous to its survival

Computers only work as well as they are programmed to do. There's no reason to believe a politician can be influenced more easily than a software developer, the stakes just haven't been that high yet.

amacca

ciaranmac wrote: »

Computers only work as well as they are programmed to do. There's no reason to believe a politician can be influenced more easily than a software developer, the stakes just haven't been that high yet.

and a self aware computer/machine?....but of course I digress, this is the EU/politics forum as opposed to the sci-fi one.

thebman

ciaranmac wrote: »

Computers only work as well as they are programmed to do. There's no reason to believe a politician can be influenced more easily than a software developer, the stakes just haven't been that high yet.

Yes there is, the code is a paper trail in itself.

The problem with the political system is the wink, nod, you know what I mean but I can't say it kind of corruption.

Good luck getting all the rules of the world into a software system though.

RandomName2

HugoBradyBrown wrote: »

Sadly, after the Italians' self-indulgent experiment with an elderly man who consorted with girls a quarter his age, there is no time for such methods of identifying a candidate likely to command a majority in the Chamber. It is their fault that they elected such corrupt political parties, as it has been ours; electoral democracy is now being shown to those who treat it lightly to be a serious matter. Possibly to their surprise. And ours.

Berlusconi's sexual predilections are entirely irrelevant concerning his capacity to govern (except in the manner that scandal impinged upon his power base).

To be brutal, Berlusconi's popular mandate had been dented, whilst he himself could never be considered the champion of democracy. However, his being ousted was that of power politics within the Italian parliamentary system which can easily be seen as a blow to democracy by anyone who gave two hoots about Italian democracy (which I, for one, don't).

More to the point from our point of view is the first fall of one of the EPP's members' prime ministers in circumstances surrounding the fallout from the European debt crisis. With in-fighting developing between the the cartel formed by the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire and Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, one must wonder how widespread such unrest and destabalisation will ultimately become.

The Corinthian

RandomName2 wrote: »

Berlusconi's sexual predilections are entirely irrelevant concerning his capacity to govern (except in the manner that scandal impinged upon his power base).

Sexual scandals are largely an Anglo-Saxon concern. Realistically that one is having an affair does not make any difference to their competence as, say, a finance minister, however it goes against the sexual taboos of English-speaking countries. Countries such as France or Italy generally don't care.

To be brutal, Berlusconi's popular mandate had been dented, whilst he himself could never be considered the champion of democracy. However, his being ousted was that of power politics within the Italian parliamentary system which can easily be seen as a blow to democracy by anyone who gave two hoots about Italian democracy (which I, for one, don't).

As I said earlier, most Italians consider the State as largely irrelevant - at the very least, there is little feeling of collective responsibility or enfranchisement.

Much of the popularity that Berlusconi enjoyed came from the perception that he was an outsider of the political caste. I use the word caste, because it is an entrenched elite that are seen as corrupt, self-serving and ineffectual; regardless of political affiliation or declared ideology.

As a result, being governed by a technocrat is actually popular by comparison.

More to the point from our point of view is the first fall of one of the EPP's members' prime ministers in circumstances surrounding the fallout from the European debt crisis. With in-fighting developing between the the cartel formed by the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire and Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands, one must wonder how widespread such unrest and destabalisation will ultimately become.

Such is the lack of faith that many European democracies have in their politicians, I suspect you will see little resistance against future technocratic governments in many EU states.