Parliament and Congress: Representation and Scrutiny in the Twenty-First Century.

• Author: Pare, Jean-Rodrigue
• Position: Book review

Parliament and Congress: Representation and Scrutiny in the Twenty-First Century, William McKay and Charles W. Johnson, Oxford University Press, 2010, 577 pages.

The authors of this impressive work are, respectively, the former Clerk of the House of Commons in London who served from 1998 to 2002 and the former Parliamentarian of the House of Representatives in Washington who served from 1994 to 2004.

Their book is a comparative analysis of the evolution of the United Kingdom and United States parliamentary systems over the past 40 years, following the example of Bradshaw and Pring's 1972 book of the same name. It is not a manual of parliamentary procedure but rather a genuine mapping of the development of ideas, events and decisions that led to the current state of these systems.

The great strength of this comparative work is that the authors do not limit themselves to identifying the two systems' similarities and differences. At every opportunity, the authors make the additional scholarly effort of researching the historical origins of these points of comparison and tracing their historical development through the end of 2009. This breathtaking historical perspective allows the reader not only to become aware of these differences, but also to truly understand them.

Chapter 1, "Introduction," and Chapter 2, "Basic Constitutional Distinctions," provide a summary of the political theory behind the two systems of government. As one might expect, the fundamental principle of the Westminster system is what is called in Canada "responsible government"--the support of the House is the foundation for the executive's legitimate exercise of power and the regular testing of that support is made possible by having members of the executive sit in the House.

In contrast, the American constitutional system was designed to protect the governed through a written constitution which deprived the executive of a significant portion of its legislative powers while giving it a fixed term of office.

In England, the two Houses allowed the nobility and the commoners to keep an eye on each other to avoid either one's tyrannical alliance with the people, while a tyranny of the King was made unlikely with the creation of a separate judiciary. In the United States, the differences between the House and the Senate are not based on social class, but rather distinct roles: the Senate's greater predictability, which would reassure foreign powers when negotiating treaties and nominating ambassadors...