alt Hacker News> It's not enshrined in some document they got together and wrote down like the US constitution
It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling like the American government. Too much depends on gentlemen agreements and people trusting other people to do the right thing. It works in a stable environment, but shatters the moment someone with no shame and no scruples shows up.
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> It’s also very brittle and one charismatic populist away from unraveling
All sufficiently large governments (really all organizations of any kind) are necessarily like this, from the most successful attempts at open societies to the most autocratic. They all require constant vigilance both to perform their intended function and to preserve themselves into the future.
There's really no way around the possibility that whatever you've written down in your constitution will be ignored in the heat of the moment, or become degraded over time.
While no democratic system is completely protected from tyrants, at least the UK (and the Commonwealth nations who inherited their principles) uses the living tree doctrine in its courts, which means that the written text is not sacrosanct and the intention and usage is to be considered. That and unwritten tradition has force of law and can be challenged in court. Look at Boris Johnson's reversal of his prorogation as an example.
Constitution and laws are just pieces of paper. They only matter if the population acts as if they matter. Liberia has the same Constitution as the US.
But they're cycled through much more rapidly, and seem generally more vulnerable than the dictators in the U.S or otherwise. A small concession to be sure.
It seems like a fundamental failure of government that in many cases, there are no consequences for deliberately or accidentally screwing your people. You either get murdered eventually or the country is just left to fix itself later, which disproportionately affects people with little resources.
Strong disagree. It's uncontested that supreme authority lies with parliament, not with the leader of the day. PM can't do shit if parliament doesn't want him to, because they can always simply change the rules on him.
Being able to vote in a strong leader to fix things directly is a feature. Democracy is not always the answer and when it is it can be too slow when time matters.
Britain's problems are due to uncharismatic Blairite socialist.
Most western democracies have exactly the same fault, maybe having unscrupulous, shameless legislators are the end state of the current models of democracy being practiced.