How does a Parliament work? My impression of it is that it is chaotic and unproductive in solving country’s issues. Every single issue is brought up and before one member finishes speaking, a few others would jump in and interrupt. Why is this system used? Is the a better alternative?
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Which bits do you watch? The stuff you see on the main TV news is less than five percent of what happens. It’s mostly for show. It’s modelled on a debate society (or maybe a debate society is modelled on it?). Either way the debates in Parliament are mostly theatre.
Most of the *actual* business of Parliament is behind the scenes stuff that you don’t normally watch. That includes Select Committees, and members talking to each other in the lobby. You will, of course, get proper debates in Parliament. However those often don’t have a lot of TV coverage and are rather dull and boring. Ideas and policies *definitely* are talked through and challenged without the show outrage.
I’m talking about the UK BTW but other assemblies around the world are pretty much the same. The legislature doesn’t simply sit in a house all day and barrage the other side with memes and witty quips.
All the interruptions and shouting have nothing to do with the parliamentary system. That’s just the political tradition in whichever country you have in mind. You could have the same in the US Congress, if they decided that was how to run it.
The parliamentary system just means that the executive branch relies on support from parliament, rather than being elected directly.
In the US you vote for who the president should be (even if it’s then warped and mangled by the Electoral college), and they form an administration around them. In a parliamentary system you just vote for members of parliament, and then *they* decide on who should form the government.
It has nothing to do with how they moderate their sessions and whether people interrupt each others.
What you are describing is not the parliamentary system. You are describing what can often happen when a legislative body has actual debates on the issues. In contrast, in the United States, Congressmen and Senators simply make prepared speeches and then sit down.
A parliamentary government could have the same rules of debate as the United States Congress if it wanted. What makes a parliamentary system different from the United States is that in a parliamentary system, the head of government can be removed at any time by the legislature. He or she is not independently elected. It is neither more nor less stable than the U.S. system.
It is generally more productive than the U.S. system because any political party or group of political parties that can have its leader serve as prime minister can generally legislate as it wishes. There is usually no deadlock nor divided government because the President and Congress cannot agree.
A parliament works by having its members (1) control the government and (2) take votes to create laws, including budgets.
First, MPs get to question the ministers of the government. The ministers must answers these questions by providing facts or explanations of what they want or wanted to do with their policies. If MPs lose confidence in a minister, that minister must resign. It can also be the government as a whole that needs to go, but that depends on the specifics of the constitution in each country. Losing a motion of confidence means the end of the government. Someone else might try to find a new parliamentary majority, or new elections will have to happen.
If the government proposes a new law, a budget, or a change to an existing law (usually written by their civil servants), they have to win majority support for their proposal in parliament. MPs can also bring their own legal proposals or amendments up for discussion. Usually MPs specialize in a few topics and become part of a special committee, so that they can contribute more meaningfully. In the end, the goal is to get to a law that has majority support in parliament. Before that happens, there is usually a lot of debate between MPs and the government, as well as between MPs in general. A good parliamentary debate is regulated by [the Speaker](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAM-YW-6vdU&ab_channel=OnDemandNews) of the parliament, who gets to decide who can speak and on which issue there will be a vote. Interrupters may be punished by that Speaker.
Why is this system used? Because parliament is sovereign and can therefore set its own rules. Its legitimacy comes from the voters, through direct elections. Those are also the people/constituency they have to answer to. Is there a better alternative? There are certainly alternatives, but I don’t know by what yardstick they should be measured as better.
The best way to describe a Parliamentary System is to contrast it with a Presidential System. I’ll use what I consider the archetypal Parliamentary and Presidential Systems (at the very least within the English-speaking world): the UK and the US.
In the US, the Electoral College elects an individual to the Office of President, the chief executive officer of the Federal government and head of the executive branch. At the same time, we also directly elect members to Congress, the legislature of the United States. The Office of the President is separate from, albeit not insulated from, Congress. The President’s powers stem largely from statutes empowering the executive branch to take regulatory or law enforcement actions, which the President then has some level of discretion over as prescribed by law. The President serves for 4 years unless indicted (“impeached”) by the House of Representatives and convicted of criminal conduct or abuse of power and trust by the Senate; however, conviction is a high bar that has never been met. Both the legislative and executive branches are separate, but dependent, on each other. Congress may act against the wishes of the President and vice versa. Save for removal from office via impeachment
In the UK, there is no President. Instead, there is the Monarch, who effectively does not exercise power, and the Prime Minister. Unlike the US, where the President is elected the Prime Minister is not, at least not independent of Parliament. Instead, the Monarch appoints to the position of Prime Minister someone who can command the confidence of Parliament; by convention, this is a member of Parliament, typically the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons which can garner majority support in the chamber. Whereas the President has a fixed term in office, the Prime Minister does not, instead serving only so long as they have the confidence of Parliament. If, in a “motion of no confidence”, a majority of Parliament votes against the government, then the government must either resign, presenting the possib, or a general election must be called, which gives the government a chance to win the confidence of the new Parliament.
Every government is different, with some systems having both a President and Prime Minister. However, the US and UK illustrate the general distinction between a Presidential and Parliamentary System: a Parliamentary System establishes the executive branch as dependent upon and subsidiary to the legislative branch, whereas a Presidential system creates a more independent executive. While the legislative branch may still hold some level of power over the executive branch (for example, the President require Senate approval for picking cabinet members in the executive branch and can be removed in extraordinary circumstances, as stated above), the executive generally operates on its own electoral mandate. In a Parliamentary, the Prime Minister and executive branch effectively serves at the pleasure of the Parliament.
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