Parliamentary systems without the motion of confidence

Thande

Donor
Two things bring this to mind - the current Canadian dispute and the fact that I'm having problems with this in LTTW.

OTL, the first motion of confidence came about against Lord North in extraordinary circumstances (the controversial war in America). What happens if (as in LTTW) the American war never happens? Without this precedent, by what constitutional means might a government be brought down and the PM forced to resign?
 

MrP

Banned
Well, barring another event to inspire an ATL vote of confidence, one could ask the monarch or regent to dissolve parliament, I suppose.
 
Could Parliament reject the budget? It's a de facto motion of no confidence, and if so the King could hold that the Prime Minister is unable to serve effectively as chief minister (lacking ability to secure funds). Alternately, you could have legislative obstruction so severe that the monarch could judge Parliament unworkable, and dissolve the house.
 
OTL, the first motion of confidence came about against Lord North in extraordinary circumstances

The first vote of no confidence happened then, yes, but the simple fact that a PM had a to have the confidence of a majority of the Commons was already a well-established rule of forty years by that point. The simple fact was, if you didn't have the confidence of the Commons, then you couldn't get business through. And if you couldn't get business through, then there was no point in you being the King's representative in Parliament.
 

Thande

Donor
The first vote of no confidence happened then, yes, but the simple fact that a PM had a to have the confidence of a majority of the Commons was already a well-established rule of forty years by that point. The simple fact was, if you didn't have the confidence of the Commons, then you couldn't get business through. And if you couldn't get business through, then there was no point in you being the King's representative in Parliament.

But what might be the point at which a government resigns, if there is no specific vote which demonstrates that you don't have confidence?

I mean, what's to stop the government doing what Brown did a while back and simply declare that a bill that looks likely to fail is not considered a vote of confidence? Unless the government is so beleaguered that anything they try to ram through gets voted down...
 
But what might be the point at which a government resigns, if there is no specific vote which demonstrates that you don't have confidence?

You misunderstand - I was highlighting the fact that the basic concepts regarding a vote of no confidence were already in place by the time of Lord North; if the specific notion of a vote of no confidence hadn't sprung up then, it would have done later. As the only initial requirements for staying PM was that you had to have the confidence of the Commons and the King, (still the case with the Commons) I think it's inconcievable that no formal mechanism for testing that in the Commons would ever have sprung up.

In any case, Walpole had already set the precedent here by just resigning when he no longer had the confidence of the House; he declared a specific measure to be a confidence measure, and lost. If there had been no invention of the formal vote of no confidence, then people (either the government or the opposition) would have just started declaring similar items as confidence measures. If a government started losing such measures regularly, then the pressure to go would be too persuasive.

And of course, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, there's also the simple expedient of the King sacking a PM/government which was useless.
 
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You get a lot of devolved decision-making at local level, somewhat like the early modern Polish state when the Sejm was deadlocked. Central government's authority wanes, and that of those who can exercise authority in its stead rises

If the elections occur at set times, eg five years apart, then every time there is one it will be fiercely fought with street battles, private armies etc as the rival parties vie to get a majority which will allow them to promote their private agendas into the national one

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
I think basically you have three options

1) -- Someone invents the motion of no-confidence. I agree with other posters that this is most likely.

2) -- I can't think of any examples pre-POD, so I'll call this "The Whitlam" -- the government fails to pass an operating budget, and the monarch dissolves said government.

3) -- It might be possible for the government to evolve into the U.S. system, whence the government mutters on until the next scheduled election no matter how lame-duck it is. This would probably require a strong executive capable of carrying out basic government functions in the absence of much parliamentary support -- again, like the U.S.
 
Could Parliament reject the budget? It's a de facto motion of no confidence, and if so the King could hold that the Prime Minister is unable to serve effectively as chief minister (lacking ability to secure funds). Alternately, you could have legislative obstruction so severe that the monarch could judge Parliament unworkable, and dissolve the house.

This occurred frequently in the nineteenth century - Gladstone's infamous savaging of Disraeli's budget being a prime example. I think the motion of confidence existed anyway, the condition of no confidence first emerged after the Revolutionary War but the condition of confidence already existed as an ingrained part of the war Parliament worked, therefore the possibility for the condition of no confidence existed within the set-up.
 
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