Required supermajority in legislatures

Is it at all realistic that the legislature of a successful country could require a supermajority (e.g., three-fifths or two-thirds) in order to pass laws, rather than a simple (one-half) majority? Maybe a group of constitution-writers would want to put checks on the legislature, but without having to deal with the extra back-and-forth of having to vote twice on the same bill--once with a simple majority to pass the bill, and again with a supermajority to override an executive veto.

Amendments to the country's constitution might require an even larger supermajority--e.g., 3/5 for laws and 3/4 for constitutional amendments, or 2/3 and 4/5.

Wikipedia has the following information on the current use of legislative supermajorities in the IRL USA:
A Senate rule requires an absolute supermajority of three fifths to move to a vote through a cloture motion, which closes debate on a bill or nomination, thus ending a filibuster by a minority of members. In current practice, the mere threat of a filibuster prevents passing almost any measure that has less than three-fifths agreement in the Senate, 60 of the 100 senators if every seat is filled.
One common provision of so-called "taxpayer bill of rights" laws (either in state statutes or state constitutions) is a requirement of a supermajority vote in the state legislature to increases taxes. The National Conference of State Legislatures reported in 2010 that fifteen states required a supermajority vote (either a three-fifths, two-thirds or three-fourths majority vote in both chambers) to pass some or all tax increases. Supermajority requirements for tax increases have been criticized as "deeply flawed" by a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report, since such requirements make it difficult to close tax loopholes, empower a minority of legislators, make it difficult to fund transportation infrastructure, and may encourage pork-barrel spending as a trade-off to ensure passage of a tax increase.
The National Conference of State Legislatures says this:
Supermajorities are intended to prevent a "tyranny of the majority," and also encourage deliberation and compromise as proponents attempt to gather enough votes to reach a supermajority. Supermajorities in the legislature often are required for constitutional amendments because of the belief that constitutions should not be amended without careful deliberation. Many states also require a supermajority vote of the legislature to increase taxes.

In most states, however, the initiative constitutional amendment process is not subject to the same supermajority vote requirement as the legislature. Some experts question why supermajorities are required of the legislature but not of the people. They point out that the initiative process lacks checks found in the legislature that promote compromise and consensus and suggest that a supermajority vote requirement might help to prevent the passage of initiatives that are supported only by a narrow majority.
usgovinfo.about.com cites The Federalist:
In general, the Founding Fathers favored requiring a simple majority vote in legislative decision making. Most of them, for example, objected to the Articles of Confederation's requirement for a supermajority vote in deciding such questions as coining money, appropriating funds, and determining the size of the army and navy.

However, the framers of the Constitution also recognized the need for supermajority votes in some cases. In Federalist No. 58, James Madison noted that supermajority votes could serve as a "shield to some particular interests, and another obstacle generally to hasty and partial measures." Hamilton, too, in Federalist No. 73 highlighted the benefits of requiring a supermajority of each chamber to override a presidential veto. "It establishes a salutary check upon the legislative body," he wrote, "calculated to guard the community against the effects of faction, precipitancy, or of any impulse unfriendly to the public good, which may happen to influence a majority of that body."
Does anyone have any opinions on this topic?
 

Skallagrim

Banned
It depends, in a way, on your definition of a successful country. In a general sense, this sort of thing tends to be a reaction to a previous situation that proved problematic... so it can certainly be imagined as a realistic possibility. Not easily for the early USA, however. Exactly as you point out, the Constitution was a reaction to the Articles, which had turned out to be unsatisfactory. In this case, however, the reaction went the other way. Legislation and actual government had turned out to be too difficult under the Articles, so the goal was to facilitate a more effective central government.

If you want this sort of thing, you want a situation where government gets out of hand, and laws are easily passed that turn out to be repressive, tyrannical and generally undesirable. After such a system falls, a situation can arise where the framers of the new legal order - cautious of abuses of power such as the ones just overcome - want to put restrictions on government. Those are the kind of situations that lead to drastic constitutional measures. Think, for instance, of Germany's "eternity clause", adopted after World War II - which stipulates that the articles of the German constitution pertaining to civil rights etc. can never, ever be scrapped or tampered with.

Special measures such as requiring supermajorities for all acts of legislation can also fit into that trend. Going with that solution, however, is rather rare. Why? Because mot people are not, generally "libertarians" (whether that term is used in that time or place or not). Most people, regardless of whether one agrees with that position, want government to be able to act. The kind of proposal demanding considerable supermajorities for all legislative acts appeals only to people who want government to be purposely kept powerless. Because the result will be that most proposals don't pass. So in effect, you only get this in situations where the national sentiment is pretty "libertarian" and anti-government as a norm, or where some serious abuses have soured the people on any kind of trust in government for the time being.

All in all, the resulting country - provided that this system is not later repealed - will almost certainly be one with a rather small government, which can only pass laws that the vast majority agrees upon. If such a system is arrived at in an earlier time, when governments were rather modest, expect it to be difficult to get the range of government tasks to expand. Critics of such expansion will always be too numerous to make passing the relevant laws easy.

Projecting this onto the US, for a moment (just to illustrate, bevause as I said, the USA would be unlikely to turn to this): you'd end up with a USA that remained more of a "union of states", with a very small federal government that concerns itself only with interstate crime, the military and foreign affairs; where constitutional amendments are extremely rare; where things like federal taxes do not exist, beyond tarriffs; where matters like education, health care, retirement schemes, environment and all such latter-day tasks of government are handled exclusively on the state level... if they become government tasks at all.

(To be fair: it is very likely that such things would simply be done on a state level, which is hardly impossible: member states of the EU all handle most of it for themselves, and it's not like they're impoverished hellscapes or anything! One can easily imagine US states all setting up such things for themselves. but there would be much more diversity in approach... and quality. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But on a federal level, the government would remain a minimal night-watchman state.)

As I said: US states are plenty big by themselves. So even if a major country like the USA would somehow opt for these restrictions, and even if they were permanent, I suspect it would mostly lead to more decentralisation, and things being handled on a local level instead. Looking again at Europe, I can claim with some confidence that we would indeed be able to call that "a succesful country". (Personally, being a fan of decentralisation and local diversity in approaches to policy, I think it would be better than OTL. But that's very subjective.)

So yes... this scenario is possible, and given the right POD, far from unrealistic. But it's not extremely likely, since only very exact scenario's provide the right POD for this.

One more thing: if a hypothetical country forces such restruction to be applied on all administrative levels (including local government etc.), the inevitable outcome would be that this country's government is put in a cage. It cannot expand. The country will, as far as government tasks are concerned, remain at a 19th century level. This would certainly appeal to "libertarian" minds. I will simply refrain from judgement (this not being Chat), but whether one calls that a "succesful country" depends very much on one's political and economical preferences and beliefs.
 
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