WI - The USA as a parliamentary republic

The electoral fun presently going on over in the UK has made me wonder: what if the United States had been a parliamentary republic all of these years instead of adopting the presidential system? That is, having “a system of government in which the ministers of the executive branch are drawn from the legislature and are accountable to that body, such that the executive and legislative branches are intertwined,” to quote yon Wikipedia. The President would merely be the head of state, usually a rather ceremonial position, while the Prime Minister, Premier or Chancellor is one who actually runs the government. How would this have effected things over the course of US history? For example, western expansion, the era leading up to the Civil War, tariffs and trade, etc.?
 
The butterflies...

Changing the form of government is going to literally throw everything up in the air.

The US as a parliamentary republic would result in much stronger political parties much sooner than otherwise. And it will change who controlled the US government from very early on. Just from going off the OTL election returns, the *Democratic-Republican Party would form a slim majority government in 1792. That's going to have huge future ramifications, since the types of policies that were enacted in Washington's second term IOTL are going to be impossible.
 
If you're looking for parties, look to England and Canada. We would probably have a center-left party and a center-right party, with probably a centrist third party. I can't see a Christian Democratic or Social Democratic Party being formed in America, as both are such a product of Europe.
Example:

Farmer-Laborer Party (shortened to Labor): Center-Left party formed in the late 1800's by OTL's Populists.
Liberal Party: Centrist Party created by Jefferson.
Conservative Party: Center-Right party formed by Hamilton.

Obviously these are only ideas. It would be impossible to predict America's current political scene.
 
If you're looking for parties, look to England and Canada. We would probably have a center-left party and a center-right party, with probably a centrist third party. I can't see a Christian Democratic or Social Democratic Party being formed in America, as both are such a product of Europe.
Example:

Farmer-Laborer Party (shortened to Labor): Center-Left party formed in the late 1800's by OTL's Populists.
Liberal Party: Centrist Party created by Jefferson.
Conservative Party: Center-Right party formed by Hamilton.

Obviously these are only ideas. It would be impossible to predict America's current political scene.
A good outlook for the start. But early territorial expansion, the Civil War, and "Manifest Destiny" will have the effect of tossing the cards into the air several times. I can't see the pre-Civil War third parties surviving, but perhaps the Populists? Definitely the Progressives have a chance, if the Republicans go too far to the right, or the Democrats become hardcore "Dixiecrats".

Comments?
 
If you're talking about it being modern-parliamentary from the beginning, it's ASB fodder; Britain wasn't much like the modern system in 1783, and none of the colonial governments had been structured anything like it. The idea of the monarchy being a ceremonial position is also anachronistic - the powers of the Presidency are the powers the colonists (and the British, more or less) expected the monarch to exercise. Parliament didn't begin usurping the functions modern Americans think of as the "Executive" until after the Revolution. The ideas didn't exist yet.

That said, I think we could imagine a way to steer the early USA gradually towards that. Start with a Presidency that more closely resembles the monarchy - perhaps serving for life, although still elected, and with no possibility of a veto being overridden by Congress. The First Congress, whose Jeffersonian members are already in near-hysterics about how they've replaced King George III with a new King George I, makes the Cabinet departments answerable to the House rather than the (President, King, whatever Washinton winds up being called) in the bills that establish them. From there, you could see evolution along a path very similar to the one the UK took.
 
If you're talking about it being modern-parliamentary from the beginning, it's ASB fodder; Britain wasn't much like the modern system in 1783, and none of the colonial governments had been structured anything like it. The idea of the monarchy being a ceremonial position is also anachronistic - the powers of the Presidency are the powers the colonists (and the British, more or less) expected the monarch to exercise. Parliament didn't begin usurping the functions modern Americans think of as the "Executive" until after the Revolution. The ideas didn't exist yet.

Curses. :(

That said, I think we could imagine a way to steer the early USA gradually towards that. Start with a Presidency that more closely resembles the monarchy - perhaps serving for life, although still elected, and with no possibility of a veto being overridden by Congress. The First Congress, whose Jeffersonian members are already in near-hysterics about how they've replaced King George III with a new King George I, makes the Cabinet departments answerable to the House rather than the (President, King, whatever Washinton winds up being called) in the bills that establish them. From there, you could see evolution along a path very similar to the one the UK took.

That will work! :D Another idea I'd briefly considered was the US having a constitutional convention sometime after WWII that changes things along the lines I'd laid out in my OP, but I can't think of a POD for it.
 
Curses. :(



That will work! :D Another idea I'd briefly considered was the US having a constitutional convention sometime after WWII that changes things along the lines I'd laid out in my OP, but I can't think of a POD for it.

The successful removal of Andrew Johnson from the office of POTUS has been used a couple times in threads gone bye as a POD for turning the US into a parliamentary republic.
 
The successful removal of Andrew Johnson from the office of POTUS has been used a couple times in threads gone bye as a POD for turning the US into a parliamentary republic.
Can be done. But I'd favor more of a parallel evolution from the beginning, perhaps with a surviving Articles of Confederation, and the US adopting a precedent based, informal constitution, like Britain.
 
The successful removal of Andrew Johnson from the office of POTUS has been used a couple times in threads gone bye as a POD for turning the US into a parliamentary republic.

That POD is a personal favorite of mine, but I can never quite figure out how the position of Prime Minister would develop ITTL. I doubt the Constitution would be formally re-written to create such a position (it seems like formalizing that arrangement would raise a lot of public opposition that wouldn't necessarily arise if the process just happened), so what would happen? Would the Speaker of the House serve the function of a Prime Minister? Would the Speaker ever come to be called Prime Minister (I actually like the title Premier better, it sounds distinctive from the British title).

Also, how would elections be handled? Having elections every two years would probably create pretty unstable governments, but the election schedule can only be changed by a constitutional amendment.
 
The Speaker is the Prime Minister. Before the populist reforms of the 1910s, the Speaker of the House had near-total and arbitrary authority over legislation - only the Speaker could call for a vote on a bill or an amendment, so if the Speaker didn't like it, it never came up for a vote- 2/3 can override the President but no number of Congressmen could override the Speaker. Committee assignments were made by the Speaker and were not required to conform to anything other than his whim. Whether using an Early American or Andrew Johnson PoD, preventing the evolution of a PM-like post is harder than having one.

House elections every 2 years does lead to an unstable and chaotic lower house. But not so much that it cannot conduct business or do its part- we've got by well enough that way as it is, after all.
 
The Speaker is the Prime Minister. Before the populist reforms of the 1910s, the Speaker of the House had near-total and arbitrary authority over legislation - only the Speaker could call for a vote on a bill or an amendment, so if the Speaker didn't like it, it never came up for a vote- 2/3 can override the President but no number of Congressmen could override the Speaker. Committee assignments were made by the Speaker and were not required to conform to anything other than his whim. Whether using an Early American or Andrew Johnson PoD, preventing the evolution of a PM-like post is harder than having one.

House elections every 2 years does lead to an unstable and chaotic lower house. But not so much that it cannot conduct business or do its part- we've got by well enough that way as it is, after all.

After thinking it over and doing a bit more research I think the Andrew Johnson POD is the one most likely to work. I could see a situation where in the wake of the impeachment and perhaps a more chaotic Reconstruction the Presidency gradually loses power in favor of the Legislature - and by extension the Speaker of the House - until it's reduced to a figurehead. But unless this arrangement is formally written into law it's only a matter of time until a strong President comes along and starts forcefully exercising the constitutional prerogatives of his office. Then things could get messy.
 
a tip of advice from someone living in a parlamentary democracy:
parlamentarism does not jump out of the blue.
in order to have a parlamentary regime, you need usually to have a dictatorial (or at least an authoritarian) regime before it.
parlamentarism is usually adopted once the authoritarian regime is fallen, since presidentialism is seen as a possible starting point for a new would-be-dictator
 
a tip of advice from someone living in a parlamentary democracy:
parlamentarism does not jump out of the blue.
in order to have a parlamentary regime, you need usually to have a dictatorial (or at least an authoritarian) regime before it.
parlamentarism is usually adopted once the authoritarian regime is fallen, since presidentialism is seen as a possible starting point for a new would-be-dictator

Ou c'est possible pour une évolution organique pour une système parlementaire. ;) It doesn't jump out of the blue, yes, but even a Presidential system could lead towards a parliamentary republic via a semi-presidential stage. No authoritarianism required - just the passage of time.
 
a tip of advice from someone living in a parlamentary democracy:
parlamentarism does not jump out of the blue.
in order to have a parlamentary regime, you need usually to have a dictatorial (or at least an authoritarian) regime before it.
parlamentarism is usually adopted once the authoritarian regime is fallen, since presidentialism is seen as a possible starting point for a new would-be-dictator

Which leads me to a pet idea I've had:

Andrew Jackson vs. the Congress in a military conflict. Is it too far to imagine Jackson might overreach, that Congress might rebel against him, and successful brand him King Andrew?
 
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