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Political executives are government officials who participate in the determination and direction of government policy. They include heads of state and government leaders—presidents, prime ministers, premiers, chancellors, and other chief executives—and many secondary figures, such as cabinet members and ministers, councillors, and agency heads. By this definition, there are several thousand political executives in the U.S. national government, including the president, dozens of political appointees in the cabinet departments, in the agencies, in the commissions, and in the White House staff, and hundreds of senior civil servants. The same is true of most advanced political systems, for the making and implementation of government policy require very large executive and administrative establishments.
The crucial element in the organization of a national executive is the role assigned to the chief executive. In presidential systems, such as in the United States, the president is both the political head of the government and also the ceremonial head of state. In parliamentary systems, such as in Great Britain, the prime minister is the national political leader, but another figure, a monarch or elected president, serves as the head of state. In mixed presidential-parliamentary systems, such as that established in France under the constitution of 1958, the president serves as head of state but also wields important political powers, including the appointment of a prime minister and cabinet to serve as the government.
The manner in which the chief executive is elected or selected is often decisive in shaping his role in the political system. Thus, although he receives his seals of office from the monarch, the effective election of a British prime minister usually occurs in a private conclave of the leading members of his party in Parliament. Elected to Parliament from only one of several hundred constituencies, he is tied to the fortunes of the legislative majority that he leads. By contrast, the U.S. president is elected by a nationwide electorate, and, although he leads his party’s ticket, his fortunes are independent of his party. Even when the opposition party controls the Congress, his fixed term and his independent base of power allow him considerable freedom of maneuver. These contrasts explain many of the differences in the roles of the two chief executives. The British prime minister invariably has served for many years in Parliament and has developed skills in debate and in political negotiation. His major political tasks are the designation of the other members of the cabinet, the direction of parliamentary strategy, and the retention of the loyalty of a substantial majority of his legislative party. The presidential chief executive, on the other hand, often lacks prior legislative and even national-governmental experience, and his main concern is with the cultivation of a majority in the electorate through the leadership of public opinion. Of course, since the president must have a legislative program and often cannot depend on the support of a congressional majority, he may also need the skills of a legislative strategist and negotiator.
Another important area of contrast between different national executives concerns their role in executing and administering the law. In the U.S. presidential system, the personnel of the executive branch are constitutionally separated from the personnel of Congress: no executive officeholder may seek election to either house of Congress, and no member of Congress may hold executive office. In parliamentary systems the political management of government ministries is placed in the hands of the party leadership in parliament. In the U.S. system the president often appoints to cabinet positions persons who have had little prior experience in politics, and he may even appoint members of the opposition party. In the British system, cabinet appointments are made to consolidate the prime minister’s personal ascendancy within the parliamentary party or to placate its different factions. These differences extend even further into the character of the two systems of administration and the role played by civil servants. In the U.S. system a change in administration is accompanied by the exodus of a very large number of top government executives—the political appointees who play the vital part in shaping day-to-day policy in all the departments and agencies of the national government. In Britain, when political control of the House of Commons changes, only the ministers, their parliamentary secretaries, and one or two other top political aids are replaced. For all practical purposes, the ministries remain intact and continue under the supervision of permanent civil servants.
In nearly all political systems, even in constitutional democracies where executive responsibility is enforced through free elections, the last century saw a remarkable increase in the powers of chief executives. The office of the presidency in the United States, like the office of prime minister in Britain, greatly enlarged the scope of its authority. One of the challenges of representative government is to develop more constitutional restraints on the abuse of executive powers while retaining their advantages for effective rule.
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