Why Do Prime Ministers Become Too Powerful

Firstly, the House of Commons has the ultimate check on government power via a vote of no confidence, this last happened in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher was able to be elected due to the Labour government's failure.

Most of the specifications for the executive branch in the Constitution, other than how he is to be elected, have to deal with the interactions between Congress and the President. The president can (fill in the blank) but only if (this part) of Congress approves. The powers of the president have been interpreted widely so that he has more power than I believe the Framers intended. They wanted him to be able to check Congress with veto power and be the head of the military. However, I think that presidents nowadays have too much power. They are active in trying force their policy agenda through Congress, manage foreign relations, and act as the administrative head of the entire nation. The textbook lays it out well in, "The vast size of the executive branch and the number and complexity of decisions that must be made each day pose a challenge for the White House.” (316) In order to deal with the stresses put on the executive branch, there are thousands of employees that work to give the president the information that he needs to make decisions. He has advisors, cabinet members, legislative liaisons; the list goes on and on, but he is the person who actually gets to make all of the choices. The President is limited in some ways and given more power in other ways by the structure laid out for him in the Constitution, and evolved to be what it is now.

they head. As, a group, the cabinet is intended to serve as an advisory body to the

In recent times many commentators have pointed out that the UK’s Prime Ministers are increasingly acting like Presidents- of course the UK Prime Minister cannot actually become a President as the system would not allow it. Below I shall be analysing and explaining the factors that highlight the growth of presidentialism in the UK, as well as the points which suggest that the UK’s Prime Minister is still a Prime Minister.

Executive power is vested in the office of the President of the United States. The President has the dual role of being the chief of state and the head of government. The President is also commander in chief of the armed forces. He issues executive orders, and appoints Supreme Court justices (with senate approval). The president is also called "the chief legislator" because he indirectly proposes many bills, considers all bills from Congress and signs them into law or vetoes them.

A president has a limit of time in office, and can serve up to two terms, four years at a time. I believe like this is a good and bad thing. While it gives our president time to make good decisions, and time to actually change things in our country, if the president has bad ratings, there is nothing we can do about it until his term is up. There is only one circumstance when a president can be voted out of office before his term is up, and that is called impeachment. This can happen when the president has committed acts treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, thus giving the power to the house of representatives to impeach him, and the senate the power to remove him for office, given a two-thirds vote to convict. This rarely happens though, and throughout history only two presidents have ever been impeached; Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 (http://biden.senate.gov). In Canada, the Prime Minister’s terms of office are determined much differently. The prime minister is appointed by the Governor General on behalf of the queen. The governor general will typically pick the leader of the party that has the most seats in the house to maintain stability in the government. Unlike the president, the prime minister does not have a fixed term of office. Canada’s constitution, The Constitution of Canada, limits each parliament member to five years, and then a general

The Scrutiny of executives by the Parliament would not let political parties to abuse its power as Select Committees question the Prime Minister publicly. A confidence vote, meaning a motion of no confidence, is a vote on whether a group of people still has confidence in a government or leader. This is mainly a statement or vote which states that a person in a superior position, be it government, managerial, etc, is no longer deemed fit to hold that position. Votes of no confidence would not let the leader of a political power to hold this post is the Prime Minister is found to be dictatorial. Other members of Executive, for example cabinet discussions, scrutinise the Prime Minister

The prime minister has a significant amount of power within the Canadian government. Some of the sources of the prime minister’s powers are the number of seats in the House of Commons he and his party has, his ability to give push/give priority to certain government agendas, and his ability to appoint different governmental positions. For a politician to hold the office of PM his party must hold the majority of the seats in the house; this means that by convention his party must be in solidarity with his decisions, which gives the PM’s the loyal support of his party. Another power of the PM is the ability to put forward government agendas that they believe should be prioritized. The PM also has the ability to appoint people who they believe

Another source of presidential power that stems from the Constitution is the deceptively simple fact that the American president is both head of state and head of government (Romance, July 27). Unlike in several other democracies, such as in Great Britain where these two functions are split between the monarch and a prime minister, an American president has the ability to both symbolically represent the and to lead the nation (July 27). Even this is both a blessing and a curse because it forces a president to constantly live both roles and know exactly when to stress the appropriate one over the other (July 27).

Parliament has a central function in carrying out a scrutiny role. It carries close inspection and where it is necessary, amendments maybe proposed this is carried out in both houses. It holds the government collectively and the PM and other ministers accountable for their actions. It does this in debates, question times and through the work of Departmental Select Committees (DSC). However it maybe be argued that is not enough since scrutiny does not often involve blocking legislation. It is not expected that parliament will make substantial changes, but it does

Throughout Canadian history there have been many influential political leaders in the past, but none as powerful or significant as Brian Mulroney. Through political criticism, Brian Mulroney served as the longest Prime Minister in Canada. All together Brian Mulroney was one of the best Prime Ministers, but he was just misunderstood. He gave Canada Free Trade, which secured our economic prosperity.

In this essay, I will demonstrate that the Prime Minister is powerful and can cause many potential dangers by analyzing different elements inside and outside of our government over the period of different Prime Ministers throughout the Canadian political history.

In this paper we will compare the formal and informal powers if the President and we will explore how and why the Presidential powers have increased over time. The history of the Presidency is an account of aggrandizement; one envisions, today, a President with far reaching power, however, when looking at the Constitution alone we find a President with significant limits. Is the President of the United States the most powerful person in the world or merely a helpless giant?

Traditionally, the leader of the political party that can control a majority in the House of Commons, shall be appointed Prime Minister. ‘When a Prime Minister resigns, he or she advises the Queen’, however this is only a suggestion, she isn’t obliged. This is a rather inadequate factor as the Monarch has ‘Royal Prerogative’, a privilege of entitlement in appointing whoever she wishes to fulfil this role. As Harold Nicolson wrote in 1952 "When the head of a Government resigns, or is defeated in Parliament’, ‘the choice of his successor devolves upon the King alone’. Although the Queen can lawfully select anybody she wishes, this is overruled by constitutional conventions, a set of rules which guide her in this process.

There are limitations to the prime ministers powers, despite the prime minister role being the highest in UK politics. The prime minister still maintains many powers but one main limitation that there is, is the prime ministers’ party.