“The government has collapsed”

Eugene Volokh has an interesting observation:

…The goal of many emerging parliamentary democracies, I think, is for citizens to be able to say “The government has collapsed. Now, which movie do you want to go see tomorrow?,”…

I am not a fan of our constitution. I think the framers did an awfully lazy job of it. But I think that the silliest thing they did was to adopt the Parliamentary system instead of the Presidential system. What do you people think?

4 thoughts on ““The government has collapsed””

  1. >>“The government has collapsed. Now, which movie do you want to go see tomorrow?,”…
    That reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s excellent “Brave New World Revisited.” He attributes the dumbing down of democracy, among other things to television, how the debates on TV are disguised shams, the shortening of peoples’ attention spans and how people (at his time, in 50s or 60s) were becoming “bored” with stupid stuff like politics and “issues”. Read it.

  2. Ok, but I don’t think that this is what Volokh meant. He meant that governments “collapsing” is a routine occurrence in a parliamentary democracy as against once-in-a-lifetime event in other forms of government. The whole linked quote should make what he meant clearer.

  3. But I think that the silliest thing they did was to adopt the Parliamentary system instead of the Presidential system.

    For a country like India the Presidential system could have only spelt disaster. For example – How do you think each state would get represented in that election – would you follow the American model of winner takes all?

    If you do – that puts the smaller states in a really bad situation. If you don’t – that would beat the very purpose of a presidential election.

    [Formatted by Ravi to make clear which was the quote and which was Nilu’s comment]

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