{"id":4772,"date":"2017-03-09T00:36:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T08:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/?p=4772"},"modified":"2017-03-09T00:36:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T08:36:55","slug":"german-double-deel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2017\/german-double-deel\/","title":{"rendered":"PS: Constitutional Reform &#038; Double Deel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>By Julian Dierkes<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Constitutional revision remains under consideration in Mongolia. If the MPP wins the presidential election in June 2017, there may be less pressure toward a revision of the relative power of president and parliament (most recent discussions in Mongolia would assign more power to parliament, but somehow I don&#8217;t think that M Enkhbold would be so excited about that should he win the presidential election).<\/p>\n<p>One of the issues that keeps coming up over and over is the &#8220;double deel&#8221; (\u0434\u0430\u0432\u0445\u0430\u0440 \u0434\u044d\u044d\u043b), i.e. concern about members of parliament also serving as members of cabinet.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2015\/thoughts-on-constitutional-reform\/\">I have used examples from Canadian and German state\/provincial parliaments to argue that other parliaments of comparable size have not been concerned about this challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out and as I have learned in the context of debates of constitutional reform in Berlin, I was at least partly wrong about that.<\/p>\n<p>The Green Party of Germany, for example, has long argued for a separation between a seat in parliament and an office (<em>Trennung von Amt und Mandat<\/em>), though this has been focused primarily on party offices.<\/p>\n<p>In Spring 2017, the Berlin parliament (Abgeordnetenhaus) is debating a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.parlament-berlin.de\/ados\/18\/IIIPlen\/vorgang\/d18-0178.pdf\">proposed constitutional amendment to prevent the double deel<\/a>. I hesitate to offer this link, in part because it leads to the proposal by the <em>Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/em>, a rightist-populist party. However, as the example of rules against the party double deel in the Green Party show, this is a debate that other parties are open to.<\/p>\n<p>The case in the Berlin discussions includes the following elements:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>separation of power: the German constitution does not adopt this as a principle, instead preferring interlocking powers (<em>Gewaltenverschr\u00e4nkung<\/em>)<\/li>\n<li>weakening of parliament: this is in part a numbers argument (i.e. every member that joins the cabinet no longer operates as a member of parliament, but also an argument about the role of parliament as endorsing and controlling the government<\/li>\n<li>salary: the Berlin parliament is defined as a half-time job (surely not realistically so), members of cabinet (<em>Senatoren<\/em> in the case of Berlin) thus draw salaries as such AND as members of parliament<\/li>\n<li>examples: the two other German city states, Hamburg and Bremen, both have separated membership from parliament from membership in cabinet<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While the Greens have practiced this separation for some time, it has also been advocated for by parts of the Social Democrats.<\/p>\n<p>Given similarities in the issues and challenges identified, perhaps there are opportunities for an exchange between Berlin and Mongolia around this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Julian Dierkes Constitutional revision remains under consideration in Mongolia. If the MPP wins the presidential election in June 2017, there may be less pressure toward a revision of the relative power of president and parliament (most recent discussions in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/2017\/german-double-deel\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6444,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[252610,104,4225,1223],"tags":[983090],"class_list":["post-4772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constitution","category-democracy","category-germany","category-governance","tag-julian-dierkes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6444"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4773,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4772\/revisions\/4773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mongolia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}