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The Irish state inherited many features of the Westminster parliamentary system, but with some important divergences: a written constitution protected by a Supreme Court, a proportional representation electoral system with a single transferable vote, and a directly elected President as Head of State. Irish political parties are cohesive, disciplined, and centralized under the direction of the party leaderships. The electoral system allows the electorate to vote directly for individual candidates in multimember constituencies, which increases the individual accountability of legislators and helps to contain agency loss. Irish governments have not been heavily constrained or monitored by other institutions or agents, including Parliament.

At the end of the nineteenth century, New Zealand's MPs began to see their mandate as an occupation and therefore granted themselves full salaries. Yet, staffing remained poor until the 1970s, when parliament became more sophisticated, specialized, and policy-focussed. Political recruitment and careers were mostly channelled through one of the two dominant national parties; that changed in 1993 when the first-past-the-post electoral system was substituted by a mixed member proportional system resulting in a more diverse party system. But the electoral reform process itself also shows how the rather small, established political class of New Zealand tried to protect their endangered status first by resisting popular reform initiatives and then by manipulating their inevitable institutional outcomes.

Members of the Canadian Parliament today are well-paid political professionals. Still, the most attractive goal of a national political career in Canada is a seat at the cabinet table, because only here members can influence public policy, assure their reelection, and control the parliamentary party. However, as the opportunity to serve in national cabinet is limited, most members of the Canadian political class spend their careers engaged in constituency service or remain at the provincial level. Reform efforts have for the most part been focussed on increasing MPs' input into policy making and greater freedom of voting, but the backbenchers have been reticent to challenge the general executive-centred nature of Canada's parliamentary system.

This chapter examines the changes in ministerial responsibility in Great Britain during the twentieth century. It suggests that the twentieth century saw the decay of imperfect but working conventions, the divisions between policy and operations and accountability and responsibility which may suggest a rationalisation of ministerial responsibility. The chapter explains that, for more than a century, ministerial responsibility has underpinned Britain's constitutional arrangements and the Westminster system of government, andhas provided the rationale for the institutional structure of government and the basis for political relationships.

This chapter delves into the privileges of parliament as an integral part of the Westminster System, going back to Article 9 of the Bill of Rights 1689. It lists freedom of speech, the immunity of members from legal liability for statements made in the House, and the freedom of each House to order its own affairs without interference by the Crown as the privileges of Parliament. It also refers to Westminster Model constitutions that replicate privileges in the parliament by directly specifying and enumerating them in the constitution, or by conferring on parliament the power to determine its own privileges. The chapter cites the Constitution of Trinidad & Tobago as a typical example that applies the privileges of the House of Commons. It discusses how the constitution gives parliament the power to prescribe the powers, privileges, and immunities of each House.

The Anglo-American tradition is perhaps the most difficult to characterize. Although there are common roots, there has been a divergence between the United Kingdom and other Westminster systems and the United States. There are common roots among these cases, including a contractarian conception of the state, an emphasis on the separation of politics and administration, an emphasis on management rather than law in the role definition of public administrators, and less commitment to uniformity. But these common values are interpreted and implemented differently in the different countries. For example, the United States has a more developed system of administrative law than do most of the Westminster systems. All these administrative systems, however, have been more receptive to the ideas of New Public Management (NPM) than have other governments, although the United States and Canada had implemented many of those ideas long before NPM was developed.

The Australian experience with executive power demonstrates one of the familiar tensions inherent in constitutionalism, namely, the tension between continuity and flexibility. The Westminster system of responsible government may have been more or less appropriate for the United Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century. Australia at the start of the twenty-first century was dramatically different. This chapter attempts to address the weakness of parliamentary accountability and its inability to provide rectification of individual grievances. The remainder of this chapter considers the scope of executive authority and the mechanisms for holding its exercise to account that presently operate in Australia. It focuses principally on the Commonwealth position, noting the State position only where it diverges significantly. The system of responsible government is also described in various ways. At its most abstract, the system contains principles identifying who exercises executive power and principles relating to accountability for its exercise.

We cannot directly infer from common property resource regimes the principles to govern great societies. Hayek has argued that there can be no social justice in great societies, but this view relies upon a mistaken theory of parliamentary legislation and a misunderstanding about the scope of social justice. In looking at the great transformation, we note that the political institutions of great societies rest upon an historical consolidation of authority that creates a fundamental pluralism of interests. The political institutions are representational democracies, Westminster systems or liberal constitutionalist. The most notable feature of the economy in the great society is the economies of scale associated with the division of labour. The household ceases to be the basic unit of production. Although there is a movement from community to association, the great society creates its own forms of interdependence

While the Australian government is usually regarded as being derived from that of Westminster, this chapter highlights the elements which are particular to Australia and shows how Australian government is distinguished from similar practice in the UK and in Canada, the other great federation of the Westminster system. This approach highlights contrasts between the major Westminster polities, rather than the more usual path which stresses comparison, likeness, and similarity. The contrasts range over the alteration of constitutions, the heads of state, ‘executive’ councils, chambers of parliament, Cabinet, and the public service. It is based on a view that Australia is basically in the Westminster mould, but not markedly British.

This chapter aims to clarify the roles that legislatures play in Canadian public policy and its analysis by looking at the institution as it functions in the country’s parliamentary system of government. The chapter begins by describing the four core functions that legislatures perform in Canada’s parliamentary system, namely making government, making government work, making government behave, and making alternative governments. The chapter then explains how and where these functions fit into the public policy process, most significantly in the agenda-setting, implementation and evaluation stages. The chapter concludes with some thoughts on what this fresh perspective on Canadian legislatures and public policy offers for policy analysis in this country.

This chapter examines speeches in the Australian House of Representatives from 1990-2019. Our findings are primarily determined by the nature of Australia’s Westminster-style system, where the government tends to dominate proceedings. We find strong party effects, government versus opposition effects, and strong ministerial effects on the amount and duration of speeches. The descriptive statistics demonstrate that women and less experienced parliamentarians speak less than male and experienced ones. The gender effect also holds when controlling for ministerial selection. The latter is likely to be explained by men being given more important and prestigious ministerial portfolios. We also find that opposition MPs speak more on average than non-ministers on the government side. However, that is mostly a statistical artifact of their necessarily being fewer opposition MPs, but the rules give both sides of the House approximately equal time to speak. While both gender and seniority are predictive of how much people speak, this is mediated by the fact ministers speak more.

This chapter analyses the life and work of Sir John Fortescue, with particular regard to his concern with the role of the people in a body politic headed by a monarch in realizing good governance. This he determined was the best form of governance. Fortescue was a politician, lawyer, a Chief Justice, and Lord Chancellor in exile. He is an unacknowledged architect of the Westminster system of governance and the common law. His two seminal works on English governance—De Laudibus Legum Angliae and The Governance of England—had profound impact. De Laudibus focuses on the common weal, and the role of the people in a body politic headed by a monarch. Here Fortescue’s experience of civil war as lawyer, soldier, and politician enabled him to fashion a pragmatic paradigm emphasizing law (not war) and the people’s involvement in government as the basis of good governance, to abiding effect.

This chapter studies debate participation in New Zealand’s parliament from 1996 to 2002. New Zealand has a mixed-member proportional electoral system and a multiparty system. Its parliamentary rules and procedures give parties considerable control over the allocation of speaking time in debates and questions during question times. The empirical analysis, based on 125,088 speeches, studies the number of speeches that parliamentarians delivered and the number of words they spoke during two legislative periods. I find that ministers and party leaders participate significantly more and use more words in parliamentary debates than other parliamentarians. I also show that female politicians and ethnic minorities are less likely to participate.