Wait so does it mean they will only propose when they have chance to pass? Is it just me or here is something really wrong with this? It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?
It's how any sovereign body must work. Putting something to a vote and failing demonstrates weakness, so it's avoided. And the body cannot be bound in deliberation. (Else it's not sovereign, but a vassal of whoever sets the agenda.)
Sure, these are messaging bills [1]. If you're clearly out of power, they're an effective tactic.
If you're in power, a good way to lose it is by embracing messaging bills.
[1] https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article2...
This means that it was implicitly voted upon and rejected by the people, therefore it should not be put up for a vote again.
The veto right was effectively removed once certain countries started abusing it.
Note this was done through treaty amendments, which were agreed by all participants.
Not really. Besides, how would that work? Wouldn’t a new law proposal be just that, a new proposal to be debated and voted on, even if its intent or wording is similar to a previous rejected proposal? Is there any country with the equivalent of dismissal with prejudice for new laws?
Right, but constitutional changes can be unmade or superseded. Even in a notoriously conservative country like the US, constitutional amendments are repealed on occasion. And a lot of other countries’ constitutions get complete overhauls every now and then, at which point the details of the previous constitution cease to matter. So the fact that something gets to the constitution does not mean that nobody can discuss it, ever, it just changes the process of doing it.
I don’t know if any country where a draft law is rejected because it was too similar to another failed proposal. Although I wouldn’t put past the English having something like that in a dusty corner of their constitutional hodgepodge.
This is typically how legislative bodies work--it's why vote counting is an essential component of whipping. (Sorry, American political terminology.)
> It has no chance to be rejected and gone for good?
I have never seen a way to do this proposed that doesn't have horrific side effects. (One, who decides which issues are too similar to previously-mooted ones. Two, how do you avoid one side deliberately "spoiling" an issue to prevent the other from taking action on it in the future.)
The best you can do is require a total process re-start each time. That doesn't prevent reintroduction, but it adds significant cost and delay.
There's some sort of fetishism of systems and technology on the internet and especially in technical forums like HN where people have this idea that technical solutions can fix social issues
Governance systems have mostly been unchanged at their core for the past 100-200 years and people are under the impression that makes them somewhat antiquated so we definitely can fix this with some good code and automated judging.
It helps that that's much easier than having to accept the responsibility of being involved and proactively interested in the work of institutions which most people find boring and not worth the effort to learn about
I actually disagree with this notion. We had three big spurts of new-country formation in the last 100 years: after WWI, after WWII/decolonisation and after the collapse of the USSR. I'd argue we've been better each time around at creating a larger fraction of resilient governments.
> easier than having to accept the responsibility of being involved
Correct. Strongmen are convenient.
Yes, but they didn't really introduce new ideas and philosophies of government, at most slightly different ways of implement old ideas
Looking at the state of a lot of ex-USSR countries, I'd say this is not correct. Quite a few of them ended up as dictatorships. If anything, I would argue the immediate post-WWII was an apex of democratic creation that we are unlikely to match any time soon.
> The best you can do is require a total process re-start each time. That doesn't prevent reintroduction, but it adds significant cost and delay.
Democracy is not all about efficiency. In fact it is important that these costs are added, especially for passing new laws. As it is in IT Security, there is always DoS Potential if the defender has to do more work than the attacker. As such the one proposing a new law must be seen as the attacker and it is important that he must do a significant more amount of work than the defender.
An example where this fails, also for the EU legislative, are the various Safe Harbor Agreements with the US and their corresponding Schrems judgements. They all passed more than easily and Schrems needed years to fight against their unjustice. As a result the EU had many years under an unsound law.
I think there is much potential to improve the democratic institutions of the EU and not being able to withdraw a proposal (or maybe only in extraordinary circumstances) would be one of them.
In that context, I meant cost and delay as a benefit.
> not being able to withdraw a proposal
This empowers anyone who can introduce proposals with fillibustering the forum.
In my opinion filibustering would only be a problem, if there are no speech limits. As far as I'm aware of the internal workings of the EU institutions there are tight schedules and every member has limited speech time and the vote is set on a fixed date.
And as I stated, there should also be exceptions which allow for a withdrawal. It just shouldn't be as easy as: Let's withdraw until I got a stable majority.
Stable and flexible legislative sure is an important thing in democracy, but there must also be some kind of disruptive process to correct and the MPs should only be bound to their own conscience at the end of the process.
Could you maybe elaborate a bit further how this would enable filibustering?