Re: Royal Wedding (Prince William & Kate)- R U Waking Up Early to Watc
Sure it is.
The sovereigns in Europe's constitutional monarchies are the heads of state of those countries. As presidential democracies dominate in the Americas where the offices of head of state and the head of government are merged in the office of president it's easy to forget that that's not necessarily the norm. In Europe, those offices are separate (and with good reason, I think). Those countries which don't have monarchies have presidents instead.
Ok, I realize that I'm going to start a pretty off-topic rant here but what you wrote shows that you don't really have a clue about politics.
1. The constitutional monarchies in Europe have limited the power of the monarch to representational duties. Which means that the actual political power is close to zero. That makes sense because the monarch isn't an elected head-of-state. But it also means that what you wrote about the offices of head of state and head of government being separate is bullshit. The might be separate in theory but 99% of the power lies in the hands of the head-of-government. I'll get back to that again in a bit.
2. Some European countries which do not have a monarch have a president instead, yes. Germany and Italy are the prime example for "weak presidents" and I mean that in a good way. The head of government (Chancellor in .de, prime minister in .it*) has more power than the head of state (the president) whose role is reduced to (mostly) representational duties but it's not reduced as much as the role of the monarch in Europe's constitutional monarchies. Which again makes sense because the presidents were at least elected in a democratic process whereas the monarch did nothing to deserve his or her role.
3. So there's no real split between the 2 offices in England since the Queen's role is pretty unimportant for actual everyday politics. But I said that the split isn't perfect in Germany and Italy either, right? So in theory even in Germany there should only one person/party be in charge after an election just like that's usually the case in the UK (rare coalition governments being the exception)?
Wrong.
Because this is where different models of democracy come into play. The UK uses a model that the political science calls the "Westminster model of democracy". It's a highly confrontational model that makes sure that after an election there's (usually) only one party who's in charge of government due to the so-called "plurality voting system" which is a "winner takes it all"-system.
So on extreme occasions it is very much possible that the party who wins the elections actually did not get the majority of votes. (If there are 300 different constituencies who decide on one member of parliament each it's possible that one party wins 151 of those by a very tiny margin. Whereas another party wins 149 by a huge margin. The first party wins the election in that case even if the second party has more votes if you just count the totals in all 300 constituencies.)
Why is this not the case in Germany and other European democracies? Because like the Scandinavian countries Germany uses the "consensus model of democracy". The elections use a "proportional representation"-system instead of the "plurality voting system" which means that all parties are represented in parliament in exactly the size of their proportion of the nation-wide vote-count.
In turn that means that 99% of all governments in those countries are coalition governments. (Funny enough it's currently the case in the UK, too but that's due to a very rare impressive success of the liberal party.)
It also means that instead of having only 2 (max 3) parties in parliament people actually have the choice between more parties who realistically have the chance to enter parliament. This made it much easier for new parties like the Greens to achieve success in countries like Germany.
Also the actual work style of the parliament is completely different and is actually reflected in the way the parliament's actual meeting room is structured. In England the opposition and the government oppose each other. In consensus model democracies all parties sit in a semicircle and seek consensus in parliament and in small working groups which is the preferred method of law-making. If that fails (!) the government coalition (so still not only one party!) can use their parliament majority to get it done.
Why the long rant?
Cause I felt like it and cause I couldn't really stand seeing you praise the british system of democracy as dividing the power between head-of-state and head-of-government. In theory that might be true but in fact the british system has put an enormous amount of power solely in the hands of the prime minister and his party.
Whereas other countries split the power between the head-of-government, the head-of-state and split it even further due to using the "consensus model of democracy" which favors coalition governments, the entry of more parties into parliament and finding consensus in parliament instead of just having government and opposition yelling at each other.
So yeah... the UK probably has the least division of power imaginable and that pretty much sucks huge donkey balls in my opinion.
And hey, maybe at least somebody here enjoys some political science once in a while and now realizes that there's actually different models of democracy and representation.
* little footnote: The Italian head of government is actually called "presidente del consiglio dei ministri" but don't mistake him for the president. He's "presidente della repubblica".
), so wouldn't have to get up so early but I still won't watch it.
)