A further Comment on Geoffrey Palmer's Recent Book

Geoffrey Palmer's recent book Unbridled Power is a contribution, in the best liberal democratic political tradition to the ideology of the bourgeois parties that have inter-changeably ruled many of the advanced Western capitalist states throughout this century. It's main recommendations will appeal to the reformist ideals of people of liberal persuasion who see parliamentary democracy as the best form of government.

The linchpin of the liberal ideology is that the state apparatus must rest on a division and balance of power between three main branches: The Executive branch, the Judiciary and Parliament. If any one branch gets too powerful then rules must be drawn up to ensure that each branch can check on the other to prevent abuse of power.

Like most liberal constitutionalists nowadays, Palmer is concerned about the growing corporate-like power of the executive branch (ie the political executives and their top career civil servant policy advisers). Their secrecy in making decisions and increasingly authoritarian legislative fiats offend Palmer's bourgeois nations of "the rule of law". He has there fore made a specific recommendation to curb the growing executive monster by a written constitution based on the division of powers with checks and balances and, a Bill of Rights. (See the summary in the last chapter of the book.)

Basically, I am in favour of more open, and accountable governments and Palmer's concisely argued recommendation appeal to my liberal reformist instincts. What I do not share, however, is the liberal belief that if only more power is transferred from the Executive into the bands of the people's representatives in parliament, the state will become more "democratic".

There is really nothing original in the belief that parliament's lost power and authority should be restored to make "democracy" viable again in these turbulent times. After all, Max Weber, one of the fathers of bourgeois social science made similar recommendations, but his wisdom had no influence on subsequent political developments in his native Germany during his time.