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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 17, 2025

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That touches upon an interesting question, though - to what extent should democratically elected governments be able to constrain the actions of future ones? There is a sliding scale from saying "the previous government's decision to have this separate executive agency be untouchable by future administrations is null and void" to saying "we will not honour contracts or debts taken out by any past government", and each of them could be justified in the same way. If the People are sovereign, why can't they make a sovereign decision to renege on a contract? Of course, if you did that, the government would find it much harder to get anyone or anything to trust it and sign a contract with it in the future. Of course, you could then argue that a truly sovereign people should take the L and make it a learning experience (and maybe next time consider to vote for contracts made in their name to be honoured even if they have come to hate the guy who they empowered to make them). That might be fine philosophically, but in reality no major country's people may actually have sufficient collective executive function to learn that lesson. As a result, the perfect democracy, as philosophically appealing as it may be, would be outcompeted by other countries running a kayfabe democracy that somewhat insulates the people from their stupidity. Are you ready to make that experiment with your own country on the line?

There is a sliding scale from saying "the previous government's decision to have this separate executive agency be untouchable by future administrations is null and void" to saying "we will not honour contracts or debts taken out by any past government"

In the US, the rule is very much closer to the latter. In law, this is the rule against "legislative entrenchment", often expressed as "the current legislature may not bind the future legislature". As far as I know, no one has seriously questioned whether the equivalent rule applies to the executive. The US Government may be bound by treaty or constitutional amendment, but not much else.

Are you ready to make that experiment with your own country on the line?

The alternative being that the bureaucracy runs the government, "Yes Minister" style? Yes.