This is a short post in my constitutional design series covering term lengths and term limits in parliamentary democracy.
Term Lengths
When should you hold elections?
Too frequently and you don’t give those in power time to do things. Big policy takes a certain amount of time to set up - negotiation, implementation, refinement - so if you have elections too frequently you aren’t going to allow big policy to be implemented properly. This is especially problematic because the public is going to judge you based on half-baked policy.
Another drawback of holding elections too frequently is that you won’t be able to see the results of new policy, which means that voters won’t be able to tell if it’s working. In 2010 we had barely yet seen the effects of Obama’s economic stimulus, leading to a red wave, while by 2012 voters had warmed up to the Obama presidency.
On the flip side, the less frequently you host elections, the less democratic your system is - the less the views of those in power will reflect the views of the public.
4 year terms is probably my preference. I think it’s long enough to get stuff done, but short enough to lead to pretty democratic results. Also, do not hold midterm elections - they screw things up in the same way that short terms do, and divided government is a bad state to be in in general.
Term Limits
The rationale for term limits really depend on who you’re applying them to. The downsides on the other hand are pretty universal:
Once you stumble upon a good popular politician, you should be able to keep them around, instead of having to find a new one
A politician develops experience upon serving
A politician not eligible for re-election doesn’t have the incentive to act in popular ways
For Leaders
Term limits for the leader are there to ensure the leader doesn’t become a dictator. If a leader serves too many terms, they can consolidate power by ousting any politician who doesn’t show them complete loyalty. This then allows them to destroy democracy.
The usual downsides of term limits all apply to the leader. The one thing I’ll note in particular is that while a term-limited leader doesn’t have the same incentive to get themselves re-elected, they still are incentivized to make their party more popular so that its next leader (who likely shares most of their political views) can win election. Still, it’s not quite the same, and the next leader can always distance themselves from the previous leader if they are too unpopular.
The one clear mechanism I think you should implement is non-consecutive term limits. If a leader loses re-election, you no longer have to give them the incentive to act in popular ways. In fact, giving them the ability to run for re-election might give them less incentive to act popularly as leader, because they know if they lose they can always run again. Sure, non-consecutive term limits mean that chosen leaders will have less experience, but I think the threat of a dictator makes it not worth it. This one mechanism would do a lot to stop would-be dictators - stopping Trump, Netanyahu, Orban.
Consecutive term limits are trickier. A limit of 1 or 2, which is likely to actually prevent democratic decline, leads to constant term-limited leaders - something like a third of US presidencies have been term limited. I’d probably go with 2, but I can see the argument for 1, 3+, or no non-consecutive term limits.
(I don’t support term limits for leaders on the local level though, since the risk of democratic decline is much lower)
For Party Leaders
If you don’t want a leader to have dictatorial control over their own party, you can make the party leader spot term limited as well. In a parliamentary democracy, this leader is well defined, it’s the one vying for the prime minister spot. In presidential democracy, the party leader probably encompasses both the party’s presidential candidates and their legislative leadership; you could set either a term limit for each of them or have one timer that counts toward the number of times a person can serve as either a presidential candidate or as a legislative leader.
In formalizing the party leader position(s), you want to try to prevent there from being some sort of “shadow leader” figure in a party, who dominates the party but only takes the leader spot when they think they have a decent chance of winning.1. This is what Nigel Farage did with his Reform party for instance. (Though I think you would set a term limit for someone to be leader of any party, not just a specific one, which would have caught Farage as he was previously leader of the UKIP party).
Probably you’d want the party leader position to encompass anyone who:
is a party’s candidate for president (in presidential democracy)
is prime minister
You can try to do a thing where the only people eligible to be prime minister in the eg year following an election are the party leaders declared during an election. This unfortunately has the downside of making it ruling out some potential compromise prime ministers that could unite an ideologically diverse majority coalition, but this might be worth it.
has predominant say in a party’s candidate selection
has predominant say in the legislative leadership of a party, eg the committee chairs
These are the powers that I think would allow someone to dominate a party in a way that would merit term limits
I don’t think you should make term limits for party leaders apply to small parties - parties with less than eg 15% of the seats or 15% of the vote last presidential election. With very small parties you may just not have a ton of legislators to choose from for legislative party leader, and it isn’t so important that they don’t dominate their own party.
For larger parties though, I think it’s worth considering. It’s not without the usual downsides of term limits, but it has the important upside of ensuring that a leader doesn’t dominate their party. Maybe I’d make it a term limit of 3 terms as party leader (either in the legislature or as a party’s presidential candidate), and if they ever become president/prime minister the regular leader term limit kicks in instead.
For Legislators
I think these are generally a bad idea.
These have the all the same downsides of term limits. I think the inability to develop experience when serving is particularly bad for legislators; a leader can always rely on those around them for support, while legislators are all you have.
The upside is supposed to be that long-time serving legislators are often corrupt. I don’t think this logic is super strong though - sure long-time legislators might have closer connections to lobbyists, but newly elected officials have just the same incentive to take bribes. People can also just vote out longtime leaders if they feel they are corrupt.
And actually, because term limits for legislators cause them to have less experience, they can increase the power of lobbyists, because the lobbyists are the only ones who have really been around long enough to know the ins and outs of policy.
All that said, you might still want term limits for legislators because you think incumbency in party candidate selection is just too large. Perhaps new legislators are more likely to try to act in popular ways where long-time legislators become complacent. I would set the limit to be high to minimize the downside, maybe four or five terms of 4 years each.
To this end, probably you’d have to include some sort of ban on anyone other one figure having comparable power in candidate selection or committee appointments. This might disrupt some parties which have multiple figures of party leadership..