The council political system: Its concept, historical rooting, and its distinguish from other parliamentary systems

• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Author: Zeyad S. Al‐Dabbagh
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2159

ACADEMIC PAPER

The council political system: Its concept, historical rooting, and

its distinguish from other parliamentary systems

Zeyad S. Al-Dabbagh

College of Political Science, University of

Mosul, Mosul, Iraq

Correspondence

Zeyad S. Al-Dabbagh, College of Political

Science, University of Mosul, Mosul 00964,

Iraq.

Email: z-psc@uomosul.edu.iq

The council's political system (CPS) is based on a basic idea that the legislative

authority dominates the executive authority as the sole representative of the people,

it authorizes the executive authority to carry out executive activities on its behalf

with the latter remaining subordinate to the former and operating under its supervi-

sion and direction. CPS is considered one of the few systems of Parliament in appli-

cation compared to other parliamentary systems and was often used by countries in

times of crises experienced by them in an attempt to overcome those crises, given

that this system limits the power of actual decision-making to the legislative author-

ity. CPS can be distinguished from other parliamentary political systems both presi-

dential and parliamentary through several things, the most prominent of which is

based on the idea of the relationship between its powers being included in favor of

the legislative authority, and not on the basis of cooperation as is the case in the par-

liamentary system, or on the basis of complete separation as it is the situation in the

presidential system. The results indicated that the success of the implementation of

the council system depends on the nature of the ruling system that will be adopted

and the philosophy that is based on it, in addition to the necessity of a high degree of

political awareness. Through these results, we recommend the application of the CPS

in light of the outbreak of the COVID-19 and the subsequent political and societal

changes.

1|INTRODUCTION AND THEORETICAL

BACKGROUND REVIEW

The council's political system (CPS) is one of the few political sys-

tems in the world compared to other presidential and parliamentary

political systems, and we find this natural, as countries often took it

after the revolutions, wars, and crises that it is going through, that

is, they used it in exceptional circumstances in order to control the

abnormal conditions as it was facing, then it soon departed from it,

as France, which was the first to introduce and implement this sys-

tem after a few years of the French revolution because of its suffer-

ing from absolute monarchy for a long period of time, but it

nevertheless did not continue to adopt this system and changed

it. As well as, other countries took this system such as Austria in

1920 and Turkey in 1924.

1.1 |Historical rooting for the CPS

The CPS, or the Assembly's government system as some have called

it, was defined as a transitional or temporary system that states resort

to in the aftermath of revolutions or crises facing them, where the

authorities meet in the hands of a representative body in charge of

governance and establish a committee or council to exercise the exec-

utive authority under its supervision, guidance, and powers (Asfour, n.

d.). Khachaimia (2007) mentioned that the implementation of the

council's system was a tactical rather than a strategic choice, and this

system has appeared temporarily in a number of modern constitutions

that were issued after the First World War, such as the Constitution

of Austria in 1920 and the Constitution of Turkey in 1924.

Bassiouni (1985) pointed out that the first application of this sys-

tem was in France, from 1792 to 1795, when Parliament, known as La

Received: 1 April 2020Accepted: 21 April 2020

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2159

J Public Affairs. 2021;21:e2159.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa© 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd1of7

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2159