131214840-Carl-Schmitt

ernment, and influence the selection of ministers who are responsible to it, assumes that
belief.
Page 34
The oldest justification for parliament, constantly repeated through the centuries, takes into
account an extreme "expedient": 1 The people in its entirety must decide, as was originally
the case when all members of the community could assemble themselves under the village
tree. But for practical reasons it is impossible today for everyone to come together at the
same time in one place; it is also impossible to ask everyone about every detail. Because of
this, one helps oneself quite reasonably with an elected committee of responsible people, and
parliament is precisely that. So the familiar scale originated: Parliament is a committee of the
people, the government is a committee of parliament. The notion of parliamentarism thereby
appears to be something essentially democratic. But in spite of all its coincidence with
democratic ideas and all the connections it has to them, parliamentarism is not democracy
any more than it is realized in the practical perspective of expediency. If for practical and
technical reasons the representatives of the people can decide instead of the people
themselves, then certainly a single trusted representative could also decide in the name of the
same people. 2 Without ceasing to be democratic, the argument would justify an
antiparliamentary Caesarism. Consequently, this cannot be specific to the idea of
parliamentarism, and the essential point is not that parliament is a committee of the people, a
council of trusted men. There is even a contradiction here in that parliament, as the first
committee, is independent of the people throughout the electoral period and is not usually
subject to recall, whereas the parliamentary government, the second committee, is always
dependent on the trust of the first committee and can therefore be recalled at any time.
The ratio of parliament rests, according to the apt characterization of Rudolf Smend, 3 in a
"dynamic-dialectic," that is, in a process of confrontation of differences and opinions, from
which the real political will results. The essence of parliament is therefore public deliberation
of argument and counterargument, public debate and public discussion,
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