Editing Parliamentary system (section)

=== Calling of elections ===
{{Unreferenced section|date=April 2022}}
{{Essay-like|section|date=January 2024}}

In his 1867 book ''[[The English Constitution]]'', [[Walter Bagehot]] praised parliamentary governments for producing serious debates, for allowing for a change in power without an election, and for allowing elections at any time. Bagehot considered [[fixed-term election]]s such as the four-year election rule for [[President of the United States|presidents of the United States]] to be unnatural, as it can potentially allow a president who has disappointed the public with a dismal performance in the second year of his term to continue on until the end of his four-year term. Under a parliamentary system, a prime minister that has lost support in the middle of his term can be easily replaced by his own peers with a more popular alternative, as the Conservative Party in the UK did with successive prime ministers [[David Cameron]], [[Theresa May]], [[Boris Johnson]], [[Liz Truss]], and [[Rishi Sunak]].

Although Bagehot praised parliamentary governments for allowing an election to take place at any time, the lack of a definite election calendar can be abused. Under some systems, such as the British, a ruling party can schedule elections when it believes that it is likely to retain power, and so avoid elections at times of unpopularity. (From 2011, election timing in the UK was partially fixed under the [[Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011]], which was repealed by the [[Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022]].) Thus, by a shrewd timing of elections, in a parliamentary system, a party can extend its rule for longer than is feasible in a presidential system. This problem can be alleviated somewhat by setting fixed dates for parliamentary elections, as is the case in several of Australia's state parliaments. In other systems, such as the Dutch and the Belgian, the ruling party or coalition has some flexibility in determining the election date. Conversely, flexibility in the timing of parliamentary elections can avoid periods of legislative gridlock that can occur in a fixed period presidential system. In any case, voters ultimately have the power to choose whether to vote for the ruling party or someone else.