INSTITUTIONS LAW AND GOVERNMENT - ASSIGNMENT SOLUTION

Introduction 

A set of rules that govern a country is known as national constitution and the rules can be based on tradition or can be written in the form of law or number of laws (Paulsen & Paulsen, 2017). The laws forming the constitution are ordinary laws in some nations that can be changed like any other law but in most of the nations the laws forming constitution have special status and Australia is one among them (Australian Government, 2019). The report analyzes the similarities and differences between the institutional structure of Australian and Shangri-La (SL) Constitutions. The report provides recommendations on whether the Australian Constitution is appropriate for Shangri-La and how it can have a responsible government.

Issues

Australia is federation of states and each of them have their own government, laws and constitution (Australia Government, 2019). The constitution defines the structure and power of the federal parliament that includes House of Representatives and the Queen represented by Governor General and Senate (Australian Government, 2019). From each state there have to be at least six Senators. The constitution also defines structure of executive government, federal judicial system. The constitution controls the Commonwealth finances and trade between States, the relations of States with Commonwealth, is responsible for only creating new States (Parliament of Australia, 2019). The institutional arrangement of Shangri-La’s (SL) constitution differs with Australian constitution in many respects. Unlike Australia Shangri-La has a National Assembly having 200 members and Council of Cantons that has 26 councilors representing interest of 26 regions of Cantons. So each of the region in Shangri-La does not have their own constitution, law or government as is the case with Australia. The elected representatives belong to one of the two main political parties, which are Moderates and Socialists whereas Australia has three main parties, which are the Australian Labor Party, the Nationals, the Liberal Party of Australia. In Shangri-La no legislation can be passed without approval of both National Assembly, the Council of Cantons and hereditary ruler. In Australia, the legislation can be passed only by a majority vote in House of Representative and the Senate and Queen is not involved in the process instead the power is given to the Governor-General (Parliament of Australia, 2019). Australia allows people of each state to be represented in House of Parliament in proportion to their numbers, which is not the case with Shangri-La wherein Shongs have only two representatives in National Assembly, which is one of the major differences in institutional structure. Another difference is that the country has only a High court having only five judges and is considered the superior court and Rani the hereditary ruler has the power to appoint and remove judges. 

Historical Context

The history of Australia and Shangri-La is quite similar as both the lands were settled by British and Plantagenets  respectively based on ‘terra nullius’. Many settlements then followed across Australia and each colony that settled in the country was governed by British Governor appointed by the Queen of England (Australia Government, 2019). The Catholic religion was then dominated by the British authorities and British and European culture were followed (Parliamentary of Australia, 2019).  Before British colonization, diverse groups of Australians Indigenous population lived in Australia in spite of which British entered and settled in Australia on basis of ‘terra nullius’. The history of Shangri-La is similar to Australia where Shongs are similar to the Indigenous population of Australia. There has been an imbalance of parliamentary representation of Indigenous people as compared to non-Indigenous and there is no formal body, or a treaty that gives any provision for more representation of indigenous Australians (Parliamentary of Australia, 2019).