Wizarding legislation

[raven]

biascut said, "Write a HP fic set in the Ministry of Magic. Assume, against all available evidence, that the Minister of Magic is a democratically elected office, and work out wizard equivalent of the Cabinet, (Minister of St Mungo's, Minister of Cauldron Bottom Thicknesses & Other Export License NitPicking, Minister of Secrecy, Special Secretary with Responsibility for Floo Network...) Then work out how a new bill allowing the licensed ownership and customisation of Muggle vehicles would be passed, who would contest it and how."

And how could I say no to that?

It isn't a fic, it's an essay. And it's incredibly boring. But it was surprisingly fun to write.

The Minister for Magic may well be a Cabinet Minister like the others, but I doubt this simply because of the sheer volume of things he must haveto do. Besides, that means everyone at the executive level of Muggle government is aware of the wizarding world, and I don't think that works.

So let's say the Minister for Magic is equivalent to the Prime Minister, and he has his own Cabinet just as the Prime Minister does. There are seventeen (last time I checked) Muggle government departments, but I think there must be less in the Ministry, simply because there are less wizards and witches in general. If we decide Hogwarts is the only magical secondary school (and it certainly seems like it), and let us say it's like any British public school and compare it to Merchant Taylors'. If we say that like Merchants', it has about six hundred girls and six hundred boys, that means the total number of wizards and witches in the country must be absolutely tiny when considered as a proportion of the population as a whole. Of course, not all of them are at school, but still.

If I may segue into Biology for a moment, let's say wizarding ability is the result of a recessive gene - ie, you have to be homozygous for the allele in order to have some sort of magical ability. At one stroke, this explains why some wizards/witches are Muggle-born (both parents were heterozygous carriers) and some magical families give rise to Squibs (one parent is a carrier, the other is homozygous) and also the pureblood mania among the Slytherins (they're aware at some level that the gene is recessive, and are afraid the ability will die out with too many heterozygous people).

So I think we can conclude that the amount of people who come under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Magic is small. As corroborative evidence, there is the fact that Arthur Weasley works in the Misuse of Magical Artefacts department at the Ministry, and according to Ron, he and his assistant are the only people in it. This would make Arthur the equivalent of a Cabinet Minister, which sounds counter-intuitive unless you decide beforehand that the wizarding version of the Cabinet is much smaller and less important.

I won't even go into the political party aspect, by the way. It's clear there are no real wizarding parties, and unless Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems have some sort of magical offshoot, it seems as though there's no such thing as wizarding constituencies. This would appear to work, because the average constituency has seventy thousand people in it, and the village the Weasleys live in, Ottery St Catchpole, has five magical families, which translates to about twenty people. Not enough. Maybe they operate a regional list system and therefore proportional representation, but I doubt that. So I'm ignoring it.

Okay. Say Arthur Weasley decides to pass legislation legalising the customisation and ownership of Muggle cars. Because we've already decided there are no such thing as wizarding constituencies, then it follows that there's no such thing as Private Members' Bills. So if Arthur proposes legislation, it's as part of the executive. He's in charge of the relevant department, so he gives the first reading before the House. Not the House of Commons - unless the Ministry rents it out, which is interesting - but wherever they do this. He'd have to read it before all the other department heads, plus Fudge, and possibly the junior ministers as well (we know they exist - Fudge started off as Junior Minister in the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes).

However, seeing as there doesn't seem to be a political party aspect, Arthur Weasley is both department head and Permanent Secretary to the department. The first reading is a formality - there is no debate. It's followed by the second reading, where there is debate, which may or may not be followed by a formal division. This makes me wonder where the meetings are held, as the House of Commons has its Aye and Noe lobbies, but maybe they have a magical way of voting.

The committee stage is a difficult one. Without MPs, there isn't anyone to stand on the Standing Committees (the Muggle ones are composed of ordinary MPs, appointed by the Prime Minister and they have the same proportional composition as the House of Commons in order to encourage them to operate on cross-party lines) so I can't help but wonder if Muggles are involved here. Wizards need laywers the same as anyone else, so what if there's a Muggle Select Committee for the Ministry of Magic, that not only performs its primary function of scrutiny on behalf of the Muggle executive, but also does double-time as a Standing Committee for magical legislation?

Huh. It works for me. Yes, the committee stage. I would say it's the Ministry of Magic rather than the Muggle executive who have the right to impose either a guillotine or a kangaroo on the Standing Committee. In the case of Arthur Weasley's customisation of Muggle vehicles legislation (which had an unnoticed loophole that allowed Arthur to go on tinkering with a flying car in his shed), I would say it was a kangaroo rather than a guillotine that was imposed. Once this was done, the whole process would have been speeded up to the report stage. The Standing Committee's report would probably be different to when they report on Muggle legislation, because there are six hundred and fifty-nine MPs to argue about it, or rather debate; more debate is compulsory if six MPs propose it.

Without MPs, I should imagine the report stage goes without a hitch, and onto the House of Lords. I would say that there must be some wizards or witches in the Lords, simply because it's eight hundred years old and has that level of tradition. The Slytherin purebloods may well have hereditary peerages, and may also have had enough influence to be granted life peerages following the reforms of the Lords. In any case, the Lords amendments are most likely accepted, especially considering the amount of influence the old wizarding families seem to have over the Ministry.

Which brings us to the third reading and the last formal division. A word on divisions - it makes you wonder if there is any equivalent of a formal party whip system. In the absence of actual parties, a two-line whip becomes obsolete, so most likely it would be one-line or three-line, if the wizarding deparment heads are whipped at all. I think they're probably not whipped, and allowed a nominal free vote on just about everything, but only nominal; that would explain why Arthur never gets promoted despite loving his job. It's the same thing as an MP being kept down and/or possibly deselected by his/her constituency for rebelling against a party whip.

Once the third reading is over, the bill goes for royal assent. I would be very surprised if the monarchy were unaware of the existence of wizarding government, but I would also venture to say that wizarding legislation has to go before the Muggle government at this stage, particularly if any aspect of the new bill concerns Muggles. The wizarding government must be subordinate to the Muggle one, because the Muggle government has much more a mandate - it's elected and democratically accountable, whereas the wizarding one isn't.

Once it's got royal assent and Muggle assent, Arthur's bill for the customisation of Muggle cars becomes a Wizarding Act of Parliament, with a commencement order - ie, a date upon which it becomes legal.

Boring. Yes. Incredibly so.

Comments

[biascut.livejournal.com]

Hee! That was great. And I hope it helped with the revision, but if it didn't, then you have at least proved that you know a hell of a lot more than I do about how Parliament works.

I admit that I stole the idea from ajhalluk's exam on <a=href=http://www.livejournal.com/users/ajhalluk/48963.html>Wizard Inheritance Law, written shortly after OotP was published. But you did it proud!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked, as it's All Your Fault. :)

It did help with the revision; it made me sit down and learn the stages of passing legislation with reference to quite a few other representative features.

Onwards and upwards - still got loads to do.