US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned (BBC)
By Anthony Zurcher
BBC News, Washington
As the United States heads toward a budget crisis that will shut down many federal services and affect more than 700,000 workers, other countries look on with a mixture of puzzlement and dread.
For most of the world, a government shutdown is very bad news - the result of revolution, invasion or disaster. Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war, the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers' wages.
For leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth to willingly provoke a crisis that threatens to suspend public services and decrease economic growth, then, is astonishing to many. American policymakers "are facing the unthinkable prospect of shutting down the government as they squabble over the inconsequential accomplishment of a 10-week funding extension", Mexico's The News writes in an editorial.
In the United States, however, government shutdowns - or the threat thereof - have become an accepted negotiating tactic, thanks to the quirks of the American federal system, which allows different branches of government to be controlled by different parties. It was a structure devised by the nation's founders to encourage compromise and deliberation, but lately has had just the opposite effect.
Elsewhere in the world, such shutdowns are practically impossible. The parliamentary system used by most European democracies ensures that the executive and legislature are controlled by the same party or coalition. Conceivably, a parliament could refuse to pass a budget proposed by the prime minister, but such an action would likely trigger a failure of the government and a new election - witness the current situation in the Netherlands, where Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government faced a no-confidence vote at the start of debate over his 2014 budget proposal. And even when there is a gap prior to a new government taking office, national services continue to operate.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-24342521
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