Netanyahu, Iran, and the Emergence of Political Parties

The recent decision by Congressional Republicans to invite a foreign leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, to debate the American President in matters of foreign policy, followed by the direct intervention of 47 Senators in that foreign policy through their letter to Iran, has created an uproar over the perceived breach of the power of the executive by the legislature. 

Though Joe Biden has dubbed it "unprecedented," all week commentators have debated whether there have been any such incidents in American history.  Yet this infringement on the rights of one branch of government by another is far from new.  In fact, the modern political party emerged from just such a crisis in government, in England in the 1670s. 

Seventeenth century England was a deeply divided country, one that had fought a Civil War from 1641-1649 and experienced a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell before the Restoration of the monarchy with Charles II in 1660.  Yet many of the tensions over questions of religion, domestic political governance, and foreign policy that led to the Civil War remained.

Religious tensions divided Anglican followers of the official Church of England from evangelical non-conforming Puritans, who wanted to end their religious exclusion from politics and envisioned an exceptional destiny for themselves in the world.  Like many evangelicals today, they feared the growth of a militant and expansionist religious Other, in this case the Catholics, embodied at home in the heir to the throne, Charles’ Catholic brother James.

Political tensions made for an uneasy understanding between the monarch and his Parliament.  Charles II wished to emulate the absolutism of his cousin, Louis XIV of France, by limiting local governance and the rights of the representative Parliament.  Parliament, meanwhile, hoped for greater legislative powers and feared a decline of representative government comparable to what had happened in absolutist France.  The two fundamentally disagreed over the balance of power between the executive and legislature and the relative power of the local and central government.

Tensions over foreign policy also loomed: Charles II looked to the increasingly powerful French and saw a useful ally.  Yet many members of Parliament (MPs) saw in France an untrustworthy and dangerously ambitious Catholic rival, a rival that wanted to expel its Protestants, expand its territory across Europe, and usurp England’s growing European and American trade.  Much like today’s Congressmen, these MPs linked religious connections and foreign policy, arguing that the Protestant Dutch, not the Catholic French, were England’s natural allies.

Under the Restoration settlement, established in 1660, the King retained the right to conduct foreign policy, pass laws as proclamations, and call the legislature.  Parliament, meanwhile, was responsible for passing legislation, including bills regulating the complex religious settlement, and raising taxation without which the King’s court could not function and war was impossible.  Usually this system worked well.  Although Parliament did not meet on a regular schedule, the King summoned it when he needed funds and the legislature generally obliged.

Though the 1670s, however, political divisions between the King and many MPs began to grow.  As the King explored ways to extend his royal executive power at the expense of Parliament, meddling in the religious regulations and planning to subvert Parliament’s revenue raising power by taking money from the French King, Parliament sought to extend its rights to by intervening directly in foreign policy.

When Charles II chose to ally with France and go to war against the Dutch in 1672, many MPs argued that the English were helping their enemies to expand at the expense of their natural Protestant allies.  Within two years they demanded peace, forcing Charles II to abandon the French.

Four years later, Parliament again interfered in the King’s negotiations, demanding a war against the French and insisting that the King guarantee the safety of the Netherlands.  At the same time, the Spanish Ambassador Don Blasco de Salinas approached several MPs with a proposal of his own.  The weakened Spanish, whose territory in Flanders, modern Belgium, had been overrun by French attacks, recognized that the domestic political divisions within England gave them an opportunity to shape English foreign policy in their own interests.  They secretly entered into negotiations with several opposition leaders.  When Charles II discovered the deception he was furious, and the attempt to subvert executive control over foreign policy sparked a minor international incident.

This willingness of MPs to undermine the authority and legitimacy of the monarch in front of a foreign rival not only embarrassed the King, but also indicated the extent to which Parliament’s respect for both the individual and the office had eroded.  The two branches of government were, in fact, no longer capable of working together.

By the end of the decade, ideas about the direction of government began to coalesce into political parties.  Desires to preserve the conservative English Church, increase the power of the monarch, and ally with the French reinforced one another and merged into a party platform, dubbed Tories by their opponents.  Others, nicknamed Whigs, argued for the rights of Parliament and the freedom of evangelical religious dissenters.  They feared the expansion of Catholic France, portrayed as a foreign empire with an insatiable thirst for universal domination, and argued for a virtuous Protestant alliance with the Dutch against the untrustworthy religious Other.  

These political divisions extended through the social spectrum, as English men and women read and listened to newspapers and political pamphlets, engaging in political debate at home and in public and gathering in spaces like the new coffee houses.  As tensions mounted and Parliament made increasing attempts to rein in executive power, Charles eventually chose to sidestep the legislature entirely, refusing to call it into being.

The direct undermining of one branch of government by another in the international political sphere not only showed the extent of political divisions, it exacerbated them into a full breakdown of the government.  When Charles II’s brother James II ascended to the throne in 1685, he fulfilled all the Whig fears of a Catholic and absolutist monarch, creating a standing army, revoking local privileges, and appointing Catholics to political office.  Within three years a popular rebellion invited his son-in-law, a Protestant Dutch aristocrat, to invade, and James II lost his crown in the Glorious Revolution.

The modern United States faces few of these existential dangers - the President is unlikely to be overthrown, Congress will continue to meet regularly, and our written Constitution guarantees the separation of powers.  Yet as the heirs to both the English political system and the parties that emerged from this crisis, we also retain many of the tensions over the relative power of the executive and the legislature, the right of the central government to intervene in state and local issues, and the intersection of religion and foreign policy in our policies towards Israel and the Middle East.  As these tensions mount, we too create space for foreign powers to try and shape our foreign policy in their own interest and expose our own domestic weaknesses on a global stage.  Perhaps it's time that our political leaders took a look back, before they create a constitutional crisis of our own.

Image Credit: http://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/estatehistory/reformation-1834/commons-chamber17th-18thc-/