Thursday marks the 30th day of the federal government shutdown and the American public has grown more concerned about the shutdown throughout the month and more disapprove of how Donald Trump is handling the federal government, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel.
More Americans blame Trump and the Republicans in Congress than the Democrats for the shutdown, the poll finds.
In parliamentary systems, “not having a government” isn’t as catastrophic as it sounds. It varies by country, but generally speaking the Executive and Legislative branches are run together. When there is a clear party majority in the Parliament, that party gets to pick all the heads of the executive branch. When there is not a clear majority, but a coalition of parties that make up a majority, they negotiate which party gets to head which department.
When there is not even that coalition, nobody will agree on those department heads. The departments don’t grind to a halt in most cases. There are lower-level deputies who can take over day-to-day administration, and there are usually still funds available. But no big decisions can be made without the formal department head. It mainly runs in place. (And, without any majority in Parliament, odds are there are not any laws getting passed either).
In many countries, this condition of the Parliament existing with no governing majority can trigger a new election, so the Parliament can have a new chance to get out of its deadlock. Why was Belgium different? You’ll have to ask a Belgian.
What is going on in the US is much different. We have a government in place, it just can’t agree on funding executive agencies, and we have laws on the books that specifically restrict what agencies can do without funding. We could have structured things differently, but did not. Our politicians want this chaos, because they think they can gain politically from it.