BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Implementation and focus of ideas depends on the personality of the Prime Minister rather than the party

As stated before, the second big group of electors vote for ideas rather than politicians. We claim that their vote is not conducted as well. Even if different prime ministers are from the same party, their focus is different. The personality of the prime minister also determines the direction of the party, like Tony Blair and the new left of the Labour Party in UK. The policies implemented always depend to some extent on the implementer of the policy, because the world-view of different people is similar rather than identical. Alternative candidates might have different positions and focuses on some key issues and they might have done something that would make electors decide differently. Also, one has to bear in mind, that voters take into account all the candidates and the framework they are in (for example if two or more parties represent similar ideological views) and if one candidate is removed from the equation, the whole framework changes.Therefore if the executive power changes, also the implementation and interpretation of legislation switches. In reality that means that the ideas are also modified and the reasonable expectations of the other group of electors are also dissatisfied.
Australia summary

The framework provided by Team Estonia was faulty. Their definition was largely tailored to suit the nature of their argument, such as ignoring the frequency, or even the possible frequency, of a resignation of Prime Ministers in parliamentary democracies. With no reasonable justification, they chose to scope the debate to the democracies of developed nations only, and failed to address the issues we raised about the democracies of developing nations. In relation to the change of PM they correctly identified some circumstances in which this change could occur but they failed to address, or even consider, the circumstances which we posed to them. A change in PM automatically triggering a general election questions the ideals of democracy; It is these sudden and irrational actions that lead to anarchy, not democracy. What would be an appropriate democratic decision is the original system and policies put in place by the elected party, preventing unnecessary economic and social instability allowing some illegitimate and implausible notion of democracy to arise. When a PM change is made within the same party, there is not a significant enough change in warrant action to this extent. Political elections are determined on policies, economical influences and social lifestyles impacted by the government. To suggest that one person holds all the power and is the reason that a particular party is in office is both ludicrous and offensive to all parliamentary democracies around the world. Put simply, the potential for instability under Team Estonia’s model is too high. It would require Parliament to, firstly, be put on hold as the election campaign is held, and secondly, put all current members of parliament up for re-election. Additionally, there is very little incentive for any interested group to try force a leadership change, because the party remains the same until the end of the term and pressure serves no purpose. However, if this motion were implemented, interest groups would have a much larger gateway to impacting an election. It gives interest groups and the media too much power over politics, and undermines the interests of the general public, and thus the ideals of democracy. Furthermore, general elections require much more than just a mere candidate’s speech, more than just campaigns through media. It is the money taxes used to provide manpower and the effective campaigns needed to generate these elections. Because of the high cost involved, it seems absurd to hold a general election everytime there is a change of PM as it only causes unnecessary financial strain on the nation. It is clear that in all parliamentary democracies, including those from western nations, an increase in general elections will risk detriment the nation’s finances, increasing the potential of the nation (regardless of being ‘western’ or not) acquiring national debt and damaging the nation’s financial situation.
Legitimacy

As proven in the previous point, parties may change their focus according to the leader which allows parties to do better. Opposition claims that we will have elections over elections and any long term element of the governments will disappear. That claim is simply ridiculous since prime ministers do not resign that easily, so we are speaking about rare situations. Secondly, the system is not likely to be abused—if one deliberately and constantly manipulates with elections, voters are likely to dislike and not vote for one (or other parties are likely not to co-operate with one’s party). Also, opposition seems not to understand the context of the debate. Not only are we not speaking about everyday changes, but also the idea of “set time” is relative. We have elections in the first place over a period of time to represent the views of the citizens, to allow long-term policies to be implemented and not to bore electors with politics too much (which in most cases is the reality) However, often the status quo strives to the opposite—it allows people to be ruled by leaders (and their policies) they have not voted for and it also might incentivise shifts in politics (because the other leader has other priorities, because other wing of the party is in power etc) without democratic permission. We would like to point out that there already are limits in the set time period—if the prime minister is impeached, usually general elections are held and this affirms our principles.
The issue can be solved another way

The Opposition claims that the best way is to sometimes have extraordinary general elections, but not automatically, because issues come upon suddenly and the decision is best made voluntarily. We firstly do not think that prime ministers would resign very suddenly. Even if some drastic events would occur, that is usually not a reason for resigning—not until they are sure they are to blame etc. Also, the stability is not at stake, because there are other mechanisms to ensure constancy – e. g. civil service and the law system. Secondly the problem in their system lies in the agent, who decides when elections occur. If they concede that there are “bad PM’s” and if these prime ministers have any power over their party (as they obviously do, because they are the leaders), then giving them the power to decide makes the system particularly defective. Why would a failed PM or party ever want to have elections? That result the grave consequences in terms of legitimacy and the implementation of public policies. If a PM truly is a skilful and popular politician, who resigns for a sensible reason and has a sound candidate to fill the vacancy, the candidate is likely to be re-elected. Therefore even under the best case scenario parties and prime ministers will not suffer under Team Estonia’s model. However, there are three significant harms concerning the status quo — legitimacy of the system, alienation of the voters and effectiveness of the government – as we have proven in our substantive. The Opposition proposed an alternative—only electing a prime minister. By stating that they are contradicting themselves by conceding that PM is important, which they previously tried to rebut. Secondly, we the model would not solve the legitimacy issue—if the party gets to power because of the prime minister, they should also be able to lose power because of that. . Secondly, this could create practical problems - PM from one party and parliament from the other
It would not be consistent with a fair, reasonable and responsible democratic ideal

Opposition is misrepresenting us by claiming we support the idea of one person having all the power. We have never asserted this. We simply state that the party leader makes a difference both in terms of leadership and in the minds of people. Naturally there is a party structure behind the prime minister in SQ and after the implementation of our policy. But parties often are not fully democratic. Often leaders of parties have significant power to affect what is going on in the party (the top down model). They also might represent a certain wing of the party (especially if we have systems with only two big parties, which express many different views) and if they resign, the other wing becomes more popular (policies might change). Moreover parties often need leadership to be popular. By exploiting the candidate’s characteristics they also change the course of their policies. Voters tend not to think about policies, but leaders and human beings. Parties take advantage of that fact by changing their policies according to their leader—they advocate for issues that are important to that candidate, like John McCain and war veterans or foreign policy issues. To sum up-there are different discourses in politics and one of the most important is the discourse of leaders and directions these people point at through their competence. Since electors follow the discourse, the parties have followed and hence the personal traits of the prime minister do matter. In a democracy citizens have the power to decide and generally the democratic system should be directed at respecting the will of the people. If you elect a leader you will take into account the policies he has advocated or the likeliness of him actually implementing those policies, so the risk is reasonable. However, when electing a leader you do not take into account the fact that he/she might get out of office and be replaced. You cannot also legitimise this action; the new government is illegitimate in the moral sen
Party leaders and front-runners are far more than candidates

While it may be true that the majority of voters in any given Western democracy will base their vote on the leader, that leader is a mere image of party policy. Furthermore, these voters fail to realise that in a parliamentary democracy one is essentially voting for the party, not the personality. When they vote they have elected whatever candidate their party has chosen to represent their constituency, and that party, as with any organisation, has the right to choose whatever leader or other member it desires, in order to look after the best interests of the nation. Also, it is concerning to suggest that because the leader is more popular than their party, the political landscape has changed so significantly that it is actually reasonable that the people should hold new elections. Generally, the party's policy is as good as whatever leader they choose. Popularity should not be an issue. Consider the case of the 2007 change of leadership in the UK. Approval ratings did not show a hugely significant change overall in the years before and after this change[[http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/]] Furthermore, given the nature of politics and humanity in general, that negative portrayal of the government, whether through the media or through politicians themselves, is likely to cause an unnecessarily emotive response in a general election. We would risk political campaigns diving to all new lows as parties try to compete based on popularity alone, and a lack of long-term policies being developed for fear of a huge financial losses of taxpayers' money when the next government comes along and revoked programs mid-way through implementation. A good democracy recognises that, as do Team Australia, a good leader is not necessarily a popular leader; popular leader is not a substitute for good policy, and therefore no election should ever be triggered on the basis that the new Prime Minister isn't popular enough.
Social and Political Impacts of the Motion

First of all we are happy that Team Australia concurs that it would bring the meaning of the leader to the electoral system. As we have claimed before, that would correspond to what people actually base their ballots on. Secondly, everyone understands that causing elections too often is not a very popular step to take. Therefore Team Estonia claims that politicians would simply be more careful with resigning and that is a beneficial thing. Before becoming a front-runner of a party, the candidate should understand that he (or she) is taking the responsibility for a set term and resigning is not a very good option. Also it would force politicians to act in more proper ways because they know that they have lost their escape root through simply resigning. Therefore we claim that it would simply make politicians more honest and devoted. For example politicians take impeachment very seriously, because they know that it will trigger general elections and the reasons on which they resigned are going to be under immense attention. Third of all, if the parties would be confronted with harm to their popularity if they surrender to pressure from the lobby groups, there is a big chance that they would give up the surrendering part. A political system without powerful lobbies would certainly be a benefit rather than a harm.
Legitimacy of the government

We would like to raise an issue with an assumption that is underlying this point, and that is that a change of PM will ultimately result in a change of party focus. This, however, is not often the case as the replacing PM will be nominated by the representative body and will be chosen to represent the party’s ideals and focus. We believe that a shift in party leader is not a good enough reason to terminate all party promises, uproot all current schemes and plans and put everything on hold. The party was elected to act in the best interests of the people and has been elected to fulfill certain promises within a set period of time. If we remove the ability for parties to successfully complete their promises by constantly rushing to election what are we achieving? There may be some accounts where going to an election, would be appropriate, but it is clear that it is not a good enough reason to automatically trigger an election every time there is a change, irrespective of the reason behind the change. Which ideal of democracy are you talking about here? Is that the ideal that the people make a choice and that the government must follow through with the expectations of that choice... which in a Parliamentary Democracy is that the party will stand and fulfil their promises within a set period of time. If we allow governments the power to simply reshuffle their cabinets and force an automatic election we will surely be going against the real ideal of democracy by removing the power of the people’s choice and overriding it simply by changing the figure head of the party.
Definitions:

We find the restriction of this discussion to Western nations to not only be incorrect in nature, as over half of the nations in the world are not from ‘western’ Parliamentary Democracies[[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2128.html]], but also logistically impractical on a worldwide scale and ethically questionable in nature. Team Estonia seems to hold the belief that Western liberal democracies are the only nations worth debating about in this discussion. Their argument seems to show that developing countries should not be debated about due to their “several problems regarding elections”. Regarding Estonia’s point that there are “several problems regarding elections”, we would like to say that this is points to what we are saying. If a government were to be too unstable and have issues regarding an election, a change is exactly what is needed, here, we are proposing an easier solution to change due to the fact that instable governments cannot afford to go to election. We would also like to point out and correct Estonia that we will not just change the motion due to the fact they wish to “limit” the motion without proper reasoning and/or evidence as to why developing nations should not be involved. It is also an imperative now that we do debate for the sake of developing nations seeing as Estonia have agreed that the debate is scoped to all parliamentary democracies. We agree that in a multi-party coalition, there could indeed be external influences and the party changes. However we would like to point out that such coalitions are merely another example of potential sources of undue influence on the leadership - where a party could easily pressure a change of Prime Minister, potentially so that its own candidate would take their place!
The issue can be solved another way

We live in a world of uncertainty and constant change. Each country is continually dealing with an array of issues ranging from terrorism to homelessness; not to mention the internal political scandals. Changes happen, sometimes they are choices made by majority votes of party members and sometimes they are forced upon us suddenly. For this reason we find that an automatic triggering of a general election would not always be in the best interests of the nation and it's people. We concede that there are times when the party and the PM are in the wrong, and we agree that if the party choices have been heavily manipulated by a specific PM then maybe there would be grounds to call a general election. This decision would be based on the best interests of the nation concerned and not on the whims of the public perception of what they think is happening, enforced whilst they are still reacting. We propose that in most cases, such as the one mentioned by the proposition - death of a PM - or in the case of change dictated by the best interests of the nation, there would be no benefit to the wider community of calling an immediate re-election and stopping progress on all current governmental schemes and policies simply because a change has been made within the party heirachy. We believe that instead of creating chaos in government, and instead of risking the progress and success of the current government's vital plans and programs, that there should, in the case of a change of PM, be a special election or referendum for the nation to decide on the candidate who will replace the existing PM. This model would allow the integrity of democracy to not be compromised and for a fair and valid judgment to be made.
It would not be consistent with a fair, reasonable and responsible democratic ideal

It can not possibly be democratic that those representatives elected for a full term be put up for re-election based on the whim of the government. It would defeat the purpose of democracy if the people are not given the right to vote for a candidate and have them represent their constituency for the term they elected them. In a parliamentary democracy the ruling party has a right to change or oust their members, but it's simply unfair that constituencies risk losing their elected representative, especially in countries like Japan, New Zealand or Australia where the margins needed for one major party to defeat the other are very small. Now, we agree that the PM is just a figure-head for party policy. People indeed will make their choices based on how they see the leader. But if a government suddenly decides they want more seats - what’s to stop them from replacing their leader with a shinier model, forcing a new election and overriding the democratic vote of constituents who expected their representative to remain in office for a full term. Another reason why a general election is unnecessary is because of the concept of Responsible Government. In parliamentary systems such as Australia and Canada, the Cabinet, including the PM, is accountable to the rest of the Parliament.[[www.australianpolitics.com]] So while elections may be used to reign in the government, the role of the Parliament in between elections is to provide this role without the detriments the proposition's system would bring. Lastly, it is obvious that a democracy where rough party politics trigger a haphazard and impulsive election is not sensible. A sensible government is one that has the potential to be open and honest. It has to be given time to fulfil promises, and it creates a rational and informed dialogue with its voters. The state of democracy is sometimes questioned, but the proposition's motion would just move us backwards.
Party leaders and front-runners are far more than candidates

Party leaders and front-runners are far more than candidates. We believe that there are many types of electors, but in general they can be divided into two groups: voters who vote for ideas and voters who base their decisions on politicians rather than their ideas (in this case the charisma or the personality is perceived to be important regardless of party lines). In both cases the change of the prime minister who usually is the leader and was the flag-runner of the party, alters the situation to a large extent. It is more obvious in the case of the voters who base their decisions on politicians: these electors commonly vote for the party whose leader they like more. Even if they cast their vote for the party or representative of their favourites party, they do that based on their hope that their preferred candidate is a front-runner and is likely to take the lead of the country. E.g. president Obama's popularity in the U.S. has always been higher than popularity of the Democrats. If the prime minister changes, the reasonable hope and choice of these people is not fulfilled and that is a reason enough to hold new elections, even if the prime minister would come from the same party, because the political landscape has changed significantly.
Social and Political Impacts of the Motion

Instability is a huge issue with this motion. Even if we accept the proposition’s statement that this debate only includes developed nations, the potential for political instability is too high to risk. The very idea of automatically initiating a general election every time there is a leadership change means that we would be placing a much higher emphasis on the importance of the leader and maintaining power. Ask any voter what he or she wants in a government, it will be the leader who acts, not the leader who is most concerned with keeping power. Politics is becoming so much a power struggle that politicians would need to be afraid to open their mouths. Honesty will no longer be the best policy. Implementing this motion would be a backward step in trying to make our democracies stronger. Let’s consider for a moment the power of lobby groups. Worldwide pressure groups are notoriously responsible for concerning amounts of influence over legislators. In many nations, for instance Canada[[http://www.polarisinstitute.org/big_oil039s_relentless_lobby]], members of corporate lobby groups actually work as government advisors! Now imagine that by putting pressure on the ruling party, groups might just convince them to drop their leader. Too far-fetched? Because that’s exactly what essentially happened in June of this year in Australia. Prime Minister Rudd’s proposed Resource Super Profit Tax caused a huge stir in the mining industry. It would see their revenue cut by an extra 10%, and consequently, negative advertisements flooded Australian TV screens to denounce Kevin Rudd. His approval ratings dropped by up to 10 points[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_Australian_federal_election,_2010]][[http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/jittery-times-for-rudd-as-bitter-winter-sets-in-early-20100509-ulrr.html]]. However, the new leader too risks losing because of lobby groups. DON'T give lobby groups the new power to force a general election!