Well, I think you've raised an important point, and it is that we can talk about institutional features, but at the end of the day what Parliament does is part of the political system and political dynamics, and these give rise to certain behaviour, which can be highly partisan or sometimes less partisan in some countries.
I have, however, seen parliaments in other countries that also have parliamentary systems, where you see occasionally at least much more of a cross-partisan approach in committees in particular. So if it is possible, it is possible in committees. This is the one big point I would make, and I also second Professor Franks on this.
I will just give you one nice example, which I really like, from the German budget committee in the German Parliament. They were having their budget hearings a few years ago and they heard that instead of attending the hearing in the budget committee, the finance minister was hanging out in the press gallery. When the committee heard this, they cut $500 million Deutschmark, at the time, from his budget—half a billion Deutschmark is not an insubstantial sum—which he wanted to use to renovate his customs offices.
That kind of approach...you're not doing it to score party political points, but you are really doing it to hold government to account. You can see a kind of cross-partisan spirit in that.
I think that is only possible in committees. One of the ways in which some committees foster this kind of approach is through rapporteur systems, where you give groups of MPs the task to scrutinize a particular part of the budget, and these MPs come from different political parties and they try to come up with a consensus view on this. Some committees in other OECD countries operate along these lines.
But as you said in your introduction, these broader political dynamics are very difficult to change, so they often are what they are, unfortunately, sometimes.