Nexus (pronounced nek-suhs)
(1) A means of connection, tie or link; a form or state of connection.
(2) A connected series or group (objects or concepts); a network or web.
(3) The core or center or a matter, discussion or situation.
(4) In cellular biology, a specialized area of the cell membrane involved in intercellular communication and adhesion.
(5) In digital anthropology, the world’s first web browser.
(6) In law in many North American jurisdictions, the relationship between a vendor and a jurisdiction taxation purposes.
(7) In formal grammar, a technical term in the work of Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860–1943) describing a group of words expressing two concepts in one unit (such as a clause or sentence).
(8) In the civil law of Ancient Rome, a person who had contracted a nexum (obligation) such that, if they failed to re-pay that obliged, a creditor could compel them to work as a servant until the debt was paid; an indentured servant.
1655-1665: From the Latin nexus (the act of binding together; bond), the perfect passive participle of nectō (bind) and past participle of nectere (to bind). Nectō was from the primitive Indo-European gned & gnod (to bind) and was cognate with nōdus (knot), the Ancient Greek γνάθος (gnáthos) (a jaw), the Avestan naska (bundle), the Old Irish nascim (to bind), the Old Norse knútr (from which German gained knude, Norwegian knute, and Icelandic hnútur). Related were the Old English cnotta (which survives in Modern English as knot), the Old English cnyttan (which in Modern English is knit), the Old High German knotto (knoten in modern German) and the Middle Dutch cnudde (the Modern Dutch knot). The suffix created the Latin verb of action. Nexus is a noun; the noun plural is nexuses or nexus although the Latin plural form (written nexūs or nexûs) is used in process philosophy, a highly technical branch of the discipline which administers the school of thought that change (ie alterations in the state of relationship(s) between things) constitute the only experience of life (the alternative schools focused on the process of change being understood as inadvertent or illusory).
Australia's defeated 1967 nexus referendum
Section 24 of the Australian Constitution provides for a numerical nexus between the House of Representatives (lower house) and the Senate (upper house):
The House of Representatives shall be composed of members directly chosen by the people of the Commonwealth, and the number of such members shall be, as nearly as practicable, twice the number of the senators.
The senate chamber in the new parliament house, opened in 1988. The scope of works given to the architects required that both chambers should be able (without major structural change) to be re-configured to accommodate up to twice the number of members. The building is said to have an anticipated life of some two-hundred years so it would appear in the 1970s, nobody expected there was for centuries any possibility of breaking the nexus between the houses. Despite the ominous prospect, Australians seem rarely to think the quantity of politicians is lacking although they are often sceptical about the quality.
After an abortive attempt in 1966, a referendum was held the following year which sought to remove the nexus, thereby freezing the number of senators at ten per state (an increase from the original six triggered by the enlargement of the lower house in 1949). The cabinet’s enthusiasm for curbing any proliferation of senators was prompted by concern an increase in the size of the upper house would make it easier for minor parties to win seats. The referendum was defeated and the problem persists. As the number of senators to be elected increases, the votes each needed to gain a seat (a quota) reduces and by the 1980s, a quota in a normal half-senate election was well under 20%; in a double-dissolution, less than 8%. That, when combined with preferential voting, means votes surplus to a quota flow through the system and it’s become successively easier to succeed, a few senators having been elected with but a handful of first-preference votes. Section 24 is not monocausal, there being many reasons for the decline in the share of the vote enjoyed by the major parties but the recent success of micro-parties would not have been possible without the operation of the clause. For a generation, political excrement like the Democratic Labor Party (the DLP, a right-wing, predominately Roman Catholic breakaway from the Australian Labor Party (ALP)) was helped by the lower quotas demanded in a senate of sixty rather than thirty-six. The modern senate of seventy-six is democratically more promiscuous still.
In Australia, as in all modern Westminster systems, the major parties alternate in their roles as "His Majesty's Government" and "His Majesty's loyal opposition" but they are as one in their attempt to keep others out of the cozy little system they've designed for themselves and, ahead of the 2016 election, changes were implemented to stop preference arrangements between minor parties and independents producing results said to be "a distortion of the electoral process" (ie independents and those from minor parties being elected to seats the majors regarded as "belonging to them"). Further to advantage the majors, a form of optional preferential voting was introduced, said to have been done to assist voters but the most obvious beneficiaries were the major parties because it became harder for independents or minor party candidates to be elected to the Senate.
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