Are they condemned to five years in which their views may be heard but are not acted on? One way of expanding the participation of the electorate and therefore the whole ethos of democracy would be to initiate more mechanisms whereby the public can participate, should they wish, in the decision making process. Such mechanisms could be the greater use of public enquiries and referendums. Both would allow the public the ability to participate in the complete process of examining an issue, but they would not guarantee that the public would have any say in the final decision made by government.
Home » British Politics » Representative Democracy. Democracy is a word frequently used in British Politics.
In the UK there are too many people to ask and too many decisions to take, therefore representatives are elected to make decisions. It has two parts — the House of Commons and the House of Lords, plus the monarchy. For the purposes of the General Election, the country is divided into constituencies or areas. Each constituency elects one MP to Parliament. MPs either debate or ask questions in the House of Commons or they work in smaller groups known as committees.
Other important roles of MPs in Parliament are to help make laws and to scrutinise check-up on the work of the government or investigate issues. The role of the House of Lords is to help make laws as well as check-on the work of government and investigate issues. In either case, the party leadership will control the final manifesto wording, although, when the Labour Party moved to the left in the early s, its National Executive Committee tried to exert more control.
Parliamentary candidates send out a local election address to voters which will include national manifesto commitments and possibly pledges on local issues as well. If the party leadership, once in power, tries to carry out policies contrary to their election manifesto, backbench MPs of their party may object and even use this as a reason to rebel against the Government in a Parliamentary vote.
In a constitutional sense it is important as well. In , the Conservative majority in the House of Lords, faced for the first time by a large Labour majority in the House of Commons, agreed to what has been called the Salisbury Convention, after the Conservative leader of the time. Since the Government was elected in by just over a quarter of voters, the Convention has begun to be questioned. Previous Next. About Democracy. What is a liberal democracy What is representative democracy?
British Elections - The Basics. Voting Systems. Electoral Systems in Britain. How do People Vote? General Election Outcomes. About Party Systems. About By-Elections. A Look at Referendums. Democracy vests power in the people but an election then transfers power from the voters to a particular group of politicians so that the British public do not then directly take political decisions such as:- — Whether Value Added Tax should be increased — The level of university fees — Whether assisted dying is legalised — Whether people should be able to vote at 16 What does a representative democracy look like?
In a Representative Democracy they instead are decided by elected politicians. Nevertheless, MPs do take up the issues that their constituents present to them. The Mandate and the Manifesto The British system of Representative Democracy has depended on ideas of the Mandate and the Manifesto:- The idea of a mandate The idea of a Mandate related well to the British two party system of the Liberals and Conservatives before and Labour and the Conservatives after The manifesto British parties produce a fairly detailed Manifesto during the election campaign containing the policies they would carry out.
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