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Archive for We The People
An EU Referendum
The Thunderdragon’s “We The People” column this week is about the EU Referendum (or lack thereof).
He posts on a Thursday evening every couple of weeks, a time which has a habit of missing most of the visitors - so we are starting to put a plug in on Friday morning.
Tags: Thunderdragon, We The People[tags]Thunderdragon, We The People[/tags]
An EU Referendum: We The People
As the news informs us that MPs have decided not to allow us a democratic vote on the Lisbon Treaty…
The European Union and related issues is a topic that causes great schisms across most parties, one that is usually widest across the Conservative party, but recently it is the Lib Dems who have been most split by it, primarily over what we should have a referendum on, the “Libson Treaty” or EU membership itself.
Referendums and Democracy
Referendums are a form of direct democracy, whereby we the people answer a yes-or-no question on a subject of importance. In some countries, such as Switzerland, referendums are standard events. In others, such as here in the UK, they really aren’t. After all, we have had only one referendum ever. Which just happened to be on entry to what is now the EU.
Referendums are important events, no matter how often they are carried out, and just become even more important the rarer they are. After all, the last referendum decided that we would be members of the Common Market, which has become the EU without we the people getting another vote. Even though the last vote was held a decade before I was even born.
Read the rest of this entry »
A Written Constitution: We The People
Jack Straw is hinting that the government wants to draw up a written Constitution for the UK, with a process that could take up to 20 years. But why does Straw want to do this? Because
most people might struggle go put their finger on what [their] rights are or in which texts they are located. The next stage in the UK’s constitutional development is to look at whether we need better to articulate those rights which are scattered across a whole host of different places and indeed the responsibilities that go with being British… [And to] bring us in line with most progressive democracies around the world.
But why on earth does this mean that we should have a written Constitution?!
What Is A Constitution?
A constitution is basically the rules by which the democratic system of the nation state is run. Th is can either by an “unwritten”, though in reality this more means “uncodified”, constitution which relies on accepted conventions in order to run or a formalised, written Constitution.
Britain has an uncodified constitution, not an unwritten one. Pretty much every bit of it exists written down, in documents such as the Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, and the Parliament Acts. The British constitution also exists in every single piece of legislation ever passed by Parliament, since there is no division between primary and secondary legislation. It also exists in common law, treaties with foreign powers, and analaysis and commentary made by experts [such as Bagehot]. But it also exists in conventions, which guide the way in which the system works - one convention being the role of Prime Minister.
America is the prime example of the written Constitution. It has a piece of paper which lists the rights and responsibilities of Americans, and is very hard indeed to modify. These kind of Constitutions are typically created after war or revolution, in order to satisfy the populace that their rights are defended.
MPs and Democracy: We The People
The Wardman Wire has seen some very good articles over the past week on the subject of MPs and the money they claim, both as salary and expenses. It’s not my intention to weigh in on that debate, but use the opportunity to examine the role of MPs in our democracy.
Why do we have MPs? What is their point?
Britain - and all of the democratic world - uses the representative form of democracy. We elect representatives, in our case Members of Parliament (MPs), to represent us on the national level. They are supposed to be our “voices” and to work out the best things to do and laws to pass for us.
However, they are not delegates, like Edmund Burke pointed out. They are not elected to repeat the findings of polls and the like verbatim. They are elected to use their brains. We expect them to look deeper into the issues and examine them closely and make decisions from the basis of that. We have them to do that because we the people don’t have the time or inclination to do so. And certainly not for every little thing. They are charged with the responsibility of acting in the interests of the people and given the power to do this - between elections, when the power is returned to the people for a short period while they decide on the next set of representatives.
But why not just vote of things ourselves?
Democracy isn’t, of course, necessarily reliant in principle of the use of representatives. Direct democracy, sometimes referred to as “pure democracy” is the idea that we the people should vote directly on everything. This simply does not exist in the real world on a national level [Switzerland is the closest, but still a long way off], however, due to the simple practical difficulties impossibilities of making it work.
It is possible to work when there are tiny electorates, such as Rousseau’s idea of a town meeting under a tree to discuss policies, but when an electorate increases beyond a number able to meet together easily, this becomes impractical. Until technology advances enough to make e-voting a real possibility, direct democracy is nothing more than a pipe-dream.
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Proportional Representation: A Better Alternative: We The People
The last article in the “We The People” column was a response and comment about PR by the Thunderdragon, following the ministerial rejection of Proportional Representation for General Elections. The article argued against PR for General Elections.
This is a response (also published at Make My Vote Count) from Lewis Baston a research officer with the Electoral Reform Society, looking at the recently published report of the Government’s Review of Voting Systems for UK General Elections, and arguing in favour of PR. The ERS itself published an “alternative review.”
Government Review of Voting Systems published (quietly)
It may not have been the first thing on many people’s mind last Thursday - the resignation of Peter Hain did rather grab the headlines - but in the longer term an announcement smuggled out by the Ministry of Justice might turn out to be the most significant political development of the day. At long last the government’s Review of Voting Systems was published.
The Review was a long time in gestation. It was promised in the 2001 and 2005 Labour manifestos as a watered-down version of the discarded 1997 pledge that there would be a referendum on the electoral system. It was also shamefully ’spun’ on the day as if it had rejected the case for electoral reform, which a look at the contents reveals it manifestly did not.
What was actually in the government’s review?
The Review is significant because it is an official rejection of many of the arguments made in favour of keeping the current ‘First Past the Post’ system. In its own words:
- “We do not find a difference between PR systems and FPTP in terms of delivering stable and effective government … in the experience of the UK, coalition governments can be just as stable as single-party governments.”
- “One of the main benefits of PR, and in particular STV, is that voters have a greater degree of choice in elections and a greater chance of their vote counting in terms of who gets elected.”
- “We do not find, on balance, any evidence to suggest that voters find one voting system easier or more confusing than another voting system.”
- “In conclusion, FPTP has the simplest direct relationship between representative and constituent. STV also allows for a direct relationship, but there are a number of potentially competitive representatives and greater choice for the electorate.”
It also, cautiously, endorses some arguments made in favour of electoral reform, pointing to a significant (5 per cent or so) boost to turnout in countries with PR systems, and better representation of women and minorities.
Why FPTP is broken beyond repair
Way back in 1997, the government set four criteria to assess electoral systems:
- broad proportionality
- stable government
- voter choice
- a link between the representative and a constituency
We might also add the ability to give fair representation to women and the diverse strands of society.
FPTP fails on most of these counts.
- It produces increasingly unrepresentative results, notably a government elected with a comfortable parliamentary majority on 35 per cent of the vote, and the strong possibility of a party winning more votes and fewer seats than its main rival.
- While it can produce stable majorities, it does not necessarily do this - it often does not in Canada and may not do it in Britain in future. Governments with a weak base of popular support are more likely to generate popular protests while in office and see their policies reversed by their successors.
- FPTP also offers no real voter choice - the national result being decided by a small and unrepresentative group of swing voters in marginal seats, and local results often foregone conclusions for the biggest party’s single nominee. When the parties are talking to the same small group, it is not surprising that many people think they are all the same and not relevant to their own concerns.
- While there is a direct link between MP and constituency, how much to electors (as opposed to politicians) value it? Only about a third of MPs have the support of more than half their local voters, and none at all the majority of their electorate.
FPTP’s record at representing society is shocking, and would be worse without Labour’s internal policies of ‘twinning’ and all women shortlists.
Article Series - Proportional-Representation-for-the-UK
- Proportional Representation: A Better Alternative: We The People
Proportional Representation: We The People
I’m delaying what had been intended to be the first posts for this column yet again because this story caught my eye…
The Story
The Proportional Representation voting system has been rejected by ministers because it wouldn’t boost turnout:
“A review of PR voting in Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and European elections said voters were confused.
The report said PR had resulted in more parties being represented in the devolved administrations but also had a tendency to produce coalition governments.
If PR was introduced in Westminster elections, constituencies could be represented by more than one MP, said the review.
But there is no guarantee PR would increase turnout in a general election or make Parliament more diverse, the report says.
It also warns that it could cause complications between the House of Commons and the House of Lords.” (BBC)
What Is PR?
Very basically, PR is a voting system by which seats in the legislature is supposed to be very closely matched to votes. In a pure PR system, a party who gets 35% of the votes also gets 35% of the seats. Of this, this isn’t always possible in real life, where there are often minimum vote percentage requirements for a seat - examples of this is the 4% minimum in Sweden and the 1.5% limit in Israel - hence votes don’t always equal seats.
The idea behind PR is to equally distribute seats according to votes, to make the legislature a ‘true reflection’ of the voter’s intentions. But what it also does is almost certainly mean that there isn’t a majority.
A Bad Thing For The UK
PR would be a bad thing for the UK. It simply would not work within our political system. To replace the plurality [first-past-the-post] system we use with proportional representation would be a disaster. We need to have a party with a majority in parliament for our government to work. We have a parliamentary system, and thus the government is inextricably linked to parliament. It is from parliament that it gains it’s legitimacy and power.
The ‘Westminster model’ political system requires effective government. If there is no majority held by one party in parliament, the government cannot govern. The very oppositional nature of our political system that goes with it ensures that. Coalitions do not work - Britain has never had a coalition government outside of wartime, even when the opportunity has arisen.
Article Series - Proportional-Representation-for-the-UK
- Proportional Representation: We The People
Kenyan And Pakistani Democracy: We The People
I hadn’t intended to start this column until next week, and not on this issue either - but rather by trying to find a working definition of democracy instead. This flurry of activity over the last week or so has prompted me to begin a bit early, and on a different topic.
Is there a Crisis of Democracy?
What could be called crises of democracy has occurred in Kenya and Pakistan, both accompanied by bursts of violence - one caused by the assassination of an opposition political leader, and another by alleged and suspected electoral fraud. Neither of these countries have a highly developed or deeply-embedded democracy, and are still riven by tribal differences. Fifty Kenyans have died in a torched church - a place normally regarded as a safe-house - because they were members of the same tribe as the President.
But is there really crises of democracy in these two countries?
