Direct democracy is where citizens within a country elect representatives to make decisions for them. In Britain every 5 years people have the chance to vote into power MP’s they wish to represent them in parliament. The elected MP’s then meet in the House of Commons to discuss matters and pass acts which then become British law. Each elected MP represents an area which is called a constituency. The electorate has given the responsibility of making decisions to the MP who wants to be in that position. For five years the MP represents his or her constituency and if they fail to perform they can be removed from this position by the people of their constituency. The majority of the time candidates offer electorates tax breaks and other incentives. They usually do not have the electorate’s interests at heart and just want to get into power.
“Most of the presidential candidates’ economic packages involve ‘tax breaks,’ which is when the government, amid great fanfare, generously decides not to take quite so much of your income. In other words, these candidates are trying to buy your votes with your own money.” Dave Barry
In electing an MP the electorate are removing themselves from the process of decision making process within the Commons. Representative democracy is sometimes described as a limited and indirect form of democracy. It is limited in the respect that the popular participation in government is infrequent and brief, the electorate can only vote to change the MP’s every 5 years. It is indirect in that the public do not exercise power themselves. There are some good points to representative democracy it offers a practical form of democracy in contrast to direct democracy. It also allows government to be placed in the hands of trained professionals with expert knowledge and experience in dealing with government issues.
Parliament is divided into three main sections, the Sovereign the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The House of Lords is mainly right wing and consists of hereditary peers and appointed or nominated peers. The House of Lords has no elected peers. The electorate has no power over who sits in the House of Lords and this is key issue in a representative democracy, seeing as though the House of Lords plays a role in passing bills. The House of Commons consists of elected MP’s. The way MP’s are elected in constituencies is a system called ‘first past the post’. The MP in each constituency who receives the most votes wins a seat in the House of Commons. Each MP will belong to a party and the party who receives the most seats becomes the governing party for the next 5 years. The governing party must have a parliamentary majority of 330 seats or more. As the government has the majority in the House of Commons they will usually have the majority decision when making or altering any laws. This undermines the whole point of a representative democracy. If a constituency did not vote for the party in government to represent them and they voted for a different party then there is little chance for their elected MP to have their voices heard in the Commons.
Roles of parliament have altered as relations between parliament/monarch and commons/lords have changed. Most governments have significant majorities, they can set the legislative agenda and force motions through, but even with the growth of executive power some roles remain. The first of these roles is legitimation. All parties accept the legitimacy of parliament and leaders and ministers are chosen from parliament members. The oratorical skills can determine both careers and fortunes of a party. The next role is scrutiny. This means that government must explain and defend its actions. The ways in which they do this include question time, select committees emergency debates etc. There are problems with question time though. The prime minister knows the questions he is going to be asked beforehand and has time to prepare his answers. There fore he can worm his way out as such, of difficult questions that have been asked. He is also never put on the spot so we never know if he is telling his people the truth. The third role is representation. The Commons represents by party, constituency and pressure groups. Various interests are to be found, especially via lobbying. Conflicting interests are a concern which prompted the Nolan report. Another role is reqruitment, ministers are invariably drawn from the Commons and they learn their trade in “shadow” positions. The skills learnt in the parliamentary debate are different from those needed to run the country, but they are honed in the Commons. The last role is law making. All statute must originate in the Commons as a bill. For a bill to become law it must pass through several readings and a standing committee before it progresses to the House of Lords. This is where problems lie with government dominating parliament. The government in power has the majority in the House of Commons, therefore if your elected MP is not a member of the governing party they don’t really stand a chance of objecting to or passing bills. The government also has the power to force legislation through with the Act of Parliament.
Once a party is elected the prime minister elects his own cabinet. The cabinet are a bunch of ministers who will each be given a department to run and they will control the issues of the country such as the budget, NHS, Schools and civil services to list a few. The cabinet makes all the important decisions in the day to day running of the country. These members of the cabinet are not elected by the electorate. This means that the people running the country are not entirely elected by the people, which goes against the whole point of a representative democracy.
In theory a well run representative democracy would be ideal but due to the interference of government in parliament Britain is not a well run representative democracy. I feel that in the UK, we do not have a representative democracy because the government dominates parliament is very much the case. Government dominates the majority of goings on in the House of Commons.
