What accounts for the weakness of the UK Parliament?

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16/01/2008Daniel Cooper Somerville College Politics Essay WEEK1

Week 2: The Legislature

What accounts for the weakness of the UK Parliament?

Before performing the explicit task detailed in the question there must be an analysis of the implicit premise/s underpinning the question. This question has already accepted two premises, which are;

  1. The UK parliament is weak
  2. That weakness is an effect which has cause/s

Conclusion: There are factors that account for the weakness in the UK parliament.

The relationship between the conclusion and premises is one bi-conditional implication, in that the premises entail the conclusion and vice-versa.  Identifying these premises will be useful in the context of the question because finding evidence that supports them will legitimise the question and uncover evidence that supports the conclusion whilst concurrently answering the question.

The argument also helps us to identify the evidence that will negate the premises and therefore the conclusion. Examples of this type of evidence are episodes and actions that indicate large strength in the UK Parliament. If substantial evidence of this type is discovered then the answer to the question will consist of explanations of Parliament’s strength and a refutation of the implicit premise ‘the UK Parliament is weak.

Analysis of the structure of the question must now proceed to content in order to define a domain of study. The UK Parliament in question consists of two houses; the House of Commons and the House of Lords, therefore the scope of study extends to the members of these institutions. Accepted functions of Parliament need to be defined so that weakness or strength can be identified in the performance of these roles. Walter Bagehot suggested in 1867 these functions were to ‘ Elect a Ministry, legislate, teach the nation, express the nation’s will and bring matters to the nation’s attention.’

The areas being examined for weakness have been accurately defined now weakness and the context in which that quality is judged must also be defined. Weakness is lexically defined as ‘wanting strength or power, being easily overcome or lead, being unconvincing.’ Identifying weakness contextually is more problematic because of the nature of the adjective weak. We could try to identify Parliament’s weakness absolutely by using the dictionary definition to characterise certain activities weak or strong but the process of judgement and classification might become overly arbitrary. The fact weak is a scaling adjective indicates some form of relative judgement is necessary for it to be properly applied, however it is unclear which relation we should explore in order to make this characterisation.

The first obvious frame of reference is Parliament’s history; thus a longtitudinal study of past Parliaments ability to perform the identified functions effectively would be fruitful. The second frame of reference is an international one, by comparing the UK Parliament to our international counterparts weaknesses in our system can be exposed.

Within these two major frames of reference further interactions need to be considered. The principal set of relationships that require consideration are between Parliament and other actors. For example if the Cabinet and the Prime Minister in can easily manipulate Parliament in matters of legislation then Parliament could be defined as weak. Intra-Parliamentary relations are also significant when identifying weakness. The aphorism a chain is only as strong as the weakest link can be paraphrased to ‘ Parliament is only as strong as the weakest member.’ Therefore weakness is present if one House comprehensively dominates another or if there is a large standard deviation in the magnitude of influence of each member. Thus Parliament as a whole may be characterised weak even if groups or individuals within Parliament hold the majority of power.

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The flow of argument I will use to identify the factors that account for weakness in the UK Parliament is as follows:

1.Set a frame of reference to identify weakness

2.Identify weak actions by the UK Parliament

 3.Attribute causal factors for these weak actions

The final action should directly answer the questions and the previous stages should help to ensure a cohesive argument.

The first context I will use to identify weakness is a chronological one. The notion of Parliamentary decline seems to be supported by the words of John Smith who said      ‘Parliament ...

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