Electoral Systems Flashcards
Outline the characteristics of Elections in the UK
- Universal adult suffrage
- One person, one vote
- Secret Ballot
- Free, fair and regular - held every 5 years
- Multiple levels: General elections, Devolved Assembly elections, European Parliament elections and Local elections (district, borough and city councils)
Functions of elections
- Form governments
- Ensure representation
- Uphold legitimacy
What doubts exist over the effectiveness of elections in ensuring representation?
- Four/five year gaps between elections mean that governments rule unchallenged, even if a majority of the public oppose their rule
- Doubt over the effectiveness of representatives in carrying out representation of their constituents, based on several models of representation
In what ways are governments not always legitimate?
- Low levels of turnout bring into question whether Governments actually have a mandate to rule given to them by the majority of citizens. Recent General elections of 2001, 2005 and 2010 have all suffered from low turnout
- Falling levels of support for major parties, Conservatives and Labour, may show disillusionment with Government as it is highly likely that one of these parties will win power
What is representation?
When an individual or group stands on behalf of a larger body of people. Representation seeks to form a system of popular self-government in which there is no difference between the people and government, unlike democracy where this difference exists
What 3 ways is representation supposedly carried out?
- Trusteeship
- Doctrine of the mandate
- Descriptive representation
What is trusteeship?
- System of representation said to operate in the UK
- MPs should not act as delegates but as trustees; this describes the way in which MPs act on behalf of others, using their superior knowledge and experience and better education, taking issues that are in that are in the long-term interests of their constituents to Parliament, even if these contradict their short-term interests/goals
- Often referred to as the ‘Burkean Model’ of representation
What are the issues associated with trusteeship?
- -MPs can act selfishly. Career-minded MPs may act in a way which would set them up for promotion within their party and not for the general good of their constituents
- Out of date; it would mean MPs would have to assume knowledge of and responsibility for a much wider range of issues affecting a wider range of people, which is often outside of their existing knowledge or expertise
What is the Doctrine of the Mandate?
- Theory which argues that as parties publish manifestos during election campaigns, the winning party has the legitimacy to translate those commitments into laws or policies
- Argues that parties act as representatives and not individual MPs, as the party’s policies have received the backing of the electorate and therefore represents their views
- Also means that MPs should be loyal to their party, as if they do not, they are effecting the quality of representation given
What are the criticisms of the Doctrine of the Mandate?
- Assumes voters vote ‘rationally’ i.e. that they choose a party based on their manifesto. We know that often this does not happen, with a variety of ‘non-rational’ factors affecting their choices i.e. party name, background and age
- It is unlikely voters agree entirely with a party’s manifesto
- Parties do not have to honour their manifesto promises, meaning parties use ‘vote-winning’ policies to gain favour
- Unclear whether the party or the PM claims the mandate
- Cannot apply upon the formation of a coalition; certain manifesto promises have to be abandoned, such as the Lib Dems’ promise of an end to university tuition fees in 2010.
What is Descriptive Representation?
- Parties should resemble the group they claim to represent
- If this took place, government would be a cross-section of wider society, containing members from all races, classes and social groups
What is a key problem with Descriptive Representation?
There are concerns whether the UK public are represented descriptively, as there is considerable under-representation of women and minorities in government.
What are the concerns over the value of Descriptive Representation?
- If a government only represents the groups from which they come, representation would become narrow with no insight into broader public interest and other points of view
- If the government was fully representative of the population it would display its weaknesses i.e. apathy, lack of education and ill-informedness, and would not further public interests
- Balancing out representation of different groups is difficult. For example, if one group was more highly represented than another, other groups could be said to be neglected. For example, Labour’s attempt to boost female representation in Parliament through all-women shortlists was declared illegal under equal-oppurtunities legislation
What is a majoritarian electoral system?
- An electoral system which promotes the likelihood of single-party majority government
- Larger parties tend to win a higher proportion of seats than the proportion of votes they gain at election
What are the subdivisions which exist within majoritarian electoral systems? What is a problem with majoritarian systems?
- Plurality Systems: where individual candidates only need to win a majority of the vote e.g. FPTP
- Majority Systems: where candidates need to win a majority of the vote (over 50%) e.g the Alternative Vote and SV
-Both are highly disproportionate; there is little correlation between the % of votes and the % of seats
What are proportional systems?
-An electoral system which guarantees an equal, or at least a closer and more reliable link between the number of seats gained by parties and the number of votes they gain at election
Where is First-Past-the-Post used?
Westminster General elections and English and Welsh local government elections
Outline the workings of FPTP
- Constituency-based system: there are 646 constituencies in the UK
1. Voters select a single candidate by marking an ‘X’ next to their name on the ballot paper, reflecting the “one person = one vote” principle
2. Constituencies are of roughly equal size. This is ensured by the Electoral Commission in England and Wales and the Boundary Commission in Scotland and Northern Ireland
3. Each constituency returns a single candidate as winner. However in local government there are multi-member constituencies - The winning candidate must only have achieved a plurality of the votes i.e. more than any other candidate
What are the implications of First-Past-the-Post?
- Disproportionality
- Systematic Biases
- Two-Party system
- Single-party majority government
- The landslide effect
Describe how FPTP creates disproportionality
- Fails to create a link between the % of votes gained by a party and the number of seats they win
- This is because the system elects individual members, not parties as a whole
- For example, it is possible for the ‘wrong’ party to win at election; in 1951, Conservatives formed a majority government with fewer votes than Labour. The opposite happened again in 1974.
