One of the topics listed for AQA's UK Politics paper this year is the vaguely titled 'nature of democracy' section. A glance at the mammoth UK/US textbook reveals that this is referring to the section on representative democracy and direct democracy, what constitutes them, how effective they are, and whether the UK would benefit from a move towards direct democracy.
A thing that is worth challenging, although not technically a mistake, comes about when students consider how effectively representative democracy actually provides representation to its citizens. Most students seem to look at this *only* through the lens of descriptive representation; that is to say, whether parliament looks like the electorate. A good place to look at this would be parliament's own numbers, which state that there are 220 women MPs out of 650, so just over a third (about half for Labour), with about 10% of MPs being from an ethnic minority vs 14% of the population. HOWEVER, this is not the main point of representation! What this means is how good are UK MPs at representing their constituents? UK citizens enjoy remarkable access to their MPs compared to a lot of countries, and politicians routinely travel back to their constituencies on Friday to deal with constituency issues. Political betting (quite a long time ago) pointed out that whilst people on the whole disliked MPs, they often liked their MP, in this article.
- As an aside the UK has JUST changed voter ID laws, making it the case that approximately 1.1 million people will lose the right to vote. Also, the Electoral Commission has lost its independence, putting it under direct government control. This is very relevant!
Here are some points about representative democracy that are worth remembering:
- Edmund Burke is probably the key person an examiner wants you to know, as the proponent of the trustee model of representation (as opposed to the delegate model). He said that " his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living." This means that an MP should make their own judgement on your behalf - NOT just doing what you think.
- You should look at how effectively our system encourages participation. What are recent general election turnouts? What are recent figures regarding political party membership?
- What is the level of education in our political system? How well informed are voters about political issues? Do they understand how UK democracy works?
- What is the level of accountability of our politicians? Between our (up to 5-yearly) elections MPs have very limited levels of accountability, and of course the overwhelming majority of them represent safe seats that means the chances of them losing are virtually nil.
- Other factors you might want to consider are legitimacy, civil rights, and the rule of law. More information about these can be found on page 146 of the excellent AQA Politics textbook (Lemiuex, Hammal, Fairclough and Bennett).
So would using a system with greater direct democracy improve on any of these areas. To know this it is important to know what we already have that includes this, and what else it could include.
Firstly, we should certainly know the results and details of referendums that have occurred in the UK. Some of these seem to demonstrate very positively about direct democracy, such as the high participation levels achieved in the EU referendum, as well as the 84% turnout in the Scottish Independence referendum. However, there are many examples of issues with referendums. This includes the 34% turnout of the London mayoral referendum, and 42% for the Alternative Vote referendum. Also, the Welsh Assembly referendum only passed with 50.3% of the vote, with a turnout of 50.2% - hardly a ringing endorsement, with only just over a quarter of the country voting for it.
Another aside - Farage and others are now pushing for a referendum of 'net zero' (the push for zero net carbon emissions). Hopefully this never happens.
It should be remembered that the government controls what we have referendums on and when we have them. As such, this is an informal add-on to our system, rather than a formal system such as in Switzerland, where they have frequent referendums, which can be gained via citizen petitions.
Other forms of direct democracy in the UK include:
- e-petitions, such as the one that led to a government enquiry into the Hillsborough disaster. This is an example of a genuine form of direct democracy that has been bolted on to the UK's system in a formal way. It should be noted that the government does, however, have no requirement to hold a debate on issues that gain sufficient signatures, such as the petition to cancel Brexit.
- Recall petitions. In certain circumstances, such as where an MP has received a criminal conviction, a petition that gets over 10% of votes in a given period can result in a recall election. Labour MP Fiona Onasanya and Conservative Christopher Davies have both been ousted from their seats in this manner.
- We now have directly elected mayors in a large number of locations, such as Liverpool where Labour Joe Anderson was succeeded by Jo Anderson. However, in Bristol they have voted to get rid of their directly elected mayor!
- Police and Crime Commissioners. These were supposed to give some local control over policing. I suppose it has, but when the turnout in 2018 was 26% it can hardly be said to have animated anyone.
- in the US they have some other things, like ballot initiatives which are local or state referendums on new laws. Some of them have led to major changes on issues like drugs or euthanasia. Anyone can get something on the ballot with enough signatures. They also have elections for all sorts of things, like school board members, giving voters direct control over all sorts of areas (which isn't always a good thing). Some states also have their own system of referendums, which effectively enables them to veto laws.
We seem to be moving towards some piecemeal mixture of direct and representative democracy. However, the prospects of citizen determined referendums are unlikely, or at least a long way off.
Hopefully whatever comes up is in some part answered by this post!
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