CHINESE POLITICAL SYSTEM
The Chinese Communist Party is almost schizophrenic in its economic policies. China still maintains a communist society but, on the other hand, its economy is more capitalist than most European countries. Chinese country is the largest in the world by population and it is a nation of growing economic and political importance in global affairs, it is a political system rivaled in its opacity by the government of North Korea. Ever since the end of the civil war in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has ruled the country. The Party is over 89-million membership which makes it the biggest political party in the world.
The Constitution of the People's Republic of China is amendable document. The first Constitution was adopted in 1954. After the two intervening versions, the constitution enacted in 1975 and 1978, the current Constitution was declared in 1982. There were significant differences between each of these versions, and the 1982 Constitution has subsequently been amended not less than four times (1988, 1993, 1999, and 2004). Furthermore, changing Constitutional conventions have led to significant changes in the structure of Chinese government in the absence of changes in the actual text of the Constitution.
They have no special organization tasked with the enforcement of the Chinese Constitution. , More so, under the legal system of the People's Republic of China (PRC), courts lack the general power of judicial review and cannot invalidate a statute on the grounds that it violates the Constitution.
THE POLITBURO
These are the main group of people in a communist government who make decisions about policy. Most significant decision affecting China is first discussed and approved by a handful of men who sit on the party's Political Bureau or Politburo which is the nexus of all power in this nation of 1.3 billion. 25-member Politburo is elected by the party's Central Committee. New Politburo members are chosen only after rigorous discussion and investigation of their backgrounds, experience and views. To reach the top, people need a strong record of achievement working for the party, to have the right patrons, to have dodged controversy, and to have avoided making powerful enemies.
The politburo is made up of party secretaries from big municipalities like Beijing and Shanghai and from important provinces like Guangdong. Presently, the wealth generated by China's economic reforms has led some analysts to suggest the power of the centre as waning. It was noted that the party secretaries of large provinces like Sichuan and Guangdong are in charge of populations bigger than most European countries and that their tax revenues are extremely important to Beijing.
Formally, the power of Politburo members stems from their positions in the decision-making body in order words the people value personalities. But in China, personal relations count much more than job titles. A leader's influence rests on the loyalties he or she builds with superiors and protégés, often over decades. That was how Deng Xiaoping remained paramount leader long after resigning all official posts and it explains why party elders sometimes play a key role in big decisions.
China's most senior decision-making body is the seven-member Standing Committee of the Politburo which works as a kind of inner cabinet and groups together the country's most influential leaders. The current members are Xi Jinping (the President), Han Zheng, Wang Huning, Li Zhanshu, Li Keqiang (the Prime Minister), Wang Yang, and Zhao Liji. Members are elected to serve for a term of five years. How the Standing Committee operates is secret and unclear, but its meetings are thought to be regular and frequent, often characterized by blunt speaking and disagreement. Although policy disagreements and factional fighting are widely believed to take place in private, it is extremely rare for these to break into the public domain.
Members of the Standing Committee also share out the posts of party General Secretary, premier, chairman of the National People's Congress, and head of the Discipline Inspection Commission. The Politburo controls three other important bodies and ensures the party line is upheld through these bodies. These are:
- the National People's Congress or parliament
- the State Council, the government's administrative arm
- the Military Affairs Commission which controls the armed forces
The President of China is the head of state. He is currently Xi Jinping who was appointed at the end of 2012 in the expectation that he would serve for 10 years. The president is widely regarded as having acquired more power and as behaving in a more paranoid fashion than any other leader since Mao Zedong, having abandoned the Communist Party's once hallowed tradition of 'collective leadership' in favour of strongman rule by himself. While he is genuinely opposed to corruption among party officials, he has used his anti-corruption campaign to remove rivals and consolidate power.
The Premier of China is the head of the government and leads the State Council. He is currently Li Keqiang who was appointed at the end of 2012 and is expected to serve for 10 years. Although a relatively recent innovation, introduced in 1997, enforcement of age and term limits for top Party and State positions has brought a degree of predictability into otherwise opaque Chinese elite politics. So now, for all senior officials, there is an official retirement age of 65 and a limit of two to five-year terms in the same post.
This means that normally the President would serve for two five-year terms and his successor would effectively be nomintaed five years in advance. However, the current President Xi Jinping is doing things differently and, at the 19th Party Congress held in October 2017, he ensured that no member is young enough to take over from him in 2022. This has led to widespread speculation that Xi plans to break with convention and serve more than two terms as President. It should be noted that senior leaders sometimes retain great influence over decisions and appointments long after they officially step down from power. Part of the reason the elders wield such influence is because of the patron-protégé nature of Chinese politics.
The Central Committee is elected once every five years by the National Congress of the Communist Party of China although in fact almost all of these people are approved in advance. This Central Committee has 205 full members and 171 lower-ranking or "alternate" members". It meets every couple of months. The Central Committee is, formally, the "party's highest organ of authority" when the National People's Congress is not in session. According to the Party Constitution, it is vested with the power to elect the General Secretary and the members of the Politburo, its Standing Committee, and the Military Affairs Commission, and to endorse the composition of the Discipline Inspection Commission. It also oversees work of various powerful national organs of the party.
Under China's 1982 constitution, the most powerful organ of state is meant to be the National People's Congress (NPC), China's unicameral legislature. However, the reality is that this is little more than a rubber stamp for party decisions. The Congress is made up of 2,270 delegates elected by China's provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities and the armed forces. Delegates hold office for five years. The full Congress is convened for one session in March of each year and lasts a mere two weeks. This means that China has the largest legislature in the world which meets for the least time in the world.
In theory, the Congress has the powers to change the constitution and make laws. But it is not, and is not meant to be, an independent body in the Western sense of a parliament. For a start, about 70% of its delegates - and almost all its senior figures - are also party members. Their loyalty is to the party first, the NPC second. What actually tends to happen, therefore, is that the party drafts most new legislation and passes it to the NPC for "consideration", better described as speedy approval.
The NPC has shown some signs of growing independence over the past decade. For instance, in a notable incident in 1999, it delayed passing a law bringing in an unpopular fuel tax. It has also been given greater leeway drafting laws in areas like human rights. The formal position is that Congress "elects" the country's highest leaders, including the State President and Vice-President, the Chairman of the government's own Military Affairs Commission, and the President of the Supreme People's Court.
The State Council is the cabinet which oversees China's vast government machine. It sits at the top of a complex bureaucracy of commissions and ministries and is responsible for making sure party policy is implemented from the national to the local level. In theory, the State Council answers to the National People's Congress, but more often the State Council submits legislation and measures which the NPC then approves.
The State Council's most important roles are to draft and manage the national economic plan and the state budget, giving it decision-making powers over almost every aspect of people's lives. It is also responsible for law and order. The full council meets once a month, but the more influential Standing Committee comes together more often, sometimes twice a week. This committee is made up of the country's premier, four vice-premiers, state councillors and the secretary-general.
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) - currently 2.25 million strong - has always defended the party as much as national borders. During the early years of communist rule, most of the country's leaders owed their positions to their military success during the civil war, and links between them and the PLA remained very close. However, as this generation has died off and reforms have been introduced to make the armed forces more professional, the relationship has shifted subtly.
Party leaders know they are lost without the army's support, as became clear during crises like the 1989 Tiananmen protests. At the same time, senior military leaders realise they need the leadership's backing if far-reaching plans to modernise the armed forces are to be paid for.
The party's control over the armed forces and their nuclear arsenal is institutionalised through the Central Military Affairs Commission. Currently the 11-member Commission has a civilian chairman (the President Xi Jinping), two uniformed vice chairmen, and eight uniformed regular members. The eight are the Minister of Defence, the directors of the PLA’s four headquarters departments, and the commanders of the Navy, Air Force, and strategic missile forces, known as the Second Artillery Corps.
This Commission has the final say on all decisions relating to the PLA, including senior appointments, troop deployments and arms spending. PLA officers are also party members and there is a separate party machine inside the military to make sure rank and file stay in line with party thinking. The Military Affairs Commission also controls the paramilitary People's Armed Police (1.5 million strong), which has the politically sensitive role of guarding key government buildings, including the main leadership compound of Zhongnanhai in Beijing.
Party members suspected of corruption, bad management or breaking with the party line are liable to be brought before the Discipline Inspection Commission, set up to deal with internal party discipline and to monitor abuses. Indeed, as economic reforms have gathered pace, corruption has become probably the single most damaging issue for the party's standing.
President has launched an assault on inefficiency and corruption. The targets of the anti-corruption campaign have included the former head of security Zhou Yongkang, the country's highest-ranking official to be prosecuted in more than three decades, and Ling Jihua, a top aide to the former president Hu Jintao. Of course, such actions, as well as combating corruption, serve to eliminate opponents and consolidate power.
THE COURTS
Unlike in democratic countries, the China's court system is in no sense independent. Both main legal organs answer to the National People's Congress. The Supreme People's Procuratorate is the highest legal supervisory body, charged with safeguarding the constitution, laws and people's rights. The Supreme People's Court sits at the top of a pyramid of people's courts going down to the local level. Public security organs are in charge of the investigation, detention and preparatory examination of criminal cases.
China is governed as 22 provinces, five "autonomous" regions, four municipalities - considered so important they are under central government control (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing) - and two special administrative regions. The people in charge of these bodies - a group of about 7,000 senior party and government leaders - are all appointed by the party's organization department.
Though, many are powerful individuals - the governor of Sichuan province rules over 80 million people - their ability to deviate from the party line is limited because they know their next career move would be at stake. Nevertheless, most analysts agree the centre has lost some control to the regions in the past two decades, especially in the economic field.
The Russian political system is one of the more recent to embrace democracy but remains deeply flawed in terms of its democratic credentials, overwhelmingly tainted by corruption, and massively influenced by the power and personality of one man, Vladimir Putin. The Russian Federation was the largest nation to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991. Following the constitutional crisis of 1993, Russia adopted a new constitution in a referendum of December 1993. Essentially the country is described as a federal presidential republic.
The constitution of 1993 provides strong powers for the President. The President has broad authority to issue decrees and directives that have the force of law without legislative review, although the constitution notes that they must not contravene that document or other laws. Indeed Russia's strong presidency is sometimes compared with that of Charles de Gaulle in the French Fifth Republic (1958-69).
The President's power in practice is underlined by his power to make so many appointments of key officials. It is estimated that the size of the Presidential apparatus in Moscow and the localities is more than 75,000 people, most of them employees of state-owned enterprises directly under Presidential control.
The Law on Presidential Elections requires that the winner receive more than 50% of the votes cast. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the top two candidates in term of votes must face each other in a run-off election. Under the original 1993 constitution, the President was elected for a four-year term but, in November 2008, the constitution was amended to make this a six year term. The President is eligible for a second term but constitutionally he is barred from a third term tenure.
The first President of the new Russia was Boris Yelsin who was elected in June 1991. He was followed by his hand-picked successor Vladimir Putin. After a term as Acting President, he was elected for his first term in May 2000 and for a second term in March 2004. In accordance with the constitution, he stepped down in March 2008 and was succeeded by his nominated successor Dmitry Medvedev (previously a First Deputy Prime Minister). In March 2012, Putin was re-elected as President on the first ballot in a widely criticized election in which the opposition candidates were weak, the media was compliant, and there were many electoral irregularities. He took office in May 2012 and will serve for six years. Constitutionally Putin could seek one further term and, if elected, would therefore be President until 2024 when he would be 71. The next presidential election is in March 2018 which is this year, Putin will definitely stand, and he will certainly be elected.
The Prime Minister is appointed by the President with the approval of the Duma and is first-in-line to the presidency in the case of the President's death or resignation. Historically the role of Prime Minister has been very much subservient to that of the President. However, this situation changed in March 2008 when Vladimir Putin stepped down as President - as he was constitutionally required to do - and became Prime Minister while the First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev stepped up to the Presidency. In May 2012, Putin returned to the Presidency and former President Medvedev became Prime Minister in an exchange of roles.
The lower house in the Russian Federal Assembly is the State Duma. It is the more powerful house, so all bills, even those proposed by the Federation Council, must first be considered by the Duma. However, the Duma's power to force the resignation of the Government is severely limited. It may express a vote of no confidence in the Government by a majority vote of all members of the Duma, but the President is allowed to disregard this vote.
The Duma has 450 members who are known as deputies. Originally seats in the Duma were elected half by proportional representation (with at least 5% of the vote to qualify for seats) and half by single member districts. However, President Putin passed a decree that from the November 2007 election all seats were to be elected by proportional representation with at least 7% of the vote to qualify for seats. This 7% threshold was one of the highest in Europe and, by introducing this; Putin eliminated independents and made it effectively impossible for small parties to be elected to the Duma.
Recently Duma is elected on a single day for a term of five years, with parallel voting that was used between 1993 and 2003. Therefore, half of the 450 seats are elected by proportional representation from closed party lists with a 5% electoral threshold with the whole country as a single constituency. The other 225 seats are elected in single-member constituencies using the first-past-the-post system. Under the original 1993 constitution, elections were held every four years but, in November 2008, the constitution was amended to make the Duma's term five years. A Duma election was held in December 2011 (when turnout was only 60%). So a Duma election should have been on 4 December 2016 but was brought forward to 18 September 2016 (when turnover fell to a record low of just 48%). The next election will be due on 2021. The Duma is headquartered in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square.
THE FEDERATION COUNCIL
The upper house in the Russian Federal Assembly is the Federation Council. The Council has 170 members who are known as senators. Each of the 85 federal subjects of Russia sends two members to the Council.
The federal subjects are the 47 oblasts (provinces), the eight krais (various large territories with the same legal status as oblasts)), the two federal cities (Moscow and St Petersburg), the 21 republics (areas of non-Russian ethnicity), the four autonomous okrugs (various regions) and one autonomous oblast (the Jewish Autonomous Oblast), each category of which has different powers. In 2014, Sevastopol and the Republic of Crimea became the 84th and 85th federal subjects of Russia, although the two most recently added subjects are internationally recognized as part of Ukraine. One senator is elected by the provincial legislature and the other is nominated by the provincial governor and confirmed by the legislature.
For the fact that the territorial nature of the upper house, terms to the Council are not nationally fixed, but instead are determined according to the regional bodies the senators represent. The Council holds its sessions within the Main Building on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street in Moscow, the former home of the Soviet State Building Agency (Gosstroi).
POLITICAL PARTIES
The main political party is called United Russia and is led by Dmitry Medvedev. It was founded in April 2001 as a result of a merger between several political parties. It describes itself as centrist, but it is essentially a creation of Vladimir Putin and supports him in the Duma and the Federation Council. In the Duma election of December 2011, even with the alleged voting irregularities, United Russia's share of the vote fell by 15% to just over 49% and the number of its deputies fell by 77 to 238. However, in the election of September 2016, the party - while winning 54% of the vote - increased its number of seats by 105 to 343.
The main opposition party is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation led by Gennady Zyuganov. In the election of 2011, it won 19% of the vote and took 92 seats. At the last Duma election in 2016, its share of the vote fell to 13% its seat count fell by 50 to 42. The other parties in the Duma are the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky) with 39 seats (down by 17) and the fake opposition party A Just Russia (led by Sergey Mironov) with 23 seats (down by 41).
The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation consists of 19 judges, one being the Chairman and another one being Deputy Chairman. Judges are appointed by the President with the consent of the Federation Council. The Constitutional Court is a court of limited subject matter jurisdiction. The 1993 constitution empowers the Constitutional Court to arbitrate disputes between the executive and legislative branches and between Moscow and the regional and local governments. The court also is authorized to rule on violations of constitutional rights, to examine appeals from various bodies, and to participate in impeachment proceedings against the President.
Although in theory the judiciary is independent, most observers believe that major elements of the judiciary - together with the police and prosecution authorities - are under the political control of the Kremlin and more specifically Vladimir Putin.
The world describes the current state of the Russian political system as "managed democracy" or "sovereign democracy" or simply as "Putinism". The three political parties not in government are called the "systemic opposition". The dismissal of Russia's powerful prosecutor-general Yuri Skuratov in 1999, the indictment of Russia's richest oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003 and again in 2010, the unexplained murder of investigative journalist Anna Plitkovskaya in 2006, the death in prison of the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in 2009, the imprisonment of the three Pussy Riot members Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova & Yekaterina Samutsevich in 2012, the expulsion from the Duma of opposition deputy Gennady Gudkov in 2012, the conviction of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2013, and the assassination of leader of the opposition Boris Nemtsov in 2015, are but the most dramatic examples of the iron grip on political power exercised by Putin and his allies.
hTHE POLITICAL SYTEM the UNITED KINGDOM
http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/Russianpoliticalsystem.html
Political system of every nation is shaped by history. The fundamental continuity could be said to be the important nature of understanding the British political system. The nation has not been invaded or occupied by any substantial territory rather they were the one that invade and occupy other territories. For the first time in history it was only in 1066 that England was invaded by the Normans. So getting to 1000 years they have not been invaded or occupied by any nation.
1. Britain has no Written constitution example of other nation that has the same unwritten constitution are the Israel and New Zealand.
2. Their political system is not logical or neat, democratic and efficient.
3. They have gradual change, pragmatic and building a solid foundation on consensus.
4. The British attitude is separate from Europe and other people or cultures to that extend they are not interested in new or different ideas and this was the major factor behind the Brexit decision of 23rd June 2016.
Note: a referendum – a vote in which everyone (or nearly everyone) of a voting age can take part – was held on Thursday 23 June 2016, to decide whether the UK should leave or remain in the European Union. Whether to leave, won by 51.9% to 48.1%, the referendum turnout was 71.8%, with more than 30 million people voting (http://www.bbc.com.news.uk-politic...).The UK is due to leave the EU on 29th March 2019 at 11pm. UK time, when the period for negotiating a withdrawal agreement will end unless an extension is agreed. The UK joined the European Communities (EC) in 1973, with membership confirmed by a referendum in 1975 (http://enwikipedia.org>wiki>Brexit).Brexit is abbreviations for British exit; referring to the UK’s decision in a June 23, 2016 referendum to leave the European Union.
The political history of the British has been a struggle to shift power and accountability from the king that claimed his right to rule is from God. With the power tussle democracy here was trying to survive and there has been increasing representatives of ordinary people and accountable to ordinary people. In 1215 their King John was forced to sign the Magna Carta which has to do with the sharing of power with the Barons. This was regarded as the first statement of citizens’ rights in the world of which the Hungarians enjoyed the Golden Bull for seven years. The first Representative Assembly was called Model Parliament that was concluded by King Edward I in 1295. The British Parliament is Bicameral in nature of which the House of Commons and Lords emerged in 1341, having served as a template in very many other parliamentary systems. The 1689 bill lays down limits on the powers of the crown and sets out the rights of Parliament and the parliamentary rules, freedom of speech, Parliamentary regular election requirement and that the monarch can be petitioned without fear of retribution.
Further Reform Acts followed in 1867 and 1884. It was in1918 before the country achieved a near universal franchise and 1970 before the last extension of the franchise (to 18-21 years). Another important feature of British political history is that three parts of the United Kingdom; Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have a special status and have local administrations with a wide range of responsibilities. However, England which represents about 84% of the total UK population of around 65 million does not have a clear and strong sense of regionalism. So the British political system does not have anything equivalent to the federal system of the 50 states in the USA. The nature of the United Kingdom took on a new form in the General Election of May 2015 of which the Scottish National Party won 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland.
The final important part of British political history is that, since 1973, the UK has been a member of what is now called the European Union (EU). Recently the EU have 28 Member States covering most of the continent of Europe. Therefore the UK Government and Parliament are limited in some respects by what they can do because certain areas of policy or decision-making are a matter for the EU which operates through a European Commission appointed by the member governments and a European Parliament elected by the citizens of the member states The year 2015 was a special year for the British Parliament as it was the 750th anniversary of the de Montfort Parliament (the first gathering in England that can be called a parliament in the dictionary sense of the word), along with the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, the document that set the scene for the later 1265 de Montfort Parliament.
The British political system is headed by a monarch but essentially the powers of the monarch as head of state - currently Queen Elizabeth II - are ceremonial. The most important practical power is the choice of the Member of Parliament to form a government, but the monarch follows the convention that this opportunity is granted to the leader of the political party with the most number of seats in the House of Commons or who stands the best chance of commanding a majority in a vote of confidence in the Commons. The senior royals notably the Queen and her eldest son the Prince of Wales have to be consulted about legislation that might affect their private interests and given the opportunity to have such legislation amended. Traditionally the choice of monarch has been determined on the hereditary and primogeniture principle which means that the oldest male child of a monarch was the next in line to the throne. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement of 1701, the monarch and the monarch's spouse could not be Catholics because the UK monarch is also the Head of the Church of England. In 2015, the primogeniture principle was abolished, so that the next in line can now be a female eldest child, and the monarch can marry a Catholic but not him or her to be one.
In classical political theory, there are three arms of the state:
- The executive - the Ministers who run the country and propose new laws
- The legislature - the elected body that passes new laws
- The judiciary - the judges and the courts who ensure that everyone obeys the laws.
In the political system of the United States, the constitution provides that there must be a strict division of powers of these three arms of the state, so that no individual can be a member of more than one. So, for example, the President is not and cannot be a member of the Congress. This concept is called 'separation of powers', a term coined by the French political, enlightenment thinker Montesquieu. This is not the case in the UK where all Ministers in the government are members of the legislature and one individual, the Lord Chancellor, is actually a member of all three arms.
The British Parliament is often called Westminster because it is housed in a distinguished building in central London called the Palace of Westminster which stands out because of the clock tower at the south end (the Elizabeth Tower and it houses Big Ben) and the tower with a flag at the other end (the Victoria Tower). The British Parliament - like that of larger countries is bicameral, that is there are two houses or chambers; the House of Commons and House of Lords We can find unicameral legislatures in smaller nations such as: Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Greece, Israel and New Zealand, although China and Iran are two larger nations with a single legislative chamber (but neither of these countries practices democracy).
The House of Commons
This is the lower chamber but the one with the most authority. The Commons is chaired by the Speaker. Unlike the Speaker in the US House of Representatives, the post is non-political but by convention, the political parties do not contest the Parliamentary constituency held by the Speaker. The House of Commons currently comprises 650 Members of Parliament or MPs (the number varies slightly from time to time to reflect population change). This is a large legislature by international standards. For instance, the House of Representatives in the USA has 435 seats but, whereas, each of the 50 US states has its own legislature. The Coalition Government of 2010-2015 passed legislation to reduce the number from 650 to 600, as part of a wider change to the number and size of constituencies, but Parliament blocked the process of redrawing boundaries that is necessary before an General Election can be held with fewer seats.
Rather oddly (but deliberately), there is insufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Commons for all the MPs. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, green-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 437 MPs out of the total of 650. The origin of this strange arrangement is that the Commons first home was the medieval St Stephen's Chapel in the Palace of Westminster which could only fit around 400 Members.
Every citizen aged 18 or over can vote once in the constituency in which they live. Voting is not compulsory (as it is in Australia). In the last General Election of May 2015, 66.1% of the electorate actually voted. Most democratic countries use a method of election called proportional representation (PR) which means that there is a reasonable correlation between the percentage of votes cast for a particular political party and the number of seats or representatives won by that party. However, much of the Anglo-Saxon world - the USA, Canada, and the UK but not Australia or New Zealand - uses a method of election called the simple majority system or 'first past the post' (FPTP). In this system, the country is divided into a number of constituencies each with a single member and the party that wins the largest number of votes in each constituency wins that constituency regardless of the proportion of the vote secured. The simple majority system of election tends to under-represent less successful political parties and to maximise the chance of the most popular political party winning a majority of seats nationwide even if it does not win a majority of the votes nationwide. Until recently, in the UK (unlike many countries), there was not fixed term parliaments.
The House of Lords
This is the upper chamber but the one with less authority. Its main roles are to revise legislation and keep a check on Government by scrutinising its activities. Since 1911, its power to block "money bills" is limited to one month and its power to block other bills is limited to one session, so ultimately it cannot block the will of the House of Commons. Furthermore, since 1945, there has been the Salisbury Convention that the House of Lords will not oppose a measure that was specifically mentioned in the last election manifesto of the political party forming the Government.
The House of Lords is an utterly bizarre institution that has no parallel anywhere in the democratic world. The explanation for the unusual nature of the Lords goes back to the beginning of this essay: the British political system has evolved very slowly and peacefully and it is not totally logical or democratic.
There is no fixed number of members in the House of Lords, but currently there are 826 members - many more than in the House of Commons, more than the combined houses of the American Congress or the Indian Parliament (although both of these nations have a federal system), and the second biggest legislative body in the world (after the Chinese National People's Congress which is effectively a rubber-stamping body). The number was actually halved to 666 in the reforms of 1999 but, since then, succesive Prime Ministers (especially David Cameron) have been adding new life peers much faster than members are dying. Indeed the last (Coalition) Government added over 100. Ironically the size of the House of Lords continues to rise at the same time as the House of Commons has legislated to reduce its size (although the legislation has not been implemented).
Historically most members of the House of Lords have been what we called hereditary peers. This meant that years ago a king or queen nominated a member of the aristocracy to be a member of the House and, since then, the right to sit in the House has passed through the family from generation to generation. Clearly this is totally undemocratic and the last Labour Government abolished the right of all but 92 of these hereditary peers to sit in the House.
- Almost all the other members of today's House of Lords are what we call life peers. This means that they have been chosen by the Queen, on the advice of the Government, to sit in the House for as long as they live, but afterwards no member of their family has the right to sit in the House. Almost 200 are former Members of Parliament. Others are distinguished figures in fields such as education, health and social policy.
A small number of other members - 26 - are archbishops and bishops of the Church of England. The archbishops of Canterbury and York and the bishops of London, Durham and Winchester automatically take seats in the Lords, while the further 21 seats are allocated on the basis of length of service. Iran is the only other country in the world that provides automatic seats for senior religious figures in its legislature.
There is no retirement age for peers and the average age is an incredible 69.
There is nowhere near sufficient seating capacity in the chamber of the House of Lords for all the peers. Members do not sit at desks (like most legislatures) but on long, red-covered benches and there is only seating capacity for 230 peers out of the total of over 800. Even on a 'whipped' vote, a couple of hundred peers will not turn up.
House of Lords reform is unfinished business. The Parliament Act of 1911 first raised the prospect of an elected upper house but it has still not happened. There is a cross-party consensus that it should become a mainly elected body, although there is as yet no agreement on the details of the next stage of reform.
Some distinguishing features of the British Parliamentary system
Much of the work of Parliament is done in Committees rather than on the floor of the chamber. The House of Commons has two types of committee:
Select Committees are appointed for the lifetime of a Parliament, 'shadow' the work of a particular Government Department, conduct investigations, receive written and oral evidence, and issue reports. Membership is made up only of backbenchers and reflects proportionately the balance of the parties in the Commons.
General Committees (previously known as Standing Committees) are temporary bodies, most of them Public Bill Committees formed to examine the detail of a particular piece of proposed legislation and consider amendments to the Bill. Membership includes Government and Opposition spokepersons on the subject matter of the Bill and overall membership reflects proportionately the balance of the parties in the Commons.
The House of Lords only has Select Committees (it does not need Standing Committees because the details of Bills are considered on the floor of the chamber).
Finally there are some Joint Committees of the Commons and the Lords.
Discussion and debate involve quite a gladiatorial or confrontational approach. This is reflected in the physical shape of the chambers. Whereas most legislatures are semi-circular, both the House of Commons and the House of Lords are rectangular with the Government party sitting on one side and the Opposition parties sitting on the other side. The House of Lords alone has cross-benches for independent peers. It is quite normal for speakers in debates to be interrupted by other members, especially of another party, and, in the Commons, cheering and jeering is a regular occurrence.
In the Commons, there is a Prime Minister's Question (PMQ) Time for 30 minutes at 12 noon every Wednesday. Questions can be asked on any subject. This is frequently a heated affair with the Leader of the Opposition trying to embarrass the Prime Minister and it is the one part of the week's proceedings guaranteed to attract the interest of the media. In his book "A Journey", former Prime Minister Tony Blair wrote: "PMQs was the most nerve-wracking, discombobulating, nail-biting, bowel-moving, terror-inspiring, courage-draining experience in my prime ministerial life, without question."
The Government is normally assured of a majority in the House of Commons for any measure or vote. This is mainly because in the Commons there is a strong 'whipping' system in which political parties tell their members how to vote on every significant division though a weekly set of instructions. The importance of actually being present to vote in the manner instructed depends on whether the 'whip' is one-line, two-line or - the most serious - three-line. Even when there is a rebellion by members of the majority party, the Government usually obtains its wish because all Ministers and their Parliamentary Private Secretaries (PPSs) are required to vote for the Government or resign their Ministerial or PPS position. This is called 'the payroll vote' (although PPS are not actually paid to be a PPS) and currently around 120 MPs or 22% of the Commons make up this block vote.
- The official record of the proceedings of the Commons and the Lords is called Hansard. The press and broadcasters are present all the time and live audio and visual broadcasting can take place at any time.
In the British political system, almost all legislation is proposed by the Government and much of it comes from promises made in the manifesto of the relevant political party at the last election. At the beginning of each annual session of the Parliament, the main Bills to be considered are announced by the Queen in a speech opening that year's session of Parliament.
All legislation has to be approved by both Houses of Parliament.
In each House of Parliament, a proposed piece of legislation - called a Bill - goes through the following stages:
- First Reading - the Bill is introduced with simply a reading by a Minister of the long title of the Bill
- Second Reading - the general principles of the Bill are debated by all the members of the House and a formal vote is taken
- Committee Stage - each clause and schedule of the Bill, plus amendments to them and any new clauses or schedules, is examined in detail, in the Commons by a small, specially chosen group of members meeting as Public Bill Committee or in the Lords by the members as a whole on the floor of the House
- Report Stage - the changes made to the Bill in the Committee are reported to and debated by the whole House which is invited to consider the Bill as a whole, approve the changes by the Committee, and consider any further proposed changes that might be suggested
- Third Reading - the final version of the Bill is considered by the whole House in a short debate (in the Commons without the facility for further amendments)
- Royal Assent - the Crown gives assent to the Bill which then becomes an Act, the provisions becoming law either immediately or at a date specified in the Act or at a date specified by what is called a Commencement Order
Several points are worth noting about the legislative process:
- Under normal circumstances, all these stages must be completed in both Houses in one session of Parliament; otherwise the process must begin all over again.
- Debates on most Bills are timetabled through a programme motion (when Government and Opposition agree) or an allocation of time motion which is popularly known as a 'guillotine' motion (when Government and Opposition do not agree).
- As well as almost all legislation coming from the Government, almost all successful amendments originate from the Government.
- Ultimately, exactly the same text of a Bill must be approved by both Houses of Parliament. If the House of Lords approves an amendment to a Bill from the House of Commons, then the Bill returns to the Commons for further consideration. Usually the Lords amendment is not accepted by the Commons which is, after all, the elected chamber with the the democratic mandate. If the Lords insists on passing the amendment - or something like it - again, then the process of the Bill passing back and forth between the two Houses is known colloquially as "ping-pong".
- The House of Lords has much more limited legislative powers than the House of Commons. Money Bills can only be initiated in the Commons and the Lords can only reject legislation from the Commons for one year. Furthermore there is a convention - called the Salisbury Convention - that the Lords does not block legislation in fulfillment of the election manifesto of the elected Government.
This process of enacting legislation applies to what is called primary legislation which starts as a Bill and finally become an Act. Another type of legislation is called secondary (or delegated) legislation which is usually more detailed. The power to make specific pieces of secondary legislation comes from specific pieces of primary legislation. A piece of secondary legislation - formally called an Order-in-Council - is not even debated unless it is particularly controversial and then it cannot be amended but simply approved or opposed. In practice, the last time Parliament rejected a piece of secondary legislation was in 1979.
In recent years, the number of Bills passed by Parliament has remained broadly constant at around 50 a year. However, these Bills have become longer and, in the past few years, about 3,000 pages of primary legislation, as well as around 13,000 pages of secondary legislation, have been processed by Parliament. The reality, therefore, is that Parliament provides increasingly less scrutiny of a lot of legislation. This situation could become even worse as Parliament attempts to deal with all the legislation needed to take the UK out of the European Union (Brexit).
POLITICAL PARTIES
The idea of political parties first took form in Britain and the Conservative Party claims to be the oldest political party in the world. Political parties began to form during the English civil wars of the 1640s and 1650s. First, there were Royalists and Parliamentarians; then Tories and Whigs. Whereas the Whigs wanted to curtail the power of the monarch, the Tories - today the Conservatives - were seen as the patriotic party.
Today there are four major political parties in the British parliamentary system:
- The Conservative Party (frequently called the Tories) - the centre-Right party, currently led by Theresa May, which since 2010 has been in Government either in coalition (2010-2015) or alone (since 2015)
- The Labour Party - the centre-Left party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, which was last in Government from 1997 to 2010
- The Scottish National Party - the party supporting Scottish independence, which is led by Nicola Sturgeon
- The Liberal Democrat Party (known as the Lib Dems) - the centrist, libertarian party, led by Vince Cable, which was the junior member of the Coalition Government of 2010-2015
In recent years, Britain has seen the rise of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) led by Nigel Farage until May 2015, which was formed in 1993 but achieved some spectacular performances in local and European elections in May 2014. In the general election of May 2015, it won 12.6% of the vote but, in the general election of June 2017, its vote collapsed to a mere 1.8%.
In addition to these five parties, there are some much smaller UK parties (notably the Green Party) and some parties which operate specifically in Wales (Plaid Cymru) or Northern Ireland (such as the Democratic Unionist Party for the loyalistsand Sinn Fein for the nationalists).
Each political party chooses its leader in a different way, but all involve all the Members of Parliament of the party and all the individual members of that party. By convention, the leader of the political party with the largest number of members in the House of Commons becomes the Prime Minster (formally at the invitation of the Queen).
Political parties are an all-important feature of the British political system because:
- The three main UK political parties in the UK have existed for a century or more and have a strong and stable 'brand image'.
- It is virtually impossible for someone to be elected to the House of Commons without being a member of an established political party.
- All political parties strongly 'whip' their elected members which means that, on the vast majority of issues, Members of Parliament of the same party vote as a 'block'.
Having said this, at least until the 2017 general election, the influence of the three main UK political parties was not as dominant as it was in the 1940s and 1950s because:
- The three parties have smaller memberships than they did, since voters are much less inclined to join a political party.
- The three parties secure a lower overall percentage of the total vote, since smaller parties between them now take a growing share of the vote.
- Voters are much less 'tribal', not supporting the same party at every election, and much more likely to 'float', voting for different parties at successive elections.
- The ideological differences between the parties are less than they were, with the parties adopting more 'pragmatic' positions on many issues.
For decades, therefore, the combined share of the vote taken by Conservatives and Labour diminished as the two-party model fractured. The last election dramatically reversed this trend as the two parties took 82.4% of the votes. The Liberal Democrats, the Greens and especially the UK Independence Party all did badly and now only have a mere 13 seats between them.
In the past, class was a major determinant of voting intention in British politics, with most working class electors voting Labour and most middle class electors voting Conservative. These days, class is much less important because:
- Working class numbers have shrunk and now represent only 43% of the electorate.
- Except at the extremes of wealth, lifestyles are more similar.
- Class does not determine voting intention so much as values, trust, competence and (in Scotland) nationalism).
In the British political system, there is a broad consensus between the major parties on:
- the rule of law
- the free market economy
- the National Health Service (NHS)
- membership of NATO and possession of a nuclear deterrent
The main differences between the political parties concern:
- how to tackle poverty and inequality
- the levels and forms of taxation
- the extent of state intervention in the economy
- the balance between collective rights and individual rights
- the terms of the UK's departure from the European Union
All Government Ministers have to be a member of either the House of Commons (most of them) or the House of Lords (the remainder of them) and every Government Department will have at least one Minister in the Lords, so that the Department can speak in either House as necessary. The number of Ministers varies from administration to administration, but typically there will be around 120, the 20 or so most senior being Cabinet Ministers. The Ministerial and Other Salaries Act, passed in 1975, limits prime ministers to 109 ministerial salaries being paid at any one time with a maximum of 95 ministers in the House of Commons.
Historically most British governments have been composed of ministers from a single political party which had an overall majority of seats in the House of Commons and the 'first-past-the-post' (FPTP) electoral system greatly facilitates and indeed promotes this outcome. However, occasionally there have been minority governments or coalition governments.
For five years, the UK had its first coalition government in 65 years when, in May 2010, the Conservatives went into coalition with the Liberal Democrats because in the General Election they did not secure a majority of the seats. In this coalition, the Lib Dems had 17 ministers led by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.
However, at the General Election of May 2015, the Conservative Party won an overall majority and the normal arrangement resumed of all Ministers coming from the same party. Then, at the General Election of June 2017, the Conservatives failed to win an overall majority resulting in what is called a 'hung parliament' and so the party is governing with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of Northern Ireland. This is not a formal coalition but a 'confidence and supply' agreement in which the DUP has undertaken - in return for a comprehensive package of measures and funding - to support the government on key votes.
The Prime Minister
The UK does not have a President. Constitutionally the head of state is the monarch who is a hereditary member of the Royal Family. However, the monarch has very few formal powers and stays above party politics. He or she receives a weekly oral report from the Prime Minister, a tradition which began with King George I in 1714 because this German had struggled to follow the English deliberations of his Cabinet.
Therefore, in practice, the most important person in the British political system is the Prime Minister. The first modern Prime Minister was Sir Robert Walpole who served from 1721-1742, so the current PM Theresa May is the 54th (and only the second woman to hold the post). In theory, the Prime Minister simply choses the ministers who run Government departments and chairs the Cabinet - the collection of the most senior of those Ministers. In practice, however, the Prime Minister is a very powerful figure and increasingly has been behaving much like a president in other political systems, especially in the area of foreign policy.
I have personally met four British Prime Ministers: Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
The official residence of the Prime Minister is at 10 Downing Street in central London - a location I have visited about a dozen times - and the country residence of the Prime Minister is at Chequers in Buckinghamshire.
One British Prime Minister has been assassinated: Spencer Perceval was shot dead in the House of Commons in 1812.
Government Departments
The most important political departments are called:
- The Treasury - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of Finance. It is responsible for the raising of all taxes and the control of all government expenditure plus the general management of the economy. The head of the Treasury is called the Chancellor of the Exchequer and is currently Philip Hammond.
- The Home Office - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of the Interior. It is responsible for criminal matters, policing, and immigration. The Head of the Home Office is called the Home Secretary and is currently Amber Rudd.
- The Foreign and Commonwealth Office - In most countries, this would be called the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is responsible for all international relationships, especially membership of the European Union. The head of the Foreign Office is called the Foreign Secretary and is currently Boris Johnson.
Many other UK Government Departments are similar to those in other countries and cover subjects such as education, health, transport, industry, and justice. However, there are also small departments for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
When talking about the British Government, the media will often use the term Whitehall because a number of Government Departments are located along a central London street very close to Parliament called Whitehall.
Government Ministers
All Government Departments are run by Ministers who are either Members of the House of Commons or Members of the House of Lords. There are three classes of Minister:
- Secretary of State - This is usually the head of a Department.
- Minister of State - This is a middle-ranking minister.
- Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State - This is the most junior class of minister.
The Prime Minster and all the Secretaries of State together comprise an executive body of government called the Cabinet. The Cabinet meets usually once a week on Tuesday morning. Cabinet meetings are confidential and all members are bound by any decision that it takes in a practice called collective responsibility. An extensive system of Cabinet Committees considers matters either before they go to Cabinet or (more usually) instead of them going to Cabinet.
Although all Ministers are appointed by the Prime Minster and report to him, ultimately all Ministers are accountable to Parliament:
- About once a month, they have to face questions in the House of Commons about the work of the Department.
- Each government department has a special committee of the House of Commons which watches the work of that Department.
- Any government initiative or important statement concerning a Department must be the subject of an appearance in the House of Commons by a minister from that Department.
The civil service
Each Secretary of State is able to appoint a couple of political advisers – formally known as Special Advisers – to serve him or her. I was a Special Adviser to Merlyn Rees in the Northern Ireland Office from 1974-1976 and in the Home Office from 1976-1978, while my son Richard was a Special Adviser to Ruth Kelly in the Department for Education & Skills in 2005 and a Special Adviser to Douglas Alexander at the Department for International Development in 2009-2010.
But Special Advisers are simply advisers. They have no line management responsibilities in respect of the staff of the Department. Besides these tiny number of Special Advisers, Government Departments are run by civil servants who are recruited in a totally open manner and serve governments of any political parties. The independence and professionalism of the British civil service are fundamental features of the British political system. My son Richard once worked as a civil servant in what was then the Department of Trade & Industry and my half-brother Chris was an official in the Treasury for five years.
The UK has a devolved system of government, but this is categorically not a system of federal government such as in the United States or Australia, partly because less than a fifth of the citizens of the UK are covered the three bodies in question and partly because the three bodies themselves have different powers from one another.
The three devolved administrations are:
The Scottish Parliament
This came into operation in May 1999 and covers the 5M citizens of Scotland. It has 129 members elected by a system of proportional representation known as the mixed member system. As a result, 73 members represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the 'first past the post' (FPTP) system, with a further 56 members returned from eight additional member regions, each electing seven members. All members are elected for four-year terms.
The Scottish Parliament meets in Holyrood, Edinburgh. It has legislative powers over those matters not reserved to the UK Parliament and it has limited tax-raising powers.
In the election of May 2011, for the first time a single political party gained an overall majority of the seats in the Scottish Parliament. That party was the Scottish National Party and its victory enabled it to require the UK Government to permit the holding of a referendum on Scottish independence.
The referendum was held on 18 September 2014 and, on an astonishing turnout of 85%, the 'no' vote won a decisive victory by 55% to 45%. However, in the final week of the two-year referendum campaign, the three major parties in the UK Parliament agreed that, if the Scots voted 'no', there would be an early transfer of substantial extra powers to the Scottish Parliament. This is now the subject of fierce political debate because of the implications for the other nations in the UK and for the UK Parliament itself.
The Welsh Assembly
This came into operation in May 1999 and covers the 3M citizens of Wales. It has 60 members elected by a system of proportional representation known as the mixed member system. As a result, 40 members represent individual geographical constituencies elected by the 'first past the post' (FPTP) system, with a further 20 members returned from five additional member regions, each electing four members. All members are elected for four-year terms.
It meets in the Senedd, Cardiff. When first created, the Assembly had no powers to initiate primary legislation. However, since 2006, the Assembly has powers to legislate in some areas, though still subject to the veto of the Westminster Parliament. The Assembly has no tax-varying powers. The Welsh Assembly, therefore, has less power than either the Scottish Parliament or the Northern Ireland Assembly because - unlike Scotland and Northern Ireland - Wales does not have a separate legal system from England.
The Northern Ireland Assembly
The present version of the Assembly came into operation in May 2007 and covers the 1.5M citizens of Northern Ireland. It has 108 members - six from each of the 18 Westminster constituencies - elected by a system of proportional representation known as the single transferable vote (STV).
It meets in the Parliament Building, Belfast. It has legislative powers over those matters not reserved to the UK Parliament, but it has no tax-raising powers.
A First Minister and a Deputy First Minister are elected to lead the Executive Committee of Ministers. As a result of the sectarian division in Northern Ireland, the two must stand for election jointly and to be elected they must have cross-community support by the parallel consent formula, which means that a majority of both the Members who have designated themselves Nationalists and those who have designated themselves Unionists and a majority of the whole Assembly, must vote in favour. The First Minister and Deputy First Minister head the Executive Committee of Ministers and, acting jointly, determine the total number of Ministers in the Executive.http://www.rogerdarlington.me.uk/Russianpoliticalsystem.html
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