UK Democracy and Participation notes - Edexcel A Level Politics
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UK Politics (9PLO)
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PEARSON (PEARSON)
This document is for people who study Politics with Edexcel and it's a comprehensive guide for everything you need to know condensed: it has examples, arguments, counterpoints, recent information, debates and lots of explanations. For my A Levels this is all I used to revise and I have packs like t...
Current systems of representative and direct democracy
A wider franchise and debates over suffrage
Pressure groups and other influences
Rights in context
CURRENT SYSTEMS OF REPRESENTATIVE AND DIRECT DEMOCRACY
FEATURES, SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES
DIRECT DEMOCRACY:
- Individuals express opinions themselves
- Citizens are more active in decision-making
- Not elective
- Vote have equal weight
- Encourages participation and responsibility
- Encourages debate
- Improves political education
- Removes the need to find trustworthy representatives
- Impractical in a heavily populated state and inaccessible
- Open to manipulation by persuasive speakers
- Disregards minority viewpoints because there is no mediation bu parliamentary
institutions
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
- Citizens elect reps to make decisions on their behalf
- Citizens pass their authority to reps
- Expected to use their judgement and not just take instruction from voters
- Elections are free and fair
- Practical in a large modern state where issues are complex and may need rapid
response
- Encourages pluralism through parties and pressure groups
- Reduces the effects of tyranny of the majority
- Elections allow reps to be held to account
- Politicians are more informed and educated
- Reduced participation because people hand authority over
- Parties and pressure groups are run by elites who could be pursuing personal
agendas
- Politicians skilfully avoid accountability especially since elections are only every 5
years
- Politicians are subject to corruption
- Minorities are still underrepresented because reps follow the majority
, TIMES WHEN DIRECT DEMOCRACY IS USED WITHIN A REP ONE
- National referendums
- Recall of MPs act (possibility of a by-election)
CASE FOR REFORM?
POSITIVE FEATURES OF THE UK DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM:
- Devolved govts- enables more decisions to be taken closer to the local people
- Free and fair elections
- Wide range of parties/pressure groups
- Free media- challenges govt policy and exposes misdeeds of politicians
- Independent judiciary- separate from other govt branches to uphold the rule of law
NEGATIVE FEATURES:
- Under-representation of minority viewpoints because of fptp
- House of Lords lacks democratic legitimacy
- Lack of protection for citizens rights- HRA provides inadequate guarantee for the
rights of citizens because govts can derogate from it
- Control of sections of the media by wealthy, unaccountable business interests
- Participation crisis
PARTICIPATION (CRISIS?)
VOTER TURNOUT
- Average turnout from 1945 to 1997 was 76%, in 2001 it was the lowest since 1918 at
just below 60%
- Even lower in devolved bodies/non general elections
- May 2016 local elections in England was 33.8%
How to increase voter turnout…
- E-voting
- Wider use of postal voting
- Compulsory voting
- Lowering the voting age
- Voting over several days
- More accessible polling stations
- Day of election moving from thursday to the weekend
PARTY MEMBERSHIP
- Only 1.6% of the electorate belongs to one of the 3 political parties
- In 1983 the figure was 3.8%
- Conservatives had 400,000 mind 90s → 2016 under 150,000
- Labour saw membership rise from 190,000 in 2010 to 515,000 by 2016
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