Class 34: Great Britain

1
Class 3-4 Great Britain

• The Westminster Model
• Single-member electoral system
• Economic and political modernization
• Hegemony
• Political cleavages
• Head of state/Head of government
• Common law

2
Major institutions in Great Britain

• House of Commons main legislative powers.
• House of Lords ability to delay legislation and
  suggest revisions.
  
• Prime Minister and Cabinet primary executive
  (head of government).
  
• Monarchy ceremonial and diplomatic functions
  (head of state).

3
Head of Government vs. Head of State

• Head of Government Holder of main executive
  powers.
  
• Head of State Holder of primary ceremonial
  international pwer.

4
Political Parties

• Major parties
• Labour
• Conservative
• Minor third party
• Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems)
• Regional parties
• Scottish National Party (SNP)
• Plaid Cymru (Wales)
• N. Ireland parties

5
The Westminster Model

• Book definition -- A form of democracy based on
  the supreme authority of Parliament and the
  accountability of its elected representatives
  named after the site of the Parliament building
  in Westminster, a borough of London.
• Parliamentary democracy -- System of government
  in which the chief executive is answerable to the
  legislature and may be dismissed by it.

6
The Westminster Model

• Parliamentary sovereignty -- A constitutional
  principle of government (principally in Britain)
  by which the legislature reserves the power to
  make or overturn any law without recourse by the
  executive, the judiciary, or the monarchy. Only
  Parliament can nullify or overturn legislation
  approved by Parliament and Parliament can force
  the cabinet or the government to resign by voting
  a motion of no confidence.

7
Checks and Balances vs. Majority Rule
8
The Westminster Model (Theoretical Concept)

• Maximization of majority rule (Lijphart).
• Attributes
• Parliamentary sovereignty.
• Executive elected from parliament and backed by a
  majority in the legislature.
  
• Limited constitutional constraints, or no formal
  constitution.
  
• Unitary state
• Two-party system.
• Single-member plurality electoral system.

9
Fusion of Powers

• Book definition -- A constitutional principle
  that merges the authority of branches of
  government, in contrast to the principle of
  separation of powers. In Britain, for example,
  Parliament is the supreme legislative, executive
  and judicial authority. The fusion of
  legislative and executive is also expressed in
  the function and personnel of the cabinet.

10
Government Formation

• General election
• Crown invites the leader of party with majority
  in House of Commons to form a government and
  serve as Prime Minister.
  
• PM appoints Cabinet, which consists in Britain of
  approximately 24 members.
  
• Cabinet presents policies to Parliament, along
  with an assumption of collective responsibility.

11
Variations on Government Formation

• Minority governments.
• Coalition governments.
• National unity governments.
• Different methods of deciding who forms
  government
  
• Passive role of Head of State.
• Active role of Head of State.
• Automatic selection according to Constitutional
  rules.

12
Constitutional Monarchy

• Queen-in-Parliament.
• Hereditary succession.
• Head of State.
• Primarily ceremonial.
• Foreign policy functions.
• Moral authority and leadership.
• Some countries have a similar system, but with an
  elected president, rather than a hereditary king
  or queen (ex. Israel, Czech Republic, Germany).

13
Single-member plurality (SMP) electoral system.

• Book definition -- an electoral system in which
  candidates run for a single seat from a specific
  geographic district. The winner is the person
  who receives the most votes, whether or not that
  is a majority. SMP systems, unlike proportional
  representations, increase the likelihood that two
  national coalition parties will form.

14
Single-Member Majority (SMM) Electoral System

• An electoral system in which candidates run for a
  single seat from a specific geographic district.
  The winner is the person who receives a majority
  of votes. If there is no candidate receiving a
  majority in the first round of election, the top
  two vote recipients enter a second round of
  voting. SMM systems encourage multiple parties
  in the first round, with coalition-building for
  the runoff vote.

15
Duverger's Law

• Where an SMP system is in place, there will tend
  to be two national parties.
  
• Why?
• Strategic voting.
• Ideologies tend towards centrality.
• Incentives for parties to form coalitions prior
  to elections.
  
• Other parties have difficult entering.

16
Exceptions to Duverger's Law

• Geographically centered parties form in federal
  systems (Canada).
  
• A centrally located party ideologically, which
  becomes essential for coalitions (India).

17
Effects of SMP

• Exaggerates the size of the largest party, and
  reduces influence of regionally dispersed
  parties.
  
• Ex. In 2005, with 35.2 percent of the popular
  vote, Labour won 355 seats. With 22.1 percent of
  the vote, the Liberal Democrats won 62 seats.
  
• Tends toward single-party governments.
• Tends toward ideological homogeneity.

18
Classic Model of Modernization

• Britain usually given a privileged position in
  comparative politics.
  
• Often considered the successful model of peaceful
  democratization and economic modernizaiton.

19
2 Phases of Industrial Revolution

• Phase 1 concentration of agriculture, rise of
  merchants bourgeoisie, and guarantee of
  property rights. Followed by mass migration to
  the cities.
• Phase 2 development of industry, utilization of
  fossil fuels, increased communication, and
  increasing importance of labor.

20
Phase 1 The Enclosure Movement (14th -16th c.)

• Demand for English wool, along with declining
  population, encourages the raising of sheep to
  replace large-scale grain farming.
  
• This sharply reduces the demand for peasant
  labor, and increases the price of food.
  
• It also concentrates money into the landholders,
  providing investment funds.
  
• Landholders press for stable, well-defined,
  property rights.
  
• Evicted peasants move to the cities, creating a
  surplus of cheap labor.

21
Phase 2 Industrial Expansion

• Development of new technologies, along with new
  fuel (coal) allowed for large expansion of
  output.
  
• Also allowed for organization and expression of
  demands from organized labor.
  
• Liberal party begins pressure for full suffrage.
• Largely credited with the emergence of the 19th
  c. of the liberal philosophy, centered around
  limited government and personal freedoms.

22
Strategies of Economic Development

• Liberal classically liberal in the
  nineteenth-century European sense, favoring
  free-market solutions to economic problems and
  extensive personal freedoms for individuals.
• Dominant strategy of economic development from
  early 19th c. to 1940.
  
• Adam Smith, 1723-1790.
• Also called laissez-faire, French for to let
  do

23
Strategies for Economic Development

• Role of government in liberal paradigm
• Enforce contracts
• Protect property rights
• Provide for national defense

24
Strategies of Economic Development

• Keynesianism named after the British economist
  John Maynard Keynes, an approach to economic
  policy in which state economic policies are used
  to regulate the economy in an attempt to achieve
  stable economic growth.

25
Strategies of Economic Development.

• Counter-cyclical spending During recession,
  state budget deficits are used to expand demand
  in an effort to boost both consumption and
  investment, and to create employment. During
  periods of high growth, when inflation threatens,
  cuts in government spending and a tightening of
  credit are used to reduce demand.
• Main strategy from 1945-1980.
• Goal of full-employment.

26
Strategies of Economic Development

• Monetarism An approach to economic policy that
  assumes a natural rate of unemployment determined
  by the labor market, emphasizes setting targets
  for the rate of growth of the monetary supply,
  gives highest priority to controlling inflation,
  and rejects the instrument of government spending
  to run budgetary deficits for stimulating the
  economy.
• Also called neo-liberalism.
• Basis of Thatcherite economic policy.

27
New Left/ Third Way

• A centrist philosophy that supports a mix of
  market and interventionist policies. It rejects
  both top-down redistribution and liberal
  approaches to economic governance, chiefly
  stressing technology, education, and
  competitivene mechanisms for economic growth.
• Developed by Wilhelm Ropke (social capitalism)
  and Anthony Giddens.
  
• Basis for Labour policy under Tony Blair.

28
Policies of the Third Way

• Fiscal conservatism
• Replacement of welfare with workfare
• Pollution markets
• Use of market solutions to traditional problems.

29
Hegemony

• Hegemonic power a state that can control the
  pattern of alliances and terms of the
  international order, and often shapes domestic
  political developments in countries throughout
  the world.
• Originated in ancient Greece, and occurred when
  Sparta became the hegemon in the Poloponnesian
  League.
  
• British Empire in the 19th c. often considered
  the first global hagemon.

30
Attributes of Hegemony

• 2 methods of spreading hegemony
• Hard power military strength, the ability to
  defeat opponents at war.
  
• Soft power widespread acceptance of economic
  and social norms.
  
• These two often interrelate.
• Relationship to free trade periods of free
  trade in the 19th c., and then after World War
  II, are often linked to the interests of a
  hegemonic economic power.

31
Attributes of Hegemony

• Spread of Ideas
• Antonio Gramsci -- the process whereby ideas,
  structures, and actions come to be seen by the
  majority of people as wholly natural,
  preordained, and working for their own good, when
  in fact they are constructed and transmitted by
  powerful minority interests to protect the status
  quo that serves those interests.
• Francis Fukuyama (1989) -- End of History --
  What we may be witnessing is...the end of
  history as such that is the end point of
  mankind's ideological evolution and
  universalization of Western liberal democracy as
  the final form of human government.

32
Attributes of Hegemony

• Economic influence --
• Colonialism the extension of a state's
  sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by
  the establishment of either settler colonies or
  administrative dependencies in which indigenous
  populations are directly ruled or displaced.
• Economic dependence at its strongest, where a
  country is so dependent on another's economy as a
  market or source of goods, that it cannot
  function without it, and the first country is
  able to influence positive change. At a weaker
  level, some policies may be unable to be
  implemented without the hegemon's participation.

33
Is the US a Hegemon Today?
34
Political Cleavages

• A concept which defines voters into groups, based
  upon their position on certain, historically
  salient, issues.
  
• (Lipset and Rokkan, 1967).

35
Major cleavages in Western Europe

• Center-Periphery The division of elites in the
  central and more outlying areas of a
  nation-state. Mainly used in terms of
  sub-national movements. (ex. Scotland and N.
  Ireland)
• State-Church A division between religious and
  secular voters. Often discussed in terms of
  church privileges and lands, and particular
  social issues. (ex. Netherlands until 1970s).

36
Major cleavages in Western Europe

• Owner-Worker A division between the rich and
  poor, or between capital and labor. (ex. Labour
  vs. Conservative)
  
• Urban-Rural Agrarian parties versus
  representatives of more urban interests. Usually
  only occurs in areas where there is a
  particularly well-educated rural class. (ex.
  Agrarian parties in Scandinavia).

37
Judiciary in Great Britain

• In Britain, courts have no power to judge the
  constitutionality of legislative acts (judicial
  review). They can only determine whether policy
  directives or administrative acts violate common
  law or an act of parliament.
• Commissions and public inquiries jurists often
  participate in investigations of government
  policies.
  
• Law Chancellor and law lords Department in the
  House of Lords that holds the ultimate authority
  of appeal in British law.

38
International Judiciary

• European Court of Justice (ECJ)
• European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
• European Court of Justice on Human Rights (ECJHR)

39
Common Law

• Judges have the authority and duty to decide what
  the law is when there is no other authoritative
  statement of the law. Begins with cases and
  moves to abstract rules.
• Stare Decisis -- prior court decisions must be
  considered precidents for future rulings. Stare
  decisis et non quieta movere (Stand by
  decisions and do not move that which is quiet)
• Edmund Burke it is only with great trepidation
  that someone should tear down a norm that has
  served the society well in the past.
  
• Primarily used in Great Britain and its former
  colonies (including the US).

40
Civil (Code) Law

• Descendant mainly from Roman law, the Napoleonic
  Code, and the German Civil Code.
  
• Case law is given less weight, and greater
  emphasis is given to interpretation of actual
  legal codes.
  
• Starts with abstract rules (or laws) that are
  applied to the specific case.
  
• Main form of law in the world (Continental
  Europe, Japan, China, Latin America, and
  Louisiana).

41
Bureaucracy

• Quangos acronym for quasi-nongovernmental
  organization, the term is used in Britain for
  nonelected bodies that are outside traditional
  governmental departments or local authorities.
  They have considerable influence over public
  policy in areas such as education, health care,
  and housing.

42
Bureaucracy and Independent

• Bureaucratic drift the ability for
  bureaucracies to move policies, through its
  implementation, closer to its goals or standard
  operating procedures.
• Bureaucratic information advantage.
• Bureaucratic time advantage.
• Bureaucratic allies advantage.