Today we learned about British politics. In addition to reading about the English legal system we watched two films. One was merely a joke about a man who wanted to be a dictator and the other one described the English voting system thoroughly. What really interested me was how the constituencies and allocation of mandates worked.
As opposed to Norway, which has a proportional representation of members in their legislative branch (Stortinget) United Kingdom has a first-past-the-post system. This means that United Kingdom is divided into 646 constituencies, each with the right to one seat in the House of Commons. The sitting Prime Minister can hold elections whenever he wants within a period of five years. If he is very popular in one period, he might run an election because he expects to be chosen for another five-year period. When there is an election, parties campaign in each constituency. Through the country 646 elections are held. In each constituency, the representative with the most votes wins. This means that the total of representatives does not necessarily reflect the votes of the British people.
There are both positive and negative sides to this. Firstly, on the positive side, the representative who wins can perform a more accurate and targeted policy. They do not need to compromise to meet the other parties’ demands. Many people view proportional representation as a betrayal because the voters do not get what the majority voted for. They get a coalition between several parties instead. This makes the first-past-the-post representation strong-handed, especially because the representatives do not need to spend time compromising their political views.
There are some negative aspects to the first-past-the-post representation as well. As I have said already, this type of electoral system does not benefit the minority as well as in a proportional representation. When the first representative is past the post it does not matter how close behind the other candidates were. In a way you could say that those votes are wasted. Another problem with this electoral system is that there are more difficult for smaller parties to be represented. People tend to vote for the bigger parties they know have a chance of winning. The minor parties do not have a chance of winning and therefore it is hard for new parties to get a say in the British politics.
Nice post, hope you don't mind comments from strangers...
SvarSlettYou claim that: "Many people view proportional representation as a betrayal because the voters do not get what the majority voted for."
I personally disagree with this statement. The majority in a proportional system gets a mixture of what they voted for, it ends up being the middle road. More importantly however, the majority rarely gets what it voted for anyway: The last time there was a government (or cabinet) in the UK with a majority of the votes was in 1935 - go figure.
Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1931
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_Party_%28UK%29#Electoral_performance
Its a good text, and very written in details.
SvarSlettHi Ingrid! This is a very good blog post, and I think it was interesting to read about your thoughts concerning the first-past-the-post system practiced in UK compared to the politics in Norway. Keep up the good work! =)
SvarSlettThank you for an interesting comment, Magnus!
SvarSlettI see your point and I completely agree with your view.
However I still support the statement that people MAY feel betrayed in a proportional system of allocating seats in The House of Commons. It depends on how narrow your reasons behind your vote are. If you view voting for a party as agreeing with most of their policies and wanting their politic views to interfere the whole society you might feel betrayed when the winning party have to "share" the power with the minorities. After all, people who voted for them are the biggest group in Britain agreeing on the same party's policies to dominate fully. However it might be that you view voting for a party as a wish that they will contribute to British politics with their ideologies and ideas. In this case a proportional election is definately not a betrayal.
In my opinion I support the proportional system fully because it resembles the votes of the people in the best way. And the fact that everyone has a say is more important than steady and focused politics in the charge of the party of the majority.