How effective is Parliament?

The United States Congress is more than likely the most significant representative institution in the United States government. Each member of Congress has a primary obligation to the district, to his or her constituency. Though Congress is divided into two parts, called the House of Representatives and the Senate, they both play different roles in the legislature process. Senate is more deliberative and the House is the more centralized and organized. Congress is supposed to represent the American people but they will not always make the “right” decisions, according to some individuals. Obviously it is impossible to please everybody, but surely the laws that are being passed are because Congress views some sort of usefulness from it. There are two different types of representation that was spoken about in the chapter including sociological and agency representation. Sociological is based off of the idea that if two individuals have similar background, character, interests, and perspectives, then they can correctly represent others’ views. Agency is when a representative is held accountable to a constituency for when that constituency is represented poorly. The constituents have the power to hire and fire their representatives.

'The House of Lords is now more effective than the House of Commons in checking government power'. Discuss

Westminster is the location of the Houses of Parliament, where the majority of political decisions (other than those for devolved states) are made for the nation. The current Westminster electoral system is First Past the Post (FPTP) which is used for general elections every 5 years (due to the new fixed-term parliaments brought in by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.) The FPTP system is constituency based, each person votes for a representative for their constituency and whichever party wins the most constituencies gains governmental power. First Past the Post works on the basis of a plurality of votes, that is, that the winning party need only gain the most votes out of all parties to gain power, they do not need an overall

Parliament has a central function in carrying out a scrutiny role. It carries close inspection and where it is necessary, amendments maybe proposed this is carried out in both houses. It holds the government collectively and the PM and other ministers accountable for their actions. It does this in debates, question times and through the work of Departmental Select Committees (DSC). However it maybe be argued that is not enough since scrutiny does not often involve blocking legislation. It is not expected that parliament will make substantial changes, but it does

No, the general public does not have the information or willingness to evaluate congressional effectiveness. There is enough information available on congress to make evaluations. However, the general public does not know most of this information. The fact that only 40 percent of people know who both of their senators are is proof of this. In addition, most people aren’t willing to carefully evaluate Congress. It’s much easier to say Congress is doing a bad job and stop thinking about it. When it comes to evaluating their own representatives, most people are satisfied with their representatives and upset with congress. This is because their representative is the one who represents their interest. This means if their representative does a satisfactory

The House of Lords is the second chamber of the UK Parliament and is independent to the Commons although it complements the work of the Commons. Members of the Lords play a vital role in scrutiny, there are two main reasons for this, the first being that they are independent to the Commons and in many ways have increased power which they often use to stand up to the Commons by blocking reforms. Lords also have a better balance of parties so no government has a majority. The Government however can override Lords by using Parliament Act; this was used when the fox hunting ban was being put through under Blair’s government as there were too many in opposition of the ban in the House of Lords. The Parliament Acts, although rarely used, provide a way of solving disagreement between the Commons and the Lords. The Parliament Act of 1949 also prevents Lords from delaying bills for more than one year.

For many years it has been argued that parliamentary sovereignty has, and still is, being eroded. As said by AV Dicey, the word ‘sovereignty’ is used to describe the idea of “the power of law making unrestricted by any legal limit”. Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution, stating that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the UK, able to create and remove any law. This power over-rules courts and all other jurisdiction. It also cannot be entrenched; this is where all laws passed by the party in government can be changed by future parliaments. In recent years sovereignty of parliament has been a

Arguably, the scrutiny of Public Bills has depended more on the House of Lords than it has on the House of Commons in recent years. The term “scrutiny” means the critical observation or examination regarding the Public Bills. The “effectiveness” of the scrutiny could be measured in a variety of ways, such as the period of time the bill stays in parliament for, and whether parliament can take on board evidence from committees and implement the bills into legislation. In order to determine if the House of Lords has been more effective than the House of Commons in scrutinising public bills, it is crucial to compare and contrast the effectiveness of the procedures used in both houses.

significance - It provides the formation of a government to legislate, it provides the funds needed for the government and it provides a forum for population representation.

Parliamentary Sovereignty is the concept that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the United Kingdom. Kellerman, M. G. (2011) argues that since

This essay will explain what the formal process on how an Act of Parliament is created. I will discuss the key concepts and procedures which are relevant to law making which will be supported with relevant statutes and case law. Furthermore I will also discuss the different stages which are involved in creating a law. I will also assess the controls and systems that are in place which are used to regulate the source of law. Finally, I will analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of the literal rule.

The term efficiency is basically the ability to maintain quality of a task using a particular ability and the least amount of inputs. Effectiveness is a more straight forward direct response to a given task. Being effective means achieving present goals and measuring up against those goals.

Advocates of the parliamentary form of government suggested a few competitive strengths of this system of government. Since it has gained a stable parliamentary majority, the government is able to smoothly process its legislative project. In addition, the government is adequately furnished that it could still choose to adopt measures designed to support the national interests while many strong sectional groups oppose such measures (Dyck, 2012). The prime minister is the leader of this type of government, who is obliged to be responsive to all its people’s demands. Also, the people have the right to vote and replace the prime minister due to any incompetency of governance that does not address and fulfill their desires. This is known as the non-confidence vote; the government may be removed when it has lost confidence in the parliament, and cause the head of state to resign a new government (Dyck, 2012). An example of such measure occurred in Britain on March 28th, 1979. When James Callaghan’s labour government was defeated in the House of Commons just by one vote, it was forced into an early election that was won by the opposition leader Margaret Thatcher (Dyck, 2012). In this case, it can avoid or at least reduce the period of legislative gridlock, because of its flexibility in elections and the power is centered in the country’s prime

A parliamentary government is a democratic form of government which operates on a party system. It is the most popular and widely adopted form of democracy. A state that operates on a parliamentary system is run by two executives, firstly the head of state who is either a monarch or president who then appoints a prime minister as the head of government. A parliament can be run by either a single majority political party or as a coalition government in which more than one party collaborate to form the government. In this essay I will be assessing the key strengths and weaknesses associated with a parliamentary government. In doing so I will conclude that whilst a parliamentary government has weaknesses its strengths outweigh these and therefore it is the superior form of democratic government.

According to World Bank, government effectiveness is referring to captures perceptions of the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies. This is important for foreign investors because they do not wish to pay for the deficiencies in the provision of public goods by government.