How effective is Parliament?

In theory the House of Commons is the dominant chamber as it is elected while the House of Lords plays more of a revising role, issues to be considered include the powers of each chambers, the fact the House of Lords is more independently minded and the impact of the whips. It will ultimately be argued that the House of Commons remains far more effective due to having greater powers in checking the government power.

To what extent is parliament still sovereign? 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

Britain, for instance, one of the most stable parliamentary systems within our society does present an example for a parliamentary government in many aspects. For one, their parliamentary system creates clear access points to power with in the government. There is a much smaller breakdown of the “parts” of the government: The prime minister, and his political party, elected before him. The only other significant factions would be regulatory agencies, who are under the direct control of the majority. In Britain’s case the secretary of state, i.e. foreign minister are actual legislatures and therefore are more capable of introducing and even

Chapter 12 Journal: Congress 1. How Congress Represents the American People 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.

'Parliament carries out none of its functions adequately.' Discuss (40 marks) In the UK, Parliament consists of the Monarchy, the House of Commons and the House of Lords. This has existed for centuries and has stood the test of time, in that it still exists. However a number of concerns

4. Parliament is the lawmaking body of the British government. 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.

The function of select committees in the House of Lords In the Lords, the Labour peers’ opposition backed an amendment, meaning the voter turn out threshold of 40 per cent for the referendum result on alternative vote was to be binding. Although this amendment was overturned in the House of Commons, another amendment regarding constituency boundaries was cross -party supported and authorised by government. This amendment was that the Isle of Wight should remain as one constituency, instead of being separated into two. This bill took 17 days to go through the Lords which included one twenty hour overnight sitting, showing how greatly debated the bill was. A more recent example of the Lords effectively scrutinising public bills was related to the Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013, where the Lords raised concern about two parts of this bill: local planning and employment rights. The Lords made an amendment to the bill, allowing councils to opt out of the planning scheme, which was overturned by the Commons. The Lords challenged the Commons, and so the government decided that home -owners wishing to build extensions would have to notify the council of their plans, who would then inform their neighbours. Only if their neighbours raised an objection would the council have to intervene. This highlights how the House of Lords are arguably more effective in scrutinizing public bills, as this amendment,

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

How well does Parliament perform its various functions? There are several important functions that Parliament must perform. The word Parliament derived from the Latin ‘parliamentum’ and the French word ‘parler’ which originally meant a talk- which is what Parliament does most of the time. Parliament consists of the House of Commons, the House of Lords and the Monarchy. Parliament is the highest judicial, legislative and executive body in Britain. A parliamentary form of government acknowledges that it derives its power directly from the consent of the people. This sort of system ensures democracy and an active interaction between the people and their representatives. The three functions that I am going to focus on are Scrutiny,

- I think that our national legislators in Congress and the Senate should be responsive to the national majority of American citizens and the interests of the nation as well as to the voters of their districts and the most mobilized voices who might influence the voters in their districts.

In “Political Representation,” Shapiro et al. (2009) say that “political representation lies at the core of modern politics.” Representation is usually linked to the concept of democracy (Shapiro et al. 2009). The concept of representation is explicitly mentioned in the U.S. Constitution (U.S. Const. art. I, § 1, 2). However,

3. EC Act 1972 The biggest challenge for parliamentary sovereignty clearly comes from the implications of the 1972 EC Act. Section 2 of the EC Act obliges the UK courts to give effect to Union law. That does not mean that the British courts have the power to strike down legislation but they have the power to set aside British law in a particular case and apply Union law instead. Tensions arose in the past in a number of cases in which Westminster legislated against Union law. Good examples of it are the Factortame cases in which Parliament finally had to accept the supremacy of EU (then EC) law. However, the question of whether the traditional rule that no parliament can bind its successors is still valid was not expressly answered

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

Module: Law Component: assignment 2 Percentage of final module grade: 20% “The development of the EU has slowly eroded the sovereignty of the UK Parliament” Student Number: 1546031 Word Count: Parliamentary Sovereignty is the concept that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the United Kingdom. Kellerman, M. G. (2011) argues that since

3) Government effectiveness 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.