To What Extent Is There a Democratic Deficit in the Uk? Essay

Constitutional reform is a process whereby the fundamental nature of the system of government is changed or where a change is proposed. In the UK this may also involve the process of codification. Since 1997 there has been many key reforms that have made UK more democratic by a large amount and sometimes not so much if at all.

Parliament is very effective when dealing with the public and their interests and needs like when they redress public grievances to make sure they are listened too. However, parliament isn’t so effective on the representative side of things. This is because the electoral system that we use isn’t very fair and excludes smaller parties of a chance of being voted into parliament. This therefore means a large number of public votes have been

Direct democracy is a form of government in which all laws are created by a general vote of society. This means that political decisions are put forward to the people as they are the ones who are going to be directly affected by the outcome of the decision. An example of direct democracy used occasionally in society is referendums. A referendum is a general vote by the electorate on a single political question which has been referred to them for a direct decision. Within this essay I am going to be arguing whether direct democracy should be used more widely by weighing up the

Another common criticism of the UK system is that, although most politicians are elected, many powerful people hold their positions without having to face the voters. Over the years criticism has focused on the House of Lords, the civil service and judges. While the people serving these positions may indeed be experts in their field, the citizens of the UK have absolutely no say in who is elected into these positions. This shows a problem in the United Kingdom’s democratic system and one that does not follow a representative democracy.

Elective Dictatorship is the term used to describe the government and the Prime minister to be seen as having powers over the country that seem excessive. A government appointing as an elected dictatorship is likely to have a large majority over all other parties in the House of Commons. This essay will analise the arguments for and against the UK having an elected dictatorship. It will conclude that a proper dictatorship is never possible because the UK’s constitution is a democratic one and there are counter balances to accessive Prime ministerial powers. However when a government has a very large majority it can use its control over the House of Commons to make decisions that can seem to some as being dictatorial.

The history of parliament has demonstrated that a traditional role was to provide consent for the Monarch’s legislation. This still remains one of the main functions, also though any government enjoys a mandate from the electorate, it is still important that's it's authority to legislate is underpinned by parliament. It carries out legitimising functions as being the body which approves and sanctions major decisions in the life of the nation. For example in 2013 it did not confer legitimacy to the Government to intervene in Syria. But it can be said to have failed in the past by not fulfilling the wishes of the wider public by legitimising the war in Iraq. It is said to lack legitimacy when the government commands a large majority in the Commons. The House of Lords is also said to lack democratic legitimacy

In a democratic government also depends on freedom of press and freedom of assembly. Freedom of press is the occurrences that happen every day that are informed or detailed through television, newspaper, internet, magazines or speech without adding or removing any type of information that do not benefit a particular sector. And also is that the people have the right to have their own type of press to express their ideas. Today, freedom of press is a utopia because every country has their own secrets, and covers important information to their citizens. With freedom of press, the countries will have a perfect government not so perfect but the people need to know the truth. The democratic government is a form of government in which the people, either directly or indirectly, take part in governing. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried.” This is because there is no system that can perfectly order society. Usually the purpose of democracy is to prevent tyranny (the accumulation of

The governmental system which embodies the European Union is currently both ambiguous and undemocratic. However, in order to explore alternative strategies of improvement, it is firstly crucial to identify the root of the deficit. One is then able to discuss contributing factors which affect the national parliaments lack of importance when creating legislation and strategies of review such as the subsidiary and proportionality tests.

I would first like to start off by asking this question "What exactly is a democratic country?" Democratic is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary as -Adjective

The democratic deficit is a theory developed by scholars in order to illustrate that the European Union and its institutional bodies suffer from a lack of democracy (Wincott, 1998, p. 414). However, there are many definitions of the democratic deficit (Chryssochoou, 2000; Justice, 1996; Warleigh, 2003; Weiler, Haltern & Mayer, 1995) depending on the views and approaches of each scholar. Joseph Weiler's ‘standard version' of the democratic deficit is one of the most common definitions and it is a set of widely-used arguments by academics, scholars and the media (Weiler et al., 1995, cited by Follesdal & Hix, 2005, p. 4). It consists of five claims that explain why the EU can be called undemocratic and they are the following: a) there is an

A Democratic Deficit in the EU The question over the legitimacy of the EU has been a nearly continuous debate and many commentators appear to agree that the EU suffers from a severe ‘democratic deficit’. There are many reasons why this perception is so widespread. As a multinational body it lacks the grounding in common history and culture upon which most individual polities can draw.

For instance, if the parliament, acting on public opinion, was to make a law severely curbing the rights of some minority, the supreme court has the right to struck it down as unconstitutional, irrespective of the public support behind that law. This principle takes into account the notion that popular sentiments should not always be reflected in state policies, especially when they contradict the law. The process of judicial elections, however, is entirely based on public support as the basic legitimizing criteria for the justice system and fails to consider the fallibility of popular opinions. And, when judges are elected to their offices, the cannot work irrespective of public opinion which helped them gain their seat in the bench. Therefore, election of judges contradicts the basic principles of democracy as well as independence of the judiciary.

Firstly, there is democratic deficit as the Commission is not democratically elected but appointed by the Member States’ governments and it has the monopoly of initiating laws. It may alter its proposal during law-making process as long as the council has not amended the proposal. However, EU citizens do not elect this powerful body and thus it lacks legitimacy as it is much too powerful for an institution that is not democratically representative of the EU citizens. It is only accountable to the European Parliament and the Council. It can be argued that the Commission does not represent the interest of the EU as a

Apart from the economic issues plaguing the EU, which is most discussed topic, the issue of its democratic deficiency remains undebated. Democracy deficit in the EU in its ordinary meaning means that there is gap between the EU institutions and citizens in the member states of the EU.

The greatest challenge facing democracy in Britain is the generating force of social cleavages. For many British people, mainly in the older population, the ability to be able to decide on what’s great for Britain without having an outside force making their policies. With that, the British people, again mainly the older population, feel they are being driven out of their country with the ever-growing minority population. The older generations of Britain have stated that they want to be in control of how Britain decided on its own policies, wanting policies to be made by Britain with British values and goals. Wanting to have the control of policy making, borders, immigration and economic prospects have created a division