How Sick Is British Democracy?

Forecasts of the death of democracy are often heard and the United Kingdom is on the death watch list. This book challenges such a gloomy view by carefully examining the health of the British body politic from Tony Blair's time in Downing Street to the challenges of Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic. It finds some parts are in good health, for example, elections are free and losers as well as winners accept the results, unlike the United States. Other parts show intermittent symptoms of ill health, such as Cabinet ministers avoiding accountability. There is also a chronic problem of managing the unity of the United Kingdom. None of the symptoms is fatal. The book identifies effective remedies for some symptoms, placebos that offer assurance without cure, and perennially popular prescriptions that are politically impossible. Being a healthy democracy does not promise effectiveness in dealing with economic problems, but a big majority of Britons do not want to trade the freedom thatcomes with democracy for the promises of undemocratic leaders.

Richard Rose is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, UK, and a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute Florence, Italy, and the Science Centre Berlin, Germany. He has been writing award-winning studies of British politics and democracy in comparative perspective for more than half a century.

Auteur
Richard Rose is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, UK, and a Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute Florence, Italy, and the Science Centre Berlin, Germany. He has been writing award-winning studies of British politics and democracy in comparative perspective for more than half a century.

Contenu

1. Diagnosing the Health of the Body Politic

• Democracy: a disembodied ideal
• Anatomizing the body politic
• Many symptoms of ill health

• Potentially fatal symptoms2. Elections the Heart of Government

• Institutionalizing choice
• Responsibility for government fixed

• What voters make of their choice3. Party as the Lifeblood of Government

• Parties decide who can become an MP
• Representing society in Parliament
• Representing voters in Parliament

• MPs can influence policy but not govern4. A Single Brain in Downing Street

• Parties decide who can become prime minister
• What a prime minister can and can't do
• Personality constant, popularity fluctuates

• Two ways to become an ex-prime minister5. Whitehall's Collective Brainpower

• Cabinet ministers fill gaps left by Downing Street
• Opening up with market for policymaking

• Shuffling and reshuffling accountability6. The Limbs of A Disunited Kingdom

• Multiple Identities
• A unitary Crown without uniformity
• Four national party systems

• The contingency of consent7. An Unbalance Constitution

• Politicians are the judges of what they can do
• Constitutional rights are not politics as usual

• Constitutional disputes need political resolution8. Limits on Democratic Sovereignty

• Governance creates interdependence
• No island is an island unto itself

• Brexit: a domestic foreign policy9. A Mixed Bill of Health for British Democracy

• What Britons think of democracy
• Diagnosis: Intermittent ills, none fatal
• Prescriptions for treatment
• Coda