British Politics (POLS 3320)

Midterm Exam

Prof. Noah Kaplan

Part I – Sample responses to the identifies.

1) Single Member Simple Plurality Electoral System

In a pure SMSP electoral system, there are as many legislative seats as there are distinct geographic constituencies, and each constituency elects the legislative candidate that receives the most votes. This system is commonly referred to as a “first past the post system” since each constituency sends only one person to the legislature and that person is the candidate that receives the plurality of votes in the constituency. In contrast to a PR system, a SMSP system frequently results in parties receiving a seat share in the legislature that is significantly different from the parties’ vote share in the election.

2) Shadow Cabinet

In the UK, the major party in opposition selects senior and/or leading MPs and assigns each to a ministry. The “shadow” minister is expected to (1) learn the brief of the ministry, (2) follow in detail the actions of the ministry and the current minister, (3) lead the opposition’s questioning of the government in regards to the specific ministry’s policies and their implementation, (4) lead the opposition’s development of policy for those issues within the brief of the specific ministry, and (5) be expected to take over as minister of the ministry when the opposition party next wins a general election. The shadow government sits on the opposition’s front benches in parliament across from their opposite numbers in government.

3) Chancellor of the Exchequer

After the Prime Minister, the most powerful position in government (lives at 11 Downing Street just next to the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing St.). The Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible for all fiscal matters. The position combines and exceeds the remit of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and Director of the OMB (and, prior to Labour granting the Bank of England its independence in 1997, the office included and exceeded the powers of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System). The Exchequer is the largest ministry in government (excluding service personnel) and oversees the finances of all other ministries – thus it has a say in all policy matters. Gordon Brown is the current Chancellor of the Exchequer and is the most likely person to succeed Tony Blair as leader of the Labour Party (and, if Labour is in power, as Prime Minister).

4) Lord Chancellor

The Lord Chancellor is a member of the House of Lords (and its Speaker), a member of the cabinet and the head of the judiciary in the U.K. As a member of the government, he is responsible for the nomination of judges and the administration of the judiciary. He is also responsible for constitutional reform. As the head of the judiciary, he is a judge who may participate in all judicial sessions of the House of Lords (i.e., is a Law Lord) and is the President of the Supreme Court of England and Wales (which is the penultimate appeals court for England and Wales). Lord Falconer is the current Lord Chancellor. The current government proposed abolishing the position in favor of an office and structure that overtly separates the executive, legislative and judicial functions of the office; however, parliament failed to pass the government’s proposal.

5) Margaret Thatcher

Conservative Prime Minister of the U.K. from 1979 – 1990. Known for her commitment to laissez faire economic principles, Thatcher privatized/denationalized most industries controlled by the state and substantially reduced the extent of the welfare system. Substantively moved the political discourse in the UK to the right, forcing the Labour Party to change its policy positions to the right also. Thatcher lost her job as Prime Minister when she lost the support of the majority of Conservative MPs to remain the leader of the Party (at the time, the leader of the Conservative Party was chosen by ballot by Conservative MPs only). Replaced as party leader and PM by John Major, who waited until 1992 to call an election.

6) Michael Howard

The current leader of the conservative party, who was elected to that position in 2003 after Smith lost a vote of confidence among Conservative MPs. Howard was first elected to parliament in 1983. Howard served in the Thatcher and the Major governments, his last position in government being Home Secretary. Howard would become PM if the Conservatives win the next election. He strongly advocates reducing taxes, reducing crime and reducing immigration.

7) New Labor

The term used by Neil Kinnock and subsequent party leaders (Smith and Blair) to indicate that the Labour Party had changed its positions substantively and in a fashion that was intended to be far more attractive to voters in the middle of the ideological spectrum than was “Old” Labour. It was intended to signal voters that the Labour Party had changed from an old fashioned socialist party to a modern social democratic party. The most prominent signal of the “New” character of Labour under Blair was the redrafting of Clause Four of the party’s constitution to eliminate the party’s commitment to public ownership of the means of production and to pledge that the party was committed to market capitalism. Ideologically, associated with the development if the “third way” – a middle way between traditional socialism and laissez faire capitalism.

8) Party Manifesto

Each party issues a manifesto each general election campaign. The manifesto is the party’s platform. It outlines the party’s vision for the nation and provides in detail the policies the party would adopt if it won the election. Citizens and the media examine the manifestos in detail in order to specify the ideological and policy differences between the parties. In contrast to the platforms issues by the major parties in the U.S., the manifestos traditionally provide a wealth of detail regarding the party’s planned policies.

9) Retrospective Voting

An explanation of vote choice at the individual level. Retrospective voting involves assessing the past performance of the party in power in comparison to how the individual thinks the opposition would have performed if they had been in power over the same time period. Performance usually refers to economic performance, and economic performance is understood in terms of either an assessment of the performance of the national economy (sociotropic voting) or an assessment of the individual’s economic well-being (pocket-book voting). Retrospective voting is in contrast to prospective voting, in which the voter tries to assess how the relative performance of the parties in the future (rather than how they performed in the past).

10) Party Membership

In the UK, a citizen can become a member of a political party if the individual fills out and submits a form and pays the annual party membership fee. Party members can often participate in the selection of local and national party leaders. Party membership has declined sharply over the past 30 years (e.g., membership in the Conservative Party has dropped from 1.5 million in 1979 to 300,000 in 2001). Explanations for this decline fall into two general categories: supply and demand. Supply explanations emphasize changes in the mass public which has resulted in fewer citizens desiring to join parties and demand explanations focus on changes among political elites and the logistics of campaigns that has resulted in political elites expending fewer resources on the recruitment of members.

11) Parliamentary Sovereignty

The UK is categorized as a unitary state, in contrast to a federal state in which sovereignty is divided between levels of government. Within the U.K., parliament is the only political authority, constitutionally, whereas in the U.S., no single institution is considered paramount – rather, power is divided between the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Traditionally, it is thought that there are no limitations on parliament’s power (thus, for example, no act of parliament can be vetoed by the executive or deemed unconstitutional by the judiciary). No parliament can limit the actions of any future parliament. However, parliament’s authority may now be limited due to the U.K.’s membership in the E.U., the passage of Charter of Human rights and the creation of regional legislatures (i.e., devolution).