Teaching Comparative

Limits to action in British government

Adam Goldstein who teaches at Windward High School in Ferndale, Washington, asked,

"While reviewing for the UK I thought of an interesting question. Now my students also want to know. If the UK’s Parliament can create an Act of Parliament to pretty much circumnavigate any other government agency, what would formally prevent a political party once in charge (aside from legitimacy, gradualism, etc) from changing election rules to make them in their favor or to simply abolish elections, make another party illegal, make it so you can have 6 or 10 years between elections? Again, I know they would suffer in the minds of the British, but is there anything actually preventing them from doing it, especially if they have an overwhelming majority in the Commons like Labor did in 1997?"


I responded,

"There's no constitutional provision to prevent any of what you describe.

"The key is legitimacy. 'Playing fields of Eton...' and all that, one of the most powerful forces in British culture and political culture is the idea of 'playing fair.' Any party or leader who did anything nearly as radical as changing the rules in the middle of the game would not survive the public outrage and turmoil. We saw what happened in Poland, the Philippines, the Ukraine, et al. when people took to the streets. The Brits would take to the streets in spite of not having a tradition of doing so (like they do in France). But before it got that far, an idea like that would never get beyond a joke in one of Westminster's pubs (if it got that far). No sane Brit would seriously think it.

"Robert Redfield was an 'ancient' anthropologist, whose work I enjoyed. He described some cultures as operating under a moral order, where there was general agreement (if not near unanimity) about what was right and wrong and living by those ideas. He described other cultures as operating under a technical order, where people followed rules and did what worked. We're a lot closer to the technical order with our Constitution and court system; the British are a lot closer to having a moral order (at least in the political sphere)."

posted by Ken Wedding @ 3:19 PM