Politics paper 1 UK politics

• The concept of democracy is fundamental to an understanding of politics as it underpins all the concepts, ideas and topics you will be studying, yet it is a concept that sparks fierce passions and debates and conflicting attitudes.
• The debates over Brexit exemplify the conflicting attitudes towards democracy, with some arguing that the democratic 'will of the people needed to be respected, as the result of the 2016 referendum indicated the people wanted to leave the EU
• Others argued that it was up to Parliament to decide and that MPs should vote in the 'national interest and choose to remain in the EU
• Western democracies like the UK boast of their democratic institutions and accuse totalitarian regimes like North Korea of being undemocratic dictatorships, yet North Korea, like many Communist states, calls itself a 'Democratic People's Republic'.
• Democracy is a term that means 'rule by the people', derived from the Ancient Greek demos (the people) and kratia (rule or power), but who the people are and how the will of the people should be translated into action is a matter of fierce debate.
• Plato, one of the great Greek philosophers, saw democracy as undesirable and worried that mob rule by the uneducated masses would be damaging and could lead to anarchy and chaos, a view that persists even today in many debates about democracy.
• Democracy today is largely seen as a good thing, but people still debate its meaning and how it should be applied, as evidenced by the heated debates over Brexit.
• Democracy is about the process and means of translating the will of the people into coherent plans and action, but how this is brought about and how it operates in practice is fluid and ever-changing, which is why it is important to start by getting to grips with what democracy means in practice.
• Direct democracy, also known as "Athenian democracy", was first conceived in ancient Greece, mainly in the city state of Athens in the fifth century BC.
• The idea of direct democracy is that every tax-paying citizen has one vote of equal value to all others and all citizens are able to contribute to a decision.
• In a democracy, important decisions are made by the assembled free citizens directly, fairly and equally, such as whether the state should go to war or whether a prominent citizen who has committed anti-state acts should be exiled.
• After Athenian democracy declined in the fourth century BC, direct democracy, with a few exceptions, disappeared as a democratic form until the nineteenth century.
• Today, direct democracy has returned in the form of the referendum, which is relatively common in Europe and some states of the USA.
• Direct democracy today should be seen as an addition to representative democracy rather than a separate system, one that can add great legitimacy to the decisions made by politicians.
• Some decisions are considered so vital and also so unsuitable for representatives to make them that they are left to the people.
• The size and nature of modern politics would make the regular use of direct democracy impracticable and so it cannot be considered as an alternative to representative democracy in the twenty-first century.
• Direct democracy has its critics as well as its supporters.
• The main advantages of direct democracy are that it is a form of government where every citizen has an equal vote and can contribute to decisions, and it provides a mechanism for the people to hold their representatives accountable.
• The main disadvantages of direct democracy are that it can be time-consuming and expensive to implement, and it can lead to decision-making by a small group of people.
• Direct democracy is a form of democracy where individuals express their opinions themselves and not through representatives acting on their behalf, a type of democracy that emerged in Athens in classical times and is seen today in referendums.
• Representative democracy is a more modern form of democracy, through which an individual selects a person to act on their behalf to exercise political choice.
• Legitimacy is the rightful use of power in accordance with pre-set criteria or widely held agreements, such as a government's right to rule following an election or a monarch's succession based on the agreed rules.
• Advantages of direct democracy:

  • It is the purest form of democracy.
  • The people's voice is clearly heard.
  • It can avoid delay and deadlock within the political system.
  • The fact that the people are making a decision gives it great legitimacy.
• Disadvantages of direct democracy:

  • It can lead to the 'tyranny of the majority', whereby the winning majority simply ignores the interests of the minority and imposes something detrimental on them
  • The people may be too easily swayed by short-term, emotional appeals by charismatic individuals
  • Some issues may be too complex for the ordinary citizen to understand
• Representative democracy is the most common model found in the democratic world today.
• The basis of this type of democracy is that the people do not make political decisions directly, instead, they choose representatives to make decisions on their behalf.
• The most common way of choosing representatives is to elect them through a formal, competitive election process.
• If representatives are not elected in a vote with some degree of choice, it calls democracy into question.
• Elections are the first thing we think of when we consider representation.
• Representative democracy ensures that those elected to positions of power and responsibility have to be held to account by the people.
• Accountability is essential if representatives are to act responsibly and in the interests of the people.
• At election time both individual representatives, such as MPs in the UK, and the government as a whole are held accountable when the people go to the polls.
• During the election campaign, opposition parties will highlight the shortcomings of the government and will offer their own alternatives.
• At the same time, the government will seek to explain and justify what it has done in an effort to be re-elected.
• Individual representatives will be held to account for their performance: how well they have represented their constituents and whether their voting record in the legislature meets the approval of those same constituents.
• Edmund Burke, a 18th century Conservative thinker, wrote that 'your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion'.
• Accountability Where those who have been elected in a representative democracy must be made responsible for their policies, actions, decisions and general conduct. Without such accountability, representation becomes largely meaningless.

  Polls Another term for elections; polls simply establish the number of people who support a particular person, party or issue.

  Constituents The ordinary voters who elect a particular representative, usually based on residence in a particular geographical area.
• When people consider representation, they usually think of someone who will express the concerns and needs of the local community, acting as a sort of 'spokesperson' or champion for the local area that elected them. Representation can take different forms, however, which can have implications for interpreting and evaluating the strength of representative democracy in the UK.
• Social representation implies that the characteristics of members of representative bodies, whether national parliaments, regional assemblies or local councils, should be broadly in line with the characteristics of the population as a whole.
• Representative bodies should be a microcosm of society, reflecting the diversity of the population.