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British Electoral System

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British Electoral System
The maturity of the political system in Britain has gradually shaped the British community. Britain at present is considered to be a Liberal Democratic state and one main component is the capacity of the government to conduct an election to allow the people to voice their needs in the national level. Election is the heart or the core of a democratic state , removing this would deprive the people of their right. After five years or if the Parliament was dissolved by the Queen with of course the Prime Minister's advise, there will be an election using the "First-past-the-post" electoral system. Here the candidates can win seats in the Parliament by plurality of votes that the candidate received in his or her district. But then this form of electoral system attracted number of critics regarding the biases it constituted in the government. According to critics, only the large political parties (Conservative and the Labour Party) benefit in this scenario; those with equally strong support in different districts, gain more seats rather than those who concentrated on one area alone and; the small parties suffered the consequences of having weak and widespread support. British election has been the founding element that will contour the parties' policies and motives. The British people have already witnessed several elections that later on shaped the political way of life of Britain. These elections are highly competitive among the different parties, each presenting themselves better than the other parties and most especially maintaining their status quo or a probable of increasing their power over their constituents. Party image and public opinion generates the shaping of the British electoral results. The 1997 British General Election was the time of a new power and rule under the Labour Party. The election on May 1, 1997 was one of the most talked about election in Britain for it passed on the rule of the Conservatives to the Labour. The Labour party


Bibliography: Blackburn, Robert. The Electoral System in Britain. Great Britain: Macmillan Press LTD, 1995 Butler, David; Westlake, Marlin. British Politics and European Elections 1994. Great Britain: Macmillan Press LTD, 1995 Jones, Bill, ed., 2004. Politics UK. 5th Ed. Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited. Budge, Ian et al, 2004. The New British Politics. 3rd Ed. Essex, England: Pearson Education Limited. Clarke, H.D. et al. New Models for New Labour: The Political Economy of Labour Party Support, January 1992 – April 1997. The American Political Science Review 92/3 (September 1998): 559-575 Evans, G Fielding, S. The Labour Party and the Politics of Democracy. The Journal of British Studies 38/4 (October 1999): 486-492 Johnston, R Margetts, Helen. The 1997 British General Election: New Labour, New Britain?. West European Politics 20/4 (October 1997):180-191 Morwitz, Vicki et al Rossiter, D.J. et al. Redistributing and Electoral Bias in Great Britain. British Journal of Political Science 27/3 (July 1997): 466-47 Article On-line "British Election." Socialist Review Aotearoa New Zealand
Issue 1 (June/July 1997). http://www.iso.org.nz/sr/1/uk_election.htm. Internet; February 16, 2006

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