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The UK's CHANGING Democratic Audit The UK’S CHANGING DEMOCRACY The 2018 Democratic Audit Edited by Patrick Dunleavy, Alice Park and Ros Taylor The UK’S CHANGING DEMOCRACY The 2018 Democratic Audit Edited by Patrick Dunleavy, Alice Park and Ros Taylor Democratic Audit Published by LSE Press 10 Portugal Street London WC2A 2HD press.lse.ac.uk First published 2018 Cover and design: Diana Jarvis Cover image: Union Jack © kycstudio/iStock Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd. ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-909890-44-2 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-909890-46-6 ISBN (ePub): 978-1-909890-47-3 ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-909890-48-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/book1 Text © Democratic Audit and the individual authors. Images © Democratic Audit and the individual authors or copyright holders attributed in the source information. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence. To view a copy of this licence, go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/2.0/uk/. This licence allows for copying and distributing the work in any form and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for noncommercial purposes, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Note, copyright restrictions apply to some images; see source information for individual licensing terms, where they differ. This book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For our full publishing ethics policies, see http://press.lse.ac.uk Suggested citation: Dunleavy, P, Park, A and Taylor R (eds), 2018, The UK’s Changing Democracy: The 2018 Democratic Audit, London, LSE Press. Democratic Audit’s core funding is provided by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Read more at: democraticaudit.com 3 Contents Preface ................................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................... 8 Contributors ......................................................................................................................... 9 List of figures and tables ................................................................................................ 11 1. Auditing the UK’s changing democracy ............................................................ 15 1.1 The worsening context for liberal democracy ............................................. 19 1.2 Evaluating UK democracy and the Democratic Audit’s choice of methods ............................................................................................. 24 1.3 The ambivalent legacies of the ‘British tradition’ ........................................ 30 2. How democratic are the UK’s electoral systems? ................................. 43 2.1 The Westminster ‘plurality rule’ electoral system........................................ 45 2.2 The reformed electoral systems used in Britain’s devolved governments and England’s mayoral elections ......................................... 56 2.3 The UK’s proportional electoral system: the single transferable vote (STV) ......................................................................................... 69 2.4 Are elections conducted with integrity, with sufficient turnout? ........... 78 3. How democratic are the channels for political participation? .............. 91 3.1 The political parties and party system ............................................................ 93 3.2 The interest group process ................................................................................ 112 3.3 The media system ................................................................................................ 122 3.4 Social media and citizen vigilance ................................................................. 136 4. How democratic is the Westminster Parliament? ................................ 147 4.1 The House of Commons: control of government and citizen representation .................................................................................... 149 4.2 The Commons’ two committee systems and scrutiny of government policy-making .................................................................................................... 159 4.3 Accountability of the security and intelligence services ......................... 173 4.4 How undemocratic is the House of Lords? ................................................. 182 4 5. How democratic and effective is UK national government? .............. 193 5.1 The basic constitutional law ......................................................................... 195 5.2 The core executive and government ......................................................... 204 5.3 The civil service and public services management systems .............. 223 5.4 How transparent and free from corruption is UK government? ......... 237 5.5 In terms of Brexit ............................................................................................. 256 5.6 The basic structure of the devolution settlements ................................ 264 6. How democratic are the UK’s devolved government arrangements? ...................................................................................... 279 6.1 Scotland: devolved government and national politics .......................... 281 6.2 Scotland: local government and politics ................................................... 290 6.3 Wales: devolved government and national politics ............................... 298 6.4 Wales: local government and politics ........................................................ 305 6.5 Northern Ireland: devolved government and politics ............................. 313 6.6 Northern Ireland: local government and politics .................................... 323 6.7 London: devolved government and politics at metropolitan level ...... 331 6.8 London: government and politics in the boroughs ................................ 340 6.9 England: local government and politics ..................................................... 351 7. How far are equalities essential for liberal democracy secured? ..... 365 7.1 Human rights and civil liberties .................................................................... 367 7.2 Gender equality ................................................................................................ 377 7.3 Equality and ethnic minorities ..................................................................... 385 7.4 The rights of workers ...................................................................................... 397 7.5 Class disparities and social inequalities ................................................... 408 8. Assessing democratic quality and the potential for democratic advance...................................................................................... 425 8.1 Assessing democratic quality and renewing the potential for democratic advance ........................................................................................ 427 8.2 Counteracting democratic decay ................................................................ 437 References ............................................................................................................... 445 Index ........................................................................................................................... 505 5 Preface This book presents a uniquely democratic perspective on all aspects of UK politics, at the centre in Westminster and Whitehall, and in all the devolved nations. It returns our focus firmly to the ‘big issues’ around the quality and sustainability of the UK’s liberal democracy. The last decade has seen a global rise of debased ‘semi-democracies’ (like Putin’s Russia) where authoritarian rulers maintain (rigged) elections and a managed, only superficially open political process and institutions as a façade, disguising parts of their corruptly run or dictatorial regime from view. In these troubled times it is more important than ever before for exponents of liberal democracy to take a critical look at their own political practices, and to identify where improvements can be made. As our final, concluding chapter makes clear, this means paying attention not just to how the big and obvious macro-institutions in a liberal democracy work (like a voting system or a parliament) – but also to much less visible ‘micro-institutions’, the highly detailed rules that often govern how macro-institutions work out in practice. The need to cover how macro- and micro-institutions operate together is one reason why our book has 37 chapters. The other reason is to cover properly the vital contributions to UK democracy being made by the devolved governments and legislatures, and by politics at a local level – a task that takes up nine chapters in Part 6 of the book. The book’s overall plan follows this sequence. Part 1 is an introduction that sets the scene for the book as whole by looking at three overall aspects of the UK’s situation as a liberal democracy. Part 2 examines the UK’s main electoral systems and shows how they work. Part 3 surveys the other ‘political input’ processes, that is all the ways (besides voting) in which citizens can communicate their preferences, needs and priorities to decision-makers. Part 4 covers the heart of government in the Parliament at Westminster. And Part 5 looks at UK executive government
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