Contrasting the UK and US political systems
Created | Updated Jul 15, 2004
The UK and US are two English-speaking democracies* which may at first glance may appear to have similar political systems. In reality they could hardly be more different.
Strong V Weak Parties
In the UK political parties make policies, which their members are expected to follow. Mavericks can find their career and re-election prospects diminished. The party machines are responsible for candidate selection, and consider party interest carefully when making selections.
In the US, there are political parties, but they have less direct control of candidate selection, which is determined by primary elections among registered supporters of they party. Party policy does not play the same role in the US as it does in the UK. Candidates are more likely to appeal to local interests than British candidates are.
One consequence of this is that US representatives are freer to speak their minds. Another is that they are judged by the amount of federal spending they can attract into their districts. This is known as 'pork barrel' politics.
The role of money
The emphasis on party in the UK means that the personal wealth and personal support of candidates is much less important than it is in the US. In the US, the system of primary elections also benefits candidates with money, who can spend to earn nomination. In the UK, candidate selection is internal to the party machines and is therefore cheap to participate in.
Unicameral vs Tricameral Legislature
The UK legislature nominally has two houses (bicameral), the Commons and the Lords. However the Lords is unelected and has little power. A party with a majority in the Commons will generally get its way, and combined with the strong party system, this means that the executive will generally get its way in the legislature. To put this another way, the UK constitution is almost devoid of "checks and balances".*
The US is also bicameral. However,
laws in the US must not only be approved by the House of Representatives and the Senate, but also by the president*. This effectively means that three bodies must all be in agreement, and this makes the passing of laws and budgets rather more difficult than in the UK1.
Electoral Systems
Both countries employ the First Past the Post, whereby a single candidate with more votes than any other wins a single seat. This is in contrast to European democracies which generally have some form of proportional representation, so that parties win seats in proportion to the percentage of votes cast for that party.
The UK is divided into constiuencies of roughly equal size, each electing one MP. Constituencies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are slightly smaller than those in England, giving them slightly more MPS than would be justified by their proportion of the population.
The US States each elect a number members to the House of Represenatives in proportion to their population, and two Senators. Each state has this number (representatives + 2) of votes in the Electoral College which elects the US President. The electoral college, like the UK parliament, thus gives smaller states more power than their population would indicate. However since states almost all cast their electoral college vote as a single block for one candidate or the other, larger states have a more powerful swing effect.
In both countries the candidate or party with most votes doesn't always win. This is not just a feature of the bias in favour of smaller states or nations, but also a feature of the First Past the Post electoral system. A candidate or party could win 49% of the vote in about half the states or constituencies, 100% in the rest, and still lose, with around 75% of the total vote. In 2000 Al Gore lost the presidency despite having the most votes. In 1951 the Labour Party lost the general election despite having the most votes. The same thing happened to the Conservative Party in 1974.
Brits stand for election and Americans run.
Judiciary
In the UK, the judiciary is ultimately appointed by the Lord Chancellor, an ancient post, shortly to be abolished and replaced by an appointments commission. Although the Lord Chancellor is a member of the government, the UK judiciary is rarely regarded as politically partisan.
In the US, members of the Supreme Court are appointed for life by the President, approved by Congress. Members of lower courts are also political appointments or directly elected.
Given that the US has a written constitution to interpret, and that the nature of the legislature means that ambiguities or inconsistencies in law are often difficult to resolve; it follows that the US Supreme Court has a much more active role in making policy than any UK judicial body.
This, combined with the partisan appoinment process makes for a very partisan body; most clearly seen when the 2000 presidential election was, in effect, awarded to George W Bush by the US Supreme Court.
Rights of Initiative
In the US, there are rights, varying from state to state, whereby citizens can have referendum questions put to the people of their state. These referendums can pass or remove laws or control budgets.
There will frequently be a large number of such referendum questions on the ballot at election time.
No such right exists in the UK, or in the US at a federal level (where it might perhaps be most useful).
Devolution and States' Rights
In the UK Parliament is sovereign. Recently, some powers of government have been devolved to Scotland and Wales, and a similar attempt has been made Northern Ireland. Scottish law is different from that of England and Wales, and the Scottish Parliament is now responsible for this. Until 1999, laws applying only to Scotland were still passed by the Parliament in London.
In the US, it is a jealously defended constitutional principle that the federal government derives its authority from the states and not vice versa. The states have considerable autonomy in principle. They can pass their own laws, and have their own judiciaries.
However, the federal government raises the bulk of taxation, and local taxes, largely on sales, are under severe pressure from out-of-state and internet sales. Thus much autonomy is lost to the principle of he who pays the piper...
1The UK's budget process, whereby the Chancellor decides the budget, informs the house of commons in a speech, and has it invariably improved contrasts starkly with the US, where nobody is singularly responsible for the budget and everybody can pass the buck for a failure to pass one.
