On The British Electoral System

The paper outlines the history, construction and theory of the British electoral system .through which, it discusses a core problem of political science, that is, the framing and developing of the theory of representation.After introducing the main issue and theoretical approaches, the first chapter traces the development of British system of election. In the early 12th century, the first constitutional regulation of election, the principle of free election, originated in the 5 circuit,No.1 WESTMINSTER ACT. In the period of aristocracy, the early system of election, influenced by the factors like tribe democracy, revenge of blood relation, economic factor, legal tradition and aristocracy tradition, acted as a tool for game between the king and the aristocracy. From the industry revolution to the end of 20th century, also in the reform of constitution, the capitalism took the place of feudalism, and the idea of representation spread widely, as resulted in the great progress of system of election in the principles. Up to now, the party politics and feminism movement helps to shape the modern simple majority system of election.The British electoral system consists of 2 parts, one is the congre.ss election,the other is local election. This paper focuses on the former. It briefly introduces the system in 7 procedures:the distribution of constituency, registration of electors, to nominee the candidate,the election funding, voting , calculation of ballots and electoral sue. The material is not only from the congressional law, but also from the convention of party behavior.The third chapter tries to answer why the modern election occurred earliest in Britain?from the viewpoint of historical thoughts, the paper concludes the doctrine of popular sovereignty is the guiding idea of modern election. It gave a new explanation for the legitimacy of government power, that is, government power originates from the popular consent. The electoral system is the realization of popular sovereignty. Given the limitation of scale, representation, but not the direct democracy, is more reasonabl. The paper discusses two problems related, the concept of popularity and the majority principle. The former one has such three stages as classical community, thepeople in the widespread process of right,and the abstract concept of people , which applies to the increasing of British voters. Though meeting many critics, the majority principle has been widely adopted. While obeying it, the British electoral system minimize the requirement of legitimacy and maximize the needs of ruling ability.The question of the fourth chapter is why the Britain chooses the simple majority system. Based on the discussion of Diverger's study of party and election, the paper compare all the three main electoral systems, including the relative plurality system, the proportional representation system and the mixed or hybrid system, which is also an important part of the theory of representation. Added with the Britain-characteristic factors, the paper brings up four points to answer the question above, that is, firstly, neither of the system had the unalternative reason in the system itself, instead, their advantages depend; secondly, the constitutional framework and idea (the congress sovereignty, the cabinet system, the two party system and the electoral system ) chooses it; thirdly, the conservative tradition maintains it; fourthly, the motivation of reform is not enough.The following chapter explores the developments of the British electoral system and the theory of representation, it is summarized as the elitism democracy. The paper reviews the theory of elitism democracy, studies some problems concerned, and applies it to analyze the actor in the election, which accordingly discloses the change of the representative from the agent to the delegate, and the bureaucratic tendency of the party structure and history. As the origination of constitutionalism, the British electoral system is typical to be the case to study the theory of representati...