Democratic Incongruities: Old Models and New Perspectives

Abstract

Official descriptions of the United Kingdom’s (UK) system of government, to be found in official publications and on parliamentary and government websites, present a consistent and unambiguous ‘standard account’ of representative democracy. The key elements of this ‘standard account’ are: ‘the UK is a Parliamentary democracy’; ‘people vote in elections for MPs who will represent them in Parliament’; ‘every adult has the right to vote — known as “universal suffrage”’; ‘government is voted into power by the people, to act in the interests of the people’; there is ‘an Executive drawn from and accountable to Parliament’ and ‘a sovereign Parliament, which is supreme to all other government institutions’ (Cabinet Office 2011a; Home Office 2013; UK Parliament 2013).