The System of Government în Britan

THE SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT IN BRITAIN

While the British are reputed to be a law-abiding nation they are not particularly fond of making new laws. The style of their democracy is based on comparatively few rules and regulations, which is actually a result of their love for privacy and, ultimately, secrecy. Apparently, the government feels that if it establishes fewer rules telling the individual what to do there will also be fewer rules telling the government what to do. A very unusual aspect of this mentality is that the British citizens do not have identity cards. They do not have to inform any authorities if they change their address because nobody seems to care where a person lives. On the other hand, Britain is the only civilised country that has not passed a Freedom of Information Act, which is a law whereby the government is obliged to release any information it has collected about its citizens. On the contrary, Britain has a law, called the Official Secrets Act, which obliges the government employees not to release information about the nature of their work. These two aspects are typical of the way the relationship between the individual and the state functions in Britain. More than anything else, the traditional conjecture is that both the state and the individual should leave each other alone as much as possible. This has resulted in the peculiarity and unusual simplification of some areas of Britain's political establishment. Unlike, perhaps, the most trumpeted feature of other democracies, that the government is effected ,,by the people," Britain's democracy involves less participation by the ordinary citizen in governing and the making of the laws. The crucial political decisions in Britain's corridors of power are made rather informally, over lunch or drinks, by the group of responsible officials who understand the problem best.

The public attitude to politics is a mixed one. While everybody understands the necessity of it and generally has confidence in the political system as such, the people in Britain are convinced that the bad reputation of their politicians is thoroughly justified. The suspicion with which the politicians are regarded is a result of their lack of honesty rather than their corruption. People are in fact ignorant about who their politicians really are and surveys have shown that very few Britons actually know who their local Member of Parliament (MP) is or who the major politicians in the country are. People in Britain have lost the aggressiveness of a heated political debate, they rather see a political issue as a boring topic of conversation. They would rarely demonstrate and protest over some political matter or other, and in fact such demonstrations only took place as far back as over 150 years ago. The politicians themselves do not seem to mind the label of dishonesty attached to them by the public, the press, and especially such satirical TV programmes as Spitting Image - showing grotesque puppets of well-known public figures - or Yes, Prime Minister - about the unethical conduct of high-ranking elected officials. They even love them, or so they declare.

Britain is, on the one hand, a constitutional monarchy, which means that the country is governed by a king or queen who accepts the advice of the Parliament and a parliamentary democracy, on the other hand, that is a country whose government is controlled by a parliament elected by the people. In reality, as it happens in many European countries with monarchs and presidents, the official head of state, who is the Queen, preserves little real power. On the whole, and with an eye to the traditionalism which characterises it, the British system of government is not at all a modern one. Unlike many of the contemporary democracies, for instance, Britain has no written constitution. Instead, the principles and procedures by which the country is governed have been either gathered, little by little, over the centuries, or they have been established by laws passed by Parliament, or, even more peculiar, they arise from various rulings of law courts of which some have never been written down in any form. As a result, instead of a written constitution, Britain relies to this day on a mixture of statute law (law established by a legislative body), common law (law based on customs, usage or decisions of law courts) and conventions (practices and precepts that although not part of a legal code are nevertheless generally accepted).

The Monarchy

The monarchy in today's Britain evolves between appearance and reality. The fact that it has lost so much of its original powers may create confusion about the position and the role of the monarch. For instance, according to the law, there are no restrictions on whom the king or queen chooses to be Prime Minister. He or she has always picked the man that better served the interests of the crown for this position. In reality, today, the monarch always chooses the leader of the party that has won the elections. This is so because the Prime Minister must have a strong support in the House of Commons - the elected chamber of Parliament - in order to pass legislation and be able to collect the taxes required for the government to function at all. Yet, sometimes, the monarch really made his own choice. For instance, in 1940 King George VI chose Winston Churchill to succeed Neville Chamberlain, when his personal preference was Lord Halifax, because he felt that, in wartime, the Prime Minister was supposed to sit in the House of Commons, where the true policy was forged.

The sovereign always refers to the government as ,,my government," but in reality the ministers are selected by the Prime Minister and are presented to the monarch on a list, which is then announced to the public. In fact, these ministers are not ,,servants of the Crown" as the official formulation goes, but work in conjunction with and for the Prime Minister, actually responding to the political outlook of the victorious party. The monarch also appears to exert great powers over Parliament since, by law, he or she may summon the Parliament - every autumn at the state opening of Parliament -and may dissolve it - before a general election. Furthermore, no Parliamentary Bill can become an Act - that is, have force of law -before the monarch has agreed to sign it, thus giving it the Royal Assent. In point of fact, the king or queen's power over Parliament is .practically nil, since Parliament can only be dissolved with its own consent, at the request of the Prime Minister and the monarch is forbidden to enter the House of Commons since Charles I in 1641 tried to arrest five members of whom he disapproved. The matter of the Royal Assent is also a formal one because the bills are approved automatically and are not even signed by the monarch in person. The royal veto has not been used since 1708 and it would provoke a constitutional crisis if it were used.