Civilisation syllabus

CIVILIZATION SYLLABUS

STRICT PROGRAMME D’EXAMEN

PARLIAMENT

        This institutional body that embodies the nation’s legislative power is comprised of two houses (bicameral institution):

1. the House of Commons, which is elected;

1. the House of Lords, which is not elected and based on hereditary principles.

The House of Parliaments are located in London in the Palace of Westminster, on the banks of the River Thames.

The House of Commons is (usually) made up of 650 Members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected either in a general election (which takes place every five years in Britain), or in a by-election (for instance after the death of resignation of one particular MP). There are MPs for England (the largest number), MPs for Scotland, and MPs for Northern Ireland. About one-fifth of all MPs are women, although this is of course apt to vary from one mandate to the next. There is also a small minority of MPs coming from ethnic communities, although their number is on the rise.

The presiding officer of the House of Commons is called the Speaker. He is elected by the House but he usually does not vote except in cases when a tie arises (no majority). He essentially supervises debates. There is also a Leader of the House, that is to say a Cabinet Minister who plans and supervises the government’s legislative programme in either House and, in consultation with his Opposition counterpart (the Shadow Leader of the House) manages the daily timetable.

There are four kinds of bills:

1. Public bills: major bills that will become national laws.
2. Private bills: to alter the present legislation or create one in one particular place or for on very specific issue that does not affect the whole nation. Often emanate from associations or groups, or collective entities.
3. Money bills: budget proposals put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Ministre des finances).
4. Private Members’ bills: bills tabled (soumis) by backbenchers (MPs who have no function in the government/shadow cabinet) and for which debating time allotment is rather short, so that they seldom become laws.

THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM

Three main elections take place in Britain:

1. General Elections (to renew the composition of the House of Commons).
2. By-elections occur during a Parliamentary session to fill a vacant seat.
3. Local elections (for various officials in the local government).

 Other elections include regional elections in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland to renew the members of the various local parliaments, since some powers were devolved on them in the 1990s, and European elections.

Of course, there is no Presidential election as in France, but polls are organized to renew the total number of PMs in the House of Commons, usually every five years. The decision to call an election stems from the Prime Minister. The candidates in the constituencies (circonscriptions) that have polled the highest number of votes are elected to a seat in the House of Commons even if they have obtained less than 50% of the votes (simple majority; the system is usually colloquially known as the First-Past-the-Post system, and excludes proportional representation, although the latter exists in some of the regional parliaments).

In turn the party which polls the highest number of votes (that is to say secures the largest number of constituencies – or “wards” in the largest towns) and thus of seats in the Commons, wins the general election and goes on to designate the Prime Minister, who is as a rule the winning party’s leader. The party leader is formally “invited” by the Queen to form a “Her Majesty’s Government”. Elections take place on a Thursday; voters go to the polling station (bureau de vote), take one ballot paper from the returning officer who tears it off a pad (carnet à souches) on which the stumps (or counterfoils) are kept to counter-check that the count is accurate, writes an X opposite the candidate’s name (since all the candidates are mentioned on the paper) while in the voting booth (l’isoloir), then casts his or her vote into the ballot box (l’urne).

The House of Lords is made up of the peers* of the realm, and it was also, until 2005, the highest Court of Appeal for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The work of the House of Lord consists in revising the legislation, sometimes delaying bills passed by the House of Commons, bringing some further expertise in examining European, economic, constitutional or scientific (sometimes also religious) issues already debated in the House of Commons. In fact the history of the “Upper House” is one of a steady decline/weakening from the early 20th century onwards, expectedly brought on by Liberal or Labour governments and their various reforms:

The PRIME MINISTER

1. He or she dissolves Parliament.
2. He or she decided the date of the general election.
3. He or she attends Prime Minister’s Question Time once a week in the House of Commons.
4. He/she is the leader of his party.
5. He/she heads the Cabinet.
6. He/she sits in the House of Commons.
7. He/she appoints a large number of key figures (ministers, top civil servants, high-ranking officers of the Judiciary and the Army, bishops of the Church of England.

1 The abbreviation “Rt Hon.” means “Right Honorable”, namely an honorific title given to some members of the Privy Council, Parliament and the government, particularly when of noble origin.

2 A Minister of State is a minister who ranks below a Secretary of State;

3 A Parliamentary Under-Secretary ranks below a Minister of State;

4 The Home Office is in charge of the police force, security, law and order, immigration control (= Ministère de l’intérieur).

5 The Lord Chancellor holds the highest office in the judiciary, is appointed by the Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister, and presides over the House of Lords. 

6 The Chancellor of the Exchequer = Minister of Finance, a very important ministry.

7 Attorney General: represents the Crown in important criminal and civil cases. Usually an MP and a barrister (an advocate).

8 The Lord Privy Seal is now a sort of honorific distinction, the function being now merely historic and combined with that of Leader of the House.

THE POLITICAL PARTIES

The Conservative Party

History

        Its ancestor is the Tory Party, a political faction that emerged in the late 17th century, and defended the interests of the country gentry, of the Church of England, and more generally, of law and order and traditions. Toryism gave way to the Conservative Party in the 1830s, especially under the influence of Sir Robert Peel and of a “registration society” designed to take care of voter registration after the passing of the 1832 Reform Act, the Carlton Club.

Ideology

• Law and order
• Free enterprise capitalism
• Property ownership
• Low taxation
• Low public spending
• Low levels of regulation
• Interventionist foreign policy
• Traditional values
• The Labour Party

• Socialism (collective ownership of the means of production: “Clause IV”); eventually discarded.
• Importance of unionism.
• State intervention.
• Devolution
• Centrism and consensual outlook (social democracy): “The Third Way” (Tony Blair, Gordon Brown).
•         New Labour: concept of a “stakeholder society” (citizens have both duties and rights). Abandonment of Clause IV. Less power to trade unions in internal management of party. Less emphasis on taxation. Social reformism but also market-based economy; stronger work ethic and a decrease in public spending, a much more centrist approach (Blairism).

The Social Democratic Party

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) came into being as a result of problems arising inside the Labour Party and about its policy (we remember that the Labour Party was routed at the 1979 election). This SPD went on to unite with the small but still existing Liberal Party to form what became called “the Alliance”. However the new party was not successful at all in the following elections, so that Alliance party leaders decided to create yet another party, the Social and Liberal Democrat Party, which, again, was disbanded in the early 1990s while other members of the initial Liberal Party joined to form the Liberal Democratic Party, usually called Lib Dem, under the leadership of Paddy Ashdown.