Electoral Quotas: Should the UK learn from the rest of the world?

Chris Game

doi:10.5130/cjlg.v0i0.1107

Abstract

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown would surely love his political legacy to include a significant contribution to constitutional reform. Certainly he inherited, on succeeding Tony Blair in 2007, a substantial agenda of unfinished constitutional business: devolution, House of Lords reform, the electoral system, a bill of rights, a written constitution. Two years on, though, major progress on any of these ‘big’ topics seems most unlikely before a probable 2010 General Election. Which might mean a rather modest constitutional legacy, based mainly on bringing some prerogative powers under MPs’ scrutiny and control, and, in other comparatively minor ways, boosting the role of Parliament. One such low profile, though not unimportant, initiative is Brown’s revival of the Speaker’s Conference, a constitutional device that many supposed had become extinct with the creation in 2000 of the Electoral Commission.

Highlights

They were always rare, but there were five occasions during the 20th Century when the Prime Minister asked the Speaker of the House of Commons to establish and chair conferences of selected parliamentarians to reach all-party agreement on reforms to electoral law
The Conference is, anything but the first body to address the topic of representational disparity or diversity in UK governmental institutions, but it is the first of such standing whose whole presumed raison d’être is to make recommendations for statutory change
Turning to the focus of this commentary, if that is the case for parliamentary representation, why should it not apply at local level – at least in England and Wales, whose councils are elected by exactly the same plurality or ‘First-Past-The-Post’ electoral system as the House of Commons?

Summary

Introduction

They were always rare, but there were five occasions during the 20th Century when the Prime Minister asked the Speaker of the House of Commons to establish and chair conferences of selected parliamentarians to reach all-party agreement on reforms to electoral law. 22-24) suggest that party-centred, multimember constituency systems of proportional representation (PR) are the most favourable combination for the election of minority group representatives.

Results

Conclusion