The Politics of Constitution-making: The Experience of the United Kingdom

Abstract

Britain has one of the most stable political systems in the world. Many of its political institutions date from medieval times.1 The British constitution is said to be based on the Revolution Settlement of the late seventeenth century, but there is no clear way to distinguish between historic structures and current practice. Powers pass imperceptibly from one institution to another, in the absence of overt or formal constitutional amendment. The most obvious example is the institution of the Crown, whose focus of power has shifted from the monarch to the prime minister. The office of prime minister, however, is nowhere defined, and the monarch may still share in some of the powers of the Crown, for example in the dissolution of Parliament, or in the appointment of the prime minister where there is no parliamentary majority for one party, or where that party has not appointed a leader.2 KeywordsProportional RepresentationEuropean Economic CommunityLabour GovernmentRoyal CommissionLabour PartyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.