David Farrell argues that the extent of the decline of political parties and democratic decline is at risk of being exaggerated, and that the role of parties in democratic innovation is often underappreciated. He concludes that political parties continue to make fundamental contributions to democracy, not least in driving processes of reform to both democracy and their own internal structures and policies.

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John Pullinger, chair of the Electoral Commission and a guest speaker on the Unit’s summer conference panel on Elections and Electoral Reform, sets out four key areas where electoral law is in need of reform, arguing for improved access to registration, increased transparency when it comes to political donations, stronger and simpler electoral regulation, and a modernisation of electoral law.

Elections are at the heart of our constitution, giving people a voice when choices are made about how we are to be governed. They are a mechanism for the people to hold their governments accountable. A key test for a healthy democracy is whether people trust, value, and participate in elections. So how can we ensure that our electoral system remains effective?

An effective electoral system

An effective electoral system starts by putting the voter first. This means ensuring that as many eligible voters as possible are correctly registered, and that the process of voting is both secure and accessible to all.

The electoral system should support candidates, campaigners, and parties to get their message across, free from abuse, intimidation, and threats. It should provide transparency about campaigning activities, so we all know where campaigners’ money comes from and how it is spent.

It also needs to work for electoral administrators, supporting them to run elections effectively and efficiently, so that voters across the country receive the same high standard of service. There must be resilience in the system, so administrators can cope in the face of unexpected pressures.

At its core, it requires a simple and comprehensible canon of law so that everyone understands and can follow the rules without risk of being inadvertently caught out. The law also needs to work effectively in the context of the differences in approach to elections policy between the UK’s governments.

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In September, the Constitution Unit hosted a distinguished panel of experts to discuss the government’s plans for reforming election law, as set out in the Elections Bill and draft Online Safety Bill. Tom Fieldhouse summarises the discussion.

The Elections Bill, and the draft Online Safety Bill are two important parts of the government’s reform agenda which, in their current form, stand to significantly alter the UK’s constitutional landscape.

With the Elections Bill making its way through parliament, and the draft Online Safety Bill undergoing pre-legislative scrutiny, the Constitution Unit hosted a webinar on 23 September entitled Reforming elections: assessing the government’s proposals. The event was chaired by the Unit’s Deputy Director, Professor Alan Renwick, and heard from four expert speakers: Louise Edwards, Deputy Director of Regulation at the Electoral Commission; Laura Lock, Deputy Chief Executive of the Association of Electoral Administrators; Justin Fisher, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Policy Unit at Brunel University; and, Baroness (Nicky) Morgan of Cotes, former Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (2019–20) – now a Conservative peer and Vice Chair of the APPG on Digital Regulation and Responsibility.

The summaries below are presented in the order of the speakers’ contributions. The full event, including the Q&A, is available on our YouTube page.

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The 2019 general election is now complete, but there is still plenty to say about the campaign, the rules that governed it, and the new parliament it has produced. Luke Moore summarises the contributions at our final seminar of 2019, where Unit staff were joined by other experts to dicuss the lessons of the election.

On Monday 16 December the Constitution United hosted an event entitled Election Replay with the Experts, at which four leading political scientists, including the Director and Deputy Director of the Constitution Unit, looked back on the 2019 general election. The issues discussed included polling, women’s representation, the rules of the electoral game, and the effect of the election on the new parliament. The event was chaired by Unit Research Associate Lisa James. 

Ben Lauderdale – polling 

Ben Lauderdale, Professor of Political Science at UCL, started the evening by discussing the performance of polling at the election. During the election campaign Lauderdale had been involved in producing the much-discussed ‘MRP’ (multilevel regression and post-stratification) polling used to predict constituency results. His central message was that after two general elections — in 2015 and 2017 — in which some of the polls proved to be significantly out of step with the results, polling for the 2019 election is largely a non-story, as most pollsters were on target in their predictions. Further, the accuracy of the polls meant that the media was (in retrospect and in Lauderdale’s view) discussing the right topics during the election campaign. The most important of these was the prospect of a Conservative majority, but also the specific demographic and geographic weaknesses of the 2017 Labour coalition. While the terminology was a bit reductive and silly, it was not wrong to have focused on the vulnerability of Labour’s ‘red wall’ and Conservative appeals to ‘Workington man’.  (more…)

Women are under-represented in almost every legislature worldwide and politics is easier to get into if you have a wealthy background. Ragnhild Muriaas, Rainbow Murray and Vibeke Wang discuss their new book, which examines the effectiveness of financial incentive mechanisms to increase women’s representation in politics. They conclude that money, both as a barrier to women’s inclusion and as a potential lever for boosting their presence, is an area that requires greater consideration both from scholars and political actors.

It is a well-known fact that women are under-represented in nearly every legislature around the world. It is also well known, although perhaps less commented upon, that politics is dominated by those from wealthy backgrounds. It is, in effect, a rich man’s game. When these two concepts are linked, it is often in a way that unfairly criticises women – for example, by highlighting that gender quotas often favour the introduction of wealthy women into politics without addressing wider issues of diversity and inclusion.

In our book, Gendered Electoral Financing: Money Power and Representation in Comparative Perspective, we take a different approach. We acknowledge the ways in which money drives politics, and in particular, the ways in which lack of money can act as a gendered barrier to women’s access to politics. As money is part of the problem, we focus on ways in which it could also be part of the solution. Specifically, we examine what we term ‘gendered electoral finance’ (GEF): using money as a means to facilitate women’s entry to politics, either by supporting their campaigns directly or by incentivising parties to do so.

Our work examines a range of case studies, both in developed and developing democracies, to consider the different ways in which money presents both barriers and possible solutions for increasing women’s presence in politics. We focus primarily on candidate-centred systems, ie countries where candidates are elected individually rather than through a party list, and where the bulk of the pressure therefore lies with the candidate. We find that barriers and solutions can vary quite significantly depending on the political system in place. What remains a common theme, however, is that money plays a very important part in understanding why politics remains stubbornly gendered in favour of men. (more…)