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British House Of Commons: The hereditary landowners dominated the House of Lords, then almost as powerful as the House of Commons. Through the system of bor-augh representation (which until 1832 excluded nost of the big new industrial towns but brought nembership of the Commons to men virtually lominated by landowners for tiny villages), they :ould sway the Commons as well. More than i fourth of the Commons' members were peers or ions of peers, and many others were "placemen," he recipients of royal or aristocratic patronage. Jntil 1834 cabinets invariably included a ma-ority of peers, usually holding the most lucra-ive patronage-dispensing posts.
These characteristics of the British two-party system have very important consequences for the role of elections in Britain. If one party has in overall majority in the Commons, and if it achieves a high degree of unity in legislative voting, then that party seldom will be defeated in Parliament. However, the voters, through their ability to change the party composition af the House of Commons, can, in effect, defeat British governments. Elections in Britain basically are contests between two sets of party lead-;rs and their supporters for the right to form j government, with the electorate as the deciding Factor.
The end of political Jacobitism left the field clear for new political issues, but these were slow to develop. The 45 members elected by Scottish constituencies to the British House of Commons under the Act of Union and the 16 Scottish peers elected by their fellow peers to sit in the British House of Lords normally supported the government and thus exerted more influence than they could have done if disunited.
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