Understanding British Elections
Elections are central to understandings of democracy or modern democratic government. As Beetham (2005; 2) argues that âdemocracy can most simply be understood as a procedure for taking decisions in any group, association or society, whereby all members have an equal right to have a say and make their opinion count.â Elections enable different views to be expressed and challenged, policies to be considered by the electorate and legitimate governments to be formed. Debates traditionally centre upon how elections are conducted (i.e. whether or not they are free from corrupting influences), over the extent to which results confer legitimacy or over procedural issues (e.g. accepted methods of voting, or the voting system used to calculate the results) within elections themselves. Yet much less debate is offered to defending or assessing the premise of elections themselves. Here elections are often seen as being either normatively good, and therefore there exists a requirement to extend elections wherever possible, or they are seen as essential or the best system of governance.
Linked to these normative assumptions regarding elections are normative assumptions regarding participation within elections. For example, notions of civic duty and intrinsic value are attached to voting. Equally more attention is devoted to those who vote in elections than those who do not. In everyday language the results of elections can easily be overestimated. It is a commonâthough inaccurateâperception that elections somehow demonstrate the âwill of the peopleâ a phrase used by political scientists and politicians alike.
It is often easy to assume that elections operate perfectly or as they are designed. Norris (2015) highlights numerous reasons why elections fail. Many of these, such as gerrymandering, are applicable to the UK and other developed nations and not simply a product of unstable government structures/institutions. Other scholars too have undertaken research on electoral management in the UK exploring the suitability of electoral processes and laws (see for instance Hill, Sobolewska, Wilks-Heeg, & Borkowska, 2017; James, 2012).
Even when elections work as designed elections they only enable a select group of people to have a sayâcriteria such as citizenship, age, mental health status are used (albeit at differing levels for different ballots) to allow/prevent people from voting. Such limitations are heavily contested as the issue regarding Cameronâs refusal to give prisoners serving short sentences, despite rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, demonstrated.
Deciding who is allowed to participate in elections is highly subjective. Over the last century and a half the franchise has been extended a number of times, to include members of the working classes, women and people between the ages of 18 and 30. The subjective nature of such inclusion/exclusion is particularly noticeable when we consider the difference in terms of who is able to vote in different elections. In general elections the voting age is currently set at 18, but in elections to the Scottish Parliament the voting age is lowered to 16. Such inconsistencies were further highlighted by their use in the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum and the 2016 referendum over the UKâs membership of the EU, the former using the lower voting age with the later only allowing those over the age of 18 to participate. Given the respective dates of these referendums (September 2014 and June 2016) it is likely that some 16-year olds were able to participate in the 2014 independence referendum whilst being deemed âtoo youngâ to vote in the 2016 EU referendum (or indeed the 2015 general election).
Further differences exist regarding the registration processes of elections. In the 2019 European elections numerous citizens of European states living in Britain, and ex-pats living abroad, reported being disenfranchised due to the bureaucratic processes of registering and the short-time frame of organising the elections following extensions to the Brexit negotiations (Batchelor, 2019). In addition to this there were reports of voters being disenfranchised in the 2019 local elections due to a new pilot scheme which required voters to provide ID at polling stations (Walker, 2019).
Being able to cast a ballot does not ensure that you are able to make known your exact preferences. The options in each election are often limited by prescribed choices. There exist numerous reasons for this, firstly the simplicity of electing representatives, as opposed to direct democracy, which allows the electorate to cast only one vote to shape a series of policy choices rather than consume their time and energy exploring a variety of debates in different policy areas. Secondly, contestation in participatory democracy requires more than one person being willing to compete in a particular election. Although this often achieved in national elections in a number of local elections candidates are âelectedâ having run unopposed (Democratic Audit, 2019).
Democracy and understanding of democracies are not static over time. All societies and political systems throughout history have had to adapt to issues or crises in order to survive and so too has British democracy. Some of these adaptations have been highly salient, such as the extension of the franchise to first working-class males and later women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Other changes such as extending the number of elections has received relatively little attention (in the case of the devolved bodies in Scotland and Wales) and almost none at all in the case of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections.
A further change to elections that has been of importance over recent decades is that of declining participation and voter turnout. Turnout in general elections has declined from its peak of almost 84% in 1950 to less than 60% in 2001. Whilst this trend has been reversed (and turnout has grown at every general election in the twenty-first century) turnout in the 2017 general election was still over 15% below the levels recorded in the 1950s and 10% lower than the average of the 15 general elections between 1945 and 1997.
Alongside such changes the inability to predict recent electoral results at a national level has led to a renewed disengagement with political commentators and the wider political processes. At both the 2015 and 2017 general elections polling organisations (along with a number of journalists and academics) predicted firstly a hung Parliament and then a large Conservative majority. Neither of these predictions were borne out. Nor did similar groups fair better at predicting the results of the 2016 EU referendum (which manyâon both sides of the debateâbelieved would result in a majority for remain).
Given the centrality of elections to democracies in general and Britain in particular it is not surprising that scholars have spilled much ink explaining particular elections either in their own right or in a comparative context. Yet less focus has been devoted to the interactions that exist between different elections. Rather this is often implicit; many studies of electionsâincluding student textbooksâoften explore elections starting at the centre or top of the political system and working their way out/downwards (see for example Denver, Johns, & Carman, 2012). In many ways this reflects the greater familiarity of these elections with the reader or student and the levels of importance they place upon such elections, but this is also self-reinforcing. Whilst understandable this does however lead to a tendency of framing comparisons between Westminster (general) elections and non-Westminster elections rather than a systemic understanding of the interactions that exist between a multitude of different elections such as unpacking or exploring the similarities/differences that exist between different regional or local elections.
Understanding the nuanced differences that exist within such elections is important, not just to scholars interested in elections. Perceptions of elections impact upon a range of factors, for example party competition; scholars who explore the rise of minor political parties often highlight the partyâs fortunes in different types of elections (see for instance Ford, Goodwin, & Cutts, 2012), electoral reform and management (obtaining accurate distinctions between different elections are important in understanding the role concurrent elections can play in increasing our understanding of electoral participation see Rallings & Thrasher, 2005) and understandings of legitimacy within decision-making processes.
This chapter takes as its starting point the distinction between first- and second-order elections before considering some interpretations of this model. The nature of first- and second-order elections can then be spelt out before critiques offered in Chapter 2. Through offering such critiques it further establishes a more robust framework for classifying the differences that exist between different elections and elections of the same type. These critiques focus on two interrelated questions, which will be explored throughout the book. Firstly, are all second-order elections the same? And secondly are all elections of the same type homogenous? These questions are often only answered implicitly in the existing literature but will be systematically explored throughout the remainder of the book by exploring elections from a bottom-up perspective; many of the case studies highlighted in subsequent chapters will start by exploring one or more subnational election(s) before offering comparisons with general elections.
First- and Second-Order Elections
Following the introduction of elections to the European Parliament in 1979 scholars such as Reif and Schmitt (1980; 8) established a means of distinguishing between elections based upon their importance within a given political system. The authors distinguished between first- and second-order elections arguing that
first-order elections in parliamentary systems are the national parliamentary elections, and in presidential systems, the national presidential elections. In addition to these, however, there is a plethora of âsecond-orderâ elections: by-elec...