Edited by Patrick Dunleavy, Alice Park and Ros Taylor Democratic Audit The UK’S CHANGING DEMOCRACY The 2018 Democratic Audit Edited by Patrick Dunleavy, Alice Park and Ros Taylor The UK’S CHANGING DEMOCRACY The 2018 Democratic Audit Democratic Audit Published by LSE Press 10 Portugal Street London WC2A 2HD press.lse.ac.uk First published 2018 Cover and design: Diana Jarvis Cover image: Union Jack © kycstudio/iStock Printed in the UK by Lightning Source Ltd. ISBN (Paperback): 978-1-909890-44-2 ISBN (PDF): 978-1-909890-46-6 ISBN (ePub): 978-1-909890-47-3 ISBN (Kindle): 978-1-909890-48-0 DOI: https://doi.org/10.31389/book1 Text © Democratic Audit and the individual authors. Images © Democratic Audit and the individual authors or copyright holders attributed in the source information. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivs 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence. To view a copy of this licence, go to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by-nc/2.0/uk/ . This licence allows for copying and distributing the work in any form and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for noncommercial purposes, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Note, copyright restrictions apply to some images; see source information for individual licensing terms, where they differ. This book has been peer-reviewed to ensure high academic standards. For our full publishing ethics policies, see http://press.lse.ac.uk Suggested citation: Dunleavy, P, Park, A and Taylor R (eds), 2018, The UK’s Changing Democracy: The 2018 Democratic Audit , London, LSE Press. Democratic Audit’s core funding is provided by the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust. Additional funding is provided by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Read more at: democraticaudit.com 3 Contents Preface ................................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements..................................................................................................... 8 Contributors ......................................................................................................................... 9 List of figures and tables ................................................................................................ 11 1. Auditing the UK’s changing democracy ............................................................ 15 1.1 The worsening context for liberal democracy............................................. 19 1.2 Evaluating UK democracy and the Democratic Audit’s choice of methods ............................................................................................. 24 1.3 The ambivalent legacies of the ‘British tradition’ ........................................ 30 2. How democratic are the UK’s electoral systems? ................................. 43 2.1 The Westminster ‘plurality rule’ electoral system ........................................ 45 2.2 The reformed electoral systems used in Britain’s devolved governments and England’s mayoral elections ......................................... 56 2.3 The UK’s proportional electoral system: the single transferable vote (STV) ......................................................................................... 69 2.4 Are elections conducted with integrity, with sufficient turnout? ........... 78 3. How democratic are the channels for political participation? .............. 91 3.1 The political parties and party system ............................................................ 93 3.2 The interest group process ................................................................................ 112 3.3 The media system ................................................................................................ 122 3.4 Social media and citizen vigilance ................................................................. 136 4. How democratic is the Westminster Parliament? ................................ 147 4.1 The House of Commons: control of government and citizen representation .................................................................................... 149 4.2 The Commons’ two committee systems and scrutiny of government policy-making .................................................................................................... 159 4.3 Accountability of the security and intelligence services ......................... 173 4.4 How undemocratic is the House of Lords? ................................................. 182 4 5. How democratic and effective is UK national government? .............. 193 5.1 The basic constitutional law ......................................................................... 195 5.2 The core executive and government......................................................... 204 5.3 The civil service and public services management systems .............. 223 5.4 How transparent and free from corruption is UK government? ......... 237 5.5 In terms of Brexit ............................................................................................. 256 5.6 The basic structure of the devolution settlements ................................ 264 6. How democratic are the UK’s devolved government arrangements? ...................................................................................... 279 6.1 Scotland: devolved government and national politics .......................... 281 6.2 Scotland: local government and politics................................................... 290 6.3 Wales: devolved government and national politics ............................... 298 6.4 Wales: local government and politics ........................................................ 305 6.5 Northern Ireland: devolved government and politics ............................. 313 6.6 Northern Ireland: local government and politics .................................... 323 6.7 London: devolved government and politics at metropolitan level ...... 331 6.8 London: government and politics in the boroughs ................................ 340 6.9 England: local government and politics ..................................................... 351 7. How far are equalities essential for liberal democracy secured? ..... 365 7.1 Human rights and civil liberties .................................................................... 367 7.2 Gender equality ................................................................................................ 377 7.3 Equality and ethnic minorities ..................................................................... 385 7.4 The rights of workers ...................................................................................... 397 7.5 Class disparities and social inequalities ................................................... 408 8. Assessing democratic quality and the potential for democratic advance ...................................................................................... 425 8.1 Assessing democratic quality and renewing the potential for democratic advance........................................................................................ 427 8.2 Counteracting democratic decay ................................................................ 437 References ............................................................................................................... 445 Index ........................................................................................................................... 505 5 Preface This book presents a uniquely democratic perspective on all aspects of UK politics, at the centre in Westminster and Whitehall, and in all the devolved nations. It returns our focus firmly to the ‘big issues’ around the quality and sustainability of the UK’s liberal democracy. The last decade has seen a global rise of debased ‘semi-democracies’ (like Putin’s Russia) where authoritarian rulers maintain (rigged) elections and a managed, only superficially open political process and institutions as a façade, disguising parts of their corruptly run or dictatorial regime from view. In these troubled times it is more important than ever before for exponents of liberal democracy to take a critical look at their own political practices, and to identify where improvements can be made. As our final, concluding chapter makes clear, this means paying attention not just to how the big and obvious macro-institutions in a liberal democracy work (like a voting system or a parliament) – but also to much less visible ‘micro-institutions’, the highly detailed rules that often govern how macro-institutions work out in practice. The need to cover how macro- and micro-institutions operate together is one reason why our book has 37 chapters. The other reason is to cover properly the vital contributions to UK democracy being made by the devolved governments and legislatures, and by politics at a local level – a task that takes up nine chapters in Part 6 of the book. The book’s overall plan follows this sequence. Part 1 is an introduction that sets the scene for the book as whole by looking at three overall aspects of the UK’s situation as a liberal democracy. Part 2 examines the UK’s main electoral systems and shows how they work. Part 3 surveys the other ‘political input’ processes, that is all the ways (besides voting) in which citizens can communicate their preferences, needs and priorities to decision-makers. Part 4 covers the heart of government in the Parliament at Westminster. And Part 5 looks at UK executive government in the Cabinet system, how ministers and the civil service operate in Whitehall, and the public services. Part 6 covers the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, London and some parts of England, and local politics. Part 7 addresses the effects of democracy in terms of defending human rights and achieving core levels of equality between British citizens. The brief Part 8 summarises and ties together our judgements of the UK’s changing democratic performance. Each of our short chapters follows a very similar structure. We always start by setting out clear criteria for what democracy requires in that aspect of a nation’s political life. We then outline some key recent developments in the UK, so that readers can gain an overall picture of the most important current controversies in this institutional or policy area. The heart of each chapter is a SWOT analysis (see Chapter 1.2 for an explanation of our approach and methods). Finally, for readers deeply interested in that topic, the last part of each chapter discusses in somewhat more detail a small number of core aspects where issues arise for the democratic quality of political life. 6 How to find things in this book This is a big book, but because it is available primarily in digital form to all its readers there are two main ways of instantly and easily finding the things that you are interested in. 1. Use digital search for any bit of text (such as a theory, the name of an institution or organisation, or even a person) that you are interested in. Simply use the normal search keystrokes for the device you are reading on. This takes you straightaway to every occurrence of that term anywhere in the text. Try using close synonyms or substitute words in your search if you do not find what you expected. 2. The book also has a full index . And because this is a digital book clicking on any of the index links takes you to the pages you are looking for. The topics covered include theory words and political science or constitutional law terms, as well as more factual subjects. About our digital links referencing system We believe strongly in making as much of the modern social sciences as possible open to all citizens, and any reader worldwide. So this is not just a digital book, but also a fully open access (OA) one – and we have avoided using any conventional (numbered) footnotes or endnotes. We have tried to make not just our text but also the evidence and sources that support the analysis as open and visible for readers as we can. (i) Wherever possible we have sought to link to digitally available sources . Not only this, but when you click on any URL in the text it should also take you to a completely free and open access source for further information or reading. So far as we possibly can arrange it, whenever you click on our hyperlinks you should never go just to a paywall. This commitment has some costs as well as benefits. Much the best academic sources are articles or books that are now published in fully open access form from the outset. Where a published paper or book sits behind a paywall then wherever feasible we have linked to an alternative manuscript copy of that text deposited in an open access university repository, or on sites like ResearchGate and Academia.edu. (ii) Where no freely readable version is feasible for papers or for books we have linked to blogs, press articles or other short pieces where academics outline their work in accessible ways. (Students and academics with university library access can easily move on from there to the full texts.) Costly books that are only available in paper copies or as ebooks inside university libraries present by far the biggest problems for our strategy – and so we tend to cite them less. However, sometimes books are key sources and here we want to give the widest possible range of readers a fuller idea of what these book authors are arguing. To do this we often link to digital reviews of books, such as those on the LSE Review of Books blog – an indispensable open access source now across the social sciences. (Again readers with university library access can easily move on from reviews to access the full texts.) (iii) On factual matters (such as election data) we have linked a great deal to official statistics, and the many invaluable reports and databases from the House of Commons 7 Library and Institute for Government. Our links to Wikipedia also reflect the fact that its coverage is increasingly broad, reliable and up to date, although we have carefully checked the items used here. (iv) In addition, for interested readers we have provided a full set of references at the end of the book. For each chapter we show the trigger words in the main text that lead to links, arranged in the sequence they occur. For each we provide a conventional endnote text version of the link. We also include a small number of non-OA sources not triggered by links but which the chapter authors feel have especial value as follow-on reading. Reusing materials from this book, and citing it As part of our commitment to open science this book has a Creative Commons (CC BY- NC-ND) licence. For academics, teachers and librarians who may not be familiar with CC licence this version means that you are completely free to re-use all our materials in your own teaching and non-commercial publications so long as you accompany each use with a readable acknowledgement of this text as the source, and do not alter our text or figures in any way. For any commercial re-use, which go beyond extracts for the purpose of review, please contact LSE Press. If you are citing this book, we recommend including a micro-quotation of five or six words from it within your own text, and then linking to the relevant book chapter (each of which has its own DOI number). Do not rely on page numbers, because this book is digital from the outset, and is published by LSE Press in many different versions (with only the PDF versions including page numbers). Commenting on our analysis Finally, an important motto of the open sources movement in IT is that: ‘Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’. In any text of this length there may be mistakes, or issues, sources and arguments that we have not appreciated. We aim to revise and update this book (if we can) annually, so your comments, corrections, criticism or suggestions can really help us. Please email, Tweet or message us on Facebook at any of the addresses below. And if you have enjoyed reading the book, and want to advance open social science too, why not give us a retweet, a ‘like’ or another form of positive mention on social media? Patrick Dunleavy p.dunleavy@lse.ac.uk @PJDunleavy Alice Park democraticaudit@lse.ac.uk and @DemocraticAudit Ros Taylor facebook.com/democraticaudit 8 Acknowledgements A work of this kind depends crucially on our 23 contributors – our debt to all of them is enormous. We are especially grateful to them for so gallantly coping with our literally impossible ‘last minute’ 2018 update deadlines. Their generosity in committing their time and expertise to the project puts us heavily in their debt. We would like to thank also our main funders, the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and especially their liaison person for us, Nick Perks. JRCT has invested in the Audit over a long period of time, and their (and Nick’s) encouragement, consistent support and openness to new ideas for fostering democratic engagement have been invaluable. We are grateful to the trustees of Democratic Audit, especially their chair, Stuart Wilks- Heeg, and Clare Coatman, Rosie Campbell, Tim Bale, Scarlett MccGwire, Tufyal Choudhury and Oliver Escobar. Their regular inputs have greatly helped us to consider different aspects of the project and to maintain momentum and creativity. In a deeper way we derived many insights from the pioneering work of David Beetham and Stuart Weir , who produced the first three Democratic Audits, and from the excellent 2012 Democratic Audit edition produced by Stuart Wilks-Heeg and team in 2012. We are grateful also to Gavin Freeguard, Akash Paun and other staff at the Institute for Government, London. The Institute’s publications and open access data have done a huge amount to improve public and academic access to high quality information about UK central government. We thank the House of Commons library for supplying data and figures from their invaluable resources. Many thanks too to Diana Jarvis for the superb cover and book design. We owe many debts too to a wide range of LSE colleagues whose contributions really helped. Tony Travers and Jonathan Hopkin (the co-Directors of the Audit at LSE) always provided great advice and encouragement. Josh Townsley took time out from his main role on Democratic Audit’s Democratic Dashboard to help the project, and compiled our reference list with great skill. Some former or current members of LSE Public Policy Group – Sean Kippin, Sonali Campion and Artemis Photiadou – wrote key chapters. Many other PPG alumni have also helped on issues related to the Democratic Audit blog. David Coombe and his staff in the Research Division have been unfailingly helpful and effective. In the LSE Library we thank especially Lucy Lambe, Nancy Graham and Beth Clark, who set up LSE Press, and the innovative LSE Librarian Nicola Wright. Librarians who really ‘get’ digital and open access are a wonderful asset for any university. Any book of this scale takes a massive amount of time that eats into home life. Patrick Dunleavy thanks his wife Sheila for her invaluable help. And Alice Park would like to thank her family. 9 Contributors Andrew Blick is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Contemporary History at King’s College London. Sonali Campion is a former editor of Democratic Audit and the UCL Constitution Unit blog. She now works at the Commonwealth Secretariat. Colin Copus is Emeritus Professor of Local Politics at De Montfort University and a visiting Professor at the University of Ghent. James Downe is Professor in Public Policy and Management in the Wales Centre for Public Policy at Cardiff University ( www.wcpp.org.uk ). Patrick Dunleavy is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the LSE and co- Director of Democratic Audit there. He is also Centenary Professor in the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis (IGPA), University of Canberra. Michael Gordon is Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Liverpool. Joelle Grogan is a Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, and the creator of @StickyTrickyLaw Jac Larner is a Fulbright Research Fellow at the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan, and a PhD Candidate at the Wales Governance Centre, Cardiff University. Malcolm Harvey is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Aberdeen and an Associate Fellow of the Centre on Constitutional Change. Toby S James is Head of Politics and Senior Lecturer at the University of East Anglia. He is Lead Fellow on Electoral Modernisation for the All Party Parliamentary Group on Democratic Participation and co-convenor of the Electoral Management Network Sean Kippin is a PhD candidate and Associate Lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland and a former editor of Democratic Audit. Ewan McGaughey is a Senior Lecturer in Private Law at King’s College London. James Mitchell holds the chair in Public Policy at Edinburgh University’s Academy of Government and is a member of the COSLA/Scottish Government Enabling Group on the reform of local governance. Colm O’Cinneide is Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at UCL. James Pattison is a postgraduate research student in the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham. Artemis Photiadou is a Research Associate in the London School of Economic and Political Science’s Public Policy Group and a PhD candidate at LSE’s International History Department. She is also the Managing Editor of LSE British Politics and Policy blog. James Pow is a postgraduate research student at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics, Queen’s University Belfast. 10 Diana Stirbu is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at London Metropolitan University. Ros Taylor is Research Manager at the London School of Economic and Political Science’s Truth, Trust and Technology Commission and co-editor of LSE Brexit. She is a former Guardian journalist and has also worked for the BBC. Tony Travers is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Government at the LSE and Director of LSE London. He is the author of London’s Boroughs at 50 (Biteback). Tracey Warren is Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham. Alan Whysall is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the Constitution Unit of University College London. Until 2015, he was involved with the Northern Ireland peace process as a senior British civil servant in the Northern Ireland Office (with spells in the Cabinet Office in London). Ben Worthy is Lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck College, London, and blogs about transparency and open data issues at opendatastudy.wordpress.com 11 List of figures and tables 1. Auditing the UK’s changing democracy 1.2 Evaluating UK democracy and the Democratic Audit’s choice of methods 1. Some current quantitative rankings of liberal democracies and how they rate the UK in 2017–18 2. Some current rankings of partial institutional aspects of liberal democracy, and how they rate the UK in 2017–18 3. Some current rankings of output/political equality aspects of liberal democracy, and how they rate the UK in 2017–18 1.3 The ambivalent legacies of the ‘British tradition’ 1. Four alternative traditions/interpretations of the UK polity 2. The British imperial state in 1900 3. The UK state in 2018 2. How democratic are the UK’s electoral systems? 2.1 The We s tminster ‘plurality rule’ electoral system 1. Seats won at the 2017 general election by the parties in the UK 2. A simple example of how to calculate the deviation from proportionality (DV) score 3. How the disproportionality of Westminster elections has grown over time, up to 2015 4. How much deviation from proportionality do voters experience in the local area ‘around them’? 5. How disproportional have Westminster elections been over the last two decades, compared with other British elections? 6. The ‘national equivalent vote shares’ for the main parties in the 2017 and 2018 local elections 2.2 The reformed electoral systems used in Britain’s devolved governments and England’s mayoral elections 1. The proportion of constituency and top-up seats under AMS in British institutions 2. The deviation from proportionality (DV score) of British AMS elections 3. Governing outcomes of the additional member system elections 4. Example ballot paper for a mayoral election using supplementary vote 5. London mayoral elections using the supplementary vote, 2000–16 6. Recent major elections in England and Wales using SV, 2009–18 2.3 The UK’s proportional electoral system: the single transferable vote (STV) 1. The deviation from proportionality (DV) scores in recent STV elections in Scotland and Northern Ireland 2. The largest party in the 2014 European Parliament elections, by local authority area 3. The deviation from proportionality (DV) scores (%) of European Parliament and general elections 2.4 Are elections conducted with integrity, with sufficient turnout? 1. The estimated turnout of different age groups at general elections from 1964 to 2017 2. Problems experienced by poll workers at the English local elections 2018 3. The growing gap between the eligible total number of citizens/inhabitants and total electors 12 4. The gap between eligible attainers (people nearing voting age, who should be on the electoral register) and registered attainers 3. How democratic are the channels for political participation? 3.1 The political parties and party system 1. The party system in England, in the May 2015 general election 2. The UK’s changed party system at the 2017 general election and the subsequent Brexit negotiations phase 3. The Scottish party system at the 2015 and 2017 general elections 4. The membership levels of UK political parties, 2002 to 2018 5. Income from membership revenues as a percentage of total income 6. Donations to political parties, 2013–17 3.2 The interest group process 1. Key features of UK interest groups 2. The proportion of men and women smoking in Great Britain, 2000–17 3.3 The media system 1. The percentage of UK respondents who used different TV, radio and print news sources in 2017 – and the political affiliations of these sources 2. The online monthly readership of UK newspaper websites (in 2017) 3.4 Social media and citizen vigilance 1. Most used social media platforms for news consumption by people in the UK, 2018 2. Why people in six countries (including the UK) follow politicians on social media 4. How democratic is the Westminster Parliament? 4.2 The Commons’ two committee systems and scrutiny of government policy-making 1. Key characteristics of the 26 select committee chairs in July 2017 2. Increase in press coverage of House of Commons Committees, 2008–12 3. Trends in the UK press mentions of Commons’ select committees, 2008–12 4. How recommendations from seven select committees were implemented by the government, or not (1997–2010) 5. The main actors who gave evidence to Westminster legislative and select committee in the period 2010–11 6. The organisational affiliations of oral witnesses to all select committees, 2013–14 session 7. The organisational affiliations of 120 expert witnesses to select committees, in two months, autumn 2013 4.3 Accountability of the UK’s security and intelligence services 1. Chairs of the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee since its creation in 1994 4.4 How undemocratic is the House of Lords? 1. The Lords by party or group in 2018 2. House of Lords membership and attendance from 1992 to 2016 5. How democratic and effective is UK national government? 5.2 The core executive and government 1. Major reorganisations of Whitehall departments by Prime Ministers, 1950 to 2018 13 2. Changes in Whitehall departments’ staffing levels, 2016–18 3. Theresa May’s Cabinet committee structure in November 2017 4. The positional power of Cabinet members in the cabinet committee system, summer 2016 5. The financial liabilities of financial corporations in the UK, as a percentage of the country’s nominal GDP, from 1987 to 2015 5.3 The civil service and public services management systems 1. Tax receipts, public spending and UK deficits as a proportion of gross domestic product from 1995 to 2016, and projected to 2023 2. The size of the UK civil service, 2009 to first quarter of 2018 3. The budget for the Government Digital Service, 2011–2020 5.4 How transparent and free from corruption is UK government? 1. The main types of transparency and anti-corruption policies 2. The percentage of Freedom of Information requests where government departments refused a response, from 2010 (third quarter) to 2018 (second quarter) 3. UK Prime Ministers and policies on FOI, 2005–2017 4. How well different Whitehall departments have met the UK government’s pledge to publish monthly details of all spending over £25,000 5.6 The basic structure of devolution settlements 1a. How a federal government system works 1b. The UK’s devolved government system 2. Three Brexit battles involving the devolved governments 3. The estimated proportion (%) of each Whitehall departments’ functions devolved to the three nations in 2017 4. Tax devolution since 2014 6. How democratic are the UK’s devolved government arrangements? 6.1 Scotland: devolved government and national politics 1. Percentage of Scottish Westminster seats won by each party 1997–2017 2. Percentage of Scottish Parliament seats won by each party 1999–2016 6.2 Scotland: local government and politics 1. Financial challenges for Scottish local government, 2017 2. The sources of Scottish councils’ income, 2016/17 6.3 Wales: devolved government and national politics 1. Constitutional preferences for the Welsh Assembly (BBC/ICM St David’s Day poll, 2014–18) 6.4 Wales: local government and politics 1. How parties fared in Wales’ 2017 council elections, compared to 2012 2. The outcomes of the 2017 and 2013 local government elections in Wales 6.5 Northern Ireland: devolved government and politics 1. The outcomes of the March 2017 Assembly election 6.6 Northern Ireland: local government and politics 1. How structural reforms changed local government districts 2. How the main parties’ shares of votes compared to their share of seats in the 2014 council elections 14 6.7 London: devolved government and politics at metropolitan level 1. The percentage turnout in the five London mayoral and Assembly elections since 2000 2. Current spending by the Greater London Authority in 2018–19 6.8 London: government and politics in the boroughs 1. The outcomes of the 2018 and 2014 London borough elections 2. Political control of London boroughs after the 2018 elections 3. Total expenditure across services (in £ billions) by the 32 London boroughs in 2016–17 6.9 England: local government and politics 1. The outcomes of the May 2018 elections in England (outside London) 2. Changes in English local authority spending on different services between 2010–11 and 2016–17 3. Elected executive mayors in England in municipalities and the new metro/regional areas 4. Changes made in the 2009 reorganisation 7 How far are equalities essential for liberal democracy secured? 7.2 Gender equality 1. The proportion of women in a range of major roles in UK public life (2015–17 figures) 2. The gender pay gap for median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime), UK, April 1997– 2017 3. Gender pay gap for median gross hourly earnings (excluding overtime) by age group, UK, April 2017 7.3 Equality and ethnic minorities 1. The controversial UKIP Brexit referendum poster 2. Measures of ‘social capital’ across ethnic groups in 2017 3. The percentage of ethnic minorities in various political bodies and populations 4. The likelihood of being arrested by people’s self-defined ethnic group, compared with those from white ethnic groups: England and Wales, year ending March 2017 7.3 The rights of workers 1. UK unemployment 1881–2017, with major government changes 2. UK trade union membership, and income inequality 7.5 Class disparities and social inequalities 1. The official view of occupational classes in 2017, and their gender balance 2. The ‘Great British Class Survey’ categories and their sizes in 2011 3. The proportion of women and men part-timers working part-time involuntarily because they could not find a full-time job 8 Assessing democratic quality and the potential for democratic advance 8.1 The UK’s recent democratic gains and losses 1. Positive developments and adverse problems for aspects of the UK’s democracy 2. Positive and adverse developments in different areas of the UK’s democratic life – summarised 3. The balance of scores for positive and adverse developments in different areas of the UK’s democratic life 8.2 Counteracting democratic decay 1. Six main ‘Europeanisation’ trends within the UK 1997–2016, and their likely future prospects Auditing the UK’s changing democracy 1.1 The worsening context for liberal democracy..........................................19 1.2 Evaluating UK democracy and the Democratic Audit’s choice of methods ............................................. 24 1.3 The ambivalent legacies of the ‘British tradition’ ...............................30 16 Auditing the UK’s changing democracy – Patrick Dunleavy 1 The UK is one of the world’s oldest and leading liberal democratic states. So the fortunes and performance of democracy in these shores matters intensely not just to the citizens of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but to the wider world as well. By liberal democracy we denote a complex balance between four key goals: ✦ (large) majority control of government via free and fair elections, genuine party competition, a vivid interest group process, and diverse other forms of political participation; ✦ the maintenance and development of human rights and civil liberties for all citizens, ensuring equal treatment even for unpopular minorities or causes; ✦ the conscious development and pursuit of greater political and social equality; and ✦ widespread political legitimacy for the state, in part based on the existence of multiple (plural) centres of power, information and influence within society. We seek to give a thorough-going review of how well British government is now performing in meeting these criteria across all the salient aspects of the political process. I begin by establishing a wider context for liberal democracy globally, where prospects have generally been deteriorating in recent times, for varied reasons. Many disturbing trends elsewhere provide important pointers to possible grounds for concern within the UK itself. The factors that are currently going wrong for democratic advance across the world mostly have their counterparts in modernisation changes within Britain itself. Chapter 1.2 then describes how the Audit implements a detailed and disaggregated (section-by-section) analysis of the current performance of UK institutions and of recent developments in how they operate. We have undertaken a qualitative analysis, assessing various kinds of evidence and argument across a wide range of key topics. Readers will also find numerous charts and tables allied to a systematic effort to present different perspectives within each chapter. The final section considers the ‘British political tradition’, or the so-called ‘Westminster system’, which continues to define the almost unique political and institutional development of the UK. With the 2016 Brexit referendum decision to ‘take back control’ of all aspects of nation state operations, the UK public voted essentially to revivify one-nation practices, 18 1. Auditing the UK’s changing democracy turning our back on many processes of converging towards a more general ‘European’ pattern of working that had previously seemed in train. For some observers, the UK’s unique features and lengthy constitutional traditions and history are unquestionable sources of strength. Yet for others (as we shall see) the legacy of the UK’s long imperial history and lagged transition to modernity are the origin of much that remains problematic and flawed in contemporary democratic politics. When the UK’s Democratic Audit was established, in 1989, the prospects for liberal democracy globally seemed very encouraging. The Berlin Wall had fallen and countries in eastern Europe and within the former Soviet Union itself were beginning to separate out from the previous Communist bloc in ways that held out great hopes for a transition to democracy in many of them. In other continents too, like Latin America, decades of authoritarian dictatorship seemed to be crumbling, with democratic constitutions emerging and attracting popular enthusiasm. The 1990s indeed saw one of the largest and most sustained increases in the proportion of the world’s population under democratic rule since the late 1940s. Yet in the last two decades evidence of further liberal democratic advances has dried up. The new period began with the 9/11 massacre in the USA and the wars that followed, and intensified after the global financial crisis of 2008 struck with devastating force in many (but not all) advanced capitalist countries. Since then, worrying signs of democratic stagnation or malaise have multiplied across a wide range of countries, including some of the ‘core’ established democracies themselves. One of the most disturbing of these trends occurred in countries that are mostly far from being liberal democracies, with the rise of versions of extreme Islamic jihadism in some Muslim-majority countries, and in other areas where conflicts have occurred between Muslims and Christians, or between Islamic zealots and more secular groups (often including moderate Muslims). The new jihadist movements reject western civilisation in many aspects, but with particular force for democracy and human rights. Through a ‘wicked’ cycle of terrorism and counter-response invasions and military actions by the USA, UK and other western powers in Arab countries and Afghanistan/Pakistan, Islamic jihadist movements in varying forms and strengths have spread across many countries. Their influence now extends from northern Nigeria in western Africa, throughout north Africa, the Middle East and across through Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and into parts of Pakistan, even reaching Bangladesh. Jihadist movements reject liberal democracy, civil liberties and all respect for human rights in perhaps a more thoroughgoing way than any other political movement since European fascism in the 1930s. This change has serious consequences too for the domestic security of the UK and other European states, dramatised by the three major terrorist outrages undertaken by home-grown jihadist supporters in Britain in the run- up to the 2017 election. The worsening context for liberal democracy 1.1