Rethinking the role of small parties in the UK's parliaments

重新思考小党在英国议会中的作用

• 批准号: ES/R005915/1
• 负责人: Louise Thompson
• 金额: $ 30.11万
• 依托单位: University of Surrey
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2018 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FR005915%2F1
• 关键词: Rethinking; role; small; parties; UK

We tend to think of British Politics as being dominated by two political parties (the Labour Party and the Conservative Party). This is reflected in the style of parliamentary politics at Westminster, in which an elected government is opposed by the 'Official Opposition'. Debate tends to move between the two. Observers of the weekly Prime Minister's Question Time will see a prime demonstration of this, when the leader of the Official Opposition is granted the privilege of speaking from the dispatch box (something which is denied to the leaders of all other parties), and has the opportunity to ask up to six questions to the Prime Minister. The leader of the second opposition party receives two questions. Smaller opposition parties receive no such guarantee of a question. This two party dominance is therefore reinforced by parliamentary procedures, which grant greater speaking time as well as committee memberships to the largest opposition party. But small parties have played pivotal roles throughout nineteenth and twentieth century UK politics. They have become even more popular in the twenty first century as the appeal of the large parties has waned amidst a somewhat disillusioned electorate. The Labour Party and the Conservative party were regularly polling over 90% of the vote in the mid twentieth century, but managed only 67% in 2015.This gap is being filled by smaller parties, of which over 300 are currently registered with the UK Electoral Commission. These parties are contesting more seats than ever before in local elections and, crucially, they are winning a significant number of seats in national elections, to the UK Parliament and the devolve assemblies of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Ten political parties were represented in the House of Commons after the 2015 General Election, with a total of 85 MPs between them (accounting for 13% of the chamber). In fact, 2015 saw the best General Election performance ever for UKIP, the SNP and the Green Party. This fell to only 6 parties in the 2017 general election, but the unexpected hung parliament has seen one small party (the DUP) and has potentially empowered all other small parties in the chamber. In addition to this presence at Westminster, 19 parties have representation in the UK's sub national parliaments. Although the sub-national parliaments of the UK have more consensual practices, existing research still proceeds as though the 'opposition' is one parliamentary grouping. As such we still know little about the role of individual parties in these parliaments. But there has been an almost complete neglect of the role of individual small parties within these parliaments. This three year project aims to better understand the work of small political parties in the British House of Commons, the Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly. It uses large scale interviews with MPs and assembly members and analysis of key parliamentary documents, debates, questions and amendments to pieces of legislation since 2015 to investigate the role which small parties play in our political system. In doing so, in considers the challenges they face in parliamentary institutions and the impact they are able to make on scrutiny of government and of legislation. In doing so, it will highlight an area of parliamentary life which is usually hidden, uncovering best practice which will be shared with parliamentary officials, MPs and staff.

我们倾向于认为英国政治由两个政党（工党和保守党）主导。这反映在威斯敏斯特的议会政治风格上，即民选政府受到“官方反对派”的反对。辩论往往在两者之间进行。每周首相提问时间的观察者将看到这一点的最好证明，当官方反对党的领导人被授予在调度箱中发言的特权（所有其他政党的领导人都被剥夺了这一特权），并有机会向首相提出多达六个问题。第二个反对党的领导人收到两个问题。较小的反对党没有这样的问题保证。因此，议会程序加强了两党的主导地位，给予最大的反对党更多的发言时间和委员会成员资格。但小党在整个世纪英国政治中发挥了关键作用。在21世纪，由于选民的幻想破灭，大党的吸引力减弱，他们变得更加受欢迎。工党和保守党在世纪中期经常获得超过90%的选票，但在2015年仅获得67%的选票。这些政党在地方选举中争夺的席位比以往任何时候都多，至关重要的是，他们在全国选举中赢得了相当多的席位，进入英国议会以及北方爱尔兰、苏格兰和威尔士的权力下放议会。2015年大选后，10个政党在下议院有代表，共有85名议员（占众议院的13%）。事实上，2015年是英国独立党、苏格兰民族党和绿色党有史以来最好的大选表现。在2017年大选中，这一数字下降到只有6个政党，但意想不到的无多数议会出现了一个小党（DUP），并可能赋予议会中所有其他小党权力。除了在威斯敏斯特的席位外，还有19个政党在联合王国的次国家议会中有代表。虽然英国的次国家议会有更多的共识做法，现有的研究仍然进行，好像“反对派”是一个议会集团。因此，我们对这些议会中个别政党的作用仍然知之甚少。但是，这些议会中的个别小党的作用几乎完全被忽视。这个为期三年的项目旨在更好地了解英国下议院、北方爱尔兰议会、苏格兰议会和威尔士议会中小政党的工作。它使用了对国会议员和议会成员的大规模采访，并分析了自2015年以来的主要议会文件，辩论，问题和立法修正案，以调查小政党在我们的政治体系中发挥的作用。在这样做的时候，考虑到他们在议会机构中面临的挑战，以及他们能够对政府和立法的监督产生的影响。在这样做时，它将突出议会生活中通常被隐藏的一个领域，揭示最佳做法，并与议会官员、议员和工作人员分享。