Why does quickly calling for new elections change anything in parliamentary based systems [closed]

Question

For context I understand the American political system quite well, and have a somewhat weaker understanding of how the UK government works. With this disclosure...

My understanding is that the basic difference is that in the United States the executive head (President) is elected through the convoluted process of the electoral college, but in places like the UK the executive is selected from among the legislature. If we were to make an analogy it is like there is no President, but instead the Speaker of the House, roughly analogous to the prime minister, is the president.

So far so good. Next is how are the legislators chosen. In the United States the country is divided up into physical geographic regions of "roughly" equivalent size and representatives are elected, one from each district, and in the UK this also seems to be true, in that each MP represents one physical geographic region.

First question - is the above a reasonably accurate summary of how the UK government works?

Second question - the UK uses a first past the post system to select someone for a single seat, which as far as I can tell is basically exactly the same as to how Americans elect our house of representatives. Winner take all systems like this tend to produce 2 parties, and while the UK certainly has 2 major parties and a bunch of smaller parties in the US third party candidates basically never win anything, whereas in the UK there are always a bunch of "third party" candidates that actually get seats in the house of commons. Why are "third party" candidates so much more successful in the UK as compared to the United States? In the House of Commons it looks like there are something like 12 different parties, and 3 different parties hold at least 10% of the available seats, whereas in the United States I don't think a third party has held more than 1 or 2 seats in the House of Representatives in decades.

Last question is why holding new elections would be likely to change anything. If parliament doesn't elect a prime minister one of the things that can happen is new elections, but what I don't understand is why that is likely to help anything. I feel like in the United States if, during the time when the House couldn't elect a speaker we had instead re-done the house elections what we would have ended up with would be the sending the same group of people back to fail to elect a speaker. When parliament is dissolved for failing to form a government why is there any reason to believe that the new parliament is going to be any different from the old parliament?

Is the difference the fact that in the UK you can't vote for a "split ticket"? In the United States you can vote one party for executive and another party for legislative representative, but in the UK since the prime minister is not elected directly but is rather elected by parliament the only way you can get rid of a prime minister whose policies you hate is to get rid of your representative who put that prime minster in power?

Answer 1

You've got a reasonable understanding of how the British Parliamentary system works.

The reason that minor parties have had more success is more complex. The UK is a union of different countries and these have local parties, often with a basic policy of "leave the UK" In Scotland there is the SNP, in Wales Plaid Cymru and in Northern Ireland there is a whole array of parties (the major UK parties don't contend Irish constituencies)

Another factor is the small size of constituencies. In the US, a typical district has about ¾ million people. In the UK a typical constituency has a tenth of that. This allows for a savvy third party to position themselves as the "only viable local alternative". In many constituencies, for example the perception is that "Labour can't win here, so the anti-Tory vote must be for the Liberal Democrats". By focussing efforts locally, the Liberal Democrats, Greens, and Brexit/Reform have been able to win in constituencies with particular local demographics.

The existence of this form of local politics, means that systems that have built up in the USA which assume two parties don't exist in the UK

The processes for choosing a Prime Minsister are also rather different from the election of a Speaker. The Monarch (formally acting on the advice of Ministers and the Privy Council) invites the leader of the largest party, or the majority coalition, to be Prime Minister. So the spectacle of a house repeatedly failing to choose a Prime Minister couldn't happen. If the House rejects a Prime Minister (which it can do by no-confidence motion) and no other party can claim a majority, then there are new elections.

Part of the reason that this doesn't happen is that MPs know that there are rapid consequences. In the US, it was possible for a small group of Republicans to refuse to support the Speaker, since it didn't really affect who ran the country.

Answer 2

The UK Parliament has not been dissolved because it couldn't form a government for at least a century. Because there isn't a one-document constitution in the UK, many things are done by custom and precedent, rather than because there are clear rules. It's thus not entirely clear what would happen if a government could not be formed and new elections took place.

If that happened under current conditions, it is likely that at least some voters would change which party they supported, likely voting against parties that had obstructed the formation of a government.

Importantly, it is not necessary for one party to have a majority for a government to be formed. In 2010, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats formed a coalition. In 2017, the Conservatives formed an agreement with the Ulster-based Democratic Unionist Party to ensure their support (and thus a small majority) on votes of confidence and money bills. This has happened enough times for there to be jargon ("Confidence and Supply") for it.

An important difference between UK and US politics is that there are more than two significant political parties. The US duopoly is fairly alien to UK thinking.

Another is that the Prime Minister is not equivalent to a US President. The UK PM is the head of government, but not the head of state. That's the monarch. A US president is both head of government and head of state, a greater concentration of power than exists in the UK.

Answer 3

My understanding is that the basic difference is that in the United States the executive head (President) is elected through the convoluted process of the electoral college, but in places like the UK the executive is selected from among the legislature. If we were to make an analogy it is like there is no President, but instead the Speaker of the House, roughly analogous to the prime minister, is the president.

The analogy works to the extent that just like the Speaker of the House, the Prime Minister typically comes from the largest party in the House of Commons but there are many differences. The mechanics are quite different and, most importantly, Prime Minister is a very different role with vastly more powers than even the US president. There is in fact a separate Speaker of the House of Commons role that can also be compared to the role of the Speaker in House of Representatives (with many caveats), at least when it comes to their role in parliamentary procedure.

Second question - the UK uses a first past the post system to select someone for a single seat, which as far as I can tell is basically exactly the same as to how Americans elect our house of representatives. Winner take all systems like this tend to produce 2 parties, and while the UK certainly has 2 major parties and a bunch of smaller parties in the US third party candidates basically never win anything, whereas in the UK there are always a bunch of "third party" candidates that actually get seats in the house of commons. Why are "third party" candidates so much more successful in the UK as compared to the United States? In the House of Commons it looks like there are something like 12 different parties, and 3 different parties hold at least 10% of the available seats, whereas in the United States I don't think a third party has held more than 1 or 2 seats in the House of Representatives in decades.

Why it's happening at all in spite of the first-past-the-post system is an interesting question but it's also important to note that the UK system is still strongly bi-partisan (certainly compared to places using proportional representation or even a country like France). For the last two centuries, the two main parties have commanded a large share of the vote and the winning party almost always secured an outright majority allowing them to govern alone. The current situation with a high share of the vote going to other parties and forcing the conservatives to seek coalitions or other creative agreements with other parties is relatively new and instable.

One reason for the difference may be the way the parties work internally. US parties, at least at the federal level, tend to be “big tents” with a lot of very different tendencies and regional diversity. Disputes can, to a point, be resolved through the primary process and dissidents have a shot at growing their influence or gaining offices every election cycle.

UK parties are quite different. They are somewhat more coherent ideologically and the selection process is very centralized so that there is more incentives for (political) minorities to challenge them from outside the party, even when the electoral system puts them at a disadvantage.

Last question is why holding new elections would be likely to change anything. If parliament doesn't elect a prime minister one of the things that can happen is new elections, but what I don't understand is why that is likely to help anything. I feel like in the United States if, during the time when the House couldn't elect a speaker we had instead re-done the house elections what we would have ended up with would be the sending the same group of people back to fail to elect a speaker. When parliament is dissolved for failing to form a government why is there any reason to believe that the new parliament is going to be any different from the old parliament?

Actually, the UK may not be the best example of this so it's difficult to provide a good answer in that context. It's not among the countries with the most frequent elections. Dissolution of the Parliament does not automatically happen because a Prime Minister fails to command the confidence of the House of Commons and hasn't historically happened for that reason.

If you want to drill down on this, it may be more interesting to ask about countries like Greece, Israel, or Bulgaria but ultimately I am not sure there is any great expectation that new elections produce very different results. Instead, it's just a last resort in a government that's effectively deadlocked.

And even in the most unstable parliaments, the average term can still be longer than the regular term of a US representative. Holding elections every two years is extremely frequent in international comparison and makes the question of dissolution and early elections mostly moot, at least for the House (the Senate is obviously another story but it's harder to find analogies).

Answer 4

Existing answers are good, but a quick additional hypothesis for "why holding new elections would be likely to change anything". In the UK first-past-the-post system, "tactical voting" is commonplace - that is, many voters vote for someone other than their most preferred candidate, based on who they estimate has a credible chance of winning in their constituency. The fact that one election has just happened provides voters with a lot of new information about who has a credible chance of winning in their constituency, which may lead them to vote differently if a second election is held very shortly afterwards.