List the traditional elements in the present British political system

The emergence of the party dispute shattered the original structure of power to pieces, and, as already mentioned, the monarchical power was thus not spared, and then what followed, the other two changes brought about by the party dispute, namely, the Parliament and the Cabinet, were likewise turned upside down.

The change in Parliament is particularly meaningful for the British system, which has long been the essence of the British political system is Parliament, where the country negotiates and discusses its legislative, judicial and decision-making structures, and which is the most sacred political institution in Britain. But what if all that changed? If Parliament ceases to be that Parliament and loses any deliberative, legislative, judicial and decision-making character, can it still be called Parliament? I believe that few people have considered this question, but the British Parliament is now quietly metamorphosed ......

We have already seen since the 1832 parliamentary reforms, the formation of the false monarchy, the nature of the parliament began to change drastically, the parliamentary majority party to establish a one-party Cabinet, and the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the ruling party's fate is firmly bolted to a boat, must unconditionally support the ruling party, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the ruling party's fate. The fate of the prime minister, the cabinet and the ruling party were firmly tied to the same boat, and the prime minister had to support the cabinet unconditionally and ensure that cabinet resolutions were passed quickly. Thus, the parliament gradually became dependent on the cabinet.

In the middle and late 19th century, the Cabinet completed the combination of the legislative and executive branches. In 1867, Walter Bagehot, a constitutional scientist, pointed out in his masterpiece "British Constitutionalism" that the Cabinet was the "link" that combined the legislative part of the country with the executive part, and that the Cabinet was an executive branch, but functionally it also belonged to the legislative branch. Therefore, the British constitutional system, "the secret of the effective operation of the executive power and legislative power is the close combination and integration of nearly one"

Before and after 1900, the Cabinet deprived Parliament of the legislative function, complete domination of Parliament, since the 20th century, Parliament has become "the exclusive chamber of the Cabinet". the exclusive chamber of the Cabinet". John Mackintosh, an authority on the British cabinet system, thus concluded that "the task of the House of Commons was to support the voted cabinet and pass its statutes" (Mackintosh, The British Cabinet System). （

In the 20th century, there were even European and American scholars who likened the relationship between the Cabinet and Parliament to that of "master" and "servant".

In 1979, the leaders of the Conservative Party, led by Margaret Thatcher, agreed that "the House of Commons is no longer at the center of all events, and the big questions of power and principle will be decided elsewhere." (Thatcher, "The Downing Street Years")

So, if you look at the Tudor heyday of the British Parliament, which "could not turn a man into a woman", you can see that it has been in inexorable decline and has no deliberative function whatsoever.

The demise of the parliamentary role was due to a number of factors:

1, a profound change in the social background.

Since the nineteenth century, with the development of the free economy, the economic base of the two parties began to converge: "In 1895, the Conservative MPs, the real estate people fell to 20%, the capitalists increased to 52%, and in terms of class attributes, there is no clear difference with the Liberal Party. without significant difference." (Gutzman, The British Political Elite) In this way, the convergence of the two parties led to the inevitable diminishing of opposition in Parliament from year to year. As a result, the parliament, whose core mission is to regulate class interests, loses its function, role and value of regulation due to the convergence of class interests. Reflected in the society is also the same, the participants and supporters of the parties also slowly lose the political enthusiasm for a party, which is seen from the national political enthusiasm: since World War II in the United Kingdom, the economic basis of the two parties are consistent and lead to the convergence of national policies, the long-term historical precipitation has also formed the United Kingdom does not accept the reality of the third party in power, and so, whoever is in power in the two parties will not be the British daily life of the people produce significant differences. The difference, slowly, people's political enthusiasm gradually declined while political apathy prevailed.

2, the abolition of primogeniture in Britain at the end of the 18th century played a major role in removing the antagonism of the economic base. Because more than two thousand years, the British aristocratic family if not war and other social crises eliminated, its family life is often even hundreds of years, the core of the system is the system of primogeniture, this system almost eliminated the family property is analyzed by generations of children and grandchildren and the fate of the rapid decline, so as to ensure that the accumulation of wealth and no analysis of the problem, to ensure that the aristocratic family of the illustrious long survival. However, after the abolition of this system, all descendants could inherit, then the family wealth could be rapidly decomposed and die out, thus narrowing the social class antagonisms, and in the end, the so-called nobility could only be left with a title. This social trajectory and experience in ancient China has long been reflected, before the Tang Dynasty, hundreds of years of prominent noble family abound, but after the Tang Dynasty, China's social wealth can be constantly in the flow and can not form a long-lasting wealth oligarchy, even if the formation of the wealth is often rich, but not the death of the three generations, a big reason for this, the abolition of primogeniture ensures that for more than a thousand years, China has always had a thorough commoner's politics. The abolition of the primogeniture system has ensured that China has always had a thoroughly plebeian political society for more than a thousand years.

In contrast to the decline of parliament, the power of the cabinet has soared, and the power of the prime minister is even more powerful. As mentioned earlier, the prime minister is the party leader, party disputes on both sides will continue to expand the social prestige of the party leader and party prestige as a starting point, the so-called unconditional support for the party's specific results reflected in the party leader's absolute power. Therefore, when a party succeeds, it naturally means that the party leader is the high point of power, and it is no longer possible to be the king's power. This is a law, not subject to the will of the emperor. The expansion of the prime minister's power, naturally, also gradually separated from the cabinet's collective resolution, first to obtain additional personnel appointments and dismissals, and then the privilege of dissolving and convening parliament, leaving aside the cabinet, when the prime minister and the cabinet's collective resolution of the disconnect, then in turn, means that the dissolution of the cabinet's system of responsibility and the rise of personal accountability ......

In this way, when the The Cabinet's phalanx of powers after the 20th century, integrating the legislative, executive and even part of the judiciary, was far greater than the power of the British emperors of the past, when the Prime Minister had almost all the great powers of the state, holding all the major personnel powers such as the power to appoint Cabinet ministers, non-Cabinet ministers, the power of appointment of high-ranking civil officials, the power of royal ordination of peers and the power to control the state budget, decide the Cabinet's schedule of business, dissolve the Parliament, declare a Can it be said that the British political system is still in its original form when there is a system of powers such as the power to appoint Cabinet committees and to set up policy groups? In Britain, the power of the emperor has never completely exceeded that of the Parliament since ancient times, but now, the Cabinet is in a far more powerful position than the Parliament and the Parliament is in total decline, so the Cabinet can control the Parliament, manipulate the Parliament and even replace the Parliament as it pleases. What then is the nature of this system? This is a completely new political system, a completely different political system from the old British parliamentary system, which was dominated by the core, and this is a completely new power structure that replaces the monarch's power to rule the world after the interference of the parliament is eliminated by the phalanx of power. If before 1832 was the era of the monarch with limitations, then the 20th century began to be the era of the phallic power without limitations.

The direct approach to the unrivaled power of the Cabinet was to usurp the power of Parliament. For a long time, the British parliamentary tradition to group legislative deliberation as the core function, so for the non-permanent nature, but there is also a need to set up a variety of permanent specialized functional committees in order to efficiently deal with the tradition of the motion. Because specialized functions to deal with cases, after all, than a group of parliamentary unprofessionals to discuss more effective. So the Parliament will set up various kinds of specialized standing committees according to the need to deal with it. The importance of the parliamentary standing committees, can be analogized to the former U.S. President Wilson said: "the annual meeting of the Congress is only the exhibition of the Congress, the committee room in the Congress is the work of the Congress." (Wilson, Congressionalism). If the core of traditional British politics is Parliament, then standing committees of various specialties are the heart of the core. Such committees are often responsible for in-depth analysis, investigation, and resolution of a bill, and play a major role in the professionalization of decision-making. For example, in the Tudor Parliament, a number of special committees or specialized committees were formed by MPs to vote efficiently on motions. Before the first civil service reform, the House of Commons ordered the establishment of special committees to investigate government finances and the income and expenditure of civil servants. There are also precedents such as the Medieval Consultative Council and the Privy Council of the Tudor period, which have unconsciously divided into various committees in the permanent handling of state affairs. In this way, it can actually be shown that deliberative bodies tend to develop on their own, that is, they will be transformed from a group of democratic decision-making bodies to small and specialized deliberative bodies. If parliaments follow their own development, perhaps one day that will be the end of them.

And now, the Cabinet will not give Parliament any historical opportunity, the Cabinet in the twentieth century cleanly and almost completely deprived of the potential for the development of Parliament - the Cabinet has its own specialized committees and departments, the Cabinet and these think tanks form the brain and limbs of the role, and no longer the Cabinet and the Parliament to form the brain and limbs. With all kinds of professional standing committees as the carrier of the cabinet think-tank, professional, strategic, authoritative motion to make up for the cabinet's efficient but may be crude shortcomings, so that the cabinet has the parliamentary can not have usurpation of the power, which is the power of the professional, which can rely on its own can quickly and effectively formulate all the reality of effective and professional decision-making. From now on, the cabinet no longer need parliament. In comparison, the Parliament has become redundant with the various professional committees established under the Cabinet. Or in another sense, the parliamentary function has been reduced to zero, the collective decision-making function into a variety of specialized committees, functional departments, and into the power structure of the cabinet.

The reason for the unrestricted expansion of the phalanx, in addition to the law of power within the system, there are external political and economic factors, in the period of free capitalism, the practice of liberal economy, so the state pursues a policy of non-intervention; and when the market economy to the monopoly stage, the state must actively intervene in the economy in order to maintain a fair and benign competition in the market, and, therefore, rely only on the parliament's lengthy drag and drop complexity of legislative decision-making role has been far from efficient. Inefficient legislative decision-making role has been far from enough, the merger of government administration and legislation will be more active and effective participation in the intervention; into the 20th century since the international politics has been far from the medieval parliament can be dealt with simply, the complexity of the political power, geopolitical economic and military entanglement needs to be more small and efficient think tanks in order to make decisions quickly, and the parliament is obviously not competent to compete in such a national competition. Therefore, the 20th century, especially the first and second world wars, forced the originally decentralized power must be centralized in the cabinet, cabinet power in turn must be centralized in the prime minister in order to ensure that the legislative and executive efficiency. Slowly, it evolved into a political and cultural thinking that "for the British ruling class, the efficiency of the government was a matter of general bourgeois interest, which was more important than any abstract constitutional principle. Thus, in order to realize its political, economic and military aims, the ruling class prefers to let the prime minister and the cabinet hold the main power of the country and occupy the political center." (Yan Zhaoxiang, "History of the British Political System") Therefore, the expansion of the power of the Cabinet will be a magnificent upgrade of the parliament since the Middle Ages with its core interest strife, narrow interest positions, lengthy procrastination and other deficiencies that cannot be adapted to today's new warring parliamentary era.

So, a combination of factors, party disputes, the economic basis of the same, the loss of parliamentary deliberation function, the domestic economy of the regulatory needs of the country's fierce competition, the Cabinet usurpation of parliamentary authority, *** with the British parliamentary system of government system at the core of the transition to the class of the Song Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, Zaizi responsible for the system or Cabinet of the system of the chief ministers, and the subsumption of various types of professional committees of the Cabinet on the traditional Chinese power structure like the Ministry of the Ministry, Household, Rites, military and military affairs, the Ministry of Justice. The cabinet of various types of professional committees is like the traditional Chinese power structure in the Ministry of mandarins, Ministry of households, Ministry of Rites, Ministry of War, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Criminal Affairs, Ministry of Industry and other six ministries, and even the Imperial Historical Observatory, the Imperial Household Inspection Office, Jinyiwei, the six departments of the Ministry of the Ministry of the Ministry of the Interior, ...... a few categories like the same. This is the law of power, that is, whoever occupies the advantage of legislative power, who may be inflated to become based on the specialization of decision-making on the rapid and effective, rather than after the generalization of the democratic decision-making institutions. And the catalyst is the domestic and international situation outside the system.

And where will Parliament go when it loses its intended role? Is it left with the fate of ensuring that cabinet resolutions are implemented robustly and efficiently? But what of the future?

The current Parliament and Cabinet are by no means a permanent balance of functional power, with the Cabinet's long-term strength and the Parliament's long-term decline forming an unstable power structure, which will inevitably force the Parliament to do everything it can to regain power. And the parliament in today's historical situation, it is impossible to return to the Tudor period, such as the parliamentary decision of all the good years, the parliament to obtain new vitality, either to recapture the cabinet's various professional committees, or can only become a sub-essential decision-making body, the burden of a series of distinctive professional committees and departments. In short, the future of Parliament must be transformed into specialized committees or it will never survive.

Also, to revitalize the Parliament, a style of neutrality must be established. This is with the Speaker of the House of Commons function and the nature of the change and quietly evolved, the Speaker of the House of Commons function of the initial setup is to organize the House of Commons and the House of Lords deliberative function and the interests of the effective resistance to set up, after the House of Commons through the party dispute, the Speaker of the House of Commons party position tends to affect the two sides of the force, but with the increase in the strength of the party dispute also or with the economic base of the and weakened for the purpose of the Speaker of the function of the special need for neutrality impartiality The role of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, in the mid-18th century began to gradually form the Speaker of the House of Representatives need to be neutral stance of the system needs, in order to play a more effective coordinating role, and therefore, after the 19th century, away from party disputes to become the Speaker of the House of Representatives should be followed as a guideline and began to form the situation of the two parties take turns sitting in the House of Representatives. After the 20th century, the Speaker of the House of Commons went beyond party affiliation and became the practice of the House of Commons. That is to say, the attributes of the Speaker of the House of Commons can have personal partisan attributes, but he must have a fair and neutral position. And this neutrality will slowly change the hostility of centuries of violent partisanship in Parliament and bring a new authority to Parliament.

The evolution of parliament in the late 20th century is also a good illustration of this law: parliament in order to get rid of the dependence on the cabinet, the establishment of a non-partisan "House of Commons Committee" first to obtain financial autonomy, in order to obtain an independent right to speak (but recently the Speaker of the United Kingdom has abused this right to create a fraudulent subsidies to the additional subsidies). "(However, the recent abuse of this power by the Speaker of the British Parliament to create the scandal of cheating on extra subsidies has really added to the role and reputation of the Parliament.) Secondly, 14 specialized committees related to government departments have been set up to strengthen the independence of the House of Commons and its deliberation, scrutiny, amendment and management of government affairs. Thus, it can be proved that for Parliament to be reborn, it must take the posture of a neutralizer and professional authority to wash away the weather of more than a century of decadence.

Summary, all the phenomena and reality, so that the author has to think, parliament as the core of the nature of the political system can only exist in the stage of social civilization is not high, only suitable for the domestic and international situation is relatively closed environment, the stage of the free economy (the primary stage of the economy), in the absence of a strong external force of the compulsion, a self-sustaining political ecology of the country has a political model. And accordingly, Britain's excellent geopolitical, and the European continent across the sea, and the European continental forces are fragmented and lack of strong and powerful enough to swallow Britain's forces, so these factors *** with the combination of the creation, or the continuation of the British so that a parliamentary system as the centerpiece, but with the world getting smaller, the frequency of competition between the countries, the cruelty of the competition escalation, the natural beginning of the abandonment of the parliamentary system. In this connection, the author is speculating on another issue, that is, the reason why the Chinese political system has not formed a parliamentary system. Perhaps, not because the Chinese people did not think or try, not because the Chinese culture can not give birth to such a power structure, but has long been eliminated by the Chinese system, perhaps as early as the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties were eliminated, China's geopolitical disadvantage, resulting in five thousand years has been y from the west, north, northeast of the three directions of the desert steppe nomadic militarized organization of the high intensity of the threat, and the state government still uses a parliamentary system of government. If the country's system of government had remained parliamentary, China would never have been destroyed twice. ......