Evolution of electoral system

As the birthplace of modern democracy, Britain is one of the countries that implemented universal suffrage earlier in the world. Its electoral system is of great significance not only to Britain's democratic political system, but also to the United States and other western countries. Of course, for China, which is building a modern democratic politics, it has certain reference significance.

Britain was the first country to implement representative system, but its original intention was not for people's democracy, but also due to the kings and nobles in medieval England. Specifically, representative government can be traced back to the parliamentary meetings convened by the British king and nobles to solve some national problems, such as taxes and wars. The people attending the meeting came from all walks of life and represented their interests. It was at these meetings that the appearance of representatives led to the germination of the electoral system, and the form of electing representatives and negotiating countries also became the historical origin of representative system.

In British history, except for the electoral system in the early aristocratic political period, its electoral system has undergone great changes from 1832 to now, and has also undergone nearly ten reforms. These reforms can be roughly divided into two stages. The first stage is the reform of expanding universal suffrage from the 1930s to the early 20th century. The second stage is the electoral system reform with the principle of universal equality as the core after World War II, which is still in progress.

The earliest electoral system in Britain can be traced back to the period from tribal society to the end of the Middle Ages, which can be called the electoral system in the aristocratic political period. As the name implies, aristocratic politics had a great influence on the electoral system in this period, and the factors affecting aristocratic political tradition can be divided into two categories: economic factors and political and social factors. Economic factors refer to the influence of land, commerce and taxation on the electoral system, while political and social factors include tribal democratic tradition, blood feud tradition, rule of law tradition and aristocratic political tradition. In a word, the election sprouted from the historical background of British feudal political development and was the direct product of aristocratic political struggle. This political tradition of tribal democracy and king's rule of law provides a steady stream of democratic ideas to balance the royal power, and also lays a theoretical foundation for the election.

From the industrial revolution in the middle of18th century, the British electoral system began to change with the economic changes. During this period, the desire of the British working class to participate in politics and obtain more social resources gradually increased, which was manifested in the movement for universal suffrage. In this context, 1832 implemented the first electoral system reform law, which mainly focused on two issues: redistributing parliamentary seats and reducing the property qualification of voters. However, this reform also has some limitations, such as the ratio of the number of parliamentarians to the population varies greatly from region to region; Nobles still hold an absolute majority of seats in parliament, etc. After the reform of 1832, Britain carried out a series of reforms at the beginning of the 20th century and before World War II, which successively solved four problems: first, women's right to vote; The second is the problem of residence and income restriction; Third, the number of voters in the constituency and the number of parliamentarians are equally divided; Fourth, the issue of equal voting rights is to solve the problem of re-voting rights in voting.

After World War II, Britain began to rebuild democracy. For example, the double-vote system was abolished and the "simple majority election" was reformed. Under the auspices of the Labour Party, Britain has carried out the following reforms to the "simple majority election": First, the election of the House of Commons and the election of local councils in Britain are still conducted by simple majority election. Second, in the Scottish Parliament and Welsh National Assembly elections, the "extra parliamentary system" was introduced and a mixed electoral system was implemented. Thirdly, the Irish Parliament was established and a single transferable voting system was introduced in the election. Fourth, the proportional representation system will be implemented in the European Parliament elections.

To sum up, the electoral system in modern Britain was formed in the theory of people's sovereignty during the bourgeois revolution, determined by the comparison of various electoral systems and theories and the specific national conditions of Britain, and developed in the model of elite democracy theory. The electoral system is the core and essence of capitalist political civilization, and its experience and lessons deserve our careful study and summary, thus providing reference for the construction of modern political democracy in China.