Vernon Bogdanor

https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/representatives-of-the-people-parliamentarians-a...

This list of authors is a who’s who of British political science of the early 1980s, 15 men and one woman, with 13 of the 15 men based in the UK (one in Ireland, one in Austria, and the woman contributor is Australian). The editor, Vernon Bogdanor, used to be generally respected as an authority on the British constitution, such as it is, but has gone very Brexity recently. That was all far in the future in 1985, of course.

The book starts with two chapters on the UK, and then goes in sequence through the USA, Australia, France, West Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Scandinavia, Switzerland and Ireland, before finishing with a couple of chapters on the theory of representation. I must say I found it a bit frustrating. I would have put the two theoretical chapters up front, to contextualise the specific information about each country; I would have put Ireland, whose political culture is much closer to the UK’s than any of the others, much earlier than last in the sequence.

In general I found the authors far too ready to accept uncritically the British paradigm of MPs as constituency representatives, and inclined to rate other countries positively or negatively depending on how well they approached the ideal. The two exceptions here are the chapter on Ireland, written by Brian Farrell and quoting the likes of John Bruton, Michael D. Higgins and John Whyte and drawing on deep analysis of theory and practice over sixty years of independence; and a completely bonkers and hilarious chapter on Switzerland by Christopher Hughes, who had already retired as Professor of Politics at Leicester but lived another twenty years.

As usual, Malta, which has had both proportional representation on a similar basis to Ireland since 1921 and a rigid two-party system since 1966, doesn’t exist as far as the writers of this book are concerned.

Several writers approvingly quote Burke’s Address to the Electors of Bristol:

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament."

It is worth pointing out (as only one of the authors quoting him does) that when Burke made this speech, he had just been safely elected, so it was not an argument that he actually put to floating voters; and when he defended his Bristol seat at the next election, he came dead last with only 18 votes.

I think that the question of relations between members and constituents is one which would be treated very differently today. The representation of women and minorities is barely addressed here; also in 1985 we had no idea of the intense democratisation that was about to hit central and Eastern Europe, or the devolution settlements of the late 1990s in the UK. And there had been only two elections to the European Parliament, which was still a curiosity rather than a feature. So it’s a book of its time, perhaps telling a surprising amount through its omissions as well as its content.… (mehr)

“…Vernon Bogdanor is Professor of Government at Oxford University. I think he’s got a broad perspective, and the important thing about his book is that he says that we absolutely do, by now, have a written constitution. It’s a myth going on, talking about the Great British anomaly of not having a written constitution. …”(reviewed by Lord David Owen in FiveBooks. The full interview is available here: rel="nofollow" target="_top">http://fivebooks.com/interviews/david-owen-on-constitutional-reform)
… (mehr)