Government & Politics Essay
To what extent is there a democratic deficit in the UK?

There is an argument that the government has the power and right to change laws and represent people without necessarily having to be elected. This can also be known as ‘Democratic deficit’. An example of democratic deficit is the House of Lords. The members in the House of Lords aren’t elected but they get to make laws and represent the people. The members in House of Lords are usually given their seats hereditarily so many people found it unfair that they’re not elected into the Parliament but they can make decisions and laws …show more content…

Juries also give their verdict on how they found the criminal/defendant so the decision isn’t fully dependent on the judge.
Low participation rates in the UK are one of the features of democratic deficit. In the 2010 general elections more than 16 million% of people could have voted but chose not to. The overall turnout in the UK as a whole was 65%. In 2005 the voting turnout was 61% approximately, which means over a period of 5 years the percentage has risen by 4% over the UK. This shows that there is an in fact low participation rate in the UK and this is due to situations such as First Past the Post.
On the other hand, others may disagree because the turnout of participation has increased in the last two general elections. In 2001 the overall turnout of participation was 59%, and in 2005 the overall turnout of participation was 61%. This shows that the participation in the UK is rising. There is also some other forms of participation in the UK that have increased such as boycotting, petitions etc. These have gone up over the past years with more people becoming more interested in politics.

FPTP is an electoral voting system based on constituencies, for a party to win a general election outright they must win an absolute majority of constituencies. FPTP is used for elections to the