Tag Archives: India

Heatwave risk and election safety: does it make sense to hold elections in July?

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The UK is about to hold a July general election for the first time in almost 80 years. Sarah Birch, Erik Asplund, Madeline Harty and Ferran Martinez i Coma discuss why the risk posed by extreme heat could affect the conduct and outcome of the voting process. 

It was a chilly start to the summer, and if this trend continues, a brisk walk to the polling station on 4 July could be a welcome means of warming up. But the mercury is slowing rising and a heatwave could be just around the corner. Many will have vivid recollections of sweltering in the 40-degree temperatures experienced in the UK for the first time in July 2022, resulting in a red alert for ‘extreme heat’ from the Met Office and ‘do not travel’ advice from Network Rail. Late July is historically the hottest time of the year, with the early part of the month not far off. The average high in July was 19 degrees a generation ago; it is now over 20 and rising, as shown in this Met Office graph: 

The above image contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.  

So when Prime Minister Rishi Sunak called an election on 22 May, people may have wondered what was in store, especially as news was just coming out of temperatures nudging 50 degrees during polling in India, with dozens of poll workers dying as a result.  

This is not the only recent election that has been hit by scorching weather. Campaigning in the US presidential election has recently been affected by heatwaves in the south-west, and unusually high temperatures shaped the June Mexican elections, the European Parliament election in Romania, the April election in the Maldives, last year’s snap parliamentary election in Spain, and the 2022 legislative elections in France, among others. 

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Scrutinising delegated legislation: what can Westminster learn from other parliaments?

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Recent years have seen increasing expressions of concern about whether the UK Parliament has adequate procedures for scrutinising delegated legislation. In a recent article in Political Quarterly, Tom Fleming and Tasneem Ghazi explore the lessons which might be learned from how other parliaments approach that challenge. This blog summarises those lessons.

There is wide concern about the increasing use of delegated legislation in the UK. Delegated legislation is normally made by ministers, rather than parliament. Historically, it has been used to fill in the details of broader policy frameworks set out in primary legislation. But recent years have seen a growing trend of ministers using delegated legislation to implement major policy decisions. This was highlighted as an issue during the Brexit process and Covid-19 pandemic. It has continued under the Sunak government, as shown by the recent bills on industrial action and retained EU law both containing significant delegated powers.

This trend has led to renewed attention being paid to the UK parliament’s system for scrutinising delegated legislation (which mostly takes the form of ‘statutory instruments’). By its nature, this legislation receives less extensive scrutiny than primary legislation. But especially when these statutory instruments (SIs) contain significant policy content, it is important that MPs and peers have sufficient opportunities and means to scrutinise them. That scrutiny may confer greater legitimacy and further government accountability to parliament. It may also highlight technical and policy flaws and ensure that a range of voices are heard in the policy-making process.

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Combatting backsliding: what works?

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The Constitution Unit held an event in May, at which three expert panellists discussed the rise of democratic backsliding internationally and considered key domestic and international interventions which might help to combat this trend. In the first of a two-part series, Sophie Andrews-McCarroll summarises the discussion from the main portion of the event. A separate blog, covering the Q&A section of the event, will be published on 16 June.

Discussions about the health of democracy internationally are occurring more and more frequently, amid worrying reports of a global decline in democratic standards. These concerns relate to the problem of increasingly prolific democratic backsliding – a process by which a legitimately elected leader challenges democratic norms and institutions, and deliberately begins to dismantle checks and balances on the executive.

To discuss these challenges, and to examine possible solutions, the Constitution Unit convened a panel discussion on combatting democratic backsliding, held on 23 May 2023. This event was chaired by Meg Russell, who was joined by experts Dr Seema Shah (Head of the Democracy Assessment Unit at the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance); Ken Godfrey (Executive Director of the European Partnership for Democracy); and Professor Kim Lane Scheppele, (Laurance S Rockefeller Professor of Sociology and International Affairs, Princeton University).

The below is a summary of the speakers’ opening remarks. There will subsequently be another blog detailing the subsequent panel discussion and audience questions.

Seema Shah

Dr Shah opened the session by addressing the concept of democratic backsliding. A number of problems have arisen in defining the term. ‘Backsliding’ has been used, and is still widely used by practitioners today, to discuss a variety of general declines in democratic health – but these definitions can present challenges for those collecting data to measure the concept. International IDEA has defined backsliding as significant declines over a five-year period in checks on government; in credible elections; and in civil liberties. Academics and practitioners do not necessarily use these same categories. What has been most useful is the consensus that backsliding commonly refers to the purposeful dismantling of democratic building blocks from within by democratically elected leaders.

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A Scottish constitution: should it be devised before or after independence?

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If voters choose independence in a referendum, Scotland will need a constitution. Elliot Bulmer argues here that there are advantages to creating and debating a new constitutional document before trying to navigate the choppy waters of becoming a separate nation.

Scotland and a written constitution

Despite being rejected in the 2014 referendum, Scottish independence has not disappeared from the political agenda. With a series of recent polls showing clear majorities in favour of independence, the question is sure to be revisited.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) has long had a policy of adopting a written constitution for Scotland. The party’s substantive proposals have remained remarkably consistent since the publication of a first draft constitution in 1977: a written constitution with an enforceable bill of rights largely based on the European convention, a unicameral parliament elected for fixed terms by proportional representation, and a parliamentary executive operating under a trimmed-down constitutional monarchy. In a nod to Harshan Kumarasingham’s description of India and Ceylon (as it then was) as ‘Eastminsters’, I have previously described the SNP’s constitutional plans for Scotland as a kind of ‘Northminster’ system: a Nordic-wannabe proportional variation of the Westminster Model that is infused by a desire to ‘keep up with the Johansens’, or Westminster-on-Forth, twinned with Oslo.

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