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Parliamentary Affairs Advance Access originally published online on May 10, 2008
Parliamentary Affairs 2008 61(3):545-549; doi:10.1093/pa/gsn018
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© The Author [2008]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society for Parliamentary Government; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

This article appears in the following Parliamentary Affairs issue: The Political Representation of Women [View the issue table of contents]

The Constitution of the United Kingdom

The Evolution of a Constitution

Governing Britain Since 1945

The Cost of Democracy

Alexandra Kelso

P. Leyland, The Constitution of the United Kingdom, Hart Publishing, 2007.

E. Wicks, The Evolution of a Constitution, Hart Publishing, 2006.

N. Knight, Governing Britain Since 1945, Politicos, 2006.

K.D. Ewing, The Cost of Democracy, Hart Publishing, 2007.

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The election of the Labour government in 1997 marked a new phase for constitutional politics in Britain. Those in favour of constitutional reform had for a long time been singing the same song repeatedly. This was a song which lamented the accretion of executive power, which regretted the overly centralised nature of the state, and which bemoaned the distortions of representative democracy and the highly limited opportunities for popular participation in politics. After 18 years in opposition, at the sharp end of a political system which seemed exclusionary, distant and unfair, the Labour Party became committed to addressing the worst aspects of a malfunctioning constitution. The party pledged in its 1997 manifesto that it was committed to democratic renewal through decentralisation. The party's plans to ‘clean . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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