British Parliamentary democracy

Abstract

British Parliamentary democracy has evolved over the centuries. From Simon de Montfort’s Parliament in 1265 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642, it was based upon the changing relations between the Monarch and the various estates of the realm. By the time of the Bill of Rights in 1689 a more explicit constitutional contract had evolved between the Monarch’s Government and the two Houses of Parliament. From then until the 1832 Reform Act Britain was essentially governed by the landed aristocracy. With successive extensions of the franchise from the 1867 Representation of the People Act to the 1969 Representation of the People Act, a recognisably modern democracy gradually emerged. The contemporary result of this long evolutionary process is that since the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Community in 1973, British politicians and people alike have lived in a Parliamentary democracy which is a constitutional Monarchy within the European Union.