For some time, there has been a sense that something is wrong with politics. Declining electoral turnout across many liberal democracies in recent decades has prompted concerns that the public has become disaffected about, and disengaged from, political processes and political institutions. As Stoker (2006: 7) notes, ‘there appears to be a considerable amount of discontent and disenchantment about the operation of democracy both in those countries that have practiced democracy for decades and those that are more recent converts’. Hay (2007: 1) comments that ‘[n]owhere, it seems, does politics animate electorates consistently anden masseto enthusiastic participation in...

To understand why parliamentary reform does or does not take place requires a prior understanding of the context in which it does or does not occur. The characteristics of the institution of parliament are a product of its historical development, and that development has fostered the emergence of particular norms and values that continue to shape its functioning and capabilities. Crucially, parliament cannot be understood in isolation from government and, consequently, parliamentary reform cannot be understood separately from its likely impact on government.

Parliamentary reform can most usefully be analysed with reference to the norms and values that structure the...

The previous chapter revealed how the historical development of the Westminster parliament has bestowed a pre-eminent position on the executive inside the House of Commons. The historical institutionalist perspective highlights the norms and values of the executive as the dominant actor at Westminster, and how these norms and values contribute to a structured institutional context in which institutional change does, or does not, take place. Through their position as the dominant actors at Westminster, successive executives have sought to bring about institutional change designed to consolidate and expand the ability of the government to govern without undue interference from parliament....

The previous chapter illustrated the interest of successive governments in securing efficient procedures in the House of Commons throughout the twentieth century. The Labour government elected in 1997 was committed to an expansive legislative programme after almost twenty years in opposition, and was keen to ensure that the most efficient mechanisms were in place to secure that programme. To achieve this, the government established a Modernisation Committee to implement the necessary changes.

A significant proportion of this Committee’s time has been spent on efficiency matters similar to those explored previously by the Procedure Committee. The continued adaptation of Commons procedures...

The institutional make-up of Westminster is characterised by the norm of strong government, and consequently places much value on ensuring that government can secure its business. Successive governments have been able to use their dominant position inside the House of Commons to exploit those norms and values in order to reform parliamentary procedure and ensure that legislation is approved expeditiously and that the chamber functions in a streamlined way. Governments have also used their institutional dominance with respect to effectiveness reforms, although for quite different purposes. Following the logic utilised previously in discussing the structured institutional context in existence at...

In the period after 1997, the debate surrounding the need to improve the effectiveness of the Commons select committee system assumed a new tone with the creation of the Modernisation Committee. Examination of the events surrounding the Committee’s attempt to reform the system provides a valuable opportunity to explore the attitudinal and contextual approaches noted in Chapter 2, and to probe further the explanatory utility of historical institutionalism.

Norton (2000) outlined three conditions that must be met before effective parliamentary reform may proceed, and these conditions are worth restating in detail. The first necessary condition is a window of opportunity...

Throughout the twentieth century, arguments regarding reform of the second chamber were traditionally portrayed as concerning a battle between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, and discussions were frequently predicated on the assumption that the pre-eminence of the latter had to be preserved in any restructuring of the former. When executives wished to curtail the capabilities and powers of the second chamber, they argued that such restrictions were necessary in order to ensure the continued pre-eminence of the House of Commons. Generally, governments were drawn into Lords reform as a way to ensure that their ability to...

The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 successfully curtailed the powers of the House of Lords in order to ensure that the executive could secure its legislative programme, and thus enhance the efficiency of parliament. The failed attempt at reform in 1968–69 served to underline the extent to which MPs equated compositional reform of the Lords with a threat to the preeminence of the House of Commons, and in turn contributed to the second chamber undergoing a process of functional renewal in the absence of more comprehensive reform. The notion that the House of Commons must remain pre-eminent is...

There have been several different arguments pursued in this book, but one in particular has served to link all the others together, which is that institutions are characterised both by persistence and by change, and we must have devices in our conceptual toolkit that are capable of analysing, and perhaps even explaining, both. Historical institutionalism has been used here because it not only forces us to take the long-term view of an institution’s development, but also gives us insights into norms and values, institutional contexts, agents and ideas, path dependency and critical junctures, all of which assist in the analysis...