Representative democracy article for Democracy Live

To mark the launch of the BBC's new Democracy Live website, Ruth Fox, Director of the Parliament and Government Programme, was asked to give her thoughts on the current state of democracy in the UK. Her article can be accessed on the Democracy Live website, and is reproduced below.

For all its imperfections representative democracy remains the best form of political decision-making and governance at our disposal.

Few among us would relish the alternative and over the last half century our political system has delivered relative peace and stability, economic prosperity and living standards unimaginable to our forebears.

And yet, as Hansard Society research found last year, well before the MPs' expenses scandal, only 19% of the public believe that Parliament is "working for them".

In a system in which fidelity to Parliament's authority is predicated on public confidence and consent, such levels of dissatisfaction indicate that the democratic chain of command between politicians and the public is severely strained.

So, for all the advantages and benefits we have derived from it in the past, there is no room for complacency when contemplating the future of parliamentary democracy.

In the aftermath of the expenses scandal a series of far-reaching but often inchoate parliamentary and constitutional reforms - for example, a written constitution, electoral reform, or a smaller House of Commons - have been suggested to tackle the perceived systemic infirmities.

But none of the suggested reforms actually tackle two of the biggest challenges we face today: the sheer lack of knowledge among the public about why and how our system of representative democracy works as it does; and the lack of modern mechanisms to facilitate improved public engagement and participation in the parliamentary process.

Lack of knowledge

There is a direct link between levels of political engagement and participation on the one hand and levels of knowledge and interest on the other.

Despite improved access to information available to the public today, the Hansard Society's annual Audit of Political Engagement demonstrates that people's knowledge and understanding of the basic tenets of our system of parliamentary democracy is worryingly low.

For example, half claim to know little or nothing about the constitutional arrangements governing Britain; just 32% say they understand how Parliament works; and only 50% are confident that Parliament is not the same thing as government.

Why does this matter? Well, there is rarely a unified public view on any issue. Politicians therefore have to chart a complex, difficult course between clashing interests, competing resource demands, and the variable needs of different segments of the populace.

The policy decisions that result from this process of negotiation and conciliation are often a necessary compromise between the ideal and the possible.

In the age of 24-hour news and the internet, this mediation process is even more fraught as politicians respond to the often short-term, impatient, and selective attention of both media and public.

Social networking and the blogosphere provide ever more outlets for information exchange, and are driven by new concepts of online citizen journalism and community organisation.

But when it comes to politics they tend to produce more heat than light, bringing together and reinforcing the views of the like-minded rather than educating a broader cross section of the populace about the relative merits of the political system.

The public lacks understanding about how and why the system works as it does, and how they can play a role in it. Their dissatisfaction with the political process and the policy outcomes that result is consequently high.

Unless this knowledge gap is addressed all other reforms may ultimately fail in achieving the overall objective of improving the health of our democracy.

If the public do not really understand how the democratic system operates they cannot effectively participate in it. Improved citizenship education - specifically political literacy education - is therefore urgently needed.

Online petitions

The second challenge is how to adopt new mechanisms to bring Parliament up to date with how we live today, to enable people to have a say and exercise influence in a way that reflects the way they actually want to engage.

The Audit demonstrates that a majority do not actually want to participate in decision-making and when they do they prefer mechanisms which require only short, shallow commitments of time and resources.

A Parliamentary Petitions Committee, encompassing a new system of ePetitions, would provide a possible solution.

The Audit shows that people are more likely to sign a petition than they are to engage in any other form of democratic activity.

Utilising modern technology and digital engagement tools to incorporate petitions into parliamentary procedures would therefore go some way to ensuring that Parliament is more responsive to matters of topical public concern in future as well as providing a raft of new "teachable moments" to enhance public understanding of our democratic processes.