UK/US synoptic paper

We’ve just kicked off our study (after a bonus two days rest due to snow) of the Edexcel Unit 6 paper examining the UK and US political systems in a comparative context. It can seem a bit daunting at first to draw together different strands of the course and compare and contrast them meaningfully. And for some at the moment it seems like I am asking them to compare apples and bananas. Possible, but perhaps a bit pointless. So I thought I’d share some of the thoughts I expressed to my classes on this since there may be blog readers out there in a similar predicament.

I think it’s a great opportunity for students to raise questions about the relative advantages and disadvantages of our political system. What’s also exciting is that if we wanted to compare our country’s political arrangements with another, it would be difficult to find one that is more different.

We have a fusion of powers. America has a constitutional separation of powers.
Britain’s constitution is uncodified. The USA’s is the shortest and oldest working codified constitution.
Legislators in the UK are relatively powerless. Congress is arguably the most powerful legislature in the world.
Our judiciary has been relatively unpoliticised and powerless for a long time. The Supreme Court has been dubbed politicians in disguise and exercises raw judicial power.
UK parties have traditionally been ideological and strong. Their American equivalents have been seen as fragmented and loose in ideology.
Power in Britain is stored centrally via a unitary constitution. The US meanwhile operates shared sovereignty with power reserved to the states.

Even better is the contrast in perception of democracy in both countries. The United States build large monuments to their leaders; Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and FDR all have large spaces devoted to them in and around Washington DC’s Mall. Moreover, Americans are fiercely proud of the country they inhabit, exhibiting patriotic fervour and proclaim their country as the best democracy on earth. Many US citizens view their country as a continuation of democratic ideals which first flowered in Britain: from the Magna Carta, to the principle of habeas corpus, the US colonies then ushered in the Declaration of Independence and a nation of laws, not men. The US today, then, is a shining city on a hill, an advert to the rest of the world.

Britain, of course, operates far more modestly. The site where the Magna Carta was signed is not recognised with a national monument. There are no towering statues of John Stuart Mill or Adam Smith. Primary school children pledge allegiance to nothing.

Yet students of US Politics will already have discovered that what America proclaims to be, and what it is are very different. Is America necessarily better governed than the UK?

Then there is the added dynamic of the changing nature of politics in both countries. The UK judiciary is developing in a way that can be compared to the American model. UK central government have ceded significant power to the devolved assemblies. American parties have arguably become much more ideological in recent years, whilst their UK counterparts seemed to have gone in the opposite direction.

All exciting stuff, and a lot to cover. One hopes that once we’ve journeyed through the first couple of essays, students will begin to grasp what it’s all about.

Shame in some ways that Edexcel have ditched. I know some schools have switched to OCR for that reason.