How Successfully Does Parliament Perform Its Repre

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The representative functions of parliament are simply to make new legislature and scrutinise it for any possible negative effects it may have on the country and to represent the people in what they want to be done and bring up certain issues that worry them in government. Under the FPTP system each MP has to represent a constituency of around 70,000 people and 650 MP’s gather in the House of Commons, so in theory this seems like an effective way to represent the whole population. On the other hand there is very strong pressure for the MP’s to represent their party’s through the whip systems and strict party discipline. This is even more powerful because of the doctrine of the mandate, which means they are obliged to agree with their party. First Past the Post is an electoral system which is meant to have a very strong MP-constituency link. There are many things that make MP’s representative such as having political meetings with his or her constituents. They can also organise social functions to try to get as many constituents out and talking to them as possible both to find out if there are any problems that can be resolved in the area or more broadly and to try to get familiar and popular with the constituents. To represent the constituency effectively the MP must promote the interests of his constituents to his party, either in parliament, PM’s questions, write to the minister on the constituents behalf or if it is possible solve the problem first hand. You could argue that MP’s are not completely representative because they are put under a lot of pressure sometimes to side with their party in the House of Commons even if it is not in their constituent’s interests. If they do go against the grain and vote against the party it may hinder their future in the party, for example he or she may be put up for a seat that is an opposition’s safe seat in the next general
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