The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (196 page)

 
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Question addressed by members of a legislature to government ministers. In the UK Parliament oral questions, notice of which is given 48 hours in advance, are presented during question time; each MP called is also allowed to ask one unnotified supplementary question. At Prime Minister's question time special conventions apply, in particular allowing the Leader of the Opposition to ask up to three or four unnotified questions. Private Notice Questions, also delivered orally, are those which are allowed by the Speaker at short notice on the grounds of urgency. Written questions may be put to ministers at any time.
Formally, parliamentary questions offer one of the principal means by which members of a legislature may call ministers to account and scrutinize their operations. In practice, the regulation of questions by notification and limiting the number lead only to truncated debate and/or party political theatre. The long-term decline in the Prime Minister's availability for questions in the House of Commons reflects the extent to which the importance of parliamentary questions to good government has diminished and their potential for embarrassing ministers, particularly the Prime Minister, with party political rhetoric has increased.
JBr 

 
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The doctrine that ‘Parliament can do anything except bind its successor’, which is the official ideology of the British constitution. Acts are not subject to judicial review, nor is constitutional or other legislation ‘entrenched’ (made more difficult to amend than ordinary legislation) because to do so would be to bind the sovereignty of future parliaments. One curious but logical consequence is that guarantees enshrined in Acts of Parliament are worthless. The Ireland Act 1949, s.1(2), states that ‘It is hereby declared that Northern Ireland remains part of … the United Kingdom and … in no event will…any part thereof cease to be part of… the United Kingdom without the consent of the Parliament of Northern Ireland’. But as there is no entrenchment, this could simply be repealed should a future UK government wish to cede Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland. Defenders of parliamentary sovereignty argue that it is essential to be clear where sovereignty lies, and that it should lie with elected politicians, not unelected judges or executive officers. Critics argue variously:

(1) that parliamentary sovereignty has become a cover for executive despotism, because parliament neither can nor wishes to scrutinize executive actions purportedly done in its name;
(2) that parliamentary sovereignty was ceded with the accession of the UK to the
European Union
( see also
statute law
); and
(3) that rights ought to be entrenched, and/or that such constitutional matters as the maximum allowable length of a parliament should be kept out of the (allegedly sticky) hands of politicians.

 
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Taking part in politics. The general level of participation in a society is the extent to which the people as a whole are active in politics: the number of active people multiplied by the amount of their action, to put it arithmetically. But the question of what it is to take part in politics is massively complex and ultimately ambiguous. It raises the question of what constitutes politics. We would, for example, assume that activity within a political party or an organization which regarded itself as a pressure group should count as political participation. But what about activity in other sorts of organization, such as sports associations and traditional women's organizations? Although not overtly political, these organizations set the context of politics, give their active members administrative experience and are capable of overt political action if their interests or principles are threatened. There is an opposite problem about political losers: if people act, but ineffectively, perhaps because they are part of a permanent minority in a political system, can we say they have participated in the making of decisions? One implication of this doubt is that possessing power is a necessary condition or logical equivalent of true political participation. If one is merely consulted by a powerful person who wants one's views for information, or if one is mobilized or re-educated within the control of another, one has not participated in politics in any significant sense.
The problem of the definition of participation comes into sharper focus if we consider why participation is valued. An unbroken tradition of democratic theorists, stretching from
Rousseau
to John Stuart
Mill
to
Cole
to Carole Pateman , have supported an increase in participation: not, principally, because greater participation necessarily produces better decisions, defined in terms of the utilitarian assessment of policy outcomes (indeed, in a wide variety of circumstances an increase in participation will cause a reduction in the quality of policy in this sense), but because of the developmental value of participation in educating people, enhancing both the meaning of their lives and the value of their relationship with each other. A subsidiary set of arguments has been developed about the best arenas in which large numbers of people can participate: industrial democracy and the devolution of power to small territorial units seem to offer the best possibilities of large numbers of people co-operating in the exercise of some real political control over their lives.
Doubts about the value of participation occur in a variety of forms. Some writers see apathy, at least in a system of universal suffrage, as an index of contentment, and associate high levels of politicization with unstable societies with fundamental problems like the Weimar Republic in Germany between 1919 and 1933. Other sceptics assume that participation can carry costs which outweigh its value in terms of slow, poor quality decisions, or incoherent combinations of policies. Much of the division on the subject comes down to a fundamental value judgement about the place of politics in a fulfilled human life. Is political action the highest possible calling or is it just sitting in boring meetings? Is it the purpose of life or a mere instrument to provide the context in which more valuable activities can be pursued: as Lord Hailsham once remarked, religion for the intelligent and fox-hunting for the stupid?
LA 

 
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