Examples of Westminster in a sentence
Therefore, in accordance with Section 38 of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004, it comprises the development plan for Westminster in combination with the London Plan, which was adopted by the Mayor of London in March 2021 and, where relevant, neighbourhood plans covering specific parts of the city (see further details in Section 6.2).
In this regard, a Westminster democracy usually filters the representation of societal differences by means of a highly disproportional electoral system.
This evolution has eroded the social bases of the Westminster model, weakening the traditional unidimensional left-right competition, the one that ensures the coherence of an adversarial style of politics, and introducing new social divides.9 Majoritarian institutional set-ups are typically extremely resilient to these bottom-up pressures, and in the United Kingdom they have usually been efficient in protecting the so-called British Political Tradition.
The first one argues that they are within the likely margin of variation of any empirical case compared to a theoretical model such as that of a Westminster democracy.
According to the well-known Durverger’s law, the combined mechanical and psychological effects of the plurality electoral formula on both citizens and parties favour the formation and maintenance of the two-party system at the basis of Westminster democracies.
The solution to the Brexit conundrum, together with the restoration of a clear parliamentary majority under the second Johnson cabinet, have restored the usual Westminster dynamics of British politics, which were only suspended and not really altered.
Arend Lijphart took the label for his majoritarian model of democracy from the British Houses of Parliament, and yet he recognized that the United Kingdom is not the purest type of Westminster system (Lijphart 2012).
They admit that the ‘move back towards the Westminster model is clearly constrained’: ‘high volatility leaves the two- party system in a vulnerable position’; ‘Parliament is now structurally better equipped to challenge the government’; and ‘so far, Brexit has not cancelled the important constitutional reforms adopted since 1997’, including devolution and the role of the Supreme Court.
Parties and preferences usually underrepresented in Westminster, squeezed by the disproportionality of its two-party competition, have for the first time had their own institutional venues, and have been able to consolidate their territorial bases without being viewed as symbolic waste votes.
As such, in spite of the apparently extraordinary dynamics recently experienced, what happened was just the tip of a deeper iceberg, whose manifestation does not need to be always as radical as during the years 2018 and 2019, but at the same time will have enduring consequences for the nature itself of the Westminster model of democracy in the UK.