David Rossiter – författare

The British electoral system treats parties disproportionately and differentially. This original study of the fourteen general elections held between 1950 and 1997 shows that the amount of bias in those election results increased substantially over the period, benefiting Labour at the expense of the Conservatives. Labour's advantage peaked at the 1997 general election when, even assuming there had been an equal share of the votes for the two parties, it would have won 82 more seats than its opponents. This situation came about because of different aspects of two well-known electoral abuses - malapportionment and gerrymandering. With the use of imaginative diagrams the book examines these processes in detail, illustrating how they operate and stresses the important role of tactical voting in the production of recent election results.

Available in paperback for the first time, this work of original scholarship is the first to trace in full detail how the UK’s system for defining parliamentary constituencies has evolved since the Great Reform Act of 1832 and how the eight redistrictings since then were undertaken.Particular attention is paid to the five redistrictings that have been undertaken by the independent Boundary Commissions established in 1944, with a detailed study of all aspects of their work on the most recent review of all constituencies.The book is both a standard reference work on redistribution in the UK and provides the only detailed insight into how that task is currently undertaken, based on a study of the relevant documents and interviews with over a hundred of those most closely involved. The book will be essential for all those interested in the British constitution, and administrators concerned with making the constitution successful, as well as politicians.

Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom are elected to represent geographic constituencies; but how are these defined and what are the consequences for democracy?Tracing the UK’s system of parliamentary representation from its origins in the thirteenth century right through to the present, this comprehensive new survey reveals how a system initially designed to restrain the power of monarchs gradually evolved to serve their interests, then those of political parties before the twentieth century ‘settlement’ of an independent process for revising the constituency map.That settlement is now under pressure, with the traditional pattern of constituencies representing communities about to be replaced by one which elevates numbers above community. Advanced under the slogan of ‘making votes equal’, this new regime promises fairness yet, as the authors show, is destined to fail to address the disproportional and biased election results that have long been a feature of UK politics.Concluding with a detailed consideration of the ways in which various parts of the UK have embraced alternatives to first-past-the-post over the last two decades, this book serves as a timely reminder that the needs of political parties do not always coincide with those of us, the electors.