Choose two of the countries studied in this course (US, UK, Germany, Brazil, Russia, Iran, and China). With reference to the comparative literature, compare and contrast these two countries on one of the following dimensions: .
- Policy-making process .
- Structure of multi-level governance.
- Electoral system .
- Parties and party system.
Political Culture.
In this essay I'm going to use my comparative skills to carefully compare the United States with the United Kingdom under the following dimensions; Electoral systems and Political Culture. Both the United States and The United Kingdom has very different dimensions in a political sense but also have similarities. I shall explain the comparisons in this essay now.
In the first part of my essay I'm going to talk about the Electoral system in the United Kingdom and United States. In both countries, the US and the UK both have a democratic voting system, which is no way authoritarianism but both countries have a different type of power as the structural separation of authority in the UK is Parliamentary and in the US it's Presidential. Therefore in the US the president, Barrack Obama has a much more powerful role compared to the Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron because the Prime Minister only has control of the government while in the US the president has power over the government and the state. So the vote in both countries for the ruler of the state is a bigger job in the United States of America. However both countries actually have the same electoral system of first past the post (FPTP). FPTP is a voting system by which a voter can only choose one person on the ballot paper of the election. "It is the second most widely used voting system in the world, after Party List-PR. It is used in places that are, or once were, British colonies[ CITATION Ele14 l 2057 ]". Britain however use FPTP only to elect MP's to the House of Commons and for local elections, and use other voting techniques such as Alternative Vote (AV), Supplementary Vote (SV), Single Transfer Vote (STV), and Additional Member System (AMS) for other types of elections.