Types of Democracy - GED Social Studies

Britain is governed by a parliamentary system. There is a legislative body, called the Houses of Parliament, where the leader of the majority party, or of the largest coalition, is Prime Minister. This is different to the American system where votes for the legislature and executive are not directly tied to one another.

One of the primary advantages of a two-party system, as compared to a multi-party system, is that if there are only two parties competing for power, they must try to attract as much of the electorate as possible. This generally causes both parties to be extremely moderate in their political leanings. It is not possible to have a coalition government in a two-party system. In a coalition government, which occurs often in parliamentary systems (such as those in the United Kingdom or Germany), no one party gains an absolute majority, so parties combine their votes together to form a coalition and more than one party rules. This has the advantage of allowing disparate and varied political opinions to work together.

One of the primary differences between a presidential democracy (like the governments of the United States and France) and a parliamentary democracy (like the governments of Germany and the United Kingdom) is that in a parliamentary democracy, the people do not directly elect the Prime Minister; instead, they vote for a representative of a political party in the legislature, and the majority party in the legislature chooses a Prime Minister. In modern times, it is generally known before the election of the legislative branch the person each party would choose for their leader, so the difference is nominal in terms of the amount of power held by the people.