The politics of ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION IN Great Britain.

This article examines the way in which contemporary British environmental policies are formed, how public opinion is changing, and what the main political parties are advocating with regard to the issue, as of October 1988. In constitutional terms Great Britain allegedly experiences an unusual form of what is known as an elected dictatorship. In theory parliament is meant to represent the democratic voice of the British people. But members of parliament (MP) are elected on the basis of the greatest number of votes cast in each constituency. In a two-party system, such should produce a parliament that is fairly representative. In modern multiparty British politics, however, where an MP who receives as little as 35 percent of the total vote can be elected, the resulting composition of parliament does not reflect the popular voting pattern. In the 1987 general election, the Conservatives won a 101-seat majority in the 649-seat House of Commons with 42.3 percent of the popular vote. Thus a minority party in terms of the popular vote enjoys in effect dictatorial power by virtue of a large parliamentary majority. Although ministers are nominally accountable to parliament, in practice they tend to be more answerable to their own restive backbenchers, the non-ministerial MP who form the majority of the parliamentary party. INSET: Survey of environmental attitudes in the United Kingdom 1988..