 Hello and welcome to our video summarizing everything you need to know about government and politics. My name is Barbara and in this video I'll be looking at political participation. What does it mean? How can we participate when it comes to political structures but also I will look at democracy, the different types of democracy, dictatorship, authoritarian leadership and also when it comes to the UK, how are our political parties structured? So let's begin. Now firstly let's talk about political participation. What does it mean? Now political participation is just a fancy way of saying how we choose who runs our government and how our country is run and of course we do that by voting. Now as I've mentioned most countries today or rather many countries have a democracy. Now what does democracy mean? Democracy is where power is exercised by the masses of people and in other words in a democracy we'll all get to say in who leads our country through voting. Now there's two types of democracies that you need to be aware of. The first is direct democracy. What this means is when citizens are all granted the right to speak and vote on all issues with the majority of you becoming law. Now this whilst in theory is a good idea in practice it becomes very difficult, almost impossible if a country has millions of citizens. So if for every law it has to be debated by every single citizen and voted for we would find that laws have passed much more slowly. We perhaps also will find that some citizens are not very equally informed on these laws and of course it becomes very impractical. That therefore means all if not a majority of countries today practice representative democracy and this is where citizens choose others, experts in other words politicians who represent them in a government and they make important decisions on their behalf. So we vote for these people who make important decisions and they're the ones who bring in laws and they pass the rules which impact our daily lives and this is also known as indirect democracy. This of course is the opposite of a dictatorship and an authoritarian government. So of course there are also several dictatorships and authoritarian governments in the world today however what does that mean? Now a dictatorship is when one person or a small group of people have total power to rule over everybody and the people that live in a dictatorship do not have the same decisions. They don't get to choose who leads them and more importantly they don't get to choose the laws that these people implement. Authoritarianism is very similar. It's a country where the government is ruled by one person or group of people with very few freedoms. However there's a very interesting form of dictatorship that few countries practice and this is called an elective dictatorship. This is the idea that we can elect or choose somebody or a tiny group of people who know best for us and once we choose them they can now rule as a dictator. They don't consult us in terms of laws and once they're in power we don't really get a say in all the decisions and the laws that are passed. Now when we go back to democracy there are two major styles of democratic rule both of which are highly influenced by the U.S. and the U.K. form of governance. So the first is parliamentary democracy. What does this mean? Now parliamentary democracy is a government where the political party with the most amounts of seats in parliament this is the legislature where all MPs sit in or members of parliament sit in. This forms the government and its leader becomes a prime minister. Now the prime minister in a parliamentary democracy is also known as the executive and they are elected by parliament the lead and they are also part of parliament and especially in the U.K. the prime minister is also they retain the title of being the member of parliament of their constituency. Now when I refer to legislature all I mean is a fancy way of saying a group of people in other words members of parliaments and some countries governors and so on who simply sit in a government and make laws and decisions. So these are the same group of people in a parliamentary democracy who select the prime minister. Now the legislature in a parliamentary democracy they can remove the prime minister at any time and this includes in the U.K. but what is called a vote of no confidence. If they pass a vote of no confidence the prime minister has to step down and they have to be replaced by somebody new. Now in the U.K. there is also a head of state this is the king and queen and of course at the moment we have queen Elizabeth the second who's our monarch however she doesn't have much power on the day-to-day laws that happen. Now presidential democracy is very different this is where a president is elected not a prime minister however the powers are totally separate from the legislature in other words they are separate from the legislature or parliament. Now the president leads a country but they also are part of what is called an executive branch this is a separate organization within the government that they are in charge of and the executive branch includes the president their vice president the cabinet independent agencies other boards commissions and committees and the president is elected for a fixed term so of course in the U.S. it's four years and they can't be removed expect by extraordinary measures this is in contrast to a parliamentary democracy which as I mentioned the legislature can pass a vote of no confidence for the prime minister and they have to simply step down. Now in a presidential democracy the legislature creates laws the president can veto so refuse these laws however the legislature can still override this decision so when it comes to law passing the legislature rather than the president has a lot of power and say over lawmaking. Now when it comes to a representative democracy most countries have this and what this means is where citizens choose others so they choose the leaders by voting them to represent them and make important decisions on their behalf. Now in the UK there is a system of a representative democracy called a liberal democracy this is where people vote for a government through regular elections with secret ballots and a choice of candidates the government is also accountable and it has its power limited by free press so these are journalists who can freely criticize the government and the individual rights of the people to vote the government out. Now when it comes to representative democracy the advantages are firstly we all don't have the time or the interest to make important and regular decisions and pass regular laws so we pass this information and this huge responsibility over to the expert that knows best which is a politician. The second advantage is our leaders can educate us on political issues the third advantage is our leaders can ensure that everybody in society including minorities are considered in all their decisions and fourthly leaders are held accountable for their decisions however representative democracy is not all good and there's some disadvantages the first being leaders may not always make themselves accountable enough between elections and can only be removed by elections if they lose the respect of the people but also secondly when we choose our leaders we choose a whole manifesto so this is a booklet or a piece of information which sets out what the political party believes in and we can't change bits of the manifesto that we don't agree with. Now when it comes to the UK and its political parties now firstly of course as I mentioned political participation the main way in which we take part in how our country run is by voting for a party and of course this is active participation and another more important aspect of active participation is when we can not only choose a political party to run a government but we can also sign up to be a member of a political group and then be actively involved in this daily activities we can go leafletting we can go and help fundraisers and so on. Now in the UK there are close to 300 political parties and all political parties have a manifesto which is a document that sets out their beliefs on everything and what they think they should be done to run all areas of a country. Now I'll just touch on the main three UK political parties including the Conservatives, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Now when it comes to the Conservatives they have a greater emphasis on private over the public sectors in other words they really lean towards supporting private ownership private business over a government that owns lots of things and nationalizes many things. Now Conservatives also have a preference for taxing individuals less and they should be according to their perspective less state investment into things like healthcare schools and so on they should be down to the private individual and they have an emphasis on the role of the individual the role of the individual in supporting themselves. Furthermore Conservatives can also have a strong emphasis on maintaining tradition protecting structures and institutions such as the monarchy the church and of course maintaining hierarchy that's built into our systems. They are different to labour now the Labour Party is in many ways the opposite of the Conservative Party in the belief that the state should provide for those less fortunate in society in other words labour supports more of a nanny state a state that really taxes people a little bit more in order to find things like healthcare schools and also labour supports public sector jobs being an example of this. Labour also tries to reduce inequality between people so there's a massive aspect of socialism that's built into the Labour Party and they adopt a positive view of human nature and the ability of humans to work together for the good of all rather than the more selfish and individualistic view of running business for private aims. The final major political party is Liberal Democrats now we know them and we colloquially so informally refer to them as the Lib Dems now they highlight the importance of liberty freedom for all equality is really important for the Lib Dems as they want to create a fairer society however in contrast to labour they don't see state intervention and the state being in all aspects of our lives as desirable and the state should only really be involved in helping fairness a little bit more but not necessarily expanding the private sector employing everybody and the Liberal Democrats believe in greater freedom in the economy. So that's all if you found this video useful please do consider subscribing to our channel and giving this video a thumbs up but also do visit our website www.firstreetutors.com that you will find plenty of revision materials to help you in your academic journey. Thank you so much for listening.