The people living in an MPs constituency are her constituents. It is always mistaken for voters living in her constituency. Its people, whether they can vote or not and therin lies the issue.
For eg: if an illegal immigrant arrives today on a boat and lands in an MPs constituency, they automatically become her constituent. Irrespective of whether they are a citizen or can vote or length of residence. If that immigrant was refused entry to the UK on the day he landed on the boat, but was awaiting removal from the country, he can appproach his MP for advice and action.
The average number of people in an MP’s constituency is 91,000. The average number of people in a Representative’s constituency is 610,000. Each MP has something like four staff members. Each Representative has something like 18 full-time staff members and 4 part-time staff members. (Please correct me if those numbers aren’t right, since it wasn’t easy to find them online.) So an MP has to be closer to his constituents than a Representative does, and of course it’s even more true that a Senator has many staff members and many constituents.
Sure. I accept that on the larger scale of US federal politics, congresspersons can’t be as accessible to constituents as UK MPs are.
But what about representatives at state level? This is obviously going to vary from state to state, but it must surely be the case that in most places members of the state lower house will have fewer constituents than the 91,000 that a UK MP has. Without having thought too deeply about it, I’d expect a state representative to be at least as accessible to their constituents as a UK MP is.
Of course, the system is different. In the UK, the executive is accountable to Parliament, and therefore MPs are in a position to put pressure on Minister if the way in which executive services are being delivered is unsatisfactory to constituents. Whereas in the US the executive branch of government has its own electoral mandate, and isn’t dependent on or accountable to the legislature in the same way. So maybe the same tradition of people looking to their legislative representatives to advise and assist them in their interactions with the executive department has neve developed.
I’m sure it varies wildly, but my state rep does have regular (monthly-ish) office hours where anyone can come in and talk to him directly. Assuming you don’t just run into him at the supermarket.
And contacting your Congressional Representative to get help with some aspect of the federal bureaucracy is definitely a common thing here in the USA. It’s just that you’ll normally talk to a member of their staff, not the Rep him/herself.
A meeting with a staffer is a perfectly respectable avenue for constituent services for most purposes. Remember that a US House member represents roughly ten times the population that a British MP does.
Following the 2010 US census, an average House district is about 711,000. An MP constituency around 91,000 (Bristol West) in 2015 seems to be at the very high end, with the average being around 72,000.
Hold the phone: I – and not for one, but I think for many – have to totally rethink and reread this thread: a “Representative” and a “Member of Parliament” are not the same thing; in US (and how I’ve been reading this, like the “think Congressional district” post/poster upthread) the two are the same (substitute “Congress” for “Parliament.”)
Varies pretty wildly from 475,000 per for CA, which has 80 assembly seats, to 3300 per for NH, which has 400.
That chart only shows the 10 highest and lowest population states, but the article it came from stated that CA and NH were the highest and lowest.
Still, the US is a federal system, with elected representation at the state level, so it’s to be expected that the federal level districts will be larger.
How exactly did you think the British Parliament worked? The UK is divided into 650 constituencies covering England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The boundaries of these ridings are established by 4 independent agencies. When a general election is called each riding is contested by the candidates representing various parties. On election day the winner of the riding becomes the Member of Parliament (MP) for XYZ. The aggregate count of MPs by party affiliation in the House of Commons determines which party in the legislature will take on the role of the government.
So yes MP are similar to House Representatives in that they make up the membership of the British legislature. There’s no really equivalent to the Senate, though I suppose the House of Lords might count however most of those positions are appointed.
:dubious: Um…votes, Magna Carta, guys with wigs sometimes? Gimme a break here.
ETA: “ridings”?
This thing you call, how you say, “ridings…?” I, for one, and I wager most Americans, red-blooded ones, at least, have never heard/heard of that word.
So a constituency is a riding? See, I’m worse off than when I started.
The doctor’s ‘office’, in American terms, is called his ‘surgery’ here even though very little surgery is done there, and most of it will be done by the practice nurse. The term migrated into politics via an MP who had been a doctor.
I recall hearing about something of a scandal over this with some British MP’s not too long ago – something about claiming reimbursement for rent paid (to themself) for an office in the home they owned.
Yeah, there was a bit of a scandal over expenses. Some MPs, err, interpreted the rules rather more loosely than was publicly acceptable. I admire the sheer nerve of this one:
Actually, I believe Grey is importing a Canadian term into the discussion. At least, in a discussion I had years ago with a British MP, he was not familiar with it.
The term “riding” is English in origin: it meant a division of a county, famously Yorkshire, which was the largest English country and sub-divided into three ridings, which in turn came from an old English word for thirds.
When Canada was created in 1867, some of the new federal constituencies were based on counties, but some were based on ridings within counties. The term “riding” became a colloquial reference for a constituency and has long since lost the connection to counties. It is a Canadian term for a constituency.
Not quite. It is assumed that MPs whose constituencies are not within easy commuting distance of London will need two houses and so financial assistance is provided for the second of those houses. What were formerly the extremely lax rules about this have since been tightened up. But there is no requirement that either of those houses must be in their constituency. It is accepted that a house nearby can be just as suitable. Indeed, someone whose existing house is not actually in the constituency for which they want to get elected can often present themselves as being more ‘local’ than someone from elsewhere who has made a point of buying a house in the constituency only with a view to standing as a candidate. It’s not as if most of the constituencies cover huge areas.
MPs also get financial assistance for a local office. There is not much point in not having that in the actual constituency. Moreover, there’s not much controversy about the principle of this as most people accept that this helps MPs do their job properly.
[QUOTE=Northern Piper]
The term “riding” is English in origin: it meant a division of a county, famously Yorkshire, which was the largest English country and sub-divided into three ridings, which in turn came from an old English word for thirds.
[/QUOTE]
But it’s a term that in this context Brits would find every bit as confusing as Americans. Especially in Yorkshire. Apart from in the 1650s and for several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, the three ridings of Yorkshire have not been parliamentary constituencies. So in so far as the term still gets used, it is used for something completely different.
“ridings”?