Hello, my name's David Rumsman and this is past-present future, the History of Ideas podcast.

Today, as part of our series about how democracy could work better,

I'm talking to Hannah White, who's the director of the Institute for Government,

and we are discussing the legislature.

Why has democratic lawmaking become so fraught?

And how might parliamentary politics be improved?

The episode that you are about to hear is focused on UK politics and I'm very conscious that

we have many, many listeners who are not based in the United Kingdom. We're going to be talking about the legislature

and the difference between legislative and executive politics. I think most people are familiar

with that distinction, particularly in relation to the United States, the executive, is the presidency,

the legislature is Congress. In the British case, when we talk about

the legislature, we mean Parliament, and Parliament includes the House of Commons, and as you'll

hear in just a moment, the House of Lords, the executive is the office of the Prime Minister

and the rest of his or her at present, it's his, government, the ministers, not the MPs.

That should all be clear as we go along, and we're not just talking about Britain.

We are also talking about things that I hope resonate with you wherever you are.

Hannah, we're going to talk broadly about Parliament, focused on the UK Parliament and how

it could work better.

But I want to start with the question of second chambers, because it's a subject that

comes up a lot when people think about how democracy could work better.

Somehow, the focus sometimes seems to be on second

chambers because it feels like it would be easier to reform second chambers than the primary

...