The United States (US) and Great Britain have the most powerful and influential political systems in the world. Despite this fact, their political systems have few similarities and remarkable differences. In the two systems, there are two major political parties which form their respective governments. In the US, the main political parties are democratic and Republican parties while in Great Britain, the major political parties are the labor and conservative parties.
Another similarity is that the two systems have supreme courts as the highest courts of law. Lastly, the appointment of the executive in both systems is done in a partisan manner whereby the elected leaders appoint members of the executive exclusively from their political parties (Darlington, 2012).
One of the differences between the two systems is that the US is a pure presidential system as opposed to Great Britain, which is a parliamentary system. What this means is that the US has a federal system of government while Great Britain is a unitary state. Federalism is a means of dividing the power and functions of government between a central government and a specified number of geographically defined regional jurisdictions. Federalism is most suited for countries which have large and culturally diverse populations like the US (Darlington, 2012).
In the US, the president is the head of state and head of government as well as the head of the executive. The legislature is composed of the Senate and the House of Representatives while the judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature and is tasked with the interpretation of the constitution (Darlington, 2012).
A unitary system of government is characterized by a central government and other local governments with the central government controlling the other governments. In Great Britain, the executive power and authority are not devolved to lower units of governance like in the US. The British prime minister only holds power as long as he or she enjoys majority votes in the House of Commons (Darlington, 2012).
Another major difference between the two systems is that while the US has a constitutional document, Great Britain does not have such a document but instead has several Acts of parliament. While the US constitution is hard to amend, it is easy to amend the Acts of parliament in Great Britain (Darlington, 2012).
The other remarkable difference is in the judiciary. In the US, the president appoints the members of the Supreme Court in a partisan manner. This is as opposed to Great Britain where the appointment of the members of the Supreme Court is done in a nonpartisan manner. The other difference between the two systems is that while the US has separation of powers between the legislature and the executive, the Great Britain system does not have such separation of powers. This explains why the US president rarely addresses legislature as opposed to the British prime minister who does so in a weekly basis since he or she is usually a member of the House of Commons (Darlington, 2012).
In the US system, the transition period between the outgoing president and the incoming one is two and half months while in Great Britain, there is no transition period but the new prime minister assumes office immediately. Lastly, in the US system, the president’s inaugural speech is largely a public affair as opposed to the Great Britain system in which the new prime minister just addresses the House of Commons where he or she outlines the government’s agenda for the country (Darlington, 2012).
Reference
Darlington, R. (2012). Contrasts Betweenthe American and British Political Systems. Web.