ABSTRACT
First, it is clear that being ruled by a benevolent dictator relieves the citizens of the responsibility of ruling themselves. Even where there is a representative democracy and most people do not have to carry any actual burden of administration themselves, it relieves them of the minor inconvenience of voting and, more importantly, the psychological burden of responsibility. Whilst it is clear that a form of proportional representation is in operation for the European parliamentary elections, the elections to the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament and to the Greater London Authority, in order to provide some additional representation to those parties that have failed to secure seats by the 'first-past-the-post' method, a system of 'top-up seats' has been established. The problem with asserting that whenever a legislature enacts a provision of electoral law it is providing for its own succession, is that it sounds simply axiomatic.
