AQA AS Politics GovP2 09/06/16 Official Thread

Can someone remind us what the questions were, particularly the constitution ones please?

Also...what did people put for the multilevel governance section??

Well I seriously messed up the judiciary question then - I wrote about contempt of court, tenure, consolidated fund and judicial review with a few examples of judges signing an article criticising how the government dealt with the refugee crisis and something about the wrong treatment of a Scottish prisoner in solitary confinement that violated the human rights act. Only managed to write 3 pages

Well we wrote about similar things. It doesn't mean you messed the question up; there are many avenues to approach it. I only did 2 and a bit pages and that is sufficient to get Level 5 so writing 3 pages is not a limiting factor.

I loved the multi governance question! I wrote about how the council of ministers has one member per state and the ministers are technically elected in their states but that the PM choses the cabinet so not very democratic, also about how the presidency rotates every 6 months rather than being directly elected so the president only represents one member state at a time, then some weird point about QMV and how unanimous voting isn't very democratic because for example eastern Europe could support something and western Europe may be against it but it could still get passed (stupid point but ah well I ran out of criticisms). Then for the EU parliament I wrote about how it is the only directly elected chamber but has only recently been allowed to send legislation back for amendments and can't reject legislation entirely then how because there are 28 member states, and only 700 MEPs, each member state has less representatives as the EU grows and each MEP represents around 9 million people which isn't very effective/democratic.

I suppose so - I couldn't think of many examples though to back up my points and the essay was a bit jumbled because I kept changing my mind about whether it was politicized or not, oops!

See I didn't like it; it was too specific imo. Although I did write almost all of what you said above, I also contrasted them to the Commission and European Council to compare the argument of a democratic deficit to those institutions too. I did that because in the mark schemes it always mentions all 4 institutions, so even though they only mentioned the 2, I think they would've wanted/accepted expansion on those.

I said not because of the CRA and the reforms it brought forward in separating powers etc. as well as the fact that there have been fewer clashes between the government and judiciary since 2008 (although not none, because of Mrs May!)

Sections A was good but I didn't have enough time for section B

Ah I see, I mentioned the Commission briefly in my conclusion about how it isn't fair that they have more power than a directly elected body. Wishing I'd looked at mark schemes before doing the exam now! But I think I went into a lot of detail of the two institutions that were mentioned so I hope that will be ok

Ah, I wrote something about the CRA in my conclusion - don't even have a clue who Mrs May is tbh 😂

What do you guys think the overall A boundary will be?

I think you'll be fine as long as you focused on 'democratic deficit' throughout!



I would've thought you'd have needed to speak about the CRA to some extend within your main answer because, again, it's the focus of the mark schemes and it was a big deal constitutionally, but I'm not 100%. And how can you not know who Mrs May is, you're a GovPol student (current Home Secretary)

56 / 57 I think. Everyone seems pretty pleased with it. Could even be 58?

I wrote for the judiciary 25 mark question that "Perhaps judges have already been politicised. This is because most are pale/male etc. so they are conservative. The left have accused them of this because etc. example example". Will this count as a point? Will I still get marks? Thanks!

I wasn't planning on answering the judiciary question at first so completely forgot about CRA until the end and didn't have time to add it in. oh I see Theresa May, of course. It's been a looooooooooong day, tbh my brain hasn't recovered from my maths exam this morning and politics completely finished it off

So around 116/160 for the overall A? Sounds good, what UMS do you think you'll need to get predicted an A* for next year?

Ayy I talked about that. The social competition undermines their neutrality thus they may have conservative/middle class bias.
Did everyone talk about neutrality AND independence? As well as CRA+HRA?