Description of government structure:

• Chief of State: Queen ELIZABETH II
• Head of Government: Prime Minister Theresea MAY
• Assembly: United Kingdom has a bicameral Parliament consisting of the House of Lords with 788 seats and the House of Commons with 650 seats.

Description of electoral system:

• The Queen is hereditary.
• The Prime Minister is elected by parliament to serve a 5-year term.  Following legislative elections, the leader of the majority party or the leader of the majority coalition is usually the prime minister.
• In the House of Lords, 670 members are appointed by the monarch and 92 members are hereditary *. In the House of Commons 650 members are elected by simple majority vote in single-member constituencies to serve 5-year terms.
  • ​The number of Life Peers in the House of Lords is not fixed. The Queen formally appoints life peers based on a recommendation from the Prime Minister. The right of hereditary Peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords was ended in 1999 by the House of Lords Act. However, 92 members will remain until the next stage of the Lords reform process. 26 seats are reserved for Bishops and Archbishops of the Church of England.