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Allegiance Among English Children: A Dissent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Dennis Kavanagh
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Extract

England has long been fertile ground for scholars (usually American) concerned to locate the antecedents of stable and democratic government. More often than not they have stressed a particular configuration of attitudes as a basic support for such government. Evaluation of the consequences for the political system of these attitudes has frequently proceeded along very inferential and impressionistic lines, and has resulted in a benign view of the British political system.

James E. Alt ('Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures’ in British Journal of Political Science No. I, pp. 49–62) gives as his reasons for choosing to study county boroughs, ‘not only because of the fact that they are urban centres, the uniformity of their electoral procedure, the high level of competition (on terms of contested seats), their financial independence from other local authorities, and their service omnicompetence’. This is a standard explanation for the predominance in research on local government of the county borough to the neglect of other authorities. One positive gain of re-organization may be that future research will give a more rounded picture of local government performance and practice.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , January 1972 , pp. 127 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 Dennis, Jack et al. , ‘Support for Nation and Government among English Children’, British Journal of Political Science, I (1970),24–48.Google Scholar

2 See Kavanagh, Dennis, ‘The Deferential English: A Comparative Critique’, Government and Opposition, 6 (1971), 333–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 As indeed Dennis and his associates admit in a further analysis of the same data published elsewhere. See their ‘Political Socialisation to Democratic Orientations in Four Countries’, Comparative Political Studies, I (1968), 71–101.Google Scholar

4 See Rose, Richard, ‘England: The Traditionally Modern Political Culture’ in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney, Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 98, 104.Google Scholar

5 Greenstein, Fred, Children and Politics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar, and Easton, David and Dennis, Jack, Children in the Political System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), Chap. 6.Google Scholar

6 Litt, Edgar, ‘Civic Education, Community Norms and Political Indoctrination’, American Sociological Review, 28 (1963), 69–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jennings, M. Kent, ‘The Transmission of Political Values from Parent to Child’, American Political Science Review, 62 (1968), 169–84, p. 178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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8 This point is made very succinctly by Greenstein, Fred, Personality and Politics (Chicago: Markham, 1970), Chap. 5.Google Scholar

9 ‘Germany, The Remaking of Political Culture’, in Pye and Verba Political Culture, Chap. 4.

10 See, for example, Agger, Robert et al. , ‘Political Cynicism, Meaning and Measurement’, Journal of Politics, 23 (1961), 477–506CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Mcclosky, Herbert, ‘Consensus and Ideology in American Polities’, American Political Science Review, 58 (1964), 361–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Cf. Hess, Robert and Torney, Judith, The Development of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).Google Scholar

12 ‘Political Theory as a Vocation’, American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 1239–4.Google Scholar

13 See Birch, A. H., Representative and Responsible Government (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964), pp. 77–81.Google Scholar

14 See Greenstein, Fred and Tarrow, Sidney, ‘The Study of French Political Socialization’, World Politics, 22 (1969), 95–137CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Litt, Edgar, ‘Note’ in American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 1293–4.Google Scholar