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New Perspectives on British Local Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Howard A. Scarrow
Howard A. Scarrow
Affiliation:
State University of New YorkStony Brook
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Extract

It is both humbling and encouraging to recall notions that Americans once entertained of the British political system. Critics of F.D.R. looked enviously at the British Parliament for its reputed ability to hold the executive firmly accountable for its actions. Somewhat later, observers on both sides of the Atlantic supposed that Britain was blessed with an absence of pressure groups. Would-be reformers of the American party system further implied that British voters cast their ballots according to the content of party programs, and that party cohesion was the result of discipline imposed by a centralized party organization able to deny renomination to recalcitrant M.P.'s. Careful analyses of intra-party workings, pressure-group activity, and voting behavior have now dispelled these and other mistaken impressions, and it seems likely that the contours of our understanding of these subjects have now been established. However, additional frontiers of knowledge of the British political system remain to be charted; one of these is government at the local level.

Type
Review Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , October 1973 , pp. 126 - 138
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1973

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References

1 The original observations and matching corrective conclusions may be found in Price, Don K., “The Parliamentary and Presidential Systems,” Public Administration Review (Autumn 1943)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as reprinted in Macridis, Roy C. and Brown, Bernard E., Comparative Politics: Notes and Readings (Homewood, Ill. 1964), 399–410Google Scholar; Beer, Samuel H., “Pressure Groups and Parties in Britain,” American Political Science Review, L (March 1956), 1–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranney, Austin, Pathways to Parliament (Madison 1965), esp. 9–11, 89–90Google Scholar; Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York 1971), esp. chap. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Boston 1965), 123Google Scholar.

3 Benham, Harvey, Two Cheers for the Town Hall (London 1964), 26Google Scholar.

4 As quoted in loan Rees, Bowen, Government by Community (London 1971), 57Google Scholar.

5 Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Committee on the Management of Local Government, Management of Local Government, Volume 1: Report of the Committee (London 1967), chap. 2.Google Scholar

6 Ensor, R.C.K., England, 1870–1914 (Oxford 1936), 126–27, 295.Google Scholar

7 Almond and Verba (fn. 2), 126–34.

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11 Ministry of Housing and Local Government, Committee on the Management of Local Government, Management of Local Government, III: The Local Government Elector (London 1967)Google Scholar.

12 Mackintosh, J. P., The Devolution of Power (Harmondsworth 1968), 47Google Scholar.