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New Perspectives on British Local Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

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
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), 399410Google Scholar; Beer, Samuel H., “Pressure Groups and Parties in Britain,” American Political Science Review, L (March 1956), 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ranney, Austin, Pathways to Parliament (Madison 1965), esp. 9–11, 8990Google Scholar; Butler, David and Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain (New York 1971), esp. chap. 12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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