The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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Almond
and Verba) made a survey of what they called “the civic culture” in five
countries. These were
the U.S.A., Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy
and Mexico. In the course of this they
conducted opinion surveys on certain
relevant topics across these five countries. In answer to the
question as to “which
aspects of national life they took most pride in” they found that
“in Britain, 33%
of the respondents named their government arrangements. Additionally,
more
than a half believed that civil servants would give their individual problems
‘serious
consideration’ and three quarters believed that the police would also.
Two-thirds of those questioned
believed further that it was in their power to affect
a national policy and four-fifths of the
respondents believed that the civil servants
would treat them fairly, and no less than nine-tenths
believed that the police
would.”1

It
could be said that, by international standards, those proportions are very
impressive. In Italy, on the
other hand, only 21⁄2%
of the population named their
governmental arrangements; and, in Germany, only 4%. The
liberal-democratic

type
of government in Great Britian is an outstanding example. The system is
well-established and has been for
generations, and so are the individual
governments generated and sustained by it. Although the executive
enjoys wide
authority and extensive administrative capabilities, nevertheless, as a
whole,
government is representative of public opinion, and liberal in its concern for
minorities.
There are two reasons for this long-enduring stability of the regime:
firstly, due to the relatively
homogeneous nature of the society, which we saw in
our studies in Chapter One; secondly, and most
importantly, as a resullt of the
party system characteristics.

“Parties provide the Prime Minister and the government of the day,
together with the leader of
the Opposition and his Shadow Cabinet. They are the
agents that ensure parliamentary support for the
government. They act as
spokesmen and as channels of communication for the numerous pressure
groups

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