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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and have
barely attained the dawnings of civilization, down to the most advanced
and powerful societies – two classes
of people appear – a class that rules and a
class that is ruled. The first class, always the less numerous,
performs all political
functions, monopolizes power and enjoys the advantages that power brings,
whereas
the second, the more numerous class, is directed and controlled by the
first in a manner that is now more or
less legal, now more or less arbitrary and
violent, and supplies the first, in appearance at least, with
material means of
subsistence and with the instrumentalities that are essential to the vitality of
the
political organism.”6 Pareto and Mosca agree that the existence
of a political elite
is a necessary and indeed an inevitable feature of all societies. In everyday
life
the existence of the ruling class is clearly seen. It is a common knowledge that in
any country,
whether developed or underdeveloped, the management of public
affairs is in the hands of a minority of
influential people to whose management,
willingly or unwillingly, the majority defer. Similar things happen
in this respect
in distant and in neighbouring, countries “and in fact we should be hard put to
it
to conceive of a real world otherwise organised – a world in which all men would
be directly subject
to a single person without relationship of superiority or
subordination, or in which all men would share
equally in the direction of political
affairs. If we reason otherwise in theory, that is due partly to the
exaggerated
importance that we attach to two political facts that loom far larger in appearance
than
they are in reality. 7“

The first
fact is that in all political organisms it is always the case that there
is one person who is the head among
the ruling class and that person stands at the
helm of the state. Of course, he is not in all cases the
holder of supreme power,
even under the law; sometimes there is a prime minister or a major-domo
who
wields a legitimate power that is greater than the head of state’s. In certain cases
there may
be, instead of a single person, two or three who discharge the functions
of supreme control. The second fact
is that whatever the type of political

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