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

14

organization, pressures arising from the discontent of the masses who are
governed, from the passions by
which they are swayed, exert a certain amount of
influence on the policies of the ruling, the political
class. We shall deal with this
at a later stage.

The real
superiority of the concept of the ruling, or political, class lies in
the fact that the varying structure of
ruling classes has a preponderant importance
in determining the political type and also the level of
civilization, of the different
peoples. According to an alternative manner of classifying forms of
government
that is still used, Turkey and Russia were both, up until the the twentieth century
absolute
monarchies, Britain and Italy were constitutional, or limited,
monarchies, and France and the United States
were classed as republics. This
classification was based on the fact that, in the first two countries
mentioned,
headship in the state was hereditary and the chief was nominally omnipotent; in
the second
two, his office is hereditary but his powers and prerogatives are
limited; in the last two he is elected.
However, this kind of classification could be
seen as not profound and, one could say, over-simplified.
Absolutisms though
they were, there was little in common between the manners in which Russia and
Turkey
were managed politically, the levels of civilization in the two countries
and the organization of their
ruling classes being vastly different. In the same
way, the pre World War Two regime in Italy, a monarchy,
was much more similar
to the regime in France, a republic, than to the regime in Britain, also a
monarchy,
while there are clearly important differences between the political organizations
of the
United States and France, though both countries are republics.

The
classification that we have talked about (which divides governments
into absolute monarchies, limited
monarchies and republics) was worked out by
Montesquieu. It was aimed to replace Aristotle’s classical
categorizing in which
he divided governments into monarchies, aristocracies and democracies.
According
to Aristotle democracy was simply an aristocracy of fairly broad

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213