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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or
political system. Authority then is linked to respect, which creates legitimacy,
and therefore leads to
power.

Reconciliation between power holders and the idea of democracy is
because of this very reason of
legitimacy. In contemporary society legitimacy
will be achieved through a party system. In societies where
there is no party
system, the position of governments becomes fragile, unconnected and even
alien. This
is because parties are means which enable citizens to establish a
channel of communication with the
authorities in order to discuss their views.

“A
strong political party system has the capability, first, to expand
participation through the system and thus
to pre-empt or divert economic or
revolutionary political activity, and, second, to moderate and channel
the
participation of newly mobilized groups in such manner as not to disrupt the
system.”
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Since
power is in the hands of a very few institutional office holders (in the
United States) and both
institutional and class-based office holders (in Britain),
they tend to come from similar walks of life and
have shared the same paths
through education. Moreover, their common backgrounds are reflected in
shared
values – ideas of what is important – and they view the world in a similar way
and seek similar
solutions to problems. Democracy, in this situation, can be
likened to a sporting event, all the parties are
in competition to win. In order to
win power they must persuade the electorate to support them rather than
the other
competitors. To do this they generally try to show that they are working in the
national
interest and for the benefit of as many diverse groups in society as
possible. The electorate, according to
this view, act as the adjudicator in the
competition. The group which achieves the widest appeal gains the
victory.
However, this simple observation becomes, for politicians, a precarious balancing
act: they
must ‘feed’ the voters enough positive evidence that their party will be
the most effective
government but remain sufficiently non-committal so as to

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