¹ For treatment of the implications of this definition for empirical research, see Easton, David and Dennis, Jack, Children in the Political System: Origins of Political Legitimacy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969).Google Scholar

² See, for example, Easton, David, A Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York: Wiley, 1965);Google Scholar and Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966).Google Scholar

³ For overviews of recent work in America, See Dennis, J., ‘Major Problems of Political Socialization Research’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, XII (1968), 85–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenstein, Fred I., ‘Political Socialization’, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (N.Y.: Crowell-Collier and Macmillan, 1968), pp.551–5Google Scholar; Patrick, John J., Political Socialization of American Youth: Implications for Secondary School Studies, Research Bulletin No. 3 (Washington, D.C.: National Council for the Social Studies, 1967)Google Scholar; Dawson, Richard E. and Prewitt, Kenneth, Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969)Google Scholar; Dawson, Richard E., ‘Political Socialization’ in Robinson, James A. (ed.), Political Science Annual: An International Review, vol. I (Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1966)Google Scholar; and Dennis, Jack, ‘ A Survey and Bibliography of Contemporary Research on Political Learning and Socialization’, Occasional Paper No. 8 (Madison, Wisconsin: Wisconsin Center for Cognitive Learning, 1967).Google Scholar

⁴ Rose's, Richard essay on political socialization in Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964), pp. 59–82Google Scholar, probably marked the turning point in British studies. Jahoda's, Gustav work in developmental psychology - which has great relevance - also spanned this period. See especially his ‘Development of Scottish Children's Ideas and Attitudes about Other Countries’, The Journal of Social Psychology, LVIII (1962), 91–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Development of Children's Ideas about Country and Nationality’, Parts I and II, The British Journal of Educational Psychology, XXXIII (1963), 47–60 and 143–53;Google Scholar and ‘Children's Concepts of Nationality: A Critical Study of Piaget's Stages’, Child Development, XXXV (1964), 1081–92.Google Scholar More recently, three unpublished doctoral dissertations have added to knowledge of these matters:; ‘The Development of Children's Ideas about Country and Nationality’, Parts I and II, The British Journal of Educational Psychology, XXXIII (1963), 47–60 and 143–53;Google Scholar and ‘Children's Concepts of Nationality: A Critical Study of Piaget's Stages’, Child Development, XXXV (1964), 1081–92.Google Scholar More recently, three unpublished doctoral dissertations have added to knowledge of these matters: Abramson, Paul, ‘ Education and Political Socialization: A Study of English Secondary Education’, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 1967;Google ScholarBeall, Lynette, ‘Political Thinking in Adolescence’, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 1967;Google Scholar and Tapper, E. R., ‘Secondary School Adolescents: A Study of the Formation of Their Role Aspirations and Attitudinal Patterns’, University of Manchester, 1968.Google Scholar Three recent articles are of special relevance for the problems considered here: Abramson, Paul, ‘The Differential Political Socialization of English Secondary School Students’, Sociology of Education, XL (1967), 246–69;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMcQuail, D., O'Sullivan, L., and Quine, W. G., ‘Elite Education and Political Values’, Political Studies, XVI (1968), 257–66;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Dennis, Jack, Lindberg, Leon, McCrone, Donald, and Stiefbold, Rodney, ‘Political Socialization to Democratic Orientations in Four Western Systems’, Comparative Political Studies, I (1968), 71–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Also see Rose, Richard, ‘How much Education Makes a Tory?’ New Society, I, no. 5 (1 11, 1962), 5;Google ScholarTajfel, Henri, ‘Children and Foreigners’, New Society, VII (30 06, 1966), 9–11;Google ScholarCooper, Peter, ‘The Development of the Concept of War’, Journal of Peace Research, II (1965), 1–17;CrossRefGoogle ScholarElder, Glen H. Jr., ‘Life Opportunity and Personality: Some Consequences of Stratified Secondary Education in Great Britain’, Sociology of Education, XXXVIII (1965), 173–202;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Montague, Joel B. Jr, ‘A Cross-National Study of Attitudes by Social Class’ in Class and Nationality: English and American Studies (New Haven, Conn.: College and University Press, 1963), PP. 193–200.Google Scholar Two more recent works are also of relevance: Abramson, Paul R. and Inglehart, Ronald, ‘The Development of Systemic Support in Four Western Democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, II (01, 1970), 419–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hughes, John and Dowse, Robert E., ‘The Family and the Process of Political Socialization: Some Empirical Findings’, Departments of Sociology and Politics, Exeter University, 1968.Google Scholar

⁵ Dennis et al., ‘Political Socialization’.

⁶ Easton, , A Systems Analysis of Political Life, pp. 177–89.Google Scholar

⁷ For general discussion of support for the political community, see Easton, , A Systems Analysis, pp. 320–42.Google Scholar

⁸ Doob, Leonard, Patriotism and Nationalism: Their Psychological Foundations (New Haven Conn.: Yale University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, and ‘South Tyrol: An Introduction to the Psychological Syndrome of Nationalism’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVI (1962), 172–84.Google Scholar

⁹ Gustav Jahoda, works cited above, note 4; Piaget, Jean and Weil, Anne-Marie, ‘The Development in Children of the Homeland and of Relations with Other Countries’, International Social Science Bulletin, III (1951), 561–78Google Scholar; and Weinstein, Eugene A., ‘Development of the Concept of Flag and the Sense of National Identity’, Child Development, XXVIII (1957), 167–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a useful review of these and many other relevant works, see Davies, A. F., ‘The Child's Discovery of Nationality’, The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, IV (1968), 107–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁰ Jahoda, Piaget and Weinstein, works cited above in notes 4 and 9.

¹¹ See Jahoda, ‘Children's Concepts of Nationality’, for a discussion of how one needs to modify Piaget's stages to take into account Jahoda's Scottish evidence.

¹² See, for example, Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Eckstein, Harry, “The British Political System’, Part 2 in Beer, Samuel H. et al. , Patterns of Government (New York: Random House, 1958, 1962)Google Scholar; and Rose, Richard, ‘England: A Traditionally Modern Political Culture’ in Lucian Pye, W. and Verba, Sidney (eds.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965).Google Scholar Rose notes, for example, “The absence of a large immigrant population and the failure of Welsh and Scottish politicians to develop strong nationalist parties has resulted in a situation in which ethnic differences of English, Welsh, Scots, and Ulstermen do not detract from the emotional strength of symbols of the British community since the violent settlement of the Irish problem in 1922. In this century community ties have increased as the religious differences which intensified ethnic differences during the nineteenth century have lost political salience’ (ibid. p. 101).

¹³ Horton, Roy E. Jr, ‘American Freedom and the Values of Youth’, in Remmers, H. H. (ed.), Anti-Democratic Attitudes in American Schools (Evanston, III.: Northwestern University Press, 1963), pp. 18–60, at p. 40.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Buchanan, William and Cantril, Hadley, How Nations See Each Other (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1953), PP. 30, 137 and 213.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Polls, II, no. 4 (1967), 45.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Polls, II, no. 4, p. 46.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Polls, II, no. 4, p. 45.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Rose, Richard, Politics in England, p. 78 (italics ours).Google Scholar Rose puts this even more strongly in a recent unpublished paper: The regime in England is clearly fully legitimate, and its legitimacy not only originated in the historical past but also is maintained by it. The loyalty attitudes of individual Englishmen are not determined by schooling, family, or voluntary association activities. In a reductionist but relevant analysis, one could predict the type of loyalty orientation of a subject of the Queen Simply by ascertaining whether he was born in England!’ (‘The Problematic Nature of the Legitimacy of Regimes’ (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1969) mimeo, p. 42.)

¹⁹ A factor analysis of our agree-disagree items revealed that this item and the one shown in Table 2 defined a single attitudinal dimension, which we label simply ‘sense of national political community identification’; and it thus defines operationally a sense of pride in the nation and its political system.

²⁰ Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 102.Google Scholar

³¹ This item preceded in the questionnaire the two shown in Tables 2 and 3 above.

²² Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 102.Google Scholar

²³ Two other studies of English children support our findings in this context. Abramson found that relatively few respondents in his sample of English secondary school boys expressed national pride in England's political institutions (‘Differential Political Socialization’, p. 261). Beall also found, in comparing English, German, and American children, that the Americans were most precocious in developing a sophisticated sense of community while the English were the slowest (Beall, ‘Political Thinking’, p. 69).

²⁴ See Easton, and Dennis, , Children in the Political System, and ‘ The Child's Image of Government’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 361 (1965), 40–57;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Greenstein, Fred I., Children and Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1965)Google Scholar and ‘The Benevolent Leader: Children's Images of Political Authority’, American Political Science Review, LIV (1960), 934–43.Google Scholar

²⁵ See Rose, , ‘England’, p. 93.Google Scholar

²⁶ Rose says, for example, ‘The presence of M.P.'s provides symbolic assurance to voters that government is responsive and responsible to its subjects, although in practice the government (that is, the Cabinet) informally dominates Parliament’. ‘England’, p. 103 (italics ours). Another example of this identification of government and cabinet would be in this statement: ‘The concentration of constitutional authority and power in the cabinet means that there can be no doubt as to who or what composes the government in Britain’ (Moodie, Graeme C., The Government of Great Britain (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 185.Google Scholar

²⁷ Easton, and Dennis, , Children in the Political System, pp. 196–8.Google Scholar This is not to say that no partisan interpretation is given to our items on government by English children. In several of the tables to be reported below (especially Tables 7–12), there are small and generally consistent differences between children who identify themselves as Labour or Conservative in how positively they value the government. But the results reported in connection with these tables obtain even with partisan preference controlled.

²⁸ Easton and Dennis, Children in the Political System, chapter 6; and “The Child's Image of Government’.

²⁹ See, for example, Rose, , Politics in England, pp. 229–41Google Scholar; Shils, Edward and Young, Michael, The Meaning of the Coronation’, Sociological Review, I (1953), 63–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abramson and Inglehart, ‘Development of Systemic support’; Thompson, John, ‘Prince Philip Wins our Presidential Poll’, Observer Magazine, 23 06, 1968Google Scholar, and ‘The Queen Tops Royal Popularity Poll’, The Sunday Times, 23 March, 1969, p. 4.

³⁰ Abramson found that, even among the fourteen- and fifteen-year-old boys that he interviewed, almost 9 per cent thought the Queen was more important than the Prime Minister (‘Education and Political Socialization’, p. 26). As Abramson notes, some adults in the Almond-Verba life-history interviews also thought the Queen was important in governing Britain (ibid.). Also see Rose, , Politics in England, p. 240.Google Scholar

³¹ That there is a generally low perception of any policy role of the Monarch is shown in two polls conducted by Social Surveys Ltd (British Gallup) in January 1963 and May 1968. When asked, ‘ How much influence would you say these groups have on this country's future?’ and specifically applied to the Royal Family – the public divided as follows: in 1963, 19 per cent said ‘great influence’, 23 per cent ‘some influence’, 50 per cent ‘little or none’, and 7 per cent ‘don't know’ (Gallup Political Index, no. 98, May 1968, p. 67). In a local survey in Stockport, a suburb of Manchester, Rose and Mossawir found a similar effect: the Queen, of a list of potentially influential groups, was thought less likely even than voters to have a lot of influence, and only the Church of England and the Queen were said more often than were voters to have no influence (Rose, Richard and Mossawir, Harve, ‘Voting and Elections: A Functional Analysis’, Political Studies, XV (1967), 173–201, at pp. 185–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³² Abramson and Inglehart, ‘Development of Systemic Support’.

³³ Beer, et al. Patterns of Government, p. 92.Google Scholar

³⁴ Beer, et al. Patterns of Government, pp. 74–92.Google Scholar

³⁵ Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 102.Google Scholar

³⁶ Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, pp. 89–96.Google Scholar

³⁷ Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, p. 219.Google Scholar See the childhood data in Dennis et al. ‘Political Socialization’.

³⁸ Almond, and Verba, , The Civic Culture, pp. 108–10.Google Scholar

³⁹ Polls, II, no. 4, p. 45.Google Scholar One should note, however, that even in 1944, the distribution on this kind of sentiment was only slightly more favorable. British Gallup asked in August of that year: ‘Do you think that British politicians are out merely for themselves, for their party, or to do the best for their country?’ The response was: themselves, 35 per cent; party 22 per cent; country 36 per cent; and don't know 7 per cent (Cantril, Hadley and Strunk, Mildred, Public Opinion 1935–46 (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 574Google Scholar).

⁴⁰ Polls, II, no. 4, p. 45.Google Scholar

⁴¹ Polls, II, no. 4, p. 45.Google Scholar

⁴² One exception to these data comes from the 1964 survey in Stockport, a suburb of Manchester. Rose and Mossawir asked, ‘Broadly speaking, what do you think about the general arrangements for governing the country with a Parliament, a Prime Minister, and a Cabinet?’ Ten per cent gave unfavorable replies, 5 per cent said ‘could be better’, 4 per cent gave miscellaneous answers, 8 per cent said ‘don't know’, and 73 per cent positively endorsed the regime (‘Voting and Elections’, p. 189).

⁴³ Gallup Political Index, no. 102 (10 1968), p. 145.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Gallup Political Index, no. 98 (March 1968), p. 68.

⁴⁵ Gallup Political Index, no. 98, p. 68.

⁴⁶ Gallup Political Index, no. 98, p. 67.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Almond and Verba, The Civic Culture.

⁴⁸ A growing sense of dissatisfaction has begun to appear both in academic circles and in the popular press. Examples of the former are found in such works as Crick, Bernard, The Reform of Parliament: The Crisis of British Government Today (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964)Google Scholar and Stankiewicz, W. J. (ed.), Crisis in British Government: The Need for Reform (London: Collier-Macmillan, 1967).Google Scholar In the popular and satirical press one finds with some frequency statements such as this: ‘Britain, the oldest of modern democracies, is at long last beginning to question the efficiency of its highly complex and haphazardly developed form of government. The virtues of democracy itself are not in doubt, but the country's relatively slow rate of economic and social progress and the public's increasing lack of respect for politicians and political institutions have stimulated an overdue demand for reform’ (Hollowood, Bernard, ‘Them’, Punch, 19 02, 1969, p. 286Google Scholar).

⁴⁹ One study done at Manchester University in 1963 showed how low was support among students for British government, even then. Some conclusions of the study were: ߢWhen asked their views about the way Britain is usually governed, doubts and dissatisfactions were expressed by four-fifths….

The simple liberal-democratic belief that government reflects the views of the population is clearly not accepted by Manchester students, even though it is a platitude of many textbooks.

The students have clear political memories only of Conservative governments, since the median student was eight years old when Labour last was in office. Yet the dissatisfaction with British government is not primarily caused by anti-Conservatism, for 70 per cent of intending Conservative voters express doubts or dissatisfaction with the representativeness of government in this country. ߣ

Rose, Richard, ߢ Students in Society’ (University of Manchester Union, 1963), p. 4.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Belief by the members in the superiority of the system is reflected in observations such as these: ‘The British people have always been rather smug in their attitude to politics. They have preferred not to copy the ideas and institutions of other countries, believing that in political matters their function is to teach the rest of the world rather than to learn from it. They have exported British institutions to all parts of the Commonwealth with remarkable self-confidence, apparently believing that institutions can be transplanted from one environment to another which is totally different.’ Birch, A. H., The British System of Government (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1967), p. 16.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Birch, , British System of Government, p. 28.Google ScholarBirch qualifies the absoluteness of this observation, slightly however, in an earlier work, Representative and Responsible Government (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar, when he notes: ‘It has occasionally been proposed that a referendum might be held on a particular issue, but the proposals do not ever appear to have been taken seriously. And there has been no support at all for the idea that the initiative and the referendum should be adopted as permanent institutions of government, as in Switzerland, so that the representatives could be by-passed. Views of this kind have found favour among people of British extraction in both Australia and the United States, but in Britain itself they have never acquired any kind of influence’ (pp. 227–8).

⁵² Shaw, Malcolm, Anglo-American Democracy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), p.125.Google Scholar