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The British Governing Class and Democracy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
The concept of a governing class is as old as political speculation. Like so much else, it is found in Plato and Aristotle, and in most of the classic works of political thinkers from their day to the present. In this paper, however, I am not concerned with a history and comparative treatment of the concept, but with the idea and fact of the governing class in Britain within the period when the democratic state was evolving from the aristocratic; that is, from the Second Reform Bill of 1867 to the present. Yet a brief initial comment on the general concept is essential, even at the risk of raising more questions than one can answer here.
Every state is a hierarchy of power and authority. A governing class consists of the individuals within the hierarchy who frame the agenda and plans for public action, make the final decisions about government, and hence about the people and interests affected by government. In the contemporary world of reality a sharp dividing line between governed and governors in this sense is seldom easy to draw. Yet there is a line. Democracy is not government by all the people, but by a few accountable for their decisions to the rest. The quality and modes of such accountability depend upon the laws and institutions of the state, especially upon the persons who actually make the laws, operate the institutions, and seek to render their actions acceptable to the majority of the electorate. Such a governing class, group, or élite, whatever term we apply, consists of those whose primary concern is with acquiring, sustaining, and exercising political authority. Their function in this matter is definite and clear, and in its performance they come to think in like ways about procedure, develop common skills appropriate to their purpose, and in miscellaneous efforts learn what is feasible and not feasible.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 1954 , pp. 405 - 420
- Copyright
- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1954
References
1 A report prepared for the House of Lords in 1874, known then as the Modern Domesday Book, claimed that about a quarter of the land in the United Kingdom was owned by 1,200 persons and about a half by 7,400. The statistics of this report are doubtful. See Clapham, J. H., An Economic History of Modern Britain (Cambridge, 1932), II, 253.Google Scholar But whatever the figures, the concentration in landownership was pronounced. An analysis on the basis of the Modern Domesday and illustrating the large holdings of the aristocracy is contained in Bateman, John, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1878).Google Scholar
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