Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-22T09:40:46.569Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Consensus and Cleavage in British Political Ideology*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

James B. Christoph
James B. Christoph
Affiliation:
The Ohio State University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

One of the most perplexing questions to students of politics since the mid-1950s has been whether western societies are now approaching, or have reached, a condition called “the end of ideology.” Numerous answers have been propounded, both by those who regard such a development as desirable and by those who view it with disquietude. But difficulties have arisen because exponents of one view or the other have had recourse to markedly different, and often shifting, concepts of the terms “ideology” and “end.” If this important controversy is to be saved from sterility, social scientists must both reflect more upon the nature of the terms employed and descend from the level of sweeping cultural generalizations to examine the condition of ideology in particular political settings.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1965 , pp. 629 - 642
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For discussion of the varieties and uses of the concept, see Minar, David W., “Ideology and Political Behavior,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, Vol. 5 (11, 1961), pp. 317–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lane, Robert E., Political Ideology (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, ch. 1.

2 Spiro, Herbert J., Government by Constitution (New York, 1959), p. 180Google Scholar.

3 Rokeach, Milton et al. , The Open and Closed Mind (New York, 1960), p. 35Google Scholar.

4 Among them Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, ch. 9; McClosky, Herbert, “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” this Review, Vol. 58 (06, 1964), pp. 361–82Google Scholar; Robert E. Lane, op. cit.; and Finer, S. E., Berrington, H. B., and Bartholomew, D. J.Backbench Opinion in the House of Commons, 1955–59 (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar, chs. 2–3. Cf. Crick, Bernard, In Defense of Politics (Chicago, 1962), p. 50Google Scholar: “Politics is an activity and so cannot be reduced to a system of precise beliefs or to a set of fixed goals. Political thinking is to be contrasted to ideological thinking … the idea of an ideology of freedom is a contradiction in terms.”

5 For an example, see Smith, M. Brewster et al. , Opinions and Personality (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

6 Watkins, Frederick M., The Age of Ideology—Political Thought, 1760 to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964)Google Scholar.

7 Sigmund, Paul E. Jr., The Ideologies of the Developing Countries (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.

8 Lipset, Seymour MartinPolitical Man (Garden City, 1960)Google Scholar, chs. 2–3.

9 Notable examples are Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology (Glencoe, 1960)Google Scholar; Lipset, S. M., “The Changing Class Structure and Contemporary European Politics,” Daedalus, Vol. 93 (Winter, 1964), pp. 271–303Google Scholar, and Political Man, pp. 403–17; Kirchheimer, Otto, “The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes,” Social Research, Vol. 24 (1957), pp. 127–56Google Scholar; and Abrams, Mark, “Party Politics After the End of Ideology,” in Allardt, E. and Littunen, Y., Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems (Helsinki, 1964), pp. 56–63Google Scholar.

10 “The term ‘ideology’ is not in very good odour in serious political discussion in this country except in purely historical or descriptive connections. The grounds of the distaste for the term centre around the feeling, perhaps, that an ideology is something totalitarian in tendency or at least involves an uncompromising fanaticism inappropriate to liberal democracy of the British type.” Williams, Bernard, “Democracy and Ideology,” Political Quarterly, Vol. 32 (10–Dec. 1961), p. 374CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Hoggart, Richard, The Uses of Literacy (London, 1957)Google Scholar.

12 Campbell et al., op. cit.; Herbert McClosky, op. cit.; McClosky, Herbert, Hoffman, Paul J. and O'Hara, Rosemary, “Issue Conflict and Consensus Among Party Leaders and Followers,” this Review, Vol. 54 (06, 1960), pp. 406–27Google Scholar; Prothro, James W. and Grigg, Charles M., “Fundamental Principles of Democracy,” Journal of Politics, Vol. 22 (05, 1960), pp. 276–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lane, op. cit.

13 Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton, 1963), p. 267CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Table 4.

14 Ibid., p. 102, Table 1.

15 Ibid., p. 126, Table 2.

16 Ibid., p. 136, Table 8.

17 Abrams, Mark, Rose, Richard, and Hinden, Rita, Must Labour Lose? (Harmondsworth, 1960), p. 19Google Scholar.

18 Ibid., p. 25.

19 Ibid., p. 31.

20 Ibid., pp. 31, 35–36.

21 Davis, Morris and Verba, Sidney, “Party Affiliation and International Opinions in Britain and France, 1947–1956,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 24 (Winter, 1960), pp. 590–604CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Ibid., p. 601.

23 Herbert McClosky's studies of the ideological differences between political leaders and the electorate in the United States, for example, have no British counterpart. “Consensus and Ideology in American Politics,” loc. cit.

24 Epstein, Leon D., Britain—Uneasy Ally (Chicago, 1954)Google Scholar, chs. 5–7; Epstein, , British Politics in the Suez Crisis (Urbana, 1964)Google Scholar, ch. 6; and Nicolson, NigelPeople and Parliament (London, 1958)Google Scholar.

25 Rose, Richard, “The Political Ideas of British Party Activists,” this Review, Vol. 56 (06, 1962), p. 364Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 366.

27 S. E. Finer et al., Backbench Opinion, op. cit.

28 Ibid., pp. 56–58.

29 Ibid., p. 48.

30 Ibid., p. 110.

31 “Voting and the Equilibrium of the American Political System,” in Burdick, E. and Brodbeck, A. J., American Voting Behavior (Glencoe, 1959), p. 92Google Scholar.

32 Must Labour Lose?, op. cit., p. 25. These were multiple responses.

33 Eckstein, Harry, A Theory of Stable Democracy (Princeton, 1961), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

34 558 House of Commons Debates 1620–25 (Nov. 1, 1956). For more discussion of the significance of the procedural aspects of the crisis see Rose, Richard, Politics in England (Boston, 1964), pp. 232–33Google Scholar.

35 Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis, op. cit., ch. 5; McKenzie, Robert T., British Political Parties, 2d ed. (London, 1963), pp. 585–89Google Scholar.

36 Sampson, Anthony, Anatomy of Britain (London, 1962)Google Scholar, passim.

37 “… the extent of group power … means that the country has gone so far as to reach the point of moving with unanimity or not at all.” Beer, Samuel H., “Pressure Groups and Parties in Britain,” this Review, Vol. 50 (03, 1956), pp. 15–16Google Scholar.

38 One study asserts that only a decided minority of the electorate seems to be able to appraise the ideologies of the parties in any meaningful way. Stokes, Donald E., “Ideological Competition of British Parties,” paper given at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, 09, 1964Google Scholar.

39 For further examples, see Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions and Tendencies in Britain,” Political Studies, Vol. 12 (02, 1964), pp. 33–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Harry Eckstein, op. cit., p. 33. In a sophisticated analysis bearing on this point Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., has distinguished between parties and compromises based upon the concepts of consensus and program. “Party Government and the Settlement of 1688,” this Review, Vol. 58 (12, 1964), pp. 933–46Google Scholar.

41 For the views of these groups see Birnbaum, Norman, “Great Britain: The Reactive Revolt,” in Kaplan, Morton A. (ed.), The Revolution in World Politics (New York, 1962), pp. 55–68Google Scholar, and Steck, Henry J., “The Re-emergence of Ideological Politics in Britain,” Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 18 (03, 1965), pp. 87–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Balogh, Thomas, “The Apotheosis of the Dilettante,” in Thomas, Hugh (ed.), The Establishment (London, 1962), pp. 72–115Google Scholar; Chapman, Brian, British Government Observed (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Crosland, C. A. R., The Conservative Enemy (London, 1962)Google Scholar; “Suicide of a Nation?,” Encounter, 07, 1963Google Scholar, especially the articles by Albu, Altrincham, Cole, Shanks, and Shonfield; Anthony Sampson, op. cit.; Shanks, Michael, The Stagnant Society (Harmondsworth, 1961)Google Scholar; and Vaizey, John, Britain in the Sixties: Education for Tomorrow (Harmondsworth, 1962)Google Scholar.

43 Koestler, Arthur, “The Lion and the Ostrich,” Encounter, 07, 1963, p. 8Google Scholar.

44 Henry Fairlie, “On the Comforts of Anger,” ibid., p. 12.

45 Michael Shanks, op. cit., p. 93.

46 Austen Albu, “Taboo on Expertise,” ibid., p. 46.

47 Shanks, , “The Comforts of Stagnation,” Encounter, 07, 1963, p. 31Google Scholar.

48 Chapman, op. cit., p. 61. For a challenge to this interpretation, see Chester, D. N., “British Government Observed,” Public Administration, Vol. 41 (Winter, 1963), pp. 375–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.