Political Institutions in England

Abstract

This paper was instigated by some brilliant notes of Bertrand de Jouvenel on the weakness of the Active Power and the Surmising Forum in contemporary British institutions. The notes were by way of question. It seemed impossible to find standing ground for an answer except by going a long way round.

Note: I deliberately write ‘England’ here. The politics of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland are best understood as those of ‘dependent politics’ or client systems under English patronage. This relationship is likely to change, and, in changing, to change the political institutions of the United Kingdom: but this is another, equally complex problem.