Ольга Кравцова - Английский язык для специальных и академических целей: Международные отношения и зарубежное регионоведение. Часть 1

In short, what the British Empire proved is that empire is a form of international government that can work — and not just for the benefit of the ruling power. It sought to globalise not just an economic but a legal and ultimately a political system too.

Richard Gott on the legacy of the British Empire http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KvR0pTZvGQ&index=4&list=PL6D312E28AF131F80

Slaughter — to kill (people or animals) in a cruel or violent way, typically in large numbers Indigenous — native

Conscript (army) (adj) — enrolled compulsorily, drafted

To put down — to use force to stop a protest or an attempt by people to take power away from a government or leader

Subject (peoples) (adj) — being under the power or sovereignty of a ruler, government Proselytize — to induce someone to convert to one's faith

Straitjacket — something that limits someone's freedom to do something

Unit I. UK: from Empire to Democracy

1. What, in Richard Gott's opinion, should the British Empire be blamed for?

Unit I. UK: from Empire to Democracy

2. In what ways was the British Empire violent?

3. What facts and statistics does Richard Gott support his arguments with?

1. How would you define a democracy?

2. What are the types of democratic government in the modern world?

3. What are the main features of Britain's democracy?

4. Based on the title, do you expect the article to focus on the strengths or deficiencies of Britain's democracy?

Professor Stein Ringen University of Oxford February 2007

The answer to this question is: not very good! Of course Britain is a democracy and a solid one, but there are many solid democracies and in this family British democracy is of only mediocre quality.

In my book What Democracy Is For I rank twenty-five of the most respected democracies in the world according to their quality on a scale from 8 (high quality) to 0 (low quality). In that ranking, Britain is on level 3. The best quality of democracy is found in some of the smaller countries with political cultures of egalitarianism, such as in Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden are on level 8 and Iceland on level 7). In Europe, Italy ranks the lowest, on level 0, and France and Germany are on level 3 and 4 respectively. The two great model democracies, those of the British Westminster model and of the United States with its pioneering democratic constitution are both in the bottom range of the ranking.

This is not where British democracy should stand or be expected to stand. The Westminster Model has very much going for it. It is embedded in an ancient and firm culture of liberty. It has evolved organically out of British history and experience and was never invented or imposed. Parliament is a model of careful and pragmatic deliberation. The press is robustly free and radio and television of the best anywhere, including in political scrutiny. Governance is stable, effective and by and large honest.

We should therefore expect British democracy to compare favourably with democracy anywhere else. In fact, however, it does not. Among the world's solid democracies, Britain compares unfavourably. In spite of all it has going for it, it turns out to compare badly in democratic quality.

My concern here is neither with non-democracy nor with weak and second-rate democracies. I am interested in the solidly established democracies and with differences in quality within this exclusive family. I can therefore take some things for granted that I do not have to bring into my comparisons, principally that civil and political rights are established. Even in this the solid democracies are not fully equal but the differences are marginal. In Britain these rights are certainly enshrined in the political and social order and there is no need to question the system on this account. That is very much part of what British democracy has going for it.

However, freedom depends on more than civil and politic rights. It is now widely recognised in political philosophy that values such as freedom and justice rest not exclusively on rights but also on the means to make effective use of rights. For freedom, rights are basic but in addition the individual needs to be in command of a modicum of physical and human capital to be able to live as the master of his or her life. The protection of freedom, then, is a complicated matter of good government. Citizens depend on governance for the effective protection of liberty and rights, for the regulation of economic and social life for equality of opportunity, and for protection against at least extreme deprivations in the resources of freedom. While in all solid democracies citizens enjoy basic civil and political rights, there is a great deal of difference between them in the effectiveness of governance measured against the modern understanding of freedom.

Now back to Britain and the experience of the Britons in the delivery of security of resources. British democracy displayed a burst of energy in the aftermath of the Second World War. The British people had fought through the war together. An idea of social justice had emerged which came to be seen, at least in part, to be what the war was fought for. This idea was articulated in particular in the Beveridge Report on social security. It was an idea of universal social protection, and idea about extending to everyone the protection it is the purpose of democracy to deliver. This idea was put into effect in the great reforms of the late 1940s: family allowance, social security, income support and above all the National Health Service. Here was a democracy performing at its best. In the NHS, that was displayed magnificently. Health care in Britain pre-NHS was a shambles. There were areas where it was excellent: good, free and universally available. But about half of the population did not have access to a family doctor and the poor mostly had to pay for health care.

With the NHS the government cut through the rot, nationalised the whole system of hospitals, brought all General Practitioners into the national service, and abolished inequality by giving everyone the access the privileged had had previously. In hindsight, this was an astonishing achievement, and an astonishingly democratic one.

However, if we look more carefully at those reforms and how they evolved, we find that British democracy was not able to sustain that once-in-a-lifetime democratic burst.

First, the NHS was never able to deliver what was promised. It immediately ran into deep financial problems and has ever since been cash strapped. By the end of the century, the effects of accumulated underinvestments were visible in poor standards, inefficiency, low morale within the service and low confidence in the population. British democracy proved unable to maintain its own creation. It is possible that the NHS is presently being revitalised with new investments, but the jury is still out on this and I for one remain sceptical.

Unit I. UK: from Empire to Democracy

Unit I. UK: from Empire to Democracy

Second, no similar effort materialised in that other great area of British inequality: education. The situation here was the same as in health care, or worse. A minority of children, here a small minority, the children of the rich, had access to excellent schooling in private schools behind a wall of high fees, while the majority of children languished in second-rate, underfunded and underperforming public schools. It is conspicuous that British democracy, at the time when the need to follow through from rights to resources was so well understood in health care, was unable to mobilise the same understanding and resolve in education. As a result, the British school system remains to this day deeply undemocratic and school policy limited to perpetual tinkering with the public sector with no inclination or ability to break down the inequality of the private-public division.

Third, in spite of impressive welfare state reforms the system that emerged proved incapable of affording the population that most basic of democratic protections: protection against poverty. Poverty rates in Britain, both among the elderly and among children, have remained high. It was thought that the post-1945 welfare reforms would finally overcome poverty. When that anticipation failed, British democracy, instead of reforming again, settled down to an embarrassing acceptance of persistent poverty among affluence. It is a matter of record that poverty rates in Britain were exceptionally high by European comparison all through the second half of the twentieth century. It is the proud boast of the present government that it is on the path to abolishing poverty, at least among children, but that boast is premature. It is trying to do so with the help of carefully engineered means-tested benefits 13 13 A means-tested benefit in the United Kingdom is a payment available to people who can demonstrate that their income and capital are below specified limits. It is a central part of the Welfare state in the United Kingdom. . We have enough knowledge from social policy theory to say that this strategy can reduce poverty, which it is indeed doing, but that it cannot eradicate it, that it is arbitrary in its effects because it is never target efficient — as was put dramatically on display by the Parliamentary Ombudsman in the scandal of out-of-control overpayments and underpayments of tax credits in Britain in 2004-5 — and that it comes at the price of indignities and harassments reminiscent of the old poor-law regime. In the best European welfare states poverty has been eradicated — so we know it can be done. But British democracy remains on the defensive in poor relief because it has been unable to mobilise the resolve and resources to put itself on the offensive.

These are examples of the democratic deficit in British governance: its potential is not realised in delivery. British democracy should do better but there is not enough force in the system to carry through to the difficult matter of delivering protections in all relevant forms to all citizens.

The democratic deficit is understood and recognised in the population. Voting participation is low and falling, in particular in local elections. Membership in political parties is in free fall. Confidence in the democratic institutions is low and falling, as is documented in repeated British and comparative value surveys. So low is now confidence in democracy that in spite of local democracy having been all but killed off — and in spite of citizens being far more interested in local than in national issues — there appears to be little or no demand or appetite in the population for this crucial building block in the democratic architecture to be restored.