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How Sick is British Democracy? A Clinical Diagnosis

Document Cited in Related
Vincent
DOI10.1177/20419058211045139
Date01 September 2021
Published date01 September 2021
AuthorRichard Rose
28 POLITICAL INSIGHT • SEPTEMBER 2021
Denis Healey once said that
managing an economy is more
like gardening than computer
science. Evaluating British
democracy is also more like medical science
rather than rational choice social science.
It requires a hands-on examination of the
body politic instead of making logical
deductions from a theoretical model. It is
empirical in focusing on political institutions
and actual political behaviour, rather than
on variables that reduce complex political
processes to a single numerical indicator.
Diagnosing the body politic
When diagnosing a patient, doctors have
in mind a model of how a perfectly healthy
body ought to work that is compared with
How Sick is British
Democracy? A
Clinical Diagnosis
Richard Rose examines the anatomy of British democracy
and gives the patient a mixed bill of health.
the evidence of how dierent parts of
the body are actually functioning. Joseph
Schumpeter provides a basic model for
political scientists: A healthy democracy
is a political system in which everyone
can vote in free elections in which parties
compete for control of government and the
electorate can hold the government of day
accountable, periodically re-electing it or
ejecting it.
Schumpeter’s denition is normative in
that it describes how a healthy democratic
© Kay Roxby / Alamy Stock Photo
Political Insight September 2021.indd 28Political Insight September 2021.indd 28 16/08/2021 15:2316/08/2021 15:23

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