Synopses & Reviews
The English Constitution provides the most lucid and readable account of what has been termed the Golden Age of the nineteenth century constitution, before the advent of universal male suffrage and the rise of party as the overriding force in the British polity. Despite being strongly rooted in its time, Bagehots work can still provide us with fascinating insights into the basic nature of the constitution and its organic connections with the society within which it functions. In sketching connections between class and political systems, in its use of ideology, in what we would now term its interdisciplinary approach, Bagehots study provides insights and analysis of sometimes startling modernity.
Review
“This timely new edition of Bagehots classic study is essential reading for today's constitutional reformers and students of Britain's elective dictatorship. Gavin Phillipsons scholarly and shrewd introduction makes key links between past and present.” —Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC
Synopsis
THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION provides the most lucid and readable account of what has been termed the "Golden Age" of the nineteenth century constitution, before the advent of universal male suffrage and the rise of party as the overriding force in the British policy. Many of Bagehot's insights remain either true, as a statement of basic principle, or even if no longer strictly accurate, fascinating in their partial applicability today. they convey a sharp sense of how the constitution has radically changed since the Victorian era, and yet paradoxically at a more basic level, remained the same.
Synopsis
Walter Bagehot's classic analysis of the nineteenth-century constitution.