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Following are a number of passages from the conference held on 27 June 1989 by Professor Ralf Dahrendorf in the context of the Conferences of the Library of the Chamber of Deputies. Dahrendorf, formerly a member of the European Commission, director of the London School of Economic from 1973 to 1983, currently Master at St. Anthony College, Oxford, is one of the foremost contemporary theorists of liberalism. Among his best known works: "Classes and class conflict in industrial society" (1963), "Changing freedom" (1981), "Beyond the crisis" (1984), "To think and make politics" (1985), "For a new liberalism" (1988).

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British political institutions are unique, in that they are largely based on a principle: that of electing governments that can govern according to their own intentions until people get tired of them and elect an alternative government. In other words, democracy in Great Britain concerns the Government. It does not concern a fair and even less a proportional representation of people's opinions, nor the controls and the balances through the separation of powers. However, by concentrating on the government, the British system always implies an alternative government. The fact that the House of Commons is not shaped as a semicircle, but that government and opposition seats are placed one in front of the other has a profound constitutional meaning. The political debate is carried out by those who are in power today and by those who will be in power tomorrow.

The implications of the Anglo-Saxon system

The implications of such a system are immediately evident. For example, with this system, third parties - not to mention fourth, fifth or sixth parties - lack a role of their own. Their representatives do not even have a defined place in which to sit. When the new parties of the centre, especially the Social-Democrat parties (of then) were founded in 1982, their members were forced to arrive at the sessions of the House of Commons very early to occupy the seats that later became theirs more out of a habit than out of a right. They sat in the benches of the opposition, where they still sit today. And these new parties, who have now merged into the Democrats, still aim at replacing the Labour Party rather than forming a coalition. In fact, the very word 'coalition' is alien to the system I am describing, except in periods of war and of serious national crisis, when a coalition of all the parties is formed.

Effectiveness and alternation of governments

British democracy is thus centred on the effectiveness and alternation of governments. Three institutional regulations, in particular, guarantee that the objective is achieved: the electoral system, the role of the Prime Minister and the sovereignty of Parliament. Each of these points deserves a brief comment.

The electoral system is known as "first-past-the-post" (the first to cross the finishing line), or majority electoral system. People vote in a certain number of constituencies (currently 635), and in each constituency the candidate who has obtained the highest number of votes is elected. The highest number of votes: not necessarily the majority. (...).

It does not prevent the birth of new parties

Many and different things can be said about this system (...). For the moment, the most important point is that it favours parliamentary majorities formed by a single party. In fact, the system has often been blamed for the predominance of two parties in British politics: Conservatives (Tories) and liberals (Whigs) before World War I, and Conservatives and Labour as of the mid thirties. It is important to add that things have never been that simple. In fact, not even the British electoral system can prevent the birth of new movements, such as the Labour Party around World War I, or the Liberals and the Social Democrats in the seventies and eighties. Minority governments are formed at times. But more often one of the three competitors is excluded. Mrs Thatcher's conservatives obtained no more than 43 per cent of votes in the three elections they won, but benefited of the fact that the third party, the liberals, and later the liberals and Social-Democrats, obtained between 20 and 28 per cent. Owing to this, th

e Conservatives obtained majorities of over 100 seats at the House of Commons, while the third party, with the support of a fourth of the electorate, had to be content with 3 or 4 per cent of seats. It arrived second (or third) in most seats, and thus enabled the other candidates to pass, even if they had far less than 50 per cent. The point is clear: the electoral system translates electoral minorities into parliamentary majorities, and thus favours the formation of single-party governments.

Moreover, such governments are unusually strong owing to the position of the Prime Minister. The leaders of the major parties are, in conformity with such electoral system, candidates to the position of Prime Minister. They are elected in different ways; even in the Conservative Party, the leader no longer "emerges" mysteriously from private conversations at the Carlton Club, but is elected by the members of Parliament in an open conflict. After an election, in any case, the Queen must summon the leader of the strongest party and ask him or her to form the Government. (...).

It makes democratic change possible

The constitutional regulations described above have a chief advantage: they make democratic change possible. They give life to governments that are capable of implementing a program or even of changing it radically. As a liberal, I am not inclined to overestimate the government's role. No government can easily produce changes against the natural course of events; and even the most reformative government will be incisive only is it can count on a certain degree of consent. Governments cannot create the spirit of times, even if they can discipline it, reinforce it and even modify it to a certain extent according to their will. (...).