democratic nation state. Yet it is only necessary to imagine that,
instead, you had been born in the former Soviet Union to realise how
immensely and rapidly the political framework of your life can be
transformed in a lifetime.
Political change is probably thought of most readily in terms of
violent and rapid transitions such as the English Civil War and the
French, American and Russian revolutions. But it is worth bearing in
mind that in the English and Russian instances, at least, such vio-
lent and rapid changes were largely reversed within two genera-
tions without extensive violence. Conversely a series of piecemeal,
evolutionary changes may result in a ‘new’ political system based on
fundamentally different principles from the old.
Thus Britain in the eighteenth century was fundamentally still an
oligarchic or aristocratic, if constitutional, country. It was controlled
by a coalition of aristocrats and country gentlemen with limited
participation by a few city businessmen. By the middle of the twen-
tieth century, a series of limited reforms of the franchise and in the
powers of the two Houses of Parliament (and a whole host of
economic and social changes) meant that Britain could claim to be a
democratic country.
Much the same could be said for the United States of America –
whose Founding Fathers were careful to defend their new
constitution against the charge of democracy (Hamilton et al., 1961).
Yet now the same constitution (with only a limited number of formal
amendments) is seen by many as the very model of a democratic
constitution. A series of piecemeal changes helped the USA to
transform its political system into a democratic one. These included
the change from indirect election of the president by an electoral
college to, effectively, direct election through national political
parties. The introduction of the direct popular election of senators
was accompanied by the progressive extension of the vote to all white
male, to all white women and finally to all black citizens. This was
done largely through state legislation, or even changes in political
practice outside of the law. (Amendments 15, 17 and 19 broadened
the franchise, but 15 was ineffective and 17 and 19 mainly codified
previous practice at state level (Morison and Commager, 1962).)
Returning to the three models of social and political power we
introduced earlier, we can relate these to ideas about political change.118 PROCESSES