stration (ENA) aspire to become members of the Council of State
which is the superior administrative court. The ENA is perhaps the
most prestigious postgraduate level educational institution in the
country.
Pluralist policy making
Democratic constitutional arrangements can operate in a number of
different ways in practice depending upon the use the government
makes of the constitutional powers it has. Most democratic systems
give numerous opportunities for the government to consult and
listen to the electorate – the extent to which the government does so,
and with which parts of the electorate, makes an enormous difference
to the overall nature of the system. Three alternative ways of
working such a system can be described as pluralism, corporatism and
centralisation. We will also relate these accounts of how the con-
stitution is being worked to the more general political theories of
power introduced in Chapter 5 (pluralism, elite theories and – to
some extent – Marxism).
In a politically pluralist system the legitimacy of a host of social
and political interest groups is recognised. Ideally all have an equal
chance to be involved in an open political process by which social
decisions are reached through a process of widespread discussion,
negotiation and compromise. In the last resort, where conflicts cannot
be resolved into a consensus, the interests of the groups commanding
majority support in the population as a whole will predominate, but
strong feelings by groups most affected may count for more than
weaker preferences by more numerous less affected groups. Sub-
stantial efforts will be made to facilitate tolerant compromises
whereby different (for instance) religious, national or regional groups
may adopt different solutions to the same problems. Authors such as
Sir Ernest Barker (1961) see such pluralistic practices as intrinsic to
modern democracy.
Public compromises between groups may often be struck in such
systems in negotiations between different political parties within a
governmental coalition (continental Europe), or in legislative bar-
gaining or in compromises between the legislature and the executive
(e.g. the USA). In the UK, a well-known constitutional authority, Sir
Ivor Jennings (1957) has suggested that it is a convention of the
DEMOCRACY 185