2007 Volume 13 Issue 1 Pages 89-102
In light of the competing conceptions of the strength of the British state which lie behind contemporary debates on many of the topics to be dealt within a variety of literature, this article examines competing models of the British state. It explores the environmental factors that posed challenges to the British state’s capacity to ensure the implementation of its policies, and the state’s capacity to act autonomously in the policy process and its potential to structure, if not impose, patterns of political behavior on citizens and local governments. The specific focus of this article is an examination of the extent to which the British state is a political actor in its own right, with its own preferences, and with the capacity to influence the political process to its own ends. Someone may argue that the 1980’s was a time which challenges the traditional understanding of the British state as a weak state. Instead, this article contends that the British state has been a strong state that has not been determined by the content of a certain policy idea, but by ‘who drives the discourse channel toward the public acceptance.’
