This book explores the concept of deference as used by historians and political scientists. Often confused and judged to be outdated, it shows how deference remains central to understanding British politics to the present day. This study aims to make sense of how political deference has functioned in different periods and how it has played a crucial role in legitimising British politics. It shows how deference sustained what are essentially English institutions, those which dominated the Union well into the second half of the twentieth century until the post-1997 constitutional transformations under New Labour. While many dismiss political and institutional deference as having died out, this book argues that a number of recent political decisions – including the vote in favour of Brexit in June 2016 – are the result of a deferential way of thinking that has persisted through the democratic changes of the twentieth century. Combining close readings of theoretical texts with analyses of specific legal changes and historical events, the book charts the development of deference from the eighteenth century through to the present day. Rather than offering a comprehensive history of deference, it picks out key moments that show the changing nature of deference, both as a concept and as a political force.

The Age of Deference traces the Court's role in the rise of judicial deference to executive power since the end of World War II.

The great historian D.C. Moore's masterpiece, long unavailable. It is an essential fulcrum for all attempts to explain the nature of the 19th century English political system, and the great and continuous changes that occurred within that system as a preface to modern English society. Moore shows that the principal factors which changed the Victorian political system were those that derived from its working in the context of the changing economic and social environment in the industrial revolution and its immediate aftermath. The book reflects the premise that the key to the nature of any political system lies in the relationship between the formal political structure and the structure of the effective groups within that society.

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging book, Neil Nevitte demonstrates that the changing patterns of Canadian values are connected.

In late twentieth-century England, inequality was rocketing, yet some have suggested that the politics of class was declining in significance, while others argue that class identities lost little power. Neither interpretation is satisfactory: class remained important to "ordinary" people's narratives about social change and their own identities throughout the period 1968-2000, but in changing ways. Using self-narratives drawn from a wide range of sources--the raw materials of sociological studies, transcripts from oral history projects, Mass Observation, and autobiography--the book examines class identities and narratives of social change between 1968 and 2000, showing that by the end of the period, class was often seen as an historical identity, related to background and heritage, and that many felt strict class boundaries had blurred quite profoundly since 1945. Class snobberies "went underground", as many people from all backgrounds began to assert that what was important was authenticity, individuality, and ordinariness. In fact, Sutcliffe-Braithwaite argues that it is more useful to understand the cultural changes of these years through the lens of the decline of deference, which transformed people's attitudes towards class, and towards politics. The study also examines the claim that Thatcher and New Labour wrote class out of politics, arguing that this simple--and highly political - narrative misses important points. Thatcher was driven by political ideology and necessity to try to dismiss the importance of class, while the New Labour project was good at listening to voters--particularly swing voters in marginal seats--and echoing back what they were increasingly saying about the blurring of class lines and the importance of ordinariness. But this did not add up to an abandonment of a majoritarian project, as New Labour reoriented their political project to emphasize using the state to empower the individual.