¹ ‘No field of sociology has been more subject to vagaries of usage and to nebulous and shifting conceptualizations.’ Giddens, Anthony, ‘Elites in the British Class Structure’ in Stanworth, P. and Giddens, A., eds., Elites and Power in British Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), p. 2.Google Scholar

² ‘Policy-Making in Postwar Britain: A Nation-Level Test of Elitist and Pluralist Hypotheses’, British Journal of Political Science, iv (1974), 187–216Google Scholar, is a detailed presentation of the research design and research results. ‘Elites and the Distribution of Power in British Society’ in Stanworth, and Giddens, , Elites and Power in British SocietyGoogle Scholar presents the same research in summary form and tries to define its significance for various theoretical and methodological controversies.

³ Morriss, Peter, ‘The Pluralist Case not Proven: Hewitt on Britain’, British Journal of Political Science, V (1975), 385–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar All unattributed quotations are from this source.

⁴ The significance of pluralist findings with regard to the policy-making process depends, of course, upon the existence of theories that postulate that an elite is dominant in policy-making. In ‘Elites and the Distribution of Power in British Society’, pp. 46–8Google Scholar, I documented that several writers do in fact hold such a position.

⁵ As I do myself, which is why I examined the degree to which policy outcomes were in accord with majority public opinion. However, since the relation between democratic responsiveness and pluralism-elitism is ambiguous, I qualified my remarks on this matter by phrases like ‘it is generally implied’ or pluralists ‘often make the case’.

⁶ Keller, S., Beyond the Ruling Class (New York: Random House, 1963).Google Scholar

⁷ Morriss's definition of pluralism as it stands is unclear, since one could interpret ‘responsive’, ‘everybody’ and ‘represented in the decision-making arena’ in a variety of ways. Taking the words at their face value, it seems obvious that no society has ever existed in which ‘everybody’, for example, supporters of the National Front and the International Socialists, is ‘represented in the decision-making arena’.

⁸ Domhoff, G. W., ‘Social Clubs, Policy-Planning Groups and Corporations’, Insurgent Sociologist, V (1975), 173–4.Google Scholar Domhoff distinguishes between social and policy cohesion and sees the latter as ‘most important’.

⁹ The ‘importance’ of an issue or decision can be evaluated according to a variety of criteria of course. See McFarland, A., Power and Leadership in Pluralist Systems (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1969), particularly pp. 81–92Google Scholar for an excellent discussion of this point. My sample of issues which included the postwar National Health Service and National Insurance Acts, the Education Act of 1944, the first nationalization of steel, the first attempt at entering the Common Market, and the independent British nuclear deterrent policy seem to have a prima facie importance.

¹⁰ ‘There are plenty of lesser minor issues which do not threaten the power of the ruling class directly concerning which the public can play make-believe democracy, at least those who want to continue to play. As William Connolly notes, the power centers are willing to let the public blow off steam on certain questions, to squabble about issues such as fluoridation, progressivism in the schools, and, we might add at the moment, school busing, gun control, and abortion. The property relations that have set the stage for such secondary issues as these, however, are beyond access and challenge.’ Anderson, C., The Political Economy of Social Class (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 198–9.Google Scholar

¹¹ The outcome of the Rent Act, for example, was counted as a victory for the business group (i.e. the property associations) but M. J. Barnett, in his study, argues that they, along with other pressure groups, played only a ‘small role … in the legislative process’ and that their actions ‘seemed to have little impact on the decision-making process.’ The Politics of Legislation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 154.Google Scholar

¹² My judgement was that in aggregate these three decisions represented and were regarded as a defeat for the relevant business interests, as is shown, for example, by the reversal of the decision when the Conservatives came to power. The ‘empirical justification’ for aggregating these three matters is that they were in fact aggregated into one particular piece of legislation.

¹³ Some of the ‘wins’ of the business groups as with steel nationalization, rent decontrol and the pro-commercial television lobby were incomplete, since the steel industry was nationalized for a brief period, various restrictions were placed on rent decontrol, and television advertisers were not allowed to sponsor programs directly as they had wanted to do.

¹⁴ Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton, ‘Two faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, LVI (1962), 947–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Morriss himself points this out in discussing decision-making power. The point that one cannot draw conclusions about power solely from non-occurrences and benefits has been put forward many times. Ivor Crewe provides a pithy refutation of this fallacy, ‘Studying Elites in Britain’ in British Political Sociology Yearbook I (New York: Wiley, 1974), 40–1.Google Scholar Furthermore, G. Parry and P. Morriss in their article in the same volume on non-decision-making power, ‘When is a Decision not a Decision?’ cite various neo-elitist writers like Crenson who appear to accept this point. My acceptance of the concept of ‘routine’ as an indicator of power stops precisely at the point where Parry and Morriss bring in ‘consequential’ power (p. 332) since this seems no more than the old confusion between benefits and power under a new name.

¹⁶ Rose shows that there is a very considerable gap between the opinions of Labour voters and those expressed in the Labour party manifesto or by Labour party MPs and that this difference is much greater in the Labour party than the Conservative party. Rose, R., Politics in England (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), pp. 307–14.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Rose shows that prior to the present disturbances, 74 per cent of the Catholics thought that Catholics were ‘treated unfairly’, and also that they disapproved of the use of force in order to change the status quo because it was seen as impractical and dangerous. Rose, R., Governing without Consensus (London: Faber, 1971), pp. 272, 191–7.Google Scholar Rose, however, sees the Northern Irish question as involving much more than discrimination against the Catholic minority.

¹⁸ Two Gallup Political Index survey sin 1963 and 1968 show that Big Business and ‘the City’ were seen as having ‘great influence’ by 55 and 51 per cent of those sampled at the two dates, but that the trade unions were seen as powerful by 57 per cent of the respondents each time.