Those who keep a finger on the pulse of British democracy often announce that the patient is in a critical state. In the 1970s, the diagnosis most often came from the right, with dire warnings of the debilitating effects of social democracy. Since the 1979 election, it is those on the left who are pessimistic, pointing to an insidious authoritarianism that threatens democratic values.
Therefore, a book which maintains that a major turning point in British politics has been reached is not, in itself, particularly rare. What sets British Democracy at the Crossroads (originally published in 1985) apart, however, is the breadth and depth of its analysis. It breaks the mould of conventional political science by marrying a study of voting in the 1983 election (using a specially commissioned survey) with a detailed presentation of the context in which the election took place, including analyses of the dynamics of political parties, of the role of the news media before and duri
