Civil Society and Governance in the Future

This book has charted the ingredients of the civic culture and civil society in Britain by looking at attitudes, values, participation and also at key institutions such as political parties and Parliament. In this final chapter, we bring it all together by examining, more generally, the links between the various components of civil society, governance and the state of British democracy. Britain is one of the world’s oldest democracies and has the ‘Mother of Parliaments’, but how is contemporary British democracy actually performing? In particular how exactly does democracy relate to civil society? And how can democracy be reinforced and strengthened in the future? To address these questions we need to spell out a broad definition of democracy and then observe how the components of civil society relate to it. Once again this is done using a comparative analysis in order to characterize British democracy in relation to other countries across the advanced industrial world.