ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the manner in which the state and its relationships with the society it serves have been understood and conceptualised in Britain. The challenge of reconstruction after 1945 was quite different in Britain from that which had to be faced in Germany. In Britain political reconstruction was not on the agenda. The years after 1979 witnessed radical changes in the theory and practice of government in Britain. The process of reform within the structures of government and the methods of public service provision has been more difficult in Germany than in Britain, and so far has made less progress. Despite the setbacks of 1848–49 representative political institutions were widely established by the time that German unification took place in 1871, though the political reality of the new Empire was far removed from genuine parliamentary rule. The post-war German reconstruction – in the West alone, of course – proceeded in a somewhat different way.
