consensus politics

   Consensus implies a wide measure of agreement. In political life, it refers to a circumstance where a large proportion of the population and of the political community broadly accept certain values, even if there is some disagreement on matters of emphasis or detail.

   On the continent, where proportional electoral systems are common, politics and policies tend to be more consensual. Many governments are coalitions in which representatives of the various parties involved do work together and hammer out policies acceptable to all of them. The semi-circular shape of continental parliaments encourages cooperation among them. By contrast, the design of the House of Commons forces Members of Parliament to choose whether they are on the Government side or on that of the Opposition. In modern British politics, the period 1951–79 is often described as an ‘era of consensus politics’ because there seemed to be general agreement about the policies to be pursued. Governments did accept much of what their predecessors had done and found themselves adopting similar solutions to the problems that arose; peace, prosperity, full employment and welfare were widely accepted goals. Some commentators portrayed elections as a contest to decide which set of politicians would administer the policies on which everyone was substantially agreed. Disputes were often more about the degree, the method and the timing of change, rather than representing fundamental conflicts.

   Not all observers have seen the era of consensus politics in the same light. It was, after all, in the 1970s that Samuel Finer first put forward the theory of adversary politics. Pimlott noted that the word ‘consensus’ was little used before the 1980s and that it was then used to distinguish Thatcherism from the period that preceded it. His point was that it was much easier to detect consensus in retrospect.

   Further reading: B. Pimlott, Contemporary Record, Summer, 1989; S. Finer, Adversary Politics and Electoral Reform, Wigram, 1975