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- The nature of its constitution tells you a great deal about a country, its society and the way ruling power is calibrated and constrained within it. A key characteristic of the British constitution is the degree to which the good governance of the United Kingdom has relied on the self-restraint of those who carry it out. Unlike nearly every other democracy in the world, we lack a ‘written’ or ‘codified’ constitution. The UK has, therefore, no single text setting out the core principles, institutions and procedures of the system, protected from casual alteration by amendment procedures, and enforceable by the judiciary.4 Instead, in the UK, we have trusted politicians to behave themselves. We have long assumed that those who rise to high office will be ‘good chaps’, knowing what the unwritten rules are and wanting to adhere to them, even if doing so might frustrate the attainment of their policy objectives, party political goals, or personal ambitions – the argument being that ‘good chaps’ know where the undrawn lines lie and come nowhere near to crossing them: hence ‘the good chap theory of government.’ (en)
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