The Two Faces of Compromise

Abstract

important political concepts. The sum total of these prevalent attitudes may be seen as the national character of politics in these systems. One such fundamental concept is compromise. It could be argued that every political system can be classified by students of comparative politics on the basis of its prevalent attitude towards compromise.' In these remarks dealing with what can be called the two faces of compromise, attention will be centered on the widely divergent attitudes toward compromise prevalent in British and German politics. Like all use of ideal types in the social sciences, this discussion aims at clarifying reality rather than merely simplifying it. It is hoped, however, that the contrast of British and German attitudes toward compromise will help to explain and evaluate significant differences in the behavior of these nations in both domestic and international politics. The distinguished British political theorist, Sir Ernest Barker, argued2 that in a compromise all ideas are reconciled. The compromise can be accepted by all because it bears the imprint of all. Discussion has as its purpose compromise, and therefore the achievement of compromise is the justification for discussion in a democracy. If there has been no compromise, discussion has been useless. Barker, furthermore, sees law-making as the process of the grand dialectic of public debate, in which thought clashes with thought until a reconciling compromise is found. If a majority engages in discussion with a minority, and if that discussion is conducted in a spirit of give-and-take the result will be that the ideas of the majority are widened to include some of the ideas of the minority which have established their truth in the give-and-take of debate. Edmund Burke formulated it: All government ... is founded on compromise and barter. We balance inconveniences; we give and take; we remit some rights, that we may enjoy others. It is in this sense that discussion produces, if not unanimity, at any rate something so close to unanimity that we may speak of common consent. This common consent, if it is broad and fundamental enough, becomes consensus about both the form of the decision-making process and the content of the decisions that actually are made. Barker's conception of compromise is typically British, representing a wide variety of political views. Harold Laski, for instance, argued in his classic study of Parliamentary Government in England that successful representative government presupposes a nation fundamentally at one upon all the major objects of governmental activity so fundamentally at one that the thought of violence as an instrument of political change is incapable of entering the minds of more than an insignificant portion of the nation. Along the same lines, Earl Balfour stressed that