BRITISH CONSERVATISM AND THE PRIMROSE LEAGUE ... - ideals

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government.
It is, for him, a system based upon oligarchical and
authoritarian party management resting atop a mass base.
The caucus in
particular is portrayed as the most characteristic institution of the
new machine age; the Primrose League serving as the Conservative
manifestation of this tendency.
While Ostrogorski's political outlook necessarily omits a
dispassionate investigation of his subject, he, nevertheless, provides
a perceptive analysis of the League.
The study captures the essential
flavor of the organization, although it distorts the League's influence
and import by neglecting to show its strong ties with traditional party
leaders, its continuity with the previous associations, and its
adaptation of modern institutions to reforge older, existing practices.
In The Primrose League, Janet Robb extends the basic contours
of Ostrogorski's analysis.
However, she sees the League as performing
a more evolutionary function, embodying the transition from older
authoritarian forms of rule to modern democratic representation. Women
play a key role in this process, not only in advocating Conservative
principles, but also in seeking to present their views and tentatively
stake their claims for citizenship8 in the modern state.
8 Citizenship is defined here in the sociological tradition of
T.H. Marshall and Reinhard Bendix. It refers to voting rights granted
within a larger context of social and civil rights pursued by
individuals in western industrial societies. T.H. Marshall,
"Citizenship and Social Class," Class, Citizenship, and Social
Development (New York: Doubleday, 1964), pp. 71-72, 78, 83-84, 109-10;
published originally in England in 1963 under the title Sociology at
the Crossroads. The essay was presented as the Marshall Lecture in
Cambridge in 1949. Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 2nd ed., pp. 89-90,
92, 94, 96, 105, 112, 126.