Well, if you look back to the Glorious Revolution and the removal of oppressive, monarchical reign such as that of Oliver Cromwell under the British Commonwealth, you can see a direct link from the unequal caste type social structure of the British Empire to the constitutional monarchy (still full of plenty of corruption) set up by William and Mary during their early reign.

I would definitely say that inequality fuels the fires of revolution...and revolution can lead to England's liberal minded welfare state (among plenty of other things.), but I wouldn't say that inequality always causes such government.

Prior to the progressive government established by the constitutional monarchy, England had been (and continued to be) the leading industrial, military power in all of the world. And to fuel their nationalist heritage, the had very oppressive kings and corrupt social structure. And it seems, that most forms of oppression do lead to democracy in one way or another (France's many revolutions, American Revolution, Italian unification after Spanish usurpation, an German socialism after the fall of Communism). Nevertheless, people are in general, irrational and impatient (some more so than others), and it is always a simple waiting game once a brutal reign is established.

In the late 1800s, there was a pretty good census of land holdings that connected county level records to give national totals for the UK. Land was accounted for on a county by county basis and then organized at the Kingdom level so never officially totaled up across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. If you counted up the percentage of the population that owned 70% of all land in the UK, that percentage of of the population owned only 13% of the land in Russia. Even in Prussia, as distinct from Germany in general, the percentage was under 30%, which about what it was for Austria. The only places where you can even get to 50% is in far East Prussia, the ducal remnant of the Teutonic Monastic State, and one region of Hungary.

Might the absence of a service nobility and primogeniture's non-division of land holdings produce an elite too small to actually run the country? The aristocracy was much larger everywhere else and titles of nobility were handed out right and left on the Continent. Think of all of the von's and zu's in Germany and the de's in France. There were never many more than about 800 title holding aristocrats in the UK. And they were much wealthier than their French, German or Russian equivalents.

Since all of those second sons needed things to do, the various social institutions had to provide positions invested with respectability that were free of aristocratic place holders. In Russia or Austria or France, the institutions would have been filled up with the multi-generational service nobility. In the UK, the aristocracy was simply always too small to actually run the country. They did not even produce enough extra sons to run the place.

Plus if there is no land, enterprising people would be forced into the cities and into trade. A Physiocrat or agrarian song of the soil attitude would just not have the same appeal.

Random fact, the Duke of Sutherland owned roughly 3% of the UK in the lead up to WWI. He owned about 30% more acres than the Klebergs owned in Texas, which is three times as big.

France was remarkably equal. Inequality has not typically led to revolution. It was precisely the large base of land holders in France that fed the revolution.

The other side of this may be that only in England were there these super powerful nobles capable of forcing a Magna Carta on the monarch.

And up until the third electoral reform in ~1885, the House of Commons was almost entirely the sons of aristocrats who were either not first born or were using it as a prep school for when their dads died and they got to join the House of Lords.

I'm talking inequality in the terms used by Pareto and Gini.....land ownership through time.

Any way this is what I've been thinking about since last night and was wondering if anybody had any thoughts. The idea of England as this land of yeoman farmers with their little patches of free landholding kind of like Vermont governing themselves at the local level through town meetings and that growing up the hierarchy into a bottom up democracy is just the diametric opposite of the realities of English economic history.

Tyranny to Oligarchy to Democracy to Anarchy to Tyranny, huh KA?

Come on history buffs, am I smoking crack or not?

Comrades the future is socialism. (Not Communism; Communism makes socialism principles look absolutely horrible)

There is most definitely a causal link that joins the relatively small aristocratic base in England towards the need to rely on the upper middle-class, leading ultimately to the modern welfare system that exists in England today. However, much of this social change driven by the early and late industrial revolutions, caused much upheaval and hardship amongst the various other strata of classes in England.

Could this chain of events have occurred elsewhere in the world, as opposed to creating a system of Enlightenment that has been heavily influenced by it's roots in European history? Could there have arisen an Asian system of Liberal Democracy - and what would have been the causal factors for this to occur, given that the premise is that it could have never happened in the first place...

The other possibility, kaner, is the inequality in England produced an aristocracy so powerful that it could say no to the king and from John and the Manga Carta to Edward III recognizing Parliament as the only taxing authority the high aristocracy created concentual governance.

I guess I just have to get used to talking to myself.