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The British political system whose evolution we have just described, and which became the subject of Jean Blondel's scholarship in the 1950s, was a system whose citizens either celebrated or took for granted its advantages compared with the others. As we shall see, some of the features of the British political system are unique; the hereditary element in the House of Lords has (fortunately) no equivalent elsewhere. However, the essential features of the British political system can be abstracted to form a particular version of democracy, the Westminster model. The Westminster model was passing through one of its periods of highest prestige during Blondel's early academic career in Britain. Not only was it celebrated at home; it was also praised overseas. The report of a committee of the American Political Science Association early in the 1950s, Toward a More Responsible Party System, ¹ so admired the Westminster model that it proposed to modify the US system in its general direction. Although the report prompted a generation of patriotic American political scientists to spring to the defence of their country's party system, the report reflected an American esteem for the model that can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson's writings and has yet to disappear completely.