Thoughts on the British Political System and Democritization

I thought that Tony Wright's examination of the British political system tied in well with out discussion of democritization in the modern era. Wright goes into detail about the unique form that democracy takes in Britain and its constant evolution. He argues that the British system is always in a state of fluctuation, which he categorizes into three waves of major change following the Second World War. The first of these waves is associated with Prime Minister Clement Attlee, when the Labour Party first took the stage as the majority party in Parliament. The second of these waves is associated with Margaret Thatcher's time in office, in which the Conservative Party came back to power and deflated the role of the state in the nation's economy. And the final of these major waves occurred when Tony Blair was appointed Prime Minister, during whose administration the new British political system sought to fuse the two previous waves' views, "reconciling market economics with social justice" (Wright 43). The point Wright is making is that though the British system is always changing, there is an underlying principe that remains constant. This is, according to Wright, the system's top-down structure and its concentration of power, paramount to the functioning of British politics. 

The British example can be thought of in the context of democratization because it is the system many states attempt to emulate in forming their own democracies. In the case of the United States, though the styles of democracy are different in each, they both share the same core, underlying values. Both subscribe to the requirements from democracy laid out in Schmitter and Karl's essay, "What Democracy is...and is not." But in the modern era of democratization, will it be as easy to export our American political values to "hopefully emerging democracies"? Is it true that states can only be democratized (or democratized well) if they have a.) a history of democracy, b.) a culture willing to embrace democracy, c.) an ethnic make-up that lends itself well to a plural system, d.) all of the above, or is none of this relevant? Yes the British political system could be transposed to the American context, but can democracy emerge in places where there is no precedent for it?