interpretive approach underpins the Differentiated Polity Model (DPM) which has replaced the Westminster Model as the dominant model of British politics. This article critiques both the interpretive approach and the DPM, arguing that the latter fails to recognise the continued importance of the role hierarchy, inequality and a dominant political tradition play in British politics, omissions which result, in large part, from its roots in an interpretist position. As such, the main aim of the article is to defend an alternative conception of British politics, the Asymmetric Power Model (APM), by considering three empirical areas in which these two models differ substantially: whether hierarchy or networks are the dominant mode of governance in the UK; the extent and importance of structured inequality in the UK; and whether there is a dominant tradition in British politics. interpretive approach to the study of politics generally, and British politics particularly, is clearly establishing some purchase in a field of study which has often been regarded as atheoretical. 1 Indeed, Peter Kerr and Steven Kettell claim (2006, 11), in the introduction to a new journal focusing upon British politics:The most self-confident and influential attempt at a post-positivist approach to date, however, has come in the form of 'interpretivist' political science. Here, Bevir and Rhodes have been particularly prominent in generating a wholesale critique of the problems associated with traditional approaches to British politics, and in offering in their place a deliberate attempt to move beyond ... the Westminster model.Kerr and Kettell also emphasise the link between Bevir and Rhodes' interpretive approach and the Differentiated Polity Model (DPM), initially developed by Rhodes (1997). In addition, they claim, 'the contemporary period has also witnessed the formal supplanting of the WM with that of the "governance" thesis, expressed most coherently in the Differentiated Polity model, as the dominant organising perspective within the field of British politics' (Kerr and Kettell 2006, 13). 2 In this article, I critique the DPM arguing that, unlike the Asymmetric Power Model (APM), which is the alternative I consider here, it fails to recognise the continued importance of the role of hierarchy, inequality and a dominant political tradition in British politics, an omission which results in large part from its roots in an