Atitudes britânicas em relação aos jogos de azar

Abstract

Gambling in British history and the way in which the country has approached this multi-faceted phenomenon may be divided into different moments, each marked by their own social and political attitude in terms of the way in which the activity was perceived socially and how it should be tackled by the government. The following article makes a historical and legal-dogmatic analysis of the various types of legislation, doctrines, and policies on gambling to present, analyze, and catalogue these different moments, exposing the general attitude to the activity at the time, as well as the social, political, and economic shifts that conditioned them and the impact these had on the norms and policies of each era. In the end, we observe that, despite the discrepancies between the legal situation and the social reality of gambling throughout the United Kingdom’s history, it is possible to point to three different systems applied to gambling. These are: the prohibitionist system, the restrictive system of social regulation, and the liberal system of economic regulation.