One of the greatest patrimonies of the English people, other than the common law, is the notion of the Loyal Opposition. That you can disagree with the rulers of the day vociferously, even disruptively, but ultimately you are still loyal to some baseline elements of the polity.

The Loyal Opposition speaks out against the government, protests their policies, mobilizes and agitates against them, contests elections to take power from them, but all in the context of a political culture where loyalty to the overarching system is assumed.

I do believe this is largely a factor ingrained into the political culture of the society, and not something that can just be learned. It must be cultivated through decades, maybe even centuries, of people learning to live together despite differences.

It seems like many Muslim democracies (and non-Muslim ones, of course) are vulnerable for this exact reason. The civic and political culture (if it exists) of Tunisia, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt is "either I win, or I burn the whole thing to the ground."

Of course there are rational reasons for this type of strategy arising, normally because state power, once acquired, is used to jail and impoverish your opponents. But I do not want thing thread to get too long, so that can be a discussion for another day.