COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT

AND POLITICS
COMPARATIVE GOVERNMENT AND
POLITICS
Series Editor: Vincent Wright

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COMPARATIVE
GOVERNMENT
AND POLITI CS

An Introduction
Third Edition

Rod Hague
Martin Harrop
Shaun Breslin

M
MACMILLAN
 © Rod Hague, Martin Harrop and Shaun Breslin 1992
© Rod Hague and Martin Harrop 1982, 1987
Softcover reprint of the hardcover I st edition 1992 978-0-333-55819-5

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First edition 1982
Reprinted 1984, 1985, 1987
Second edition 1987
Reprinted 1988, 1989, 1990 (twice), 1991, 1992
Third edition 1992
Published by
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and London
Companies and representatives
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ISBN 978-0-333-55820-1 ISBN 978-1-349-22276-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22276-6

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 Summary of Contents

PART 1 STUDYING POLITICS

1 Political Concepts 3
2 The Comparative Approach 23

PART 2 THE NATION-STATE: EVOLUTION AND

REVOLUTION
3 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 45
4 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 66
5 The Nation-State in One World 100

PART 3 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF POLITICS

6 Political Culture 135
7 Political Participation 156
8 Elections and Voters 182
9 Interest Groups 209
10 Political Parties 234

PART 4 THE STRUCTURE OF GOVERNMENT

11 The Constitutional Framework 261
12 Assemblies 287
13 The Political Executive 313
14 The Bureaucracy 342
15 The Military and the Police 367

PART 5 POLICIES AND PERFORMANCE

16 The Policy Process 347

v
 Contents

List of tables, figures, maps, exhibits and exercises XVI

Preface XXX

PART 1 STUDYING POLITICS

1 Political Concepts 3
Politics and government 3
The state 6
Sovereignty 7
Power 8
Elitist theories 12
Pluralist theories 14
Authority 16
Legitimacy 19
Summary 20
Discussion points 21
Key reading 21
Further reading 22
2 The Comparative Approach 23
The advantages of comparison 24
Providing context 24
Testing hypotheses 24
Improving classifications 25
Making predictions 25
The problems of comparison 27
Controlling comparisons 30
Frameworks of comparison 31
Comparing states 31
Comparing societies 33
Comparing policies 36
Techniques of comparison 37
Case studies 37
Statistical analysis 38
Focused comparisons 39
Summary 40
Discussion points 41

VII
Vlll Contents

Key reading 42
Further reading 42

PART 2 THE NATION-STATE: EVOLUTION AND

REVOLUTION
3 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 45
The three worlds 45
The first world: heartland of liberal democracy 48
Majority democracy: the Westminster model 50
Consensus democracy 51
The second world: communism and postcommunism 54
The failure of communism 55
The challenge of postcommunism 56
The third world: the politics of economics 57
An economic classification 57
From oligarchy to democracy? 58
Summary 63
Discussion points 64
Key reading 64
Further reading 64
4 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 66
Types of political change 66
What is a revolution? 67
Explaining revolutionary change 68
Marxism 68
Functionalism 70
Social psychology 71
Comparative history 73
Three revolutions: France, Russia and Iran 74
France 1789 76
Russia 1917 78
Iran 1979 79
1989: the year of revolutions 82
Documenting the revolutions 82
Interpreting the revolutions 83
Ideology and revolution 90
What is an ideology? 91
How do ideologies arise? 91
The end of history? 96
Summary 97
Discussion points 98
Key reading 99
Further reading 99
 Contents IX

5 The Nation-State in One World 100

Interdependence and the nation-state 100
The global economy 102
The trading world 102
The competition state 103
National variations 104
Transnational corporations 105
The financial world 108
The global village 109
The global ecology 111
Population growth 112
The first world: the driving force 113
From regulation to markets 113
From markets to blocs? 114
The second world: from isolation to integration 119
The old order: problems of isolation 120
The collapse 120
The new order: problems of integration 121
The third world: dependence or interdependence? 124
Liberal theory 125
Dependency theory 126
Summary 130
Discussion points 131
Key reading 131
Further reading 132
PART 3 THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF POLITICS
6 Political Culture 135
The first world 136
The civic culture 136
Ideological hegemony 139
Postmaterialism 141
The second world 142
The failure of transformation 142
Political culture and the collapse of communism 144
The third world: local political cultures 145
Tradition and modernity 146
Political socialisation 147
Liberal and radical theories 148
Elite political culture 151
Summary 153
Discussion points 154
Key reading 154
Further reading 155
x Contents

7 Political Participation 156

Types of participation 156
The first world 157
How much, by whom, so what? 157
New politics 159
The second world 162
Regimented participation 162
The transition to postcommunism 165
The third world 167
Patrons and clients 168
Participation and development 168
Public opinion 170
Opinion polls 172
The media 173
The first world 173
The second world 175
The media under communism 175
The media and postcommunism 177
The third world 178
Summary 179
Discussion points 180
Key reading 181
Further reading 181

8 Elections and Voters 182

First world elections: bottom-up or top-down? 182
Elections in the second world 184
Elections under communist rule 184
Elections and the decay of communist rule 186
Postcommunism: the founding elections 187
Elections in the third world 190
Electoral systems 191
Converting votes into seats 192
Evaluating electoral systems 195
The social base of parties 196
The national revolution 198
The industrial revolution 200
The post-industrial revolution 201
Parties of reaction 202
Parties in the new world 202
Voting behaviour in liberal democracies 203
Classifying elections 203
Dealignment 205
Summary 206
 Contents Xl

Discussion points 207

Key reading 207
Further reading 208
9 Interest Groups 209
Classifying interest groups 210
Customary groups 211
Institutional groups 211
Protective groups 212
Promotional groups 213
Geographic groups and social movements 214
Channels of access 215
Direct dealings with government 216
Indirect influence through parties 218
Indirect influence through the media 219
What makes an interest group influential? 220
The first world: pluralism or corporatism? 222
Pluralism 222
Corporatism 224
The second world: from channelled to active groups? 227
Groups under communist rule 227
The emergence of active groups 228
Groups in the third world 229
Summary 231
Discussion points 232
Key reading 232
Further reading 233
10 Political Parties 234
The functions of parties 235
Parties in the first world 236
Party organisation 236
Party competition 240
Parties in the second world 241
Ruling communist parties 242
Means of control 245
Decline and fall 246
Postcommunist parties 247
Parties in the third world 249
No-party systems 249
One-party systems 250
Multi-party systems 251
Are parties in decline? 253
Summary 255
Discussion points 256
Xli Contents

Key reading 256

Further reading 257

PART 4 THE STRUCTURES OF GOVERNMENT

11 The Constitutional Framework 261
Constitutions 262
Classifying constitutions 262
The origins of constitutions 263
Revising and replacing constitutions 263
When do constitutions succeed? 267
Federalism 268
Federations and confederations 268
The origins of federations 270
Classifying federations 271
The consequences of federalism 272
Central-provincial relationships 273
Assessment 275
Unitary government 276
Dual and fused systems 276
The two-way stretch 278
The judiciary 279
Administrative justice 280
Judicial independence and recruitment 280
Interpreting the constitution 282
The judiciary in the second world 283
The judiciary in the third world 284
Summary 285
Discussion points 285
Key reading 286
Further reading 286
12 Assemblies 287
Structure of assemblies 288
Number of chambers 288
Committees 289
Functions of assemblies 292
Representation 292
Making governments 295
Law-making and scrutiny 296
Recruitment and socialisation 297
Assemblies in three worlds: a policy classification 298
First world assemblies: policy-making and influencing 299
Second world: the assembly as theatre 302
Assemblies under communist rule 302
 Contents Xlll

Assemblies in postcommunist states 303

Third world assemblies: minimal and vulnerable 305
Problems of third-world assemblies 306
Functions of third world assemblies 307
The fall and rise of assemblies? 308
Summary 310
Discussion points 311
Key reading 311
Further reading 312
13 The Political Executive 313
What does the political executive do? 313
The first world: presidential executives 315
The United States 315
France 318
Finland 319
Assessment 320
The first world: parliamentary systems 320
Heads of state in parliamentary systems 321
Government and parliament 323
Prime ministers and cabinets 324
Collective responsibility 328
The second world: the communist executive 329
Personality cults 330
Succession crises 331
Formal structures: state and party 332
The second world: the post communist executive 335
The third world executive 336
Personal and unaccountable rule 336
Towards accountable executives 338
Summary 339
Discussion points 340
Key reading 341
Further reading 341
14 The Bureaucracy 342
The functions of bureaucracies 342
Sources of bureaucratic power 344
How are bureaucracies organised? 345
Bureaucracy in the first world 349
Organisation 350
Recruitment 351
Political control 353
The reach of political appointments 354
Norms of ministerial responsibility 355
XIV Contents

The use of political advisers 355

Bureaucracy in the second world 358
Bureaucratic power in the communist states 358
Organisation in the communist states 359
Bureaucracy in postcommunist states 360
Bureaucracy in the third world 361
The colonial legacy 361
Patronage and privilege 362
Summary 364
Discussion points 365
Key reading 365
Further reading 366
15 The Military and the Police 367
The state in uniform 367
The military: who guards the guards? 367
The first world: the liberal model 368
The military and policy-making 368
The military as a police force 370
The second world: the penetration model 371
The party in the army 371
The army in the party 372
The military and the collapse of communism 373
The third world: military coups 376
Types of military rule 376
Motives for military coups 377
Back to the barracks? 378
The police 380
Liberal and radical perspectives 381
Structure and organisation 381
Specialisation 383
Community or reactive policing? 384
Community relations 385
Policing the police 386
The police and politics 387
The secret police and surveillance 389
Summary 391
Discussion points 392
Key reading 393
Further reading 393
 Contents xv

PART 5 POLICIES AND PERFORMANCE

16 The Policy Process 397
The policy focus 397
Synoptic and incremental models 398
Stages of the policy process 402
Initiation 402
Formulation 403
Implementation 404
Evaluation 406
The first world 406
Policy styles 406
The welfare state 409
Defining the welfare state 409
Development of the welfare state 409
Classifying welfare states 411
A crisis of the welfare state? 413
The second world 414
The planned economy 415
What did the planned economy achieve? 415
Dismantling the planned economy 418
The third world: policy stagnation 421
Summary 423
Discussion points 424
Key reading 424
Further reading 425
Appendix Information Sources for Politics Students 426
Books about specific countries and regions 426
Reference books 429
Keeping up to date 430
Starting a literature search 430
Books for the beach 430
References 432
Glossary 458
Index 473
 List of Tables, Figures, Maps,
Exhibits and Exercises

• Tables
1.1 Forms of power 10
1.2 Weber's classification of types of authority 18
2.1 Almond and Powell's functions of political systems 35
4.1 1989 - a year of revolution 84
5.1 The economic might of transnational corporations 107
5.2 Membership of major international organisations in Europe 115
6.1 Liberal and radical perspectives on political socialisation 148
7.1 Old and new politics 161
8.1 Eastern Europe and the founding elections 188
8.2 Main types of electoral system in liberal democracies 193
8.3 Some social bases of parties 199
8.4 A classification of United States elections 204
9.1 A classification of interest groups 213
10.1 Duverger's classification of political parties 238
11.1 Financial transfers from central governments to subnational
governments 274
11.2 The balance of power between central and local government
in unitary states 277
11.3 Methods of selecting judges 281
12.1 A policy classification of assemblies 298
14.1 Structures of administration 348
14.2 Background characteristics that increase the chances of entry
into the bureaucratic and political elites in liberal
democracies 353
14.3 Modes of control over bureaucracies 370
15.1 Police politics: a glossary 382
16.1 Introduction of social insurance, selected countries 410

• Figures
1.1 Government, state, political system and society 5
1.2 Elitist and pluralist views of power 12

XVI
 List of Tables, Figures, Maps, Exhibits and Exercises XVll

2.1 Easton's model of the political system 34

3.1 World divisions, circa 1983 46
3.2 Protective democracy: the US constitutional system 49
4.1 The J-curve theory of revolutions 73
5.1 Trade as a percentage of gross domestic product, 1988 105
5.2 Eurocentric and Pacific-centred views of the world 117
5.3 World automobile manufacturing 118
6.1 Almond and Verba's theory of the civic culture 137
6.2 Political learning and participation across the life-cycle: the
liberal view 149
7.1 The diamond of political participation 158
7.2 Percentage of women cabinet ministers following most
recent general elections 160
7.3 Attitudes to participation in Finland and the United States 163
9.1 A classification of interest groups 210
9.2 Channels of interest group influence 215
10.1 Organisation of the Chinese Communist Party 244
10.2 Communist party control over society 245
11.1 The territorial distribution of power 269
13.1 The presidential executive 316
13.2 The semi-presidential executive 319
13.3 The parliamentary executive 321
13.4 Soviet executive structure, 1936-91 333
15.1 Military spending as a proportion of GNP 370
16.1 Stages of the policy process 402
16.2 Dimensions of national policy style 408
16.3 Attitudes towards business people in Eastern Europe 420

• Maps
Peters' projection of the world XXll
5.1 The Baltic republics 122

• Exhibits
2.1 The origins of comparative politics: Aristotle's classification
of governments 26
2.2 Easton's model of the political system 34
3.1 New Zealand: majority democracy under strain 52
3.2 Consensus democracy: Finland 53
3.3 India: democracy and dynasty 61
4.1 The perfect revolutionary situation 75
XV1l1 List of Tables, Figures, Maps, Exhibits and Exercises

4.2 The 'isms of politics 92

5.1 Australia: sliding down the first division 104
5.2 The Baltic republics: joining the world league 123
5.3 South Korea: promotion from the third division 126
6.1 The benevolent monarch: how British children see the
Queen 150
7.1 Women in government 160
7.2 Regimented participation: China's sparrows 164
8.1 Getting out the vote, communist style 186
9.1 Do interest groups strangle nations? 223
9.2 Austria: a corporatist waltz? 225
11.1 The European Community: a chronology 265
12.1 The legislative pork barrel 294
13.1 How powerful are prime ministers? 326
13.2 The Dutch Prime Minister: not yet a chief 327
13.4 Mikhail Gorbachev: communism's undertaker 334
14.1 The Minister's tale 346
14.2 Bureaucratic power in Japan 347
14.3 Controlling the bureaucracy: a lesson from France? 357
15.1 How not to stage your coup: the Soviet Union, August 1991 374
15.2 How to stage your coup: the mechanics of military takeover 379
15.3 Policing Japanese-style 385
15.4 Civilian control of the police in Sweden 388
16.1 The language of policy analysis 399
16.2 China's Great Leap Forward ... into starvation 401
16.3 'Private enterprise' in the Soviet Union 416
16.4 Mixed views about the market 420

• Exercise
8.1 Gulf War II: showing the effect of electoral systems 197
 Preface

When a journalist asked British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan

which aspect of the job caused him most difficulty, he replied,
'Events, dear boy, events.' We know just what he meant. Rewriting
this book to take account of the dramatic events in the political world in
the late 1980s and early 1990s has proved to be a challenging exercise.
In this new edition, we have given full coverage to the collapse of
communism and to the emergence of postcommunist regimes in Eastern
Europe. In rewriting all the sections on the second world, we aimed to
give at least as much coverage to postcommunist governments as to their
predecessors. In fact, limits of information and perspective mean that we
have not kept completely to our own promise. But we think it has borne
fruit anyway. We are delighted that Shaun Breslin, a young second-
world specialist at Newcastle, agreed to join the existing authors for this
edition - and we're even more pleased with his vivid coverage of the
momentous developments in the second world.
On a minor note, we have used the past tense when referring to
communist party states, except when discussing those states (notably
China), where communist rulers still hang on to power.
The democratic revolution in the third world has been quieter, but
perhaps no less important, than the changes in the second world. The
retreat of the generals in Latin America has transformed the nature of
regimes there. Elsewhere, international pressures have encouraged a
transition towards democracy. We have sought to reflect these devel-
opments, too, in this edition.
All this raises the question: If democracy is now universal, why have
we retained a three worlds approach? The answer is that we still think
this is the best and simplest way to capture contrasts between countries.
The political differences between Canada, Chile and Czechoslovakia
remain fundamental, even if they all now share democratic forms. The
political agenda in a country is set by where a country comes from, as
well as where it is now. The agenda also depends on the country's
relationship to the world economy. On both dimensions, the differences
between the three worlds are still vast.
The world, however, continues to shrink. Traditionally, comparative
politics texts, including this one, have underplayed the whole issue of

XIX
xx Preface

interdependence between nations. We have therefore added a new

chapter on 'the nation-state in one world' to this edition. Its purpose
is to draw out those features of global politics which impinge most on
politics within the nation-state. It reflects our belief that the dynamics of
politics rest neither in national nor in global politics, but rather in the
interaction between the two.
This book conforms to the law that new editions are always bigger.
'Elections and voters' and 'the military and police' now rate chapters of
their own. Indeed, the section on the police is entirely new. The two
opening chapters have also been strengthened, in order to provide a
general introduction to political concepts (Chapter 1) and to compara-
tive politics specifically (Chapter 2). New sections in other chapters
include: majority and consensus democracy (Chapter 3); 1989 - the year
of revolutions (Chapter 4); postmaterialism (chapter 6); new politics,
public opinion, opinion polls and the media (Chapter 7); and the welfare
state (Chapter 16).
We're pleased that this book is used in several countries where English
is not the first language. We owe a special duty of clarity to such readers
and we have made an effort to improve our expression throughout the
book. Alison Wright, a recent politics graduate, went through the text
for us, simplifying paragraphs, sentences and words. Passive sentences
were also transformed by her into active ones (though she missed that
one!) We are grateful to her for this careful work and to Paul Gliddon,
another politics graduate, for compiling the index. Thanks also to Keith
Povey, our copy editor for three editions of the book, for his painstaking
work.
In these days of expanding student numbers, it's important for texts
to provide students with a framework for independent study. We have
tried to achieve this by including discussion points and key readings at
the end of each chapter. We've also added an appendix giving detailed
advice on information sources. We hope this will be useful for students'
essays and projects. The appendix includes a detailed list of recent
country and area studies, many (not all!) of which were used in
preparing this edition. We've also included more sign posting in this
edition, through a more detailed contents section and by adding chapter
summaries. In response to feedback from students, this edition also
contains more devices to break up the text and an extensive glossary of
concepts.
We want to thank all our colleagues around the world who
responded to our request for advice on how best to revise the book.
The replies (and reading lists) really were helpful in setting the agenda
for the revisions. Comments from experts on particular countries also
helped us to broaden our range of examples, and in particular to
 Preface XXI

provide more coverage of Australasia, North America, the Netherlands

and Scandinavia. We're especially grateful to the wise owls who advised
us not to change too much!
Specific thanks to:
Peter Aimer, University of Auckland
Rudy Andeweg, University of Leiden
Hugh Berrington, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
Craig Dearden, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
George Jones, London School of Economics
Steven Kennedy, Macmillan
Jan-Erik Lane, Lund University,
Roger Leys, Institute of Political Studies, Copenhagen
Chris Rudd, University of Otago
Ulf Sundhaussen, University of Queensland
Vincent Wright, Nuffield College, Oxford

The authors and publishers are grateful to The Observer for

permission to reproduce the article by Sir John Harvey-Jones in its
edition of 25 August 1991.
What began in the 1980s as an introduction to comparative govern-
ment has now broadened out in the 1990s into a comparative
introduction to politics. Although the book itself has changed over
the years, our underlying aim has not. We have sought to write a clear
and up-to-date introduction to politics for students beginning their
study of the subject. We hope this edition goes a little further towards
fulfilling that objective.

ROD HAGUE
MARTIN HARROP
SHAUN BRESLIN
 --- ><
FINLANO ,. ~:

~
J~ PHILIPPINES

KEY: EUROPE
~(J~~'
1 IRELAND
2
3
BRITAIN
DENMARK
~.~ ~"
4 NETHERLANDS
5 BELGIUM
6 FRANCE
7 ITALY
8 AUSTRIA
9 POLAND
10 CZECHOSLOVAKIA
11 HUNGARY
12 YUGOSLAVIA
13 ROMANIA
14 GREECE
15 GERMANY Q 4~E~LAND
16 BULGARIA
17 ALBANIA
18 SWITZERLAND

Peters' projection of the world

 • PART 1 •
STUDYING POLITICS
This Part provides a conceptual and comparative introduction to the
study of politics. Chapter 1 considers some central concepts of the
subject - politics, government, the state, sovereignty, power,
authority and legitimacy. It also reviews elitist and pluralist theories
of how power is distributed in modern societies. Chapter 2 discusses
the pros and cons of the comparative approach, and the different
conceptual frameworks and techniques that can be applied. At least
in comparison with the rest of this book, this opening part is
relatively conceptual; you may wish to return to it after reading
the other chapters.
 • Chapter 1 •
Political Concepts
Politics and government 3 Elitist theories 12
The state 6 Pluralism theories 14
Sovereignty 7 Authority 16
Power 8 Legitimacy 19

The main focus of this book is politics, rather than political concepts.
We look at how politics is organised in nation-states and at how
different countries solve the core problem of politics: determining
who is to get what, when and how. But we cannot jump straight into
this material. For just as what astronomers 'see' in the sky depends on
the type of telescope through which they peer, so too does our
interpretation of politics depend on the concepts through which we
approach our subject matter. Indeed, in politics it often seems as though
everyone has their own telescope - and claims that their own instrument
is better than anyone else's!
This point illustrates a fundamental fact about studying politics. The
basic concepts of the subject remain at the forefront of discussion in a
way which does not normally apply to more scientific disciplines such as
astronomy. The study of politics is always an uncertain subject in which
the perspective of the observer makes a difference to the results
obtained. Enlightenment comes not from ignoring differences in
political approach but from confronting them and making them explicit.
Hence this chapter. In it, we set out our own interpretation of some
central concepts of the discipline. Where appropriate, we also mention
alternative viewpoints. These concepts provide a background against
which we discuss more specialised aspects of politics in later chapters .

• Politics and government

To start at the beginning: what is politics? In our view, politics is the
process by which groups make collective decisions. The size of the group
can vary from a single family at one extreme to the international
community at the other. Political decisions are also arrived at in various
ways: by violence, by discussion, by custom, by bargaining, even on

3
4 Studying Politics

occasion by voting. What makes them political, however, is their

collective character, affecting and committing those who belong to the
group.
Politics does not always involve conflict. Indeed, one reason for
studying politics is to search out the conditions under which groups
can achieve their goals peacefully and effectively. In this sense politics is
a constructive and practical subject. However, much of the flavour of
politics springs from the fact that members of a group rarely agree, at
least initially, on what course of action to follow. Even if there is
agreement over goals, there may still be disagreement over means.
Disagreements arise, in part, from scarcity. However big the pie, there
is sure to be some haggling over the size of the slices. Limited resources
mean that some goals must be given priority and that some sections
within a group are likely to be treated more favourably than others. But
conflict also springs from natural differences of opinion. A nomadic
tribe must decide collectively when it is time to move on; a modern
nation-state must decide collectively whether it should go to war. When
the group as a whole is involved, there can only be one decision. Thus
the content of politics involves setting goals and taking decisions for a
group, as well as deciding how resources should be distributed within it.
The mere existence of a collective problem is not always enough to
generate the political will needed for a collective solution. Indeed it often
seems that the larger the group, the more difficult a solution becomes.
Consider the issue of the environment as an example. This is a classic,
and fundamental, collective concern. In this case, the entire world forms
the relevant group. Whoever you are, and wherever you live, you share
an interest with everyone else in preventing global warming and
depletion of the ozone layer. But the countries of the world find it
hard, though we hope not impossible, to overcome these problems. This
is partly because heavy polluters (such as the United States) are often the
slowest to adopt environmentally friendly policies. One problem of
politics is to explain why such massive gaps exist between acknowl-
edging a collective problem and agreeing a collective solution.
Our definition of politics as the process by which groups make
collective decisions is relatively neutral. Other definitions are more
evaluative. For example, in popular speech 'politics' is often used in a
critical sense, to indicate the unscrupulous pursuit of private advantage.
At the other extreme some scholars wish to reserve the term politics for
the more civilised modes of decision-making. 'Why call a struggle for
power "politics'" asked Crick (1982), 'when it is simply a struggle for
power?' Crick preferred to define politics more positively, as the
'activity by which differing interests within a given unit of rule are
conciliated by giving them a share in power in proportion to their
 Political Concepts 5

importance to the welfare and the survival of their community.' The

problem is that this defines conflict out of politics. From Crick's
perspective, politics was an ideal to aim at rather than a reality to be
described.
There is a political aspect to much of our everyday activity. However,
as social groups and organisations grow more complex, political activity
becomes recurrent, and stable patterns of collective decision-making
emerge. A regular and settled pattern of decision-making is termed
government. Universities, companies, clubs, churches and trade unions
all possess government in so far as they have regular procedures for
making and enforcing decisions. In its broadest sense, government
simply indicates this condition of orderly rule.
Our concern, however, is with decisions which are inherently
collective, affecting the whole society. This book is about government
in the public sphere, rather than the government of private, or lower,
organisations. Primarily, we are concerned with the political direction
of government at national level - and indeed the term government is
often used in just this sense, to refer to ministers in charge of major
departments.
But we also need two broader terms. The first is the state. This covers
the whole range of offices that make and enforce collective decisions for
society. Ministers, judges, legislators, bureaucrats, generals and the
police all form part of a single network of public offices - and that
network is known by the umbrella term 'the state'. The government is
the core of the state but the two terms have distinct meanings, as shown
in Figure 1.1. We examine the state in the next section.

Figure 1.1 Government, state political system and society

SOCIETY

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM

THE STATE

I GOVERNMENT I
6 Studying Politics

The other term we need to introduce here is the political system. A

rather elusive notion, this covers all those forces which impinge upon
the state. Thus the political system is a broader term again. Parties,
voters and interest groups are not formally part of the state but they are
part of the political system. This is because they both affect, and are
influenced by, those who govern. The political system is a concept
rather than an object. It does not exist in the same direct sense as the
government. Even so, the political system is the natural focus of political
science (see also pp. 33-6) .

• The state
The state is an abstract idea but an extremely powerful one: 'the state
benefits and it threatens. Now it is "us" and often it is "them". It is an
abstraction, but in its name men are jailed, or made rich on defence
contracts, or killed in wars' (Edelman 1964, p. 1).
We live in a world of states. Most of the earth's surface is now
parcelled up between governments which claim an exclusive right to rule
their particular territory. Uninhabited areas like the Antarctic, and
nomadic tribes that wander across national boundaries, are an
uncomfortable fit within this state 'system'. In reality, of course, all
governments are influenced by developments outside their territory; all
nations trade, many go to war, and ideas know no boundaries. No
nation is an island, entire unto itself. But in theory even the smallest and
weakest state is still a sovereign body. So what exactly is a 'state'?
The state refers to the authoritative decision-making institutions for
an entire society, to which all other groups, institutions and persons are
legally subject. In other words, the state is legally supreme: in the last
resort, its authority is compulsory. The state is the ultimate regulator of
the legitimate use of force within its territory (Dahl 1984).
This does not mean that the state is the only institution in society to
use force. There is, of course, criminal violence, sporting violence and
parental violence. Nor does our definition mean that the state is
maintained in being solely by force. Violence is an unstable source of
power, at least in the long run. What our definition does imply,
however, is that the state must successfully uphold its claim to regulate
the use of force by other institutions, public and private. Few people
would claim that criminals have a right to shoot policemen, but most
people would agree that there are circumstances in which policemen
may be justified in shooting criminals - for example, in dealing with
armed robbers, kidnappers and terrorists.
When the state's monopoly of the legitimate use of force is threatened,
 Political Concepts 7

its continued existence is at stake. Civil wars, for example, are in essence
disputes about which government should control the state in a given
territory. While the conflict continues, there is no legitimate authority,
perhaps indeed no state .

• Sovereignty
The state is two-faced. The hard side, often hidden from view, is its
willingness to use force to get its way. The softer side, no less important,
rests on the state's ability to convince its citizens of the rightful nature of
its power. The notion of sovereignty is linked to the softer of the state's
two faces. Sovereignty refers to the fount of authority in society. The
concept is legal (de jure) rather than practical (de facto).
Sovereignty belongs to the body which has the right to make laws for
a country. In Britain, for example, this body is Parliament. With one
major qualification, Britain is an example of clear, concentrated
sovereignty. Parliament can make whatever laws it likes, it cannot
bind its successors, judges cannot overturn its legislation and no other
body can make laws applying to the country. The qualification is
provided by the European Community (EC). EC regulations apply
directly to Britain, as to other member states, even if the regulations
have not been approved by national parliaments.
The law-making body possesses internal sovereignty - the right to
make laws applying within its territory. But sovereignty also has an
external dimension (Scruton 1983). External sovereignty is the recogni-
tion in international law that a state has jurisdiction (authority) over a
territory. It means the state is answerable for that jurisdiction in
international law. External sovereignty matters because all states claim
the right to regulate the relationships between their country and the rest
of the world. In fact external sovereignty grows ever more important as
the world becomes more interdependent. To claim sovereignty is to put
a warning sign to other states, saying 'Keep Out!' In reality, no state has
full control over events within its borders but this does not annul the
state's claim to sovereignty.
The traditional theory of sovereignty stressed the need for a single,
sovereign body within a defined territory. In his Commentaries on the
Laws of England (1765-70) William Blackstone observes that 'there is
and must be in every state a supreme, irresistible, absolute and
uncontrolled authority, in which the right of sovereignty resides.'
Blackstone's view summarised an interpretation first developed by the
French philosopher Jean Bodin (1529-96). Bodin defined sovereignty as
the untrammelled and undivided power to make laws. Bodin's aim was
8 Studying Politics

to uphold the privileges of the French monarchy and his work under-
pinned the later development of the absolute monarchy in France.
In today's more democratic and interdependent world, identifying the
location of sovereignty is not as straightforward as the traditional
theory assumes. In the United States, for example, sovereignty is shared
between the Congress, the President, the Supreme Court and the fifty
states which make up the federal republic. America has constitutional
government, indeed more so than the United Kingdom, but it is a system
which diffuses, rather than concentrates, authority. In a sense, the
United States is a case of sovereignty without a sovereign.
Even in countries with parliamentary government, we would argue
that the people must at least share sovereignty with parliament, since
parliament's authority arises in part from its representative role. Hence
in practice locating sovereignty is not quite as simple as the idea of the
supremacy of parliament makes out.
Interdependence between countries also clouds the issue of sover-
eignty. The expanding range of international commitments taken on by
nation-states reduces the room for manoeuvre available to governments.
The emergence of international organisations such as the European
Community, which has the ability to bypass national parliaments in
some areas, also threatens traditional ideas of sovereignty. These
changes are slowly diluting the notion of sovereignty, as the gap grows
between the fiction of a single source of sovereignty and the reality of
inte~dependence. Blackstone and Bodin have had their day .

• Power
Power is fundamental to politics. It is one of the building blocks of
political science - as central to us as the concept of money is in
economics. While all political scientists accept the importance of
power, they differ on how it should be conceived, defined and measured.
In a broad sense, power is the production of intended effects. It is the
ability to get what we want. To take an obvious example, presidents
have more power than do peasants because presidents exert more
influence over the course of events. Notice that the emphasis here is
on power to rather than power over - on the capacity to achieve
objectives, rather than to exercise control over other people. The 'power
to' approach is associated with the American sociologist Talcott Parsons
(1967). He regarded political power as the capacity of a government to
draw on the commitments of its citizens so as to achieve collective goals
- such as law and order, protection from attack and economic growth.
The more powerful the government, the more effective it would be at
 Political Concepts 9

achieving the goals of the community. For Parsons, then, power in

politics was not just a matter of one social group or political party
jostling with others to win control of the state. Rather, power was the
tool which enabled rulers to achieve the objectives of society.
Parsons' view of power is regarded as too narrow (and too con-
servative) by many political scientists. They believe politics is more than
a technical task of implementing a vision shared by a whole society.
They see politics as an arena of conflict over what goals should be
pursued. Thus they tend to define power in terms of whose vision wins
out. What matters is whose hand is on the wheel. For example, is the
government run by a conservative party whose primary concern is to
protect business interests? Or by a socialist party committed to the trade
union cause?
The underlying view of power here is based on the idea of conflict
rather than consensus. In this perspective, power consists in the ability
to get one's way, usually in the face of opposition. It is a matter of
getting people to do things they would not otherwise have done (Dahl
1957). This is a question of power over others, rather than power to
achieve shared objectives.
In our view, both 'power to' and 'power over' are important. It is just
as important to ask, 'how much power does a government have?' as it is
to ask, 'who exercises that power?' The first question concerns the
quantity of power while the second asks about how it is distributed.
'How much power does a government have?' parallels the economist's
question, 'How many goods does an economy produce?' On the other
hand, the distributive question, 'Who exercises that power?' is the
political scientist's equivalent of, 'Who is rich and who is poor?'
To amplify this distinction between 'power to' and 'power over',
consider the situation of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. At the time,
many commentators concentrated on the intricate political manoeuvr-
ings then taking place in Moscow. Was Gorbachev losing touch with the
reformers and throwing his hand in with the conservative old guard? An
interesting question, to be sure, but one which ignored the declining
quantity of power available to Moscow. The most important develop-
ment in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s was the
collapse of central authority. The republics were ignoring, and often
contradicting, directives ftom the central authority in Moscow. The
central government had ceased to govern. The Soviet ship was sinking
while the officers (and many journalists) squabbled over whose hands
were on the wheel. Yet if no one governed, what did it matter who
governed? Thus the Soviet Union in its death throes was an example of
how the quantity of power available to a central government can decline
to the point where the issue of its distribution became secondary.
10 Studying Politics

Power can be exercised in a variety of ways. If we asked you to

express 'power' through a symbolic gesture, you would probably raise a
clenched fist. In some ways, this image is appropriate. Violence is
undoubtedly one form of power. The frequency of wars, both between
nations and within them, testifies to its importance in history. But, just
as history is about more than warfare, so power involves more than
force. Boulding (1989) provides a straightforward classification of forms
of power. He says people get their way through using force, making
deals, or creating obligations (see Table 1.1). To put the same point
more informally, we can distinguish between the stick, the deal and the
kiss.
The threat of force (the stick) is associated with coercive institutions
such as the military and the police. It arises when A says to B, 'You do
something I want - or else.' Force is a basis of state power and, although
it is only a background condition in normal civilian politics, its presence
still underpins many political relationships. For example, the state
threatens to deprive us of our liberty if we do not pay its taxes, fight
in its wars and obey its laws. Often the threat is left implicit, but that is a
sign of its effectiveness, not its irrelevance. The stick which stays in the
cupboard is the biggest stick of all.
Exchange power (the deal) is more common, and more effective, than
the stick. It arises when A says to B, 'You do something I want and in
return I will do something you want'. Whereas the stick is based on the
threat of negative sanctions (punishment), the deal is based on the
prospect of positive sanctions (reward). But both are forms of power
because they are means through which one person seeks to change the
behaviour of another.
Exchange is the basis of economic relationships but it is also
extremely important in politics. For example, relations between the

Table 1.1 Forms of power

'Use force' 'Make deals' 'Create obligations'
(the stick) (the deal) (the kiss)

Nature Coercive threats Productive exchanges Integrative

relationships
Motive for Fear Gain Commitment
obedience
Institutions Military Economic Social

Source: adapted from K. Boulding, Three Faces of Power (London: Sage, 1989).
 Political Concepts 11

citizen and the state are often analysed in terms of an exchange, or

'contract', between the two. The basis of the exchange is this. Citizens
agree to subject themselves to the authority of the state. In return, the
state provides an umbrella of protection: a police force, an education
system, a welfare safety-net. Citizens pay their taxes and the state
provides services. The 'contract' is imaginary but the exchange under-
lying it influences how citizens behave. Put simply, when people feel the
state gives as well as takes, they are more likely to obey - and the regime
becomes more stable.
Creating obligations (the kiss) refers to the capacity to inspire loyalty,
respect and commitment. It arises when A says to B, 'You do something
I want because you love me, respect me, or are in other ways committed
to me.' When we look for examples of such obligations, we naturally
think first of social institutions such as the family, churches or charities.
We do not naturally turn to politics. However, of all three forms of
power, the capacity to inspire is probably of greatest importance.
Nationalism and religion are examples of powerful forces which have
been exploited by rulers (and, even more, by their opponents) to
motivate people to lay down their lives.
Some people argue that the whole idea of exerting power through
commitment is a contradiction in terms. If B does what A wants
voluntarily, is A really exercising power over B? If people volunteer to
fight in a war, is the state exercising power over them by encouraging
them to sign up? This depends on whether we want a narrow or broad
definition of power. The narrower approach sees power as the ability to
impose one's views against opposition. But radical political scientists
would claim that this is too restrictive. They argue that 'love power' is
the most insidious form of it.
For example Lukes (1974) claims that power is exercised whenever the
real interests of people are ignored, even if these people are unaware of
their interests. For Lukes, A exercises power over B when A affects B in a
manner contrary to B's interests. So, a factory which pollutes a town
may well try to hide this fact from the inhabitants. If it succeeds, then
Lukes believes it has exercised power, even though the inhabitants are
unaware of the pollution - and hence cannot object to it. Their interests
have nonetheless been harmed.
Equally, a government that whips up patriotic fervour in order to help
military recruitment is still exerting power over the recruits - for can it
be in their real interest to lay down their lives in a far-off field? Whether
or not we regard these as examples of power, we must accept that
manipulating the knowledge, values and preferences of others is by far
the most efficient way to control them.
12 Studying Politics

Political power typically involves a combination of force, exchange

and obligation. Consider taxation as an example. Taking money off
people is an essential, but tricky, task which any state must perform
with at least some efficiency. One reason people pay up is coercion: they
fear the heavy hand of the state if they are caught evading payment.
Another reason is exchange: people are willing to pay through taxes for
such services as health, education and welfare. And the final reason is a
sense of obligation: what would happen if everyone else evaded their
taxes? Thus, the power of the modern state rests on its ability to draw on
a variety of sources of obligation, each of which reinforces the other.
To summarise, we have reviewed three approaches to power. These
are:

1. Power as the capacity to achieve collective goals;

2. Power as the ability to impose one's will against opposition;
3. Power as affecting people in a way which runs against their own
interests.

The second view probably comes closest to an ordinary, common-

sense interpretation of power. However, the other, less coercive modes
are just as important as ways of influencing people. And, in practice,
power relationships are usually based on a combination of factors.

• Elitist theories
For students of comparative politics, a crucial question is how power is
distributed in societies. This obviously varies between democracies and
dictatorships. However, for one group of thinkers, known as the elitists,
the similarities in the distribution of power between societies exceed the
differences. Whatever the form of government, they suggest, a ruling
elite is inevitable - even in so-called 'democracies'.
The concept of a ruling elite is associated with three scholars: the
Italians Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941),
and the German Robert Michels (1876-1936). This trio form the
'classical elitists' who profoundly influenced thinking about power in
twentieth-century political science.
Pareto (S. Finer 1966) argued that in all societies there is a division
between three groups:

1. a small governing elite;

2. a non-governing elite (e.g. the wealthy and the aristocracy);
3. the mass population or non-elite.
 Political Concepts 13

The composition of the elite obviously changes over time - there is a

'circulation of elites' - but an elite is always present.
Mosca (1939, 1958) argued that the rule of a governing elite is ensured
by its superior organisation and calibre: 'the dominion of an organised
minority, obeying a single impulse, over the unorganised majority is
inevitable. Members of a ruling minority regularly have some attribute,
real or apparent, which is highly esteemed.'
Michels (1949) studied power in specific organisations rather than in
society as a whole. He formulated the famous 'iron law of oligarchy'.
This states, 'Who says organisation, says oligarchy.' ('Oligarchy' means
rule by the few.) In a path-breaking study, Michels showed that his law
applied even to socialist parties, with their supposedly democratic
organisation. Michels inferred from this that if even parties which set
out to be democratic end up under the tight control of their leaders, then
his law is likely to apply to most other parties and organisations as well.
Later, McKenzie (1963) applied this analysis to Britain's Labour Party.
He showed that the constitutional supremacy of the party's annual
conference did not match the reality of power: increasingly the leaders
dominated the party.
The elitist view of power has two implications. First it leads to
scepticism about the feasibility of real democracy, in the full sense of
government by (and not just for) the people. These doubts led Pareto
and especially Michels to sympathise with fascism. More significantly,
they also led to Schumpeter's 'realistic' restatement of democracy as a
system of competing elites (see p. 50).
Secondly elite theorists do not always believe that the governing elite
is the preserve of a particular social group. They were in fact reacting
against Marx's notion of a ruling class - the idea that an economic
group rules politically. In understanding why elites develop, the crucial
point is political, not economic: the elite is organised but the mass is not.
So, to use a fashionable phrase, elite theorists believed in the 'relative
autonomy' of the state.
Empirical investigations of ruling elites developed in the United States
from the 1920s onwards. These were studies by sociologists of the
distribution of power in local communities - for example of Muncie,
Indiana by Robert and Helen Lynd (1929) and of Atlanta, Georgia, by
Floyd Hunter (1953). These investigations generally concluded that a
small number of people, mainly from upper or upper middle class
backgrounds, and/or representing business interests, were predominant
in the community. In interviews, the same people would be nominated
again and again as community 'influentials'. So these studies suggested
that the concept of a governing elite fitted local communities, even in the
supposedly democratic United States.
14 Studying Politics

Wright Mills applied these findings to the national level in the United
States. In his influential study of The Power Elite (1956), Mills argued
that three interlocking groups dominated the 'command posts' of
American society: political leaders (generally declining in power);
corporate leaders (who joined the political directorate during the New
Deal in the 1930s); and military leaders (brought to power by America's
entry into the Second World War. Similar high-status backgrounds oiled
the wheels of communication between all three groups, though Mills did
acknowledge that their interests did not always converge. Even so it was
these elite groups, most of whom are unelected, that controlled the
direction of American politics. Today Wright Mills' theory can be
regarded as a version of corporatism (see pp. 224-7), a thesis which
maintains that elected representatives have been losing power to big
institutional interests, particularly business and the military .

• Pluralist theories
Just as elitism was a reaction to the naive expectations of early
democrats, so pluralism was a reaction against the 'ultra-realism' of
the elitists. Where elitism sees rule by a minority, pluralism sees rule by
minorities. Pluralism is a doctrine of diversity. It claims that modern
democracies (and, perhaps, other forms of government as well) are open
and competitive arenas in which many different interests and groups
compete for influence. Pluralism is a midway position between elitism
and democracy. Unlike elitism, it claims there is no single, dominant
elite. But unlike a 'majority rule' view of democracy, it accepts that the
majority does not govern. What we have (and what we should welcome,
according to the pluralists) is government by the many, rather than
government by the majority (see Figure 1.2).
Pluralists are critical of the reputational method of studying power
used in the community studies. This method consisted simply of asking
people in a community to say who were the leading figures in that
community. The results were regarded as valid if there was substantial
overlap in the answers received - as there invariably was. Clearly this
was far too crude. It meant the researchers were simply relying on
people's beliefs about who was in charge of a particular town, instead of
making their own direct study of the power structure. Dahl suggested
that to establish the existence of a ruling elite we would have to examine
a series of concrete decisions where the preferences of the 'ruling elite'
run counter to those of other groups. If the 'ruling elite' consistently
prevails, the elitist interpretation stands. If not, then either the 'ruling
elite' has been misspecified or (more likely) there is no such group at all.
 EI'''L 666
Political Concepts 15

--- -
- --- -
- --- -
-
Mass

The political system Economic Education Defence

policy policy policy

Elite model: minority rule Pluralist model: minorities rule.

A single elite dominates all Different elites in charge of different areas.
policy areas. Weaker distinction between elite and mass.
Sharp distinction between
elite and mass.

Figure 1.2 Elitist and pluralist views of power

Dahl adopted this decision-making method in his own influential

study of New Haven, Connecticut (1961). He found that in this city no
single group was predominant across all policy areas such as education,
urban redevelopment and political nominations. 'In each issue area
different actors appeared, their roles were different and the kinds of
alternatives which they had to choose among were different' (Polsby
1963, p. 60). So Dahl's thesis was that whatever local 'experts' might say
in interviews about the power structure of New Haven, careful scrutiny
of key decisions revealed no cohesive ruling elite.
This pattern of key figures varying across different areas of public
policy was then developed into a general theory of political pluralism.
Many writers in the 1960s and 1970s characterised Western democracies
as pluralistic in their power structure. They dismissed Wright Mills'
thesis of the power elite as a sophisticated conspiracy theory which
could not be sustained when the complexity and openness of real
decision-making was examined. Many writers also suggested that
pluralism was desirable: it was presented as an ideal as well as a
description.
Perhaps the key feature of pluralism is that different minorities make,
or influence, decisions in different areas. Groups with a special interest
in particular areas have their say on that topic but rarely go beyond it.
For example, generals express strong preferences on defence matters;
teachers have their say on education policy. But neither impinges greatly
on the other's territory. Thus the fragmented nature of pluralism means
that intense and well-informed views receive special weight. Pluralists
believe this improves on the strict democratic principle of 'one man, one
vote'.
16 Studying Politics

Another contrast between pluralism and majority democracy is that

pluralists accept that only a very small minority of the population
determines policy in most areas. For pluralists, it is sufficient that
ordinary people should have the opportunity to join the club if they
wish to do so. Under pluralism the channels between voters and
decision-makers are open but they are not always activated. Thus
pluralists adapted traditional democratic ideas to make them fit more
closely to what they saw as the realities of power in Western societies.
Since the 1970s, pluralists have been on the defensive in political
science. The emphasis on decision-making has been criticised for
ignoring 'non-decisions' - that is, issues which are not raised because
the powers-that-be wish to keep them off the agenda (Bachrach and
Baratz 1962). Decision-makers may well be in agreement about what
issues they should not discuss (e.g. their own positions of influence) even
if they do disagree on the matters before them.
Furthermore many people who do not participate in politics, and a
large number of interest groups which are not formally recognised by
decision-makers, believe that the system has nothing to offer them.
Given such beliefs, it becomes purely theoretical to argue that the
channels of political influence are open to all citizens who wish to
express a view. The fact is that a significant minority of the population
is too indifferent, or too alienated, to get involved.
Finally, critics allege that the pluralists understate the independent
role which politicians play in shaping policy and in deciding which
interests to respond to. Even the mayor in Dahl's New Haven was
influential across a wide range of policies. Where pluralists see the state
as an arena of political struggle, contemporary political scientists are
more likely to stress that the state is an active participant in the struggle
(SkocpoI1985). So increasingly it is felt that the pluralists only captured
one facet of the distribution of power in Western societies .

• Authority
Coercive power is an inefficient form of rule. Slavery is inefficient
because the slaves need to be watched over and in any case they lack
commitment to their work. Coercive power is unstable as well as
inefficient: those who live by the sword often die by it. So the
fundamental problem confronting rulers is how to legitimise their
position - how to convert power into authority. But what is authority?
Authority is the right to rule. It exists when subordinates acknowl-
edge the right of superiors to give orders. A general may exercise power
over enemy soldiers, but he does not have authority over them; this is
 Political Concepts 17

restricted to his own forces. At the same time, authority is more than
voluntary compliance. To acknowledge the authority of rulers does not
mean you agree with their decisions. It means only that you accept their
right to make decisions and your duty to obey them. For example, you
may not agree with your teacher's request for you to read this book, but
here you are, studying away. You have accepted the teacher's authority
over you.
Relationships of authority are still hierarchical. Often indeed they are
just a fig-leaf covering the threat of coercion. Soldiers obey generals
because they face a court martial if they disobey; those who claim
authority may not wait for it to be acknowledged. Equally students obey
teachers because they fear the sanctions of disobedience, even though
these are (we hope) far milder than a court martial. In fact political
relationships typically combine elements of both power and authority.
Just as power has several sources, so does authority. The German
sociologist Max Weber (1957, first published 1922) provided a path-
breaking analysis of the bases of authority. He distinguished three ways
of validating political power (see Table 1.2). The first type is by
reference to the sanctity of tradition:
In traditional authority the present order is viewed as sacred, eternal and
inviolable. The dominant person or group, usually defined by heredity, is
thought to have been pre-ordained to rule over the rest. The subjects are
bound to the ruler by personal dependence and a tradition of loyalty, further
reinforced by such cultural beliefs as the divine right of kings.

As Blau (1963) points out, nearly all systems of government before the
modern state exemplify traditional claims to authority. But traditional
authority is ill-suited to changing societies. In the modern world,
traditional authority only provided the basis of rule in a few dynastic
monarchies such as Saudi Arabia, Oman and Nepal. Even some of these
have now bowed to the democratic wind which blew across the world in
the late 1980s.
Charismatic authority is Weber's second type of authority. Here
leaders are obeyed because they inspire their followers, who credit
their heroes with exceptional and sometimes supernatural qualities.
Where traditional authority is based on the past, charismatic authority
spurns it. Contrary to popular use, charisma is not for Weber an
intrinsic quality of a leader: rather, charisma characterises the relation-
ship between leaders and followers. Charismatic leaders are inspiring
figures who emerge in times of crisis and upheaval. Jesus Christ,
Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King or, indeed, Adolf Hitler are
prominent examples. The role of Ayatollah Khomeini in transforming
Iran after the fall of the Shah in 1979 is a more recent illustration.
18 Studying Politics

Table 1.2 Weber's classification of types of authority

Type Basis Example
--------
Traditional Custom and the established way Monarchy
of doing things
Charismatic Intense commitment to the leader Many revolutionary
and his message leaders
Legal rational Rules and procedures - the office, Bureaucracy
not the person

However charismatic authority is intrinsically short lived unless the

authority-figure can transfer his own authority to a permanent office or
institution. This process is called the 'routinisation' of charisma. In Iran,
for example, Ayatollah Khomeini established an Islamic regime which
continued after his death in 1989.
The third base for authority in Weber's scheme is termed legal-
rational. This is the exact opposite of charismatic authority. It means
that obedience is owed not to an individual but to a set of principles - a
government of laws, rather than men. Thus subordinates in an
organisation must obey lawful commands from their superiors, irre-
spective of who occupies these higher offices. Weber believed legal-
rational authority was becoming predominant in modern society and he
was surely right.
Modern bureaucracies are the best example of organisations based on
legal-rational authority. We obey laws not just from fear, nor from
tradition, nor from personal allegiance to the chief of police, but because
we feel law and order is necessary and desirable in a rational society. We
acknowledge the authority of the law - and not just the power of those
who enforce it.
Legal-rational authority can limit the abuse of power. Because it is
based on the office rather than the person, we can speak of officials
'going beyond their authority'. If we are brave enough, we can then
legitimately refuse to obey. The police are entitled to ask you questions
but, in a well-regulated country, they do not have the authority to beat
you up if you refuse to answer. In practice, people who possess the
means of force often apply them, even when they are not entitled to do
so. But basing power on the office rather than the individual, and
spelling out the limits of that power, does help to contain abuse.
The main limit of Weber's classification is that it says little about how
power is converted to authority. Suppose you have led a successful
military coup in a small African country. You have sent the previous
 Political Concepts 19

president packing, you have taken over the radio station and you have
put your brother-in-law in charge of the army. What do you do next?
How do you build your authority so that you do not suffer exactly the
same fate as your predecessor? This is essentially a political task. The
gun may have propelled you into office but it will not keep you there for
ever.
Mere survival will help. Obedience which is at first coerced eventually
becomes habitual. As B. Goodwin (1987, p. 215) comments, 'Today's
authority is the site of yesterday's struggle for power.' Mere acquies-
cence may shore you up for a good while but you will do best in the long
term if you can transform habitual obedience into genuine allegiance.
You cannot afford to ignore the mass of the population. If they become
dissatisfied with your performance, your enemies will have an excuse, or
perhaps good reason, to move against you. In short, conquerors become
kings by creating a stable basis of support. If they show no concern for
those they rule, they will eventually confront the problems of ineffective
and unstable rule which destroy nearly all tyrants .

• Legitimacy
Legitimacy is a similar concept to authority. Legitimacy also refers to
rightful power. The difference is that we normally use the term
'legitimacy' in discussing an entire system of government, whereas
'authority' often refers to specific positions within a government. Thus
we tend to speak of the legitimacy of a regime but the authority of an
official.
To add to the confusion, legitimacy is used in a different sense by
political theorists and political scientists. Political theorists are con-
cerned with principles. They say a government is legitimate if it
conforms to some moral principle - for example, that it has been fairly
elected. Political scientists, on the other hand, are concerned with
politics as it is. They say a government is legitimate if its citizens
regard it as such. Whether a government is democratic is only one
influence on legitimacy in this second sense. For instance, no one would
describe Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini as a democratic regime.
Nonetheless he came to power through a popular revolution which
gave his regime considerable 'legitimacy', at least to begin with. But this
authority came from Islamic, rather than democratic, principles.
It is also important to distinguish between legitimacy and legality.
Legitimacy refers to whether people accept the validity of a law; legality
refers to whether the law was made in accordance with correct
procedures, normally as laid down in the constitution. Regulations
20 Studying Politics

can be legal without being legitimate. For example, the majority black
population rightly considered South Africa's apartheid 'laws' to be
illegitimate, even though they were passed in accordance with the
country's constitution.
Conversely, illegal action is sometimes seen as legitimate by at least
some sections of the population, particularly when it takes the form of
peaceful protest to achieve a collective goal. In the twentieth century,
civil disobedience has provided a constructive force for political change
around the world. It has contributed to movements for equal voting
rights and for national independence from colonial rule. The success of
these movements shows that legitimacy is different from, and more
fundamental than, legality.

Summary
1. Politics is the process by which groups take, or fail to make, collective
decisions. The flavour of politics springs from the fact that members of a group
rarely agree on what decision should be reached. Although the study of politics
is not just about conflict, it often involves looking at how conflicts are resolved.

2. Nearly all societies develop specialised institutions for reaching collective

decisions. Government is the decision-making body for the society as a whole.
The government forms a leading element of the state, a broader term than
'government'. The state also extends to those institutions that advise the
government (e.g. the bureaucracy), and also to those that enforce its laws
(e.g. the police).

3. We can also define the state as the body which possesses sovereignty, both
internal and external. 'Internal' sovereignty is the right to make laws for a
country. 'External' sovereignty belongs to the body which is recognised
internationally as having jurisdiction over a territory. The traditional theory
of sovereignty maintained that it must be based on a single entity. However, the
diffusion of power within countries, and growing interdependence between
them, means that this theory is becoming less relevant.

4. In a broad sense, power is the ability to get what we want. This is often
exercised through wielding power over others. This, in turn, takes several
forms: using force, making deals or creating obligations.

5. Elitism and pluralism are two major models of how power is distributed in
large societies. Elitism is the view that a small minority dominates all
governments, even 'democratic' ones. Pluralism is the view that many different
groups have a say in decisions, even if the majority as such does not rule.
Pluralism is rule by minorities, rather than by one small elite.
 Political Concepts 21

6. Authority is the right to rule. Acc-ording to Weber, it can be based on

tradition, charisma or law. Modern societies are characterised by lawful
authority. A key task for new rulers is to convert power into authority, usually
by performing services for those they rule. When rulers fail to do this, they often
lose power.

7. A legitimate government is one which has authority in the eyes of the

people it rules. Legitimacy is not just based on election; it too can derive from
tradition, religion and from economic or military success. Legitimacy is distinct
from legality. A legitimate law is one people feel obliged to obey. A legal
regulation is one passed according to constitutional procedures.

DisclIssion points
1. Can Robinson Crusoe engage in politics on his desert island? Why (not)?
2. Why is it difficult to reach international agreements over (a) the arms trade
(b) ecological problems?
3. Is politics possible without government?
4. 'Political power grows from the barrel of a gun' (Mao Zedong). Does it?
5. Who has exerted most power over you in your life - parents, teachers,
advertisers, or economic policy makers?
6. Does the distribution of power in (a) local government (b) your college
follow an elitist or a pluralist model? How would you go about researching that
question?
7. Do the following have authority over you, or merely power: (a) your
politics instructor (b) your police force (c) your national parliament?

Key reading
Dahl R. (1984) Modern Political Analysis, 4th edn (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:
Prentice-Hall. A perceptive introduction to political analysis by a leading
American pluralist.
Goodwin, B. (1987) Using Political Ideas, 2nd edn (Chichester: Wiley). A wide-
ranging introduction to political ideas and ideologies, written by a political
theorist.
Laver M. (1983) Invitation to Politics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Deep but not
impossible, this is a rewarding introduction, written by a political scientist.
Miller D. (ed.) (1987) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell). The 350 entries include the concepts covered in
this chapter, and many more besides. A useful reference book.
22 Studying Politics

Furthl.?r rl.?ading
On the definition of politics, Dahl (1984) is a clear, conventional guide. On the
state, Carnoy (1984) writes from an American perspective while Dunleavy and
O'Leary (1987) adopt a British approach.
Boulding (1989) provides a fascinating introduction to power from a social
scientist's perspective. For a more political and radical approach to power, see
Lukes' accessible book (1974); his edited book (Lukes 1986) is also useful. On
authority, the classic by Weber (1957, first published 1922), is the basis of
modern thinking; the review by Blau (1963) helps to clarify Weber's approach.
For a general introduction to authority, see Watt (1982).
On elites, see S. Finer (1966) or Parry (1969). Dahl (1961) is the classic
pluralist case-study; for criticisms, see Bachrach and Baratz (1962) and
Bachrach (1967). More recent criticisms of pluralism can be found in Skocpol
(1985) and Alford and Friedland (1986).
 • Chapter 2 •
The Comparative Approach
The advantages of comparison 24 Frameworks of comparison 31
The problems of comparison 27 Techniques of comparison 37
Controlling comparisons 30

Comparative politics has no monopoly on the comparative method.

Indeed comparison is the foundation of any systematic branch of
knowledge. Scientists cannot work out how quickly smoking kills
people just by looking at the life expectancy of smokers. They have to
compare this with the life expectancy for an otherwise similar group of
non-smokers (the difference, by the way, is about four years). As the
American political scientist James Coleman used to tell his students,
'Y ou can't be scientific if you're not comparing.'
In the physical sciences these comparisons can be done in the
laboratory, under carefully controlled conditions. The difficulty with
comparative politics is that such precise experiments are rarely feasible.
We cannot say to the government of India, 'You will change your
electoral system to proportional representation (PR) because we want to
see whether it will increase the number of parties in your parliament.'
Instead, we have to work with variation which occurs naturally in the
real world. We have to ask whether, in practice, parliaments elected by
PR contain more parties than those elected by other methods.
The distinctive feature of comparative politics is its focus on
comparison across nations. Most comparisons are done between
countries with similar political structures: for example, analysing the
party systems of the countries of Western Europe, or investigating prime
ministerial power in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. But
contrasting comparisons are also possible between countries with
different forms of government. For example, we could compare the
distribution of power in the United States and China.
In this chapter we discuss both the strengths and the dangers of the
comparative approach. We then review the main frameworks and
techniques available to practitioners of comparative politics.

23
24 Studying Politics

• The advantages of comparison

What is to be gained by comparing politics in different countries? Why
compare across nations?

D Providing context
The first answer is straightforward: to find out more about the places
we know least about. In 1925 Munro described the purpose of his
textbook on foreign governments as aiding 'the comprehension of daily
news from abroad.' Background information about foreign govern-
ments not only helps to interpret new developments, it also enables
one's own country to be seen in a new light. For instance, most people in
Europe and the Commonwealth probably think of parliamentary
systems as the natural form of government. However, directly elected
presidents, on the American model, are rather more common in the
world today (Derbyshire and Derbyshire 19,91, p. 56). Through
comparison, say Dogan and Pelassy (1990), we discover our own
ethnocentrism and the means of overcoming it. 'What know they of
England', asked Kipling 'who only England know?'

D Testing hypotheses
Modern students of comparative politics seek to understand a variety of
political systems not just for its own sake but in order to formulate and
test hypotheses about the political process. This is the second reason for
studying politics comparatively. It enables us to develop and scrutinise
such questions as: Do 'first past the post' electoral systems always
produce a two-party system? Are two-chambered assemblies only found
under federalism? Do revolutions occur after defeat in war?
As these questions illustrate, a hypothesis suggests a relationship
between two or more factors or variables, for example, between
electoral and party systems, or between war and revolution. Verified
hypotheses are valuable not just for their own sake but because they are
essential for explaining the particular. Consider a specific question: Why
is there no major socialist party in the United States? An obvious answer
is: because the United States was built on, and retains, a strongly
individualistic culture. This answer may seem to be particular but in
fact it is quite general. It implies that other countries with similar values
will also lack a strong socialist party. It also implies that countries with a
 The Comparative Approach 25

more collective outlook will be more likely to have a party of the left.
These comparative hypotheses would need to be confirmed before we
could claim a full understanding of our original question about the
United States. Thus the particular calls forth the general. Only theories
can explain specific cases.

o Improving classifications
A third advantage of comparison is that it improves our classifications
of politics. As Aristotle showed over 2000 years ago, classification is a
stepping stone on the journey to explanation (see Exhibit 2.1). For
instance, once constitutions have been classified into written and
unwritten, we can search for the factors which predispose countries to
have one type rather than the other. Similarly, once we classify
executives into presidential and parliamentary types, we can look at
the causes and consequences of each. But without variation, and some
sort of measurement or classification of it, we have nothing to explain.
In short, comparative politics turns constants into variables.

o Making predictions
Generalisations have potential for prediction. This is the final reason for
studying politics comparatively. If we find that proportional representa-
tion (PR) is indeed associated with a multi-party system, we can
reasonably predict at least one effect of introducing PR to countries
such as Canada and India which still use 'first past the post'. Equally, if
we know that electorates dislike high inflation more than high
unemployment, we can advise governments accordingly. We can
predict that an anti-inflation policy is more likely to produce their
own re-election than a full employment policy.
Often, indeed, countries are selected for study precisely for their
predictive value. They are, to use jargon, proto-typical. In the 1830s, de
Tocqueville (1954 ed.) examined the United States because he was
interested in politics in the new democratic age. America was his
example but democracy was his real concern:
I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image
of democracy itself, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its
progress.
In the present day, we might look to Canada to see what voting patterns
look like in a 'de-aligned' electorate where social groups do not
26 Studying Politics

Exhibit 2.1 The origins of comparative politics:

Aristotle"s classification of governments

Aristotle (Greek philosopher, 384--322 Bq, developed a classific-

ation of regimes, based on the governments of 158 Greek city-states.
It is still highly instructive. Aristotle distinguished government by the
one, the few and the many. In each category rulers could govern in
the common interest (the genuine form) or their own interest (the
perverted form). This scheme yields six types of government:

RULE BY
One Few Many

Genuine Kingship Aristocracy Polity

FORM
Perverted Tyranny Oligarchy Democracy

Building on this scheme, Aristotle identified the social character-

istics of rulers in the four types with more than one leader. An
oligarchy is ruled by the rich, an aristocracy by the virtuous.
Democracy is government by the poor. The polity, Aristotle's ideal
form of government, is broadly equated with middle-class rule.
Aristotle went on to use his classification in an analysis of the
causes of change and disorder. He suggested, for example, that
oligarchies are prone to dissension within the ruling elite. Tyrannies,
he thought, are especially susceptible to external attack.
By comparison with more recent classifications, Aristotle's work is
strongly deductive, working from principles to examples. Modern
classification in politics, and indeed other disciplines, tends to be
inductive, seeking to identify actual governments that share a
number of common characteristics. These points notwithstanding,
there can be no doubt that the generalising spirit behind Aristotle's
work is exactly that which motivates modern students of compara-
tive politics.

See: Aristotle (1962) bk. 3, ch.5.

 The Comparative Approach 27

determine how people vote. Thus comparative analysis provides some

capacity to anticipate the future - though the control provided by this
knowledge can of course be used for bad purposes as well as good.
To summarise, the advantages of studying politics comparatively are:

1. Learning about other countries casts fresh light on our own.

2. Comparison enables us to test general hypotheses about politics.
3. Comparison improves our classifications of political processes.
4. Comparison gives us some potential for prediction .

• The problems of comparison

Several problems arise in putting the comparative approach to work.
But Sartori (1970) has warned against the dangers of over-conscious
thinking which leads only to the conclusion that all comparisons have
overwhelming difficulties. So we will describe these problems in order to
be aware of the difficulties, not to present a case against comparative
politics.

Too many variables, too few countries - This is the major problem.
There are between 150 and 200 sovereign states in the world today, the
exact number depending on how sovereignty is measured (Derbyshire
and Derbyshire 1991). Even so, it is rare to find a country which is
identical to another in all respects except for that factor (say, the
electoral system) whose effects we wish to detect. This means that
comparison in political science can never become a full equivalent of the
experiments conducted in the natural scientist's laboratory. We just do
not have enough countries to go round. This is known as the 'small-N'
problem ('N' is the statistician's term for 'number of cases').
To make the same point from another angle, we will never be able to
test all the possible explanations of a political difference between
countries. For example, several plausible reasons can be used to
'explain' why France and Italy had two of the strongest communist
parties in Western Europe. Perhaps the strength of communism was a
reaction against the power of the Catholic Church in these countries.
Perhaps the French and Italian working classes were sympathetic to
communism because the ruling elite had been slow to integrate them
into democratic politics. The point is that we cannot isolate a particular
factor by looking for countries where just that factor is present. The
crucial comparisons are rarely possible: we just run out of countries.
28 Studying Politics

Many countries, one system - In reality, far fewer than 150 'cases' are
available to the student of comparative politics. This is because of
relationships between states. For example it was, in principle, a straight-
forward task to find out those characteristics of government which the
sixteen unambiguously communist states held in common. Some were
obvious to anyone who had studied or lived in a communist state. They
included a dominant single party which maintained a tight control over
society. From such a list, and a contrast with government in non-
communist states, we could have constructed a 'model' of communist
rule - a statement of those factors which identified a pure communist
state.
But there is a problem with this exercise. Would it have given us the
essence of communism - or just the characteristics of Soviet government
which had been imposed on several other communist states by force? In
other words, the idea that we had sixteen separate, independent
examples of the category 'communist state' does not stand up to
scrutiny.
Equally, we cannot look at the revolutions of 1989 in Eastern Europe
as though they were separate cases. The 'revolutions' formed a single
process, unfolding in one country after another. Once journalists had
told the story of communism's collapse in one particular East European
country, they would speculate on where they would meet up next:
would it be Berlin, would it be Bucharest? Again, one single spark
ignited these revolutions: Gorbachev's decision not to maintain
communist rule in Eastern Europe by force. He was the executioner
of communism. In 1989 Eastern Europe experienced an epidemic of
revolutions - but epidemics cannot be understood just by conducting
post-mortems on individual cases. Contagion is the essence of
epidemics.
As countries become more interdependent, so this problem becomes
more acute. For this reason, political scientists (and this book) now
focus on world politics as well as comparative politics. We must think
globally as well as comparatively. The world, as well as the state, is a
crucial unit of analysis. In newspapers as well as books, we read more
and more about 'the world economy' and 'the world financial system'
(Wallerstein 1979). Now, however, the 'small N' problem really is acute,
for there is only one world. When we take the world as our unit, we are
in the position that medical researchers would be in if they had to work
out the causes of measles from studying just one child with the disease.
We can still describe the symptoms but we find it harder to understand
the underlying causes.
Interdependence is a major theme of the modern world. However, this
does not mean the nation-state can be dismissed. It is still national
 The Comparative Approach 29

governments that seek solutions to problems, even if the problems

are shared. It is still national policy-makers who are held accountable
for problems by national electorates. Politics still happens through
nations, even if the dynamics of politics in the late twentieth century
are global.
For example, the revolutions of 1989 may have had a common origin
but their development and outcomes have varied between Czechoslo-
vakia and Bulgaria, or between Hungary and Albania. These contrasts
owe much to national factors, such as the political history, economic
development and ethnic composition of the countries concerned. Even
when different cooks work with the same ingredients, they still deliver
distinctive tastes.

Same phenomenon, different meanings - In comparing political beha-

viour across countries, it is important to remember that the meaning of
an action depends on the conventions of the country concerned. When a
British Member of Parliament (MP) votes against his party in the House
of Commons, this is far more significant than when an American
legislator departs from the party line in the less partisan Congress. To
take another illustration, Western observers are sometimes shocked by
the apparent indifference with which military coups are greeted in third
world countries. They fail to recognise that coups can become a regular
- and fairly peaceful- mechanism for the circulation of elites. In a sense
coups may be the 'functional equivalent' of elections in the West - and
should be compared accordingly.
This problem of the meaning and significance of actions is particu-
larly important in politics. This is because politics is largely conducted
in terms of signals, coded language and symbolic behaviour. At the very
least practitioners of comparative politics should be aware that
comparing like with like is not always straightforward: it requires
some intimacy with each of the countries under scrutiny.

Bias - When does 'strong leadership' become 'dictatorship?' When is a

'terrorist' a 'freedom fighter'? Values cannot be separated from analysis
by fiat; they are ingrained in the language with which we describe the
world and in the concepts through which we view it. For example,
people on the far left (and the far right) generally believe there is an
elitist distribution of power in liberal democracies. They regard the
unpopularity of their own views as a sign that real debate is being
suppressed. On the other hand, people in the middle are more likely to
see pluralism. They take political conflict at face value. So what one sees
depends on where one looks from.
30 Studying PoLitics

This problem of bias and competing values is particularly acute in

comparative politics, where we are often seeking to understand
governments and cultures with different values from our own.
The important question is whether we should even make the attempt
to separate fact and value, analysis and evaluation, in comparative
politics. Though complete objectivity is probably impossible, we believe
that such an effort is worth while. Some aspects of politics, at least, can
be treated in a relatively precise and quantifiable way (for example
comparative electoral behaviour). Furthermore, debate between people
of different political persuasions about such contentious matters as the
distribution of power can narrow the areas of difference and force
implicit assumptions to the surface.
To summarise, the main problems in comparative politics are:

1. There are not enough countries in the world to allow theories to be

tested precisely.
2. Relationships between countries mean they cannot be regarded as
independent of each other. This further reduces our ability to test
theories.
3. The 'same' phenomenon can have different meanings in different
countries. This makes it difficult to compare like with like.
4. Problems of bias and political values arise when looking at politics
in contrasting countries .

• Controlled comparisons
In comparative politics, we cannot control our comparisons completely.
We are not like chemists who can manipulate their substances at will.
We are more like physicians who, confronted with a patient's symp-
toms, have to try to identify the underlying disorder. Our 'patients' are
countries and our 'symptoms' are the political characteristics we want to
explain.
Let's look at an example. We can take two countries with contrasting
political characteristics and we can ask: what accounts for this
difference? Suppose we wanted to explain why parties in New Zealand
are so strong and disciplined. We might make a comparison with
Canada, another affluent liberal democracy with strong British ties. In
Canada, however, national parties are notoriously weak.
So the question is: What differences between the two countries might
explain the contrasting styles of their parties? One possibility is this.
Canada is a vast country with a federal system of government whereas
New Zealand is a small country with a centralised government. These
 The Comparative Approach 31

factors certainly influence, and possibly explain, the contrasting styles of

political parties in the two countries. So we have a plausible diagnosis:
big country, weak parties.
In practice, there are usually many possible explanations for a
political difference between two countries. Of course, doctors say the
same: many disorders can produce similar symptoms. However, in
contrast to doctors who can conduct tests on their patients in order to
confirm a specific diagnosis, we cannot intervene in a country's politics
just to test a particular theory. Thus we are rarely able to reach decisive
conclusions.
To return to our example, is it the size of a country or a federal system
of government which is most important in leading to weak and
fragmented parties? We cannot be sure, since size and federalism go
together. Federalism is, in fact, extremely rare in small countries. Here
we pay the price of trying to understand what happens in the real world.
We can control our comparisons only to a certain degree - but even half
a comparison is far better than no comparison at all.

• Frameworks of comparison
The practice of comparative politics is informed by a number of
conceptual frameworks. These can then be used to guide specific
studies. Frameworks direct attention to some aspects of a country's
politics - and, by implication, distract us from others. Here we briefly
review three frameworks, based on the comparison of states, societies or
policies.

D Comparing states
The state-centred approach is at once the most traditional and the most
fashionable approach to comparative politics. In the early part of the
twentieth century, scholars concentrated their attention on the formal
institutions of government - legislature, executive and judiciary - and
the constitutions which governed the relationships between these
institutions.
The style of these early studies was descriptive in the extreme.
Constitutions and formal organisations of government were examined
in legal and historical terms, reflecting the origins of political science in
these two disciplines. Informal relationships between political actors
went unstudied. Little attention was given to less 'official' organisations
such as pressure groups or the mass media. The wider social context
32 Studying PoLitics

within which government operates was ignored. The approach was also
strongly culture-bound, confined largely to the study of governments in
the United States and Europe. Finally, the style was very uncritical.
Perhaps the Webbs' study of Soviet government in the 1930s represented
the 'summit' of this approach. This described the formal organisation of
the Soviet state in minute detail, in the apparent conviction that
everything worked as Stalin's propagandists alleged (S. and B. Webb
1935).
After 1945 the state-centred or institutional approach became unfa-
shionable. The focus shifted from the state to society (see below). In the
1980s, however, attention returned to the state. 'Bringing the state back
in' became a rallying-cry in comparative politics (Evans et al. 1985).
Partiy, this reflected a belated recognition that the baby had been
thrown out with the bath-water. After all, the state is the single central
concern of political science. The institutions of government do make a
difference. For example, the key contrast between the United States and
the United Kingdom is institutional, indeed constitutional: the American
president cannot command Congress but the British prime minister can
control Parliament. Furthermore, the spread of constitutional govern-
ment to parts of the second and the third world in the 1980s and 1990s
meant constitutions and institutions had become a better guide to the
realities of power. We cannot understand politics (and least of all
political change) just by describing the operation of government
institutions. But neither can we exclude such considerations. Part 4 of
this book therefore adopts an institutional approach.
Despite the renewal of interest in the state, modern political scientists
adopt a different approach to their forefathers. Today's focus is not so
much on institutional detail but on the state as an active agent, shaping
and reshaping society. The state is seen as using its administrative
capacity and monopoly of legitimate force to bring about important
changes in society. For example Skocpol (1985) showed how successful
revolutionaries such as the Russian Bolsheviks and Iranian Mullahs used
their control of the state to produce total transformations of society.
Even in the Western world, the large-scale role of the state has enabled it
to lead social and economic change. The state has facilitated indus-
trialisation, led the development of mass education and helped to create
modern welfare states.
Thus this new version of the state-centred approach concentrates on
the impact of the state on society. In a comparative context, of course, it
is clear that the power of the state is a variable rather than a constant.
For example, in communist countries, the state was a paramount
influence, pervading virtually all aspects of life. In liberal democra-
cies, the state is less dominant. In much of the third world, the state is
 The Comparative Approach 33

less important still: its writ may not run far beyond the capital city and a
few major towns.

D Comparing societies
In the 1960s and 1970s the focus of comparative politics switched to
examining politics in its social context. The Second World War had
stimulated new developments in social science techniques (e.g. attitude
surveys) which younger scholars were keen to apply to politics. In
addition de-colonisation spawned many new nations where the formal
institutions of government proved to be very fragile. There was no point
in studying the constitution if no one in the country abided by it.
So attention shifted away from government institutions to the
political system. The political system refers to all the factors which
influence collective decisions, even if those factors are not formally part
of the government. Thus, parties, voters and social movements all form
part of the system of politics, even though they are rarely mentioned in
constitutions and other formal documents. The systems approach to
politics was pioneered by David Easton (see Exhibit 2.2). Although few
political scientists explicitly use his model today, his work still forms
part of the vocabulary of politics. 'The political system' has become a
widely used (probably over-used) phrase among political scientists.
The functional approach to comparative politics provided another
important justification for the switch in emphasis from government to
political system. Functionalism was a deliberate attempt to broaden the
traditional institutional framework of executive, assembly and judi-
ciary. The functional approach raised the following question: even if
political systems vary greatly in their institutional arrangements, are
there certain functions which any political system must perform if it is to
survive and operate effectively? Almond and Powell (1978, 1988)
provided the most important analysis of the functions of political
systems. Their list is shown in Table 2.1. The first three functions
shown there (recruitment, socialisation and communication) concern
the maintenance of the system, while the last four relate to the process
by which collective decisions are made and implemented.
Functionalists argued that a check-list of this kind provided an
objective, standardised and culture-free approach to comparative
politics. Take the first function in the table, political recruitment, as
an example. All political systems have to persuade people to fill political
roles, varying in scope from chief executive to humble voter. However,
this function is performed by different institutions in different countries.
In the first world, elections are a major recruiting agent. In communist
34 Studying Politics

Exhibit 2.2 Easton's rnot:I81 of the political sysmn

INPUTS OUTPUTS
G
A
T
E
K The
Demands, Authoritative
Supports
E political
decisions
E system
P
E
R
S

FEEDBACK

Figure 2.1 Easton's model of the political system

According to Easton (1957, 1965a, 1965b), the political system

consists of all those institutions and processes involved in the
'authoritative allocation of values' for society. The political system
takes inputs from society. These consist of (a) demands for particular
policies and (b) expressions of support. Supports include: compli-
ance with laws, payment of taxes and diffuse support for the regime.
The political system converts these inputs into outputs - author-
itative policies and decisions. These outputs then feed back to society
so as to affect the next cycle of inputs. However, inputs are regulated
by gatekeepers, such as parties and interest groups, which bias the
system in favour of certain demands and against others.
Easton's model helped to move political science away from an
exclusive concern with government institutions. However, he
achieved this by reducing the state to nothing more than a 'black
box' in an abstract diagram. Critics also alleged that Easton's model
was too static, paying little attention to how political systems
change.
 The Comparative Approach 35

Table 2.1 Almond and Powell's functions of political systems

Political recruitment People must be recruited to fill political roles

from voters to government leaders.
Political socialisation Their attitudes to the political system must be
formed and sustained.
Political communication Politically relevant information must be
transmi tted.
Interest articulation Demands for particular policies must be
expressed.
Interest aggregation Demands must be selected and combined into a
manageable number of major alternatives.
Policy-making Demands must be converted into authoritative
decisions and policies.
Policy implementation These decisions must be put into effect.

Source: G. Almond and G. Powell, Comparative Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978),
pp. 13-16.

states, the ruling party was the key vehicle in recruitment. Once the
party had approved a nomination for office, election (if indeed there was
one) became a mere formality. In some third world states, personal
connections are more significant in recruitment. The institutions vary
but the underlying function must be performed by every political
system. No recruitment, no system.
For the political scientist off on a field-trip to a distant country,
functionalism provided a ready set of questions. Which political
institutions performed which functions? Were any of the institutions
multi-functional (that is, did they perform several functions at once)? So
the central task became one of linking political structures (which vary
across countries) to political functions (which do not).
Functionalism came in for some tough criticism. Can a political
institution be explained by identifying its function in a wider system?
Is a political system like a car engine, in which each component has a
function in a smooth-running whole? Is the emphasis on political
stability ultimately a reflection of conservative ideology? Should not
political scientists be more concerned with how political systems change
than with how they are maintained? This last criticism proved to be the
most damaging. As with the systems model, functionalism seemed to
have as little to say about the real world of political change as the
narrow institutional approach it had replaced. Under the weight of these
36 Studying Politics

criticisms functionalism lost ground to the study of political change.

Looking back, it succeeded in taking the study of politics in new
directions. But the new destination was no more permanent than the
old one.

D Comparing policies
All the approaches discussed so far concentrate on the process of politics
rather than the substance of policy. But since the 1970s and 1980s many
political scientists have become more interested in the substance of
public policy - in what governments do as well as how they do it.
The policy-making perspective raises such questions as: Why do some
countries distribute medical care through the market while others rely
on the state? How do states go about improving the competitiveness of
industry? Why do some countries give grants to students in higher
education while others provide loans - and some offer precious little
support at all?
A policy-centred approach has several advantages. First, it brings us
back to the core political question of who gets what, when and how. For
example, some studies of the welfare state in Western democracies
suggest that the benefits which the middle classes gain from public
services are at least as great as those obtained by the poorer sections of
the population (Le Grand 1982).
In medical care, for instance, physicians spend more time with well-
educated middle-class patients than with less articulate working-class
clients. To find out who benefits from a policy, we must look at how it is
carried out, and not just at how it is made.
Secondly, the policy approach is well suited to comparative analysis.
Comparing health policy or industrial policy across nations is a clear,
coherent brief. It can highlight cross-national differences, and their
causes and consequences, in an effective fashion.
Thirdly, a policy perspective leads naturally to a concern with the
implementation and effectiveness of policy. Some of the older approa-
ches wrongly assumed that politics stopped once a policy had been
adopted. In fact some policies change in the process of execution - and
others are hardly put into effect at all. For instance, some Western
governments have been lukewarm in enforcing legislation intended to
reduce discrimination against minority groups (Neary 1992b).
Finally, comparative policy analysis offers the prospect of drawing
lessons which can be used to improve the quality of public policy. A
policy which succeeds in one country may be worth trying out in others;
a policy which fails in one place may not be worth attempting elsewhere.
 The Comparative Approach 37

Thus the policy-centred approach is a useful addition to the frameworks

available in comparative politics. It is discussed further in Chapter 16 .

• Techniques of comparison
Studying politics comparatively is a matter of technique as well as
strategy. There are three main techniques, which differ by how many
countries are included in the analysis. Case studies are based on a sample
of one. Statistical analysis is based on many examples. Focused
comparisons are based on two, or at most a few, countries (Lijphart
1971). We'll review each in turn.

D Case studies
A case study of a specific country is not comparative in itself. None-
theless case studies still provide most of the raw material for compara-
tive politics. To understand how, say, political parties operate, we have
to study accounts of parties in particular countries and, from them, seek
general conclusions.
Often our confidence in an overall conclusion is strengthened
precisely because it has been reached independently in several coun-
tries. For example, students of medical politics have noticed some
decline in the power of national medical associations in liberal
democracies since the 1960s (Harrop 1992). Armed with a general
observation like this, we can seek a general explanation. For example,
have medical associations lost ground because of some public loss of
faith in orthodox medicine? Or has the emergence of a new breed of
hospital manager, capable of standing up to senior physicians, been
more important?
Paradoxically, unusual cases are particularly significant. Deviant
cases, as they are known, are especially helpful in forming and testing
theories. When sleep researchers discovered The Man Who Never Went
To Sleep, they descended on him in droves. To work out why the rest of
us go to bed each night, all they had to do was work out what else was
different about this poor soul (they never did).
We have already met one example of a deviant case in politics: the
absence of a socialist party in the United States. Asking why the United
States never had a large socialist party is more revealing than asking why
Sweden, along with most Western democracies, did. China is another
example. Why did its communist rulers survive the 'year of revolution'
in 1989, when most communist regimes collapsed? Is it because China
38 Studying Politics

was still not economically developed? Perhaps the weaknesses of a

planned economy only emerge when a country reaches a certain level of
development. If so, the China crisis is still waiting in the wings.
One problem with case studies is selection bias. This means that the
cases chosen for study may not be representative of politics as a whole.
For example, most political research undertaken in the world today is
about the United States. The reason is simple: that's where most
political scientists live! But the United States, as we have already
noted, is in some ways a deviant case. Similarly, more work is done
on democratic than authoritarian governments. Again, the explanation
is obvious: democracies are more open and accessible to the researcher.
But this should not blind us to the fact that, even in the 1990s,
most people experience politics in a harsher climate than liberal
democracy.
The main limitation of case studies is that they overstate distinctive-
ness. If you look at politics in just one country, you run the risk of
ignoring similar trends in other countries. You conclude that your
example is more special than it actually is. In other words, you fail to
see the wood for the tree.
Case studies accumulate rather than cumulate. They only survive in
the collective memory of political science discipline when they have
some general significance - and many don't. As a student of compara-
tive politics, you should not feel you must remember all the details of
every study you look at. Read as much as you can but only remember the
points which have value beyond the case. Comparative politics is one
subject where the ability to forget is a definite virtue!

D Statistical analysis
At the opposite extreme to the single case study stand statistical projects
based on all liberal democracies, all industrial societies or even all
countries. Research adopting this approach deals with variables which
are easily quantified. Most often, these are figures on public expendi-
ture. Thus researchers have asked: why do some countries tax at higher
rates than others? Why do some countries spend a higher proportion of
public expenditure on welfare than others? (Castles 1982). The factors
used to answer these questions are also numerical. They include social
factors (e.g. urbanisation), economic factors (e.g. affluence) and
political factors (e.g. how many years parties of the right have been in
power since 1945).
This statistical research consists of complicated manipulation of
simple data. Expenditure figures tell us how much is spent. They do
 The Comparative Approach 39

not tell us why the money is spent, how it is spent, for whose benefit,
and with what consequences. So political scientists need to look beyond
the numbers at their wider significance and implications.
Furthermore the problem of selection bias exists even with statistical
information. In most cases, the data available to us was originally
collected by international bodies such as the World Bank or the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Their
concerns are not necessarily ours. Their priorities tend to be financial,
economic, social and political- in that order. Ours are just the reverse.
The meaning of a particular statistic can also vary from country to
country. In particular, public programmes must be examined in
conjunction with private traditions. Unemployment benefit is limited
in Japan, but does this matter to a worker employed by a large company
with a tradition of career-long employment? Equally, Japan appears
from the statistics to be poorly equipped with nursing homes for the
elderly, as indeed it is. But this is largely because Japanese families care
for their parents at home. What appears as a weakness is, in some ways,
a strength. For these reasons, statistical analysis based on many
countries complements qualitative comparisons, but should not replace
them.
Statistical relationships help to identify deviant cases - countries
which diverge from the expected pattern. A special explanation can
then be sought for these exceptions. Why, for example, does the United
States spend far more than any other developed country on medical
care? Is it because the United States is one of the few countries which
relies on the private sector for health insurance? This illustration shows
that statistical studies and case studies are not contradictory. Statistical
research can highlight cases worthy of further study (Castles 1989).

D Focused comparisons
This type of study falls somewhere between case studies and statistical
analysis. Done well, this approach has the strengths of both the other
techniques but the weaknesses of neither.
Focused comparisons take a small number of countries, typically just
two (a paired comparison). Most often the comparison concentrates not
on all aspects of the countries' politics but just on particular aspects. To
illustrate this technique, we'll take three examples from the comparative
study of public policy, a growing subfield within comparative politics
(see also Chapter 16).
In a classic study, Heclo (1974) examined the origins of unemploy-
ment insurance, old age pensions and earnings-related supplementary
40 Studying Politics

pensions in Britain and Sweden. In both countries, he concluded, the

bureaucracy was the main agency of policy formulation in these areas.
More recently Kudrle and Marmor (1981) compared the growth of
social security programmes in the United States and Canada. They
argued that the presence of elements of left-wing and Tory paternalistic
ideology in Canada explained its edge over the United States in spending
and programme development.
As a third example, Grant, Paterson et al. (1988) examined policy-
making towards the chemical industry in Britain and West Germany.
They were struck by the similarity within the policy sector rather than
by the difference between the nations. They suggested that national
governments had to adjust to the nature of the chemical industry rather
more than chemical firms had to adapt to the governments with which
they had dealings.
'Small N' studies like these have proved to be the success story of
comparative politics in recent decades (Collier 1991). They have been
applied not just to policy studies but also to historical questions such as
the origins of revolutions (see pp. 67ff. and Skocpol 1984). Focused
comparisons remain sensitive to the details of particular countries and
policies while retaining some ability to form, and test, explanations.
They work particularly well when a few countries are compared over
time, examining how countries vary in their response to common
problems such as developing the welfare state.
In practice, comparison of even a small number of countries does
seem to enhance understanding, whatever the purists may say about the
limitations of such a small sample. Larger samples may be needed for
statistical purposes, but the biggest gain in understanding comes when
the sample is increased from one (a case study) to two (a paired
comparison). 'Small N' comparison is therefore a useful technique,
and one which is as suited to student projects as to professional
monographs.

Summan
1. Comparing politics across countries has several benefits. It casts fresh light
on our own nation. It improves our classifications of political processes. It
helps us to test explanations of political patterns. Finally, cross-national
comparison has some potential for predicting the effects of introducing
particular changes into a country's political system.

2. But cross-national comparison also has its dangers. There are not enough
countries in the world for theories to be tested precisely. Furthermore, many
 The Comparative Approach 41

countries are interdependent so that they cannot be treated as separate

examples. The 'same' behaviour can mean different things in different
countries. Also, the problems of bias and political values arise when compar-
ing politics in very different countries.

3. Ideally, comparisons should be made between countries which are identical

except for the one factor whose effects we wish to determine. This is known as
a 'most similar systems' design. In practice, such controlled comparisons are
rarely feasible.

4. Most comparative studies focus on states, societies or policies. The state-

centred approach originally examined the institutions and constitutions of
government, in isolation from society. Today, the state-centred approach
emphasises the impact of the state on society.

5. The society-centred approach was more concerned with the impact of

society on the state. It tended to adopt a static view of politics and cast little
light on how political systems changed and developed.

6. The policy-centred approach compares a single policy sector across

countries. This approach looks at how policies are put into effect, and with
what effects. It rejects the assumption that politics stops once a policy is agreed.

7. The main techniques used in comparative politics are case studies (a sample
of one); focused comparisons (a sample of two or three); and statistical studies
(a· 'sample' of many or all countries). Case studies are often too descriptive.
Statistical analysis runs the danger of becoming mechanical. In practice,
focused comparisons of a small number of countries are often most revealing.

Discussion points
1. If you were asked to explain the distinctive features of your country's
politics to a visitor, what points would you emphasise? (Readers are invited to
send their answers to Rod Hague, Department of Politics, The University,
Newcastle upon Tyne, England NEI 7RU for use in the 4th edition.)
2. If you were to compare your country's politics with another's, which
country would you choose and why?
3. Some critics allege that the comparative method is no longer relevant in an
era of global politics. What is the basis of this view? Do you agree with it?
42 Studying Politics

Kc,'. rcadin o ~

Dogan, M. and Pelassy, G. (1984) How to Compare Nations (Chatham, N.J.:

Chatham House). Short, stimulating but difficult.
Evans, P., Rueschemeyer, D. and Skocpol T. (eds) (1985) Bringing The State
Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). An important and
influential statement of the centrality of the state to comparative politics.
Macridis, R. and Brown, B. (eds) (1990) Comparative Politics: Notes and
Readings (Belmont, Calif.: Brooks/Cole). An excellent selection of readings,
including several on the comparative method.
Rustow, D. and Erickson, K. (eds) (1991) Comparative Political Dynamics:
Global Research Perspectives (New York: HarperCollins). Essential reading,
not least for Collier's overview of the comparative method.

Further rcadin u~
Rustow and Erickson (1991) is a 'state of the art' collection of essays on
comparative and global politics. Another edited collection (Macri dis and
Brown 1990) contains several classic articles on comparison, and provides a
good selection of material on comparative politics in general. Other influential
works on method are Sartori (1985) on concepts, Lijphart (1971) on strategy
and Skocpol (1985) on the comparative historical approach. Almond and
Powell (1988) is a best-selling text originally written from a society-centred
perspective.
 .PART2.
THE NATION-STATE:
EVOLUTION AND
REVOLUTION
This part considers the nation-state, the central focus of this book.
Chapter 3 looks at how formally equal nation-states differ greatly in
power, wealth and the nature of their politics. They comprise three
groupings: a first world of wealthy, industrialised liberal democra-
cies, a second world 6f communist and postcommunist states of
middling wealth, and a third world of poorer states. Chapter 4 turns
to the question of political change, and in particular how countries
are sometimes overtaken by revolutionary change. This chapter also
deals with the role of ideas in political change. In Chapter 5 the focus
shifts from politics within nation-states to the striking growth of
interdependence between them.
 • Chapter 3 •
The Nation-State
in Three Worlds
The three worlds 4S The second world: communism
The first world: heanland and post-communism 54
of liberal democracy 48 The third world: the politics of
economics 57

• The three worlds

The traditional approach to comparative government has been to
classify regimes by political factors. These include the number of rulers
(one? few? many?) and how they achieved power (tradition? election? a
coup?). Such distinctions are important but insufficient. It is not enough
to classify governments by their formal structures alone. This is unlikely
to reveal the full nature of political life in a society. For the landless
peasant in Asia, it hardly matters whether the institutions of central
government are controlled by a president, a parliament or a general. The
daily struggles of life remain unsolved.
Equally, with the collapse of communism, people in Eastern Europe
can now claim that they live in democracies just like their fellow
Europeans in the West. In fact, however, the differences between East
and West are, and will long remain, fundamental. A change of ruler or
of the form of government does not in itself give the new regime more
resources to meet its people's needs.
So governments should be classified in a way which reflects economic
as well as political conditions. The level of economic development states
have reached is particularly important. Nearly 200 independent nation-
states in the modern world fall into three main groups. The first world
consists of around thirty wealthy and economically advanced liberal
democracies. The second world consists of around thirty postcommun-
ist and communist party states. These are mainly industrialised and of
middling wealth. And a large and varied number of less developed
countries make up the third world.
Between liberal democracies and the second world, the basic contrasts
have been political. In liberal democracies parties compete for power

45
46 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

and so reflect society as much as they shape it. In communist states a

single party monopolised power in an attempt to reshape society. Now
that communism has collapsed, economic differences between the first
and second worlds are coming to the fore.
Between the industrial countries of the northern hemisphere (whether
first or second world) and the less industrialised southern hemisphere,
the core contrasts are economic as well as political. The vast gaps in
living standards between, say, Africa and Western Europe make for very
different political agendas in the two continents. Most people in
Western Europe take material affluence for granted, while millions in
Africa face famine and starvation. Figure 3.1 shows how dramatic are
the inequalities between the three worlds. The third world has 52 per
cent of the world's population but produces only 18 per cent of its
output.
The figure also shows the greater affluence of the second world over
the third world, reflecting its higher level of industrialisation. However,
communist China (population 1.2 billion!) is a massive anomaly.
China's population remains 80 per cent rural, and the country is still
fairly poor. China is in the second world politically but the third world
economically.
These patterns of wealth and poverty are mainly the outcome of the
timing and course of industrialisation. The societies of the first world
are capitalist. They are the product of an early transition to economies
based mainly on private ownership. They are also liberal democracies.

Area Population Gross National Product

First world: industrialised liberal democracies

Second world: communist party states
Third world: less developed countries

Source: adapted from World Bank Atlas (1985); The World Factbook 1985
(Washington, D.C.: US Govt, 1985).

Figure 3.1 World divisions, circa 1983

 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 47

The creation of a liberal political order against feudal privilege and

absolute monarchy was crucial in building a market society. This
needed limited government, secure laws of property and contract, and
basic civil liberties for individuals. Democratisation, by and large, came
later. For the most part Western societies have coped well with the
strains of modernisation. Capitalism and liberal democracy are domi-
nant ideas in the first world and are now being exported to the second
and third worlds.
In the second world, liberal political and economic doctrines under-
mined authoritarian rulers but did not take root well. Absolute rulers
resisted reform and drove their critics to political extremes. Precommu-
nist regimes in Russia and China finally proved unable to cope with the
strains of social change and of conflicts with more modern nation-states.
They fell to revolutionary communist movements. These quickened the
drive towards economic modernity, again under authoritarian control.
By creating planned economies and suppressing private ownership,
these communist states largely took themselves out of the world
capitalist economy, at least for a few decades. The planned economy
was effective in the early stage of industrialisation, but later turned out
to be rigid, wasteful and inefficient. Communist economic methods
became more and more outmoded. This was a major factor in the
dramatic collapse of the East European communist regimes in 1989 and
of Soviet communism in 1991.
In the third world, the course of development differs again. After four
hundred years of colonial expansion, the major European nations
dominated the globe at the start of the twentieth century. Although
Latin America had gained independence from Spain and Portugal in the
nineteenth century, it remained an economic appendage of the leading
capitalist countries. Most of Asia and Africa was also in European
control. But empires fall more rapidly than they rise. The British,
French, Dutch and other empires fell apart with amazing speed, chiefly
in the great wave of decolonisation after the Second World War.
As these empires unravelled, the model of the nation-state was copied
across the globe. Overnight, ex-colonies took on the trappings of
independent statehood, which gave the new rulers diplomatic recogni-
tion and an entry card to the United Nations. But these countries
remained economically and culturally dependent on the countries of
the first world, even if they were now politically 'independent'. The
postcolonial societies of the third world still rely on agriculture and
extractive industries. What manufacturing industry exists is often small-
scale, or consists of tariff-protected enclaves making substitutes for
imported goods. The more efficient firms are likely to be foreign owned.
Rapid population increase in the third world outstrips economic
48 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

growth; much of the population is at or below subsistence level. The

population profile of the third world contrasts sharply with an ageing
first world: 80 per cent of all teenagers on the planet live in the third
world. Development, then, has now turned out to be elusive while
statehood has brought only small benefits; in many ways, independence
is more nominal than real.
The common feature of third world politics, then, is that political
rulers face huge tasks supported only by fragile and unstable political
institutions.
The patterns of power and well-being in the modern world are thus
largely the outcome of one overall process of transformation. The 'three
worlds' of politics reflect, ironically, one increasingly interdependent
world. In this chapter, we discuss the three patterns of politics in turn:
the liberal democracies of the first world, the second world of
postcommunist and communist party states, and finally the more
varied regimes found in the third world.

I The first world: heartland of liberal

democracy
Although almost all regimes in today's world claim to be democratic, we
will focus this discussion on the countries of the first world. These, after
all, are the most secure and influential examples of liberal democracy.
The concept of a liberal democracy is in essence protective. This
means that government is seen in a mixed light: necessary, certainly, but
also a potential danger to individuals (Held 1987). Liberal concern to
guard against the abuse of power therefore qualifies the pure democratic
idea of government by the people. A liberal democracy limits govern-
ment and protects individual rights.
The American constitution is by far the most well-known example of
the protective approach to democracy. The founding fathers of the
constitution aimed, above all else, to prevent tyranny. To this end, the
constitution (see Figure 3.2) features the separation of powers, frequent
elections, federalism, the Bill of Rights and judicial interpretation of the
constitution. In other words, the broad diffusion of power sets one
branch of government to check another. As one of the founders, James
Madison, put it, 'You must first enable government to control the
governed. You must next oblige the government to control itself.' In
order to maintain individual freedom, public power must be restricted in
scope and those who hold it must be chosen by, and accountable to, the
people.
 I Constitution of the United States I
I
d'IVI'd es power between
I
I
The Federal Government l
I
I Fifty States of the Union I
I
Judicial Branch
1---------- I I
I Supreme Court of Court can declare Each state has its own constitution
Senate confirms the United States presidential actions
judicial unconstitutional
appointments;
I
Court can
can impeach and
remove judges declare laws i
unconstitutional President
from office appoints judges
I L
Legislative Branch Executive Branch Judicial Branch
1---------- President can
1------------- -----------
The Congress The President State Supreme Court
veto legislation 1-------------
•-
- House Executive Office of the
- Senate President
Congress approves Legislative Branch Executive Branch
House and Senate can Cabinet Departments 1----------
veto each other's bills
appointments,
Independent Agencies
1---------
Governor
controls budget, can State Assembly
pass laws over
president's veto,
impeach and
remove president
from office

~
Figure 3.2 Protective democracy: the US constitutional system \0
50 The Nation-State: EvoLution and RevoLution

All liberal democracies have some protective elements. Majority rule

is balanced by constraints upon the exercise of power: by the rule of law;
by respect for the rights of individuals and minorities; and by many
interest groups which are consulted about government proposals.
These protective elements are probably more important hallmarks of
liberal democracy than popular control through the ballot box. The
liberalism comes before the democracy. Many writers, such as Schump-
eter (1943, pp. 269-72), have noted that the direct role of the masses in
modern liberal democracies is limited and passive. The people choose
their rulers but they do not govern. Schumpeter went on to define liberal
democracy in largely procedural terms, as a process in which elites gain
the power to decide by means of a competitive struggle for people's
votes. In Schumpeter's terms, then, the essence of modern liberal
democracy lies in an open contest for power in the electoral arena,
not in government by the people.
Although all liberal democracies are protective in nature, practice and
structures vary between countries. For example, Lijphart (1990) makes
an important distinction between majority democracies and consensus
democracies.

D Majority democracy: the Westminster model

Here a single party forms the government and holds extensive executive
powers until the voters offer their verdict at the next election. Thus
majority democracy is, in theory though not in practice, close to an
elected dictatorship. This is the least liberal (though arguably not the
most democratic) form of liberal democracy. Except for the governing
party's sense of self-restraint, the institutions that limit executive power
- a strong second chamber, a written constitution, a federal system, an
autonomous assembly, use of referendums - are absent. Instead
practices such as a 'first past the post' electoral system and cabinet
government increase the power of the executive. The electoral system
transforms a minority party in terms of votes into a secure majority
party in terms of parliamentary seats. Majority democracies are two-
party systems. This makes it possible for the opposition to replace the
governing party without upsetting the majoritarian system.
As the phrase 'the Westminster model' implies, Britain was the
homeland of majority democracy. Between 1945 and 1974, the system
worked in Britain because it was then a fairly homogeneous society
divided mainly by class. At elite level, majority democracy was marked
by very competitive politics, at mass level by fairly muted social
divisions. Opposition supporters were willing to allow the other party
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 51

to govern following a fair electoral contest. Defeat was accepted because

the natural swing of the pendulum would return the opposition party to
power in due course.
But since 1974 majority democracy in Britain has lost some effective-
ness and legitimacy. The class cleavage, which underpinned the two-
party system, has declined, and new divisions, especially those of
nationalism, have emerged. The major parties (Conservative and
Labour) were challenged by centre parties. For the two main parties,
holding power has come to depend on the arbitra.ry working of the
electoral system.
One effect has been a growing movement for constitutional reform,
supported by the centre parties and even by some leading members of
the Labour Party. These critics allege that majority democracy gives too
much power to a single party, and that 'the swing of the pendulum'
produces damaging reversals of policy as the incoming government
seeks to make its mark. Majority democracy in Britain continues, but is
no longer in the best of health. Similar criticisms are made about
majority democracy in New Zealand (see Exhibit 3.1, p. 52), which if
anything is an even 'purer' example of majority democracy than Britain.

D Consensus democracy
Lijphart uses this term to describe a model in which power is diffused
throughout the government and the parties. Executive authority is
shared among members of a formal or informal coalition. The
executive does not dominate the legislature as it does under majority
democracy. There is a multi-party, rather than a two-party, system. The
party system reflects several dimensions of cleavage rather than only
one. Elections are held under proportional representation rather than
'first past the post'.
Several Western European countries follow this pattern: for example,
Belgium, Netherlands, Finland, (see Exhibit 3.2, p. 53) and Denmark. In
its fully developed form, the consensus model also features federal and
decentralised government; a strong second chamber; and a written and
rigid constitution. The United States, Germany, Austria, Australia and
Canada fall into this category, though these countries also have
majoritarian features. Finally, devices for direct democracy (for
instance, town meetings and referendums) may be used alongside
representative procedures. These devices are used widely in Switzerland
and in many states in the United States.
We are here, of course, contrasting theoretical models of majority and
consensus democracies, not actual countries. Few countries exactly fit
52 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

Exhibit 3.1 New Zealand: majority democracy under strain

The Westminster model of democracy was exported to many Com-

monwealth countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Australia and Canada deviate from the model in that both are federal
systems, but New Zea land now fits the model of majority democracy
better than Britain itself.
ew Zealand is a small country, traditionally isolated but now more
open to externa l influences through modern communications and mass
travel. The economy is still based on agriculture, highly dependent on
overseas trade and heavily exposed to market fluctuations. With New
Zealand's reduced isolation, a sense of insecurity has pervaded its
pol itics since the 1970s. The result has been a radical shift from
protectionism and welfare values in policy (in which ew Zealand
was a pioneer) towards freer trade and markets. The small size of its
po litica l elite (the House of Representatives has only 97 members)
makes such policy changes easier to achieve.
ew Zealand has a strong, disciplined two-party system . Since 1935
the Labour Party and the more co nservative ational Party have
alternated in office under a 'first paSt the post' electoral system. In
power, each party has fi rm contro l over its backbenchers in the
unicamera l assem bly. Levine (1978 ) suggests that New Zealand's main
parties approach the democratic centralism traditionally associated
with commu nist parties .
ew Zea land's politics reflect the remarkable dominance and almost
unbridled power of cabinet. Government ministers, aided by a few
undersecretaries, can often outvote the rest of the party in Pa rliament.
New Zealand is also a unitary state with no written constitution, which
adds to the power of the governing party. Apart from the Maori
minority (9 per cent of the population), which has special political
representation, New Zea land is ethnically homogeneous. Perhaps the
only major respect in which ew Zealand departs from the majority
model is in its frequent use of local referendums - though these are
usually about liquor licensing!
For how long will ew Zealand's politics continue in a majoritarian
form? There is clear evidence of disi ll usionment among voters, with low
levels of stable party support. But politicians of the major parties do
their best to suppress or deflect these signs of restlessness among voters.
In 1986 a Roya l Commission recommended changes to the electoral
system, but its find ings were ignored by the Labour Government.
Majority democracy is largely susta ined by 'first past the post'
elections, but, in New Zealand as elsewhere, the conventions under-
pinning adversarial politics are under stra in.
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 53

Exhibit 3.2 Consensus democracy: Finland

Finland (population 5 million) is one of several small democracies

which border the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe (see Map 5.1, p. 122)
During the twentieth century', Finland evolved from a society of
peasant farmers to a prosperous society based on a manufacturing
and service economy. The welfare state arrived later than in the other
Nordic democracies (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland), but is
now well developed.
There have been several major political cleavages in the party
system: among them, language (Swedish versus Finnish); communist
versus noncommunist; and primary sector (forestry and agriculture)
versus the non-primary (manufacturing and services) sector. The
prevailing image of Finland's politics is one of extreme multi-
partyism, with sizeable anti-system parties and unstable cabinets.
But how valid is this image? The transformation of Finnish society
certainly involved harsh struggles, including a civil war between
Whites (anti-communists) and Reds (communists). But the bitterness
of these conflicts has now faded. The normal image of Finnish
politics does not convey the consensual aspects of the system, the
longevity in office of key political actors, and the continuity of
policy. While the Red-Green coalitions (the socialist and peasant
parties) of the early postwar years were beset by serious policy
conflicts, in recent years centre-left coalitions have been more
stable.
Policy-making in Finland resembles the consensual democracy
model quite closely. As in Sweden, cabinet proceedings are a matter
of public record. Regular 'evening classes' take place, in which
ministers discuss matters 'off the record'. 'Sauna evenings', too,
are a popular way for politicians to make deals. Despite a difficult
birth as an independent state, Finland fits the pattern of a consensus
democracy.
54 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

the full check-list of either model. Among those midway between the
two models, according to Lijphart, are Italy, France, Norway and
Sweden. The value of Lijphart's analysis is that it corrects the
impression that the majoritarian 'Westminster model' is somehow the
best or most genuine form of liberal democracy. In fact, strictly
majoritarian democracy is becoming rare. It is only likely to work well
in a fairly homogeneous society without sharp political conflict. In more
pluralistic societies, consensus democracy is often more suitable. This is
because it diffuses power, and ensures that all major groups and
interests in society have some influence. Consensus democracy is in
essence the politics of compromise.

I The second
postcommunlsm
~orld: communism and

Between the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the late 1970s,
communist power expanded dramatically in Eastern Europe, Asia and
Africa. Some sixteen communist regimes, and a dozen others of more
doubtful Marxist credentials, came to power. Their routes to power
were revolution, wars of national liberation, or force of Soviet arms. At
their peak in the 1960s and 1970s, communist regimes accounted for
more than 1.5 billion people - one-third of the world's population.
China alone supplies over a billion of them.
The communist world was surprisingly diverse. It ranged from dirt
poor pre-industrial societies, such as Laos and Kampuchea, to indus-
trialised countries like Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Although all
communist states subscribed to the teachings of Marx and Lenin, open
splits developed between them. From the 1960s, they no longer formed a
cohesive bloc.
Authoritarian rule was intrinsic to the communist system. The party
could not be challenged in elections, and it played a directive role within
the political system. A structure of popular representative government
did exist. Communist regimes claimed to be democratic, indeed far more
so than the capitalist democracies of the first world. As Cuban leader
Fidel Castro told his people, 'Imperialism has a single party, it's called
capitalism. There is no workers' party there, the whole social system is
organised for the government of capitalists'. But popular participation
in the Second World was 'guided democracy', operating under the firm
hand of the party. The party ruled in the name of the ideologx of
Marxism-Leninism. It claimed to be building a new, equal and classless
society. In practice, the party sought first and foremost to maintain its
own power and privileges.
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 55

With some variations, the economy was organised along state

socialist lines, with national economic planning and public ownership
of the means of production.
The relationship between party and state was central to communist
rule. In theory, the state in socialist society was separate from the ruling
party. The party laid down the policy guidelines which the government
then implemented. Again, in theory, the existence of the state was only
temporary. The state was the agent of working-class dictatorship. Once
class conflict was erased, so too was the need for an apparatus of control
and coercion. The state would then wither away.

o The failure of communism

The reality has been very different. In practice, the divide between party
and state blurred through interpenetration and supervision. At higher
levels of government, there is joint membership of party and state.
Leading state positions are filled by party members, and leading state
officials concurrently hold key party posts. For example in North Korea,
one of the few surviving communist states, Kim II Sung serves at once as
Secretary General of the party, Premier of the Cabinet, President of the
Republic, and as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. In short, he
is head of the party, the state and the military.
To reinforce its control, the ruling party has always shadowed and
supervised the work of state administrations through its own organisa-
tions, right down to the local level. Thus, party members acted as
watchdogs in the government agencies and enterprises in which they
worked. If necessary, they would intervene to ensure that party policy
was firmly followed.
Why did practice diverge from theory? Basically, because the party
and state bureaucracy ran the entire economy as if it were a single
national firm. Rather than withering away, as Marx and Engels had
forecast, the state expanded into an all-embracing network of large
institutions. Lenin saw too late the danger that this bureaucracy would
dominate society. In effect the apparatchiks, the men of the party-state
apparatus, became a ruling class.
Worse than this, however, the so-called 'planned economy' was not
rationally planned at all. It was a command economy, organised from
above on an ideological basis. Without incentives for efficient use of
resources, the economy was wastefully run and ignored people's needs.
Over the long haul, it was unable to provide both guns and butter. It
could not maintain heavy defence expenditures and improve living
standards.
56 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

Communism's decline in Eastern Europe was speeded by the failure of

the party-state bureaucracy to accept reform. The bureaucracy was top-
heavy, politically hidebound and deeply imbued with self-interest. As
Mikhail Gorbachev found, efforts at economic reform that reduced the
bureaucracy's power (e.g. introducing markets) were strongly resisted.
To paraphrase Marx, the ruling institutions of the Marxist-Leninist
states became fetters upon the further development of the productive
forces of these societies. When the chance finally came, the people threw
off their communist rulers without hesitation.

o The challenge of postcommunism

A key problem facing postcommunist states in the 1990s is defining the
role of the state. Because of the rapid collapse of the communist system,
the transition from state to private ownership was anything but smooth.
There was no gradual evolution from state planning and distribution to
the market. Choices had to be made about the extent of state ownership
and intervention in the economy. Some postcommunist democracies run
the risk of swinging from one extreme to the other: from an over-
centralised state-run economy to extreme laissez-faire. A population
used to one system will need time to adjust to another.
This risk is increased by the tainted nature of the state after the
collapse of communist control. Because of the close links between party
and state, both are associated with repression, surveillance and social
control. A bitter irony is that many of the new entrepreneurs will be
former communist apparatchiks and factory directors. They are the
people with the wealth, the contacts and the experience to set up new
ventures and take over newly privati sed businesses.
The postcommunist authorities will have no choice but to employ
many officials, policemen and administrators from the old regime, in
order to keep public services going. In this, history is repeating itself.
After they seized power in both China and the Soviet Union, the
communist parties were forced to rely on officials and experts from
the old regimes. Today, in Bulgaria and Romania, many state officials
from the communist era are still in place. Even in Poland, Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, where the electoral revolt against communism was
nearly total, many personnel from the old regime remain. Democracy
may have arrived in Eastern Europe. Even so, as Lenin found after the
Russian revolution, skilled and experienced personnel are still needed to
run the adminstration.
Although individual freedom is now far greater than under commu-
nist rule, the protective aspects of democracy still seem weakly rooted.
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 57

Only six months after the fall of the communist dictatorship in

Romania, for example, the new government bussed thousands of
miners into Bucharest. Their job, performed with gusto, was to beat
up protestors and quell embarrassing criticism. Again, deep ethnic
hatreds simmer in Bulgaria and Romania, and erupted into turmoil in
Yugoslavia. Some observers fear that Poland, whose people struggled
for decades to slough off Marxism-Leninism, could now find itself
politically dominated by the Roman Catholic Church.
The transition to liberal democracy in Eastern Europe was remark-
ably fast, as people were united by their opposition to communism. But
in societies beset by hardships, and impatient for results, the impulse
towards authoritarianism and populism will be strong. Consolidating
liberal democracy will be a long and uncertain business .

• The third world: the politics of economics

Because the level of economic development is the key to their situation,
it makes sense to classify third world countries in economic as well as in
political terms. Among the most important factors are:
the size and distribution of the national income,
the extent of industrialisation and urbanisation,
the amount of foreign debt
the concentration of exports on a single commodity.
All these affect the options open to third world governments, whatever
their form of government or political ideology. The country's relation-
ship to international markets is vital. Third world states typically
depend far more on the international economy than those in the first
world, and have far less influence upon it.

D An economic classification
There are four main clusters of third world states: oil-exporters, newly
industrialising countries (NICs), less developed, least developed. We
look briefly at each group.

1. Oil-exporters - These countries, mainly in the Middle East, supply

the oil that is the lifeblood of world industry. Since they began to use the
leverage this gives them, the major oil-exporting states have enjoyed vast
revenues. With only small populations to support, several of these
countries (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Brunei) are enormously
58 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

rich, with average incomes exceeding $10,000 per head. These highly
affluent states are ruled by traditional monarchs. The Saudi monarchy,
for instance, provides its people with extensive health and education
services but the regime is ultra-conservative and predemocratic. Elec-
tions and representative institutions do not exist or are of little moment.
Politics is the preserve of the ruling family and its advisers.
2. Newly industrialising countries (NICs) - A few countries, mainly in
the Pacific rim of East Asia (South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong
Kong) are striding rapidly towards the first world, economically at least.
Income levels have reached $2000-$4000 per head, and are rising
steadily. The political evolution of the NICs has been slower. They
combine a stable (if often authoritarian) political system with a coherent
development strategy. The workforce is disciplined and now fairly well
educated. As a result, the NICs make goods which increasingly compete
on quality, and not just price, in the world market. In theory, this then
leaves room for other, lower cost countries (such as Malaysia) to enter
the world's manufacturing economy and form the next generation of
NICs.
3. Less developed countries - In about forty other third world
countries, significant economic development has taken place. However
the modern sector of the economy is not internationally competitive
(unlike the NICs) or else is dominated by transnational companies.
Income levels in some of these countries, such as Argentina, Chile and
Uruguay, can be fairly high ($1000-$3000 per head). But their economic
development has come to a halt or is subject to large fluctuations. This
makes for political instability.
4. Least developed countries - Around seventy very poor countries,
many in Africa, have incomes per head below $1000 a year. They almost
entirely lack a manufacturing base. Instead, they depend on one or two
commodities for export earnings. Often highly dependent on foreign aid
and burdened with debt, these countries are in a very weak position
from which to attempt economic development.

D From oligarchy to democracy?

The background: oligarchy
Oligarchic tendencies are most marked in third world politics because of
the very uneven distribution of political resources. Oligarchy means the
rule of a few. A tiny elite dominates political life and the mass of the
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 59

population is inactive. Elections, if they are held, are 'made' by the men
of wealth and influence. To be sure, there are quarrels and conflicts
among the oligarchs: between 'old' and 'new' wealth, between land-
owners and the urban bourgeoisie, for instance. But the ordinary people
are not involved and neither are their interests reflected in these
conflicts. They are kept at bay, by ignorance, by deference, and if
necessary by repression.
Oligarchy has been a phase of political development in many
countries, including most of those in the first world. But traditional
elites in the third world have been more stubborn than were, say,
European aristocrats in clinging to their wealth, power and privilege.
When the pressure from the masses became too strong, third world
oligarchs have often turned to repression rather than reform, encoura-
ging right-wing military intervention.
There is, in fact, a long history of intervention by the army in many
third world countries, especially in Latin America and more recently in
Africa and Asia. But the military have been notable failures as political
rulers. In the 1980s the soldiers in Latin America and Africa who seized
power in the previous two decades were in retreat. The late 1980s was
the twilight of state dictators.
Arguably, the final curtain has now fallen on army intervention in
Latin America. Almost all the military regimes there were troubled by
grave economic failure. Vicious repression to curb political opposition
and industrial protest could not disguise these difficulties. As the
soldiers lost confidence, so they faced growing pressure from politi-
cians and ordinary people alike to restore civilian government. In
addition, US support for right-wing military regimes came to an end.
This reflected the weakening of its superpower rivalry with the Soviet
Union. In recent years, the United States has supported democratic
elections and the path of moderate reform.
Whether military intervention is a thing of the past in sub-Saharan
Africa is more doubtful. Uncertainties arise because economic develop-
ment is more limited there, and because the army is a heavyweight
institution in societies where the institutions of government are weak.
But military rule is only one form of oligarchic control in the third
world. The wave of de-colonisation in the postwar period soon led to
single-party regimes in much of the third world, especially in the Middle
East, North and sub-Saharan Africa. Parties of a nationalist and socialist
character have ruled both Syria and Iraq since the 1960s. In North
Africa, the best-known cases were the Neo-Destour party in Tunisia and
the FLN in Algeria. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, single-party
regimes were common. They included Senegal, Guinea, Ghana (in the
1960s), Ivory Coast, Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia.
60 The Nation-State: 'Evolution and Revolution

One-party rule was justified on various grounds. Political competition

was held to be alien to Arab or African culture, or needlessly divisive
and a risky luxury in societies facing great challenges. The purpose
claimed for the single party was to mobilise society for development. It
would focus loyalties, and integrate diverse peoples into a new nation. It
would also harness their energies for a huge effort to transform society.
Economic and social development was attempted under the aegis of a
permanent ruling party.
Some regimes were far more repressive than others. The savagery of
Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was of a quite different order to the
bureaucratic restrictions of Julius Nyerere's Tanzania. But in neither
case was open political opposition permitted. It was held down by a
mixture of coercion, co-opting potential opponents into the regime, and
personality cults.
Some Arab single-party regimes (for example Libya, Iraq, Syria and
Algeria) had oil or other resources, which could be used to finance
economic and social modernisation. But rulers like Colonel Quadafi of
Libya, or Iraq's Saddam Hussein, used these resources to pursue
grandiose ambitions abroad and underpin tight dictatorship at home,
rather than for the benefit of the whole population.
Moreover, with only Kenya as a doubtful exception, the attempt at
modernisation under single-party rule in Africa clearly failed. One-party
government was barely more successful than military rule. Ruling
parties became little more than businesses for the politicians. Through
the party, and therefore the state, rulers acquired access to luxuries and
consumer goods which the mass of the population could not obtain.
Eventually, international economic pressures swamped even those states
like Tanzania which tried go-it-alone economic development.
By the late 1980s, the single-party rulers of Africa faced domestic
discontent, fuelled by two decades of economic setbacks. They also
confronted international pressure. First world governments held the
purse strings of aid but their price was more democracy and pluralism.
The collapse of communist Eastern Europe also stripped away the
illusion of an alternative model of development. In the 1990s the non-
democratic rulers of African states faced three alternatives. First, they
could stand fast and risk their own overthrow. Secondly, they could try
to retain control by guiding the transition to multi-partyism. Thirdly,
they could face the verdict of free elections.

Moving towards democracy

A few third world countries have been able to operate liberal democratic
regimes since independence. These include India (see Exhibit 3.3), some
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 61

Exhibit 3.3 India: democracy and dynasty

A huge, poor country with over 700 million people, the Republic of
India is by far the most important case of post-colonial democratic
government (Ray 1989). The Congress Party has dominated Indian
politics since the 1940s, having led the countrY ,to independence from
British rule. The party, however, has become a coalition held
together only by allegiance to the Gandhi family which has ruled
India most of the time since independence.
Despite the strains imposed by India's huge diversity and poverty,
parliamentary government has been maintained. This in itself is a
remarkable achievement. But there are signs that Indian democracy
faces a crisis of governability. It may not cope with a rising tide of
discontent fuelled by expectations which politicians raise but rarely
fulfil. Political democracy, imposed from above, does not transform
traditional structures in a more egalitarian direction but sparks off a
revivalist backlash. The growing incidence of political killings, riots,
inter-communal violence and separatist conflicts are ominous
signs.
India also faces severe economic problems . Its huge foreign debt
gives the international community a lever with which to prise its
markets open to imports from abroad. Eventually, this may increase
India's growth rate but only at the cost of offending many people
accustomed to a cushion of protection previously supplied by the
ruling party.
At the centre of Indian politics, the ability of the parties, especially
the Congress Party, to pursue effective policies has declined. Leader-
ship has become more and more personalised, and support a matter
of patron-client relations rather than of principles and policies. Also,
in many areas, party organisation has passed into the hands of
criminals and 'strong men'. In short, India seems to be catching up
fast with how the third world used to be. (Kohli 1990)

small islands in the Pacific and Caribbean, and Botswana and Gambia in
Africa. But these are the exceptions. Until the 1980s, military or one-
party rule was far more typical.
Past conditions have not favoured liberal democracy in the third
world. Political and military leaders have often been hostile to
democracy; the population has not been used to it. With resources in
such short supply, the state became the main point of access to them.
62 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

The struggle to gain and hold on to power was relentless. There was
little restraint or tolerance, and political opposition therefore carried
great risks.
However, the prospects for democracy have clearly advanced. The
tide has been running towards democracy in the 1980s and 1990s.
Despite an appalling economic legacy and the constant risk of further
army intervention, elected governments have survived in Latin America.
Some have survived the acid test of peaceful changes of leadership. The
population's memory of military incompetence and widespread abuse of
human rights has helped sustain civilian rule. Over the longer term,
stable democracy in Latin America will be further reinforced if the
economy performs well.
Ballots may replace bullets, but this does not always broaden popular
influence over government. Formal democracy arrives, rather than the
substance of a democratic society. Consider the Philippines as an
example. Popular forces supported Mrs Cory Aquino's campaign
against the corrupt regime of President Marcos. After rigging the
Presidential election of 1986, Marcos was forced into exile, partly by
US pressure. But most of the 'crony capitalist' elite that flourished under
Marcos survives; President Aquino has been absorbed by it, according
to her critics. Reforms have been shelved, while an undeclared guerilla
war rages in the rural areas. Land reform programmes announced with
great fanfare in Manila, the capital city, somehow peter out in the
countryside where they meet stubborn resistance from landlords.
The same could be said of Mexico, India, Brazil or many other third
world countries. The introduction of democratic forms does not, and
cannot, solve fundamental problems of poverty and economic inequal-
ity. But this means political inequalities will continue, slightly moder-
ated perhaps but certainly not eliminated. Even if they have the will,
elected politicians lack the power to act against the interests of the
economic 'haves'. Moreover, where the 'have-nots' are concerned, the
real face of the state can be completely unchanged. The post-military
Brazilian Government, for instance, declares its commitment to human
rights, but off-duty policemen still murder street urchins, petty crim-
inals, peasant leaders and trade union activists.
In many third world countries, the transition to democracy has taken
place against the backdrop of economic deterioration. Democratically
chosen politicians are picking up the pieces from years of authoritarian
misrule and misspending. Prosperity is always the best handmaiden for
democracy. Post-authoritarian states in the third world, just like
postcommunist states in the second world, are growing up in a tough
environment.
 The Nation-State in Three Worlds 63

SUJ1lJ1lan

1. The three worlds are the outcome of a single process of change, but this has
led to widely divergent outcomes. There is a rich, capitalist first world of liberal
democracies; a less wealthy second world in which state-controlled modernisa-
tion failed, leading to the collapse of communism; and a diverse but poorer
third world, which is linked to the first world but has little influence upon it.

2. Liberal democracy combines popular influence with controls upon

government. In essence, political parties and candidates compete for the right
to govern. There are two main forms. Majority democracy (e.g. New Zealand,
UK) gives clear control over the levers of government to the majority party in
the legislature. Consensus democracy (e.g. Finland, the Netherlands) emphas-
ises power-sharing between parties in a number of formal and informal ways.

3. Communist party states had state-owned economies under strict party

control. Though effective for early industrialisation, the command economy
could not make the transition to a modern, high-productivity economy. This
was a major cause of communist collapse. Efforts at reform only worsened
basic economic weaknesses and revealed the lack of popular support for the
regime.

4. The postcommunist regimes are emergent liberal democracies, but their

political and economic prospects vary widely. All face the problem of erasing'
the residue of communism and redefining the role of the state, particularly in
the economy. All face a huge task of social and economic renewal with thin
resources. The resurgence of nationalism and ethnic conflict may destabilise
individual countries or entire regions in the postcommunist world.

5. Third world countries vary in their economic position. A few wealthy oil-
exporting countries enjoy considerable affluence. Another small group of
newly industrialising countries supplies goods to the world market at low
cost, and makes economic progress from so doing. At the bottom of the scale
come the least developed countries, largely irrelevant to the international
economy and highly dependent on aid.

6. Third world politics has not favoured stable democracy in the past.
Regimes have typically been oligarchic - run by the few. Military rule or single-
party government has predominated. The 1980s, however, saw a sweeping
transition to democracy, at least in the sense that leaders are elected through
multi-party elections. But oligarchic tendencies are deep-rooted, and renewed
military intervention cannot be ruled out, particularly in Africa.
64 The Nation-State: Evolution and Revolution

Di..,clIs..,ion points
1. Is liberal democracy the 'final form' of government?
2. Has consensus democracy more of a future than majority democracy? If so,
why?
3. Are capitalism and democracy partners or enemies?
4. Why were communist party states incapable of reforming themselves?
5. Assess the prospects for (a) market-based capitalism and (b) liberal
democracy in Eastern Europe.
6. Is economics more fundamental to the future of third world countries than
politics?
7. Will the current moves to more democracy in the third world eventually
produce stable liberal democracies?

KI.?\,. fl.?adin nu
Diamond, L., Linz, ]. and Lipset, S. (eds) (1989), Democracy in Developing
Countries, 4 vols (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner). Comprehensive coverage
of democratic trends in all major third world countries.
White, S. et al. (1990) Communist and PostCommunist Political Systems: an
Introduction, 3rd edn (Basingstoke: Macmillan). Covers the end of com-
munism in Eastern Europe but not its final demise in the Soviet Union.
Held, D. (1987) Models of Democracy (Oxford: Polity). This challenging book
is among the most accomplished recent works on democracy.
Munck, R. (1989) Latin America: The Transition to Democracy (London: Zed
Books) examines the development of the 'democratic discourse' in Latin
America.
Wiseman, J. (1990) Democracy in Black Africa: Survival and Revival (New
York: Paragon House) examines democratic traditions and transitions in
black Africa.

FlIrthl.?r fl.?ading
The contributions in Bebler and Seroka (1990), classifying contemporary
political systems, are uneven, but the chapter by Lijphart on democracy
repays reading; see also Lijphart (1984a). Powell (1982) blends empirical and
theoretical approaches to democracy. Dahl's many writings (1971, 1982, 1984
among them) have been highly influential.
 The Nation-State in Three WorLds 65

The nature of politics in the second world is comprehensively analysed in

Holmes (1986), while Djilas (1957) remains a classic and prescient source in the
light of 1989. S. White et al. (1990) is very good on the communist demise in
Eastern Europe. For this, see also Bertsch (1990).
Third world politics are succinctly covered by Clapham (1985) and in
Cammack et al. (1988). O'Brien and Cammack (1985) deal with the retreat
of military authoritarianism in Latin America. The persistence of c1ientelism is
the subject of Clapham (1982). Diamond, Linz and Lipset (1989, 4 vols) assess
democratic trends in all major third world countries.
 • Chapter 4 •

Revolution, Ideology and

Political Change
Types of political change 66 Three revolutions: France,
What is a revolution? 67 Russia and Iran 74
Explaining revolutionary 1989: the year of revolutions 82
change 68 Ideology and revolution 90

• Types of political change

The world of nation-states we inhabit today results from changes that
have taken place over centuries. Some of these changes have been
gradual. For example, developments in technology are fundamental to
our world, but they tend to take place regularly and steadily. Political
change, however, tends to be irregular. Long periods of calm are
punctured by intense periods of change, the effects of which are felt
for generations. This means we cannot just concentrate on the peaceful
periods. To understand the political landscape of today, we must also
analyse the political earthquakes of the past.
Political change takes several forms. At the two extremes stand
evolutionary and revolutionary change. Evolutionary change is gradual
but can, over time, transform the way a government works. Britain is a
good example of a political system characterised by evolutionary
change. The institutions of monarchy, Parliament and the Cabinet
have survived, but their functions and relative importance have altered
in response to changing demands. Similarly, the United States retains the
institutions set up by the constitution adopted in 1789. However, the
authors of the American constitution. would be astonished at how
government activity has developed over the last two hundred years.
Any wide-ranging change may be loosely defined as revolutionary.
However, a tighter definition of political revolutions requires a
fundamental change in the distribution of power in the nation
concerned, and often in other nations as well. The impact of revolu-
tions is so great that they often transcend national boundaries. The
regime brought about by a revolution may not last for ever but the

66
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 67

revolution itself is permanent and irreversible. It becomes part of the

country's political culture.
Between the poles of evolution and revolution stands political change
brought about by the transfer of power from one set of leaders to
another within an existing political, social and economic framework.
These may be orderly or irregular transfers. In the modern world
orderly transfers take place through elections. Irregular transfers such
as military coups are dealt with in Chapter 15. In neither case do these
transfers of power reconstruct the political landscape. A single transfer
of power, whether orderly or irregular, lacks the transformative drive
associated with revolutions.

• What is a revolution?
Although revolutions are associated with the modern world, they have
long been a preoccupation of students of politics. However, the
meaning of the term 'revolution' has changed over time. In The
Politics, Aristotle (1962) was concerned with 'revolutions' in the city-
states of Ancient Greece (see Exhibit 2.1). But when Aristotle spoke
about revolution, he was merely referring to a transfer of power that
involved a change in either the individuals in power, or the constitution.
Such a definition of revolution would not be accepted by contemporary
political scientists.
A revolution entails much broader and deeper alterations within
society. Such changes may include the alteration of social values, social
structures and political institutions, as well as changes in the personnel
of the ruling elite or its class composition (Cohan 1975, p. 31). Whether
these changes have or have not taken place within a society may take
years to become apparent.
This begs another question. There is no doubt that the Soviet Union
underwent dramatic political change between 1984 and 1991, but does
this mean that a revolution took place? Can an aggregation of political
changes over a fairly lengthy period be considered to be a revolution? If
so, is there a time limit on what constitutes a revolution? The United
States in 1989 was certainly very different from the United States of
1789, but to refer to a 200-year revolution is absurd. Historical
judgement may be the only way to disentangle revolutionary change
from other transfers of power. What the media report today as a
'revolution' may be remembered as just another coup, and what
appears to be a series of radical reforms at the time may later be
judged a revolution.
68 The Nation-State

• Explaining revolutionary change

In the first two decades after the Second World War, political scientists
were preoccupied with the problem of political stability rather than
political change. Put simply, political stability was seen as 'good' and
political change was seen as potentially 'bad'. This cautious outlook was
understandable. The world had just experienced the global consequen-
ces of two major liberal democracies - Germany and Italy - succumbing
to fascist dictatorship. With the defeat of fascism, a new 'threat' to
stability emerged in the form of communism. Political scientists also
wanted to secure political stability in the newly independent nations of
the third world. Soon after independence, many of these regimes had
succumbed to irregular transfers of power.
The perspective of most political scientists has now shifted. The study
of political stability has given way to the study of political change.
Students of change claim that nation-states never reach equilibrium -
they are continually adapting to their environment. Where students of
stability adopted a sociological approach, the study of political change
necessarily employs a historical approach.
There are (at least) four main approaches to the study of political
instability and revolution. These are:
1. The Marxist approach;
2. Functionalism;
3. Social psychology;
4. Comparative history.
Although the assumptions behind these four approaches are contra-
dictory, their interpretations also complement each other by concen-
trating on different aspects of political instability.

o Marxism
Marxism dominated the study of revolution for over a century. Marx
viewed revolution as inescapable. The entire movement of history was
inevitable - and would culminate in the creation of a communist society.
For Marx, when revolution occurred, it would be much more than just a
coup or uprising. It involved the transformation of society from one
mode of production to another.
Marx argued that capitalism, the prevailing economic system, creates
conflict in society between ruling and exploited classes. Members of the
exploited class become increasingly alienated from the existing order,
and are drawn together by an emerging class consciousness. Once the
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 69

exploited class becomes sufficiently strong, it rises up and overthrows

the ruling class. A total change in the distribution of power takes place
as the exploited class takes its destiny into its own hands and begins a
new historical epoch.
Marx believed that when revolution occurred, it would be workers in
the most advanced industrialised nations - for example, Britain and
Germany - who would revolt first. But the revolution would not stop
with the overthrow of the ruling class in one nation. The international
capitalist system would be unable to function if the dominant
(hegemonic) economy within it was eliminated. As a result, revolution
in the centre of the world economy would lead to revolutions
throughout the world.
Yet the lesson of history is that the exploited workers in the most
highly developed industrial nations have not risen in revolution. Nor
does it appear that revolutionary class consciousness has increased; if
anything, it has declined. Either the Western proletariat has failed to
understand its historical mission, or the capitalist system has proved
much more flexible and durable than Marx suggested.
Rather than occurring in the strongest links in the capitalist chain,
communist revolutions have taken place in some of the weakest links,
such as Russia and China. In the first two decades of the twentieth
century, Lenin applied himself to the task of devising a revolutionary
strategy that was applicable for Russia.
Lenin argued that the reactionary nature of the Tsar's (Russian
Emperor's) regime could interact with peasant and worker discontent
to produce a revolutionary situation. In such circumstances the prolet-
ariat, small as it was, might have the opportunity to seize power. The
stage of bourgeois democracy under capitalism could thus be by-passed
as Russia moved directly to a more 'advanced' socialist system - or at
least the capitalist phase could be telescoped into a very short time. The
crucial point for Lenin was that the proletariat should be led by a well-
organised revolutionary party. In 1902 he declared: 'Give us an
organization of revolutionaries and we shall overturn the whole of
Russia!' In 1917, the wish was fulfilled and the deed accomplished.
Lenin's contribution to the theory of revolution lay in adapting
Marxism to the purpose of achieving revolution in Russia. This process
was repeated elsewhere. In China, Mao Zedong adapted Marxism to
achieve revolution in a society without an established industrial
proletariat of any sort. Instead, the peasants were the key to revolution
in China. Long exploited by the landlords, they were spurred into
revolutionary activity as their situation worsened after the arrival of
Western imperialist powers such as Britain and France from 1839
onwards.
70 The Nation-State

Nationalism played a major part role in the Chinese revolution.

Between 1937 and 1944 with much of China occupied by Japan, the
communists downplayed their policy of class war, and instead built their
policies around the anti-Japanese fervour of the population. As such, the
rise to power of the communists in 1949 can be seen as a victory for
nationalist ideology. Communism was to come later, once the party was
in power.
Marx had regarded the peasantry as a reactionary class with no role
to play in the revolution. Lenin viewed peasants as at best a dispensable
ally in the proletariat's quest for power. Mao rejected these views and
recognised the revolutionary potential of the peasantry - at least in
China.
Marx's ideas regarding revolution have not proved pertinent for
political change in Western capitalist societies - the very countries that
he had in mind. Marxist regimes have come to power in very different
circumstances to those envisaged by Marx. In the process, the theory has
been transformed. We do not just talk of Marxism, but also of
Marxism-Leninism, Titoism, Maoism and so on. For Schwartz (1960)
the political thought of Mao Zedong is so far divorced from the original
writings of Marx, that Mao can hardly be called a Marxist at all.

D Functionalism
The division of society into conflicting classes is the decisive factor in
Marxist views of revolution. This profoundly distinguishes Marxist
from functionalist theorists of revolution. If Marxism emphasises
conflict in society, then the main preoccupation of functionalism is
equilibrium. According to the functional theory, the task of government
is to find an equilibrium between the political system and its environ-
ment. As long as rulers respond to new demands placed upon them, the
political system is likely to remain in balance and the prospects for
stability are enhanced. If rulers fail to adapt to changing conditions and
demands, disequilibrium develops. If this goes unchecked for too long, a
revolutionary situation develops. Thus where Marx saw revolutions as a
progressive force, functionalists see them as a response to ineffective
government.
Perhaps the best analogy is to think of a set of scales with the political
system on one side, and the environment (social, economic, inter-
national) on the other. As new items are placed on the environment
side of the scales, the government side has to respond by making the
correct adjustments to achieve a balance. Revolution can occur when
the scales are no longer in balance, but tip heavily over to one side.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 71

The main attempt to develop a theory of revolutionary change from a

functional perspective was made by Chalmers Johnson (1966). He
suggested that revolutionary situations occur when the political order
is no longer broadly accepted within society. This is most likely to
happen when the political system is unable to cope with the pace and
number of pressures for change. Leaders become swamped by the
demands placed upon them, and are unable to satisfy popular expecta-
tions. As a result, legitimacy is lost, and a progressive reduction of
system effectiveness - power deflation - follows. These pressures may
come from within the society itself, from outside, or (most destructively)
from both in combination. For example, in China at the end of the
nineteenth century, the emperors faced both internal pressures to
change, and external pressures from foreign intervention.
Initially, political elites often respond in an uncompromising way to
pressures for change, resorting to force to maintain their position.
However this leads to a further loss of legitimacy. Many ailing regimes
attempt at the last to respond to the pressures by implementing reforms.
However, the epitaph of so many reforms is 'too little, too late'. In
France, Russia and China, the traditional leaders tried to defuse
mounting political tensions by introducing reforms. But on all occas-
ions they merely dealt with the symptoms, and did not treat the illness
itself.
Johnson's view of what constitutes a revolution is poles apart from
Marx's. Even unsuccessful attempts at overthrowing the government are
taken by Johnson as instances of revolutionary change. Any behaviour
that disrupts settled expectations is revolutionary violence - even if no
violence is used by the 'revolutionaries'. This view seems exaggerated to
say the least. The functionalists' concern with the smooth running of the
system produces insensitivity to the varied forms of political change.

o Social psychology
The social psychological account seeks to identify what motivates
individuals to get involved in revolutionary activity. Why do some
people sometimes feel so strongly about politics that they are willing to
give time, energy and ultimately their lives to achieve change? This
approach focuses on the individual conditions of political instability,
but says little about the differing forms of instability. It does not explain
why riots sometimes become rebellions, nor why rebellions occasionally
turn into revolutions.
Originally propounded by de T ocqueville (1856, 1966) in his study of
the French revolution, the social psychological approach found favour
72 The Nation-State

in the United States in the 1960s. One of its main exponents was Gurr
(1980, ed.). He argued that relative deprivation was the key to collective
violence in politics. When there is a difference between what people
perceive they are getting (value capability) and what they feel they are
entitled to or should be getting (value expectations), collective violence
may result. Relative deprivation does not only arise from a 'deficit' of
wealth and well-being. The shortfall can also be seen in relation to social
status or even political participation. The key factor is the gap between
what people want and what they get.
Political instability can develop when relative deprivation is both
widespread and intensely felt. If writers of politics textbooks feel that
they are not getting paid enough, it is unlikely that violence will follow.
Their complaint, though just, is ignored by the rest of society. However,
if other larger sectors of the population also feel relatively deprived, then
violence is more likely.
The dangerous situation for rulers is when expectations are rising, as
with people in the third world who aspire to first world living standards,
or when the ability to meet demands falls, as when the economy goes
into recession. The most hazardous period of all is when a period of
rising expectations is followed by a decline in the ability of the regime to
meet those demands. This tension is intensified if the government has
attempted to gain legitimacy by making promises of future well-being
that it finds it cannot keep.
Davies (1962) sums up the implications of this approach: 'revolutions
are most likely to occur when a prolonged period of economic and social
development is followed by a short period of sharp reversal.' This
hypothesis is known as the 'J-Curve' theory. Figure 4.1 presents the
theory in a graph showing the relationship between expectations and
capabilities over time.
Relative deprivation's main contribution to the study of revolutionary
change lies in pointing out that how people perceive their condition is
more important than the actual condition itself. Perceptions are norm-
ally based on comparisons made over time: 'Am I better off than I was
last year?' This means that as long as conditions are not worsening,
grinding poverty and enormous inequality will not normally yield
political instability. Here, then, is an explanation of why revolutions
are so rare.
As de T ocqueville noted, the most dangerous time for an oppressive
ruler is to embark on reform and hold out the prospect of improvement.
Grievances patiently endured become intolerable once the possibility of
a brighter future crosses the population's minds. In short, reforming
leaders must exercise great care if they are not to reform themselves out
of power.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 73

High
Expectations ,.. ,.. ,..
,.. Revolutionary
} gap

Capabilities
Values

Low ~ __________________________ ~~

Time

Source: An adaptation from J. Davies, 'Toward a theory of revolution', American

Sociological Review vol. 27 (1962), pp. 5-18.

Figure 4.1 The '-curve theory of revolutions

Another cause of relative deprivation is when comparisons are made

with other groups: 'I am better off than 1 was, but my position has not
improved as much as theirs.' For instance, feelings among China's
students that they were not getting as much out of new wealth as other
groups is one reason why they took to the streets in the spring of 1989.
Furthermore, the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 suggest that
comparisons with other groups can play an important role in creating
instability - 'I am better off than 1 was, but 1 am not as well off as people
in the West.'
Although the psychological approach provides an interesting insight
into the conditions of political instability, it is certainly insufficient in
explaining political change. Whose discontent matters? Why does
discontent sometimes lead to an uprising, but sometimes not? How
and why do uprisings turn into revolutions? How is discontent
channelled into organised opposition movements? Why is such opposi-
tion usually suppressed but sometimes not? Such questions are much
more suited to the comparative history approach than to general
psychological theories.

D Comparative history
Analysing revolutions through comparison of a small number of
examples is an old trade (Brinton 1938) which has recently revived.
74 The Nation-State

To contrast this approach with psychological theories we will consider

Skocpol's (1979) discussion of the French, Russian and Chinese
revolutions.
For Skocpol the causes of revolutions cannot be found in the motives
of the participants. What matters is the 'structural conditions' - the
patterns of relationships between groups within a nation-state and,
equally important, between nation-states. The background to revolu-
tion is a regime that is weak internationally and ineffective domestically.
This leads to a breakdown of the old regime followed by a period of
dynamic change when a tightly organised revolutionary group even-
tually succeeds in consolidating power.
Skocpol's analysis places particular emphasis on the international
dimension. Revolutions in France, Russia and China all erupted after
the old regimes suddenly faced stronger military competitors. (How-
ever, this was not so with the Mexican revolution of 1910 or the Cuban
revolution of 1959. The danger of proceeding by example is that
selective case studies may be used to 'prove' a theory.)
On the domestic front, Skocpol suggests that revolutions occur when
the capacity of the state to govern and coerce has already decayed. This
collapse of domestic power is often the result of military defeat. In these
circumstances, opposition leaders can draw upon previously suppressed
mass hostility to the old regime to build a new order of power. The
revolutionary intentions of an opposition movement are not always
there at the outset but develop during the struggle itself.
So Skocpol argues that the classic revolutions occurred when well-
organised revolutionaries exploited peasant frustration with the old
regime in a period when the regime had already lost its effectiveness. In
these circumstances the actual seizing of power can be quite straightfor-
ward. The real revolution begins as the new regime imposes its vision on
opposition groups. Political revolutions do not stop with the taking of
power, but often only start at this point. Thus the comparative history
approach says much about how discontent is mobilised into revolu-
tionary activity, even if it has less to say than the psychological approach
on how that discontent arose in the first place.

• Three revolutions: France, Russia and Iran

In this section, we consider three revolutions, one from each of the three
worlds. Our purpose is not just to study the applicability of the theories
of instability and revolution outlined above. Each of these revolutions
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 75

Exhibit 4.1 The perfect revolutionary situation

Suppose we took all the major theories of revolution and listed the
factors that are claimed to be the causes of revolutions. We would
then have the ideal revolutionary situation. This may never have
existed in full, but most major revolutions share at least some of
these features.

1. An authoritarian regime that has failed to build any base of

popular support is in power. It uses violence and repression to
hold down opposition. Neighbouring countries all have stable
political systems that guarantee individual rights and popular
participation in government.
2. The masses (peasantry and working class) become alienated
from the existing order.
3. A well-organised group of dedicated revolutionaries forms to
lead the revolution.
4. A period of rapidly rising expectations is followed by a period of
sharp economic decline, while the economies of neighbouring
countries continue to prosper.
5. The government becomes swamped by the pace and number of
demands being placed upon it.
6. The government responds by implementing limited reforms
which partially remove political repression, but refuses to give
up its grip on power.
7. The reforms do nothing to allay mounting hardships for the
population.
8. The regime is confronted with foreign aggression, and ends up
ignominiously defeated.
9. The vanguard revolutionary leadership perceptively and skilfully
mobilises the discontented groups.

It is hard to imagine any country getting into the complete mess

outlined above. But the situation in Russia in 1917 perhaps comes
closest to this 'ideal' revolutionary situation.

had a profound impact on the making of the modern world. Their

influence was not confined to the nations concerned but spread out into
the wider world. In Marx's phrase, these revolutions really were
'locomotives of history'.
76 The Nation-State

D France 1789
'It is a rebellion' said Louis XVI. 'No sire,' came the blunt response, 'it is
a revolution.' The verdict of history is that Louis was wrong. Perhaps
his misreading of the situation was one reason for the success of the
revolutionary movement. The French revolution marks a watershed in
history. The revolution swept away medieval structures of power and
accelerated the creation of modern nation-states which dominate the
contemporary world.
Politically, the French revolution destroyed absolute monarchy based
on divine right and curtailed the traditional powers of the aristocracy.
Over time, the system of provincial government led by local notables
was replaced by a centralised, more meritocratic bureaucracy. Thus the
revolution created the tools through which modern states govern their
people.
Economically, the revolution weakened aristocratic control over the
peasantry and helped to create the conditions under which market
relations spread and capitalism would eventually emerge. In that sense,
it can be considered a bourgeois revolution. Capitalism did not emerge
overnight, but the political revolution laid the ground for long-term
economic change.
Ideologically, the revolution was secular and anti-clerical, hostile to
religion in general and the Roman Catholic Church in particular. It
fathered liberal ideas of individual rights for all citizens. Where local
customs had previously shaped the nature of relations between indivi-
duals, after 1789 these rights were enforceable through codified law.
The French revolution was also powerfully nationalist: the nation
became the transcendent bond, uniting all citizens in patriotic fervour.
A duty of military service to the fatherland went hand in hand with the
hard-won rights and privileges of citizenship; the French revolutionary
armies thus foreshadowed the vast conscript armies of the twentieth
century.
The shockwaves of the French revolution reverberated throughout
Europe. The ruling classes everywhere saw their very existence imper-
illed as the system of throne and altar (the conservative marriage
between absolute monarchy and an official church) trembled. Further-
more, the subsequent revolutionary wars gave an impetus to national-
ism and the nation-state which spread across Europe and throughout the
world.
What does the French case reveal about the study of revolutions?
Firstly, it shows how the full impact of a revolution may take decades to
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 77

unfold. The initial revolutionary leadership of 1789 gave way to a period

of autocratic rule by Napoleon (1799-1814) and universal male suffrage
was not adopted until 1848. Yet the revolution established the future
contours of liberal democracy: popular sovereignty, a professional
bureaucracy, a capitalist economy and a liberal ideology.
The French case also displays the features that Skocpol believes
characterises great revolutions. The international dimension can be
seen in France's generally unsuccessful competition with England in
the eighteenth century. The limited domestic effectiveness of the
monarchy was shown by its inability to raise the revenue to pay for
these foreign adventures. The ensuing fiscal crisis came to a head in the
late 1780s. For the first time since 1614, the dominant classes of
landowners and office-holders convened in the Estates General to
demand a representative body with the right to approve the introduc-
tion of any new taxes.
Then an elite crisis gave way to a revolution. Popular disaffection was
triggered by a failed grain harvest which caused peasant revolts against
rents and tax demands. This combination of both elite and mass crises
resulted in a nationwide collapse of authority.
Finally, the complex dynamics of revolution can certainly be seen in
this case. It is one thing to overthrow a regime, but it is much more
difficult (and painful) to resolve the issue of what should replace it.
Opposition to a regime provides a glue that enables revolutionaries to
stick together. Once the common enemy has been removed, the glue
dissolves. In the 1790s, assorted attempts to build a constitutional
monarchy, a republic and a parliamentary government eventually gave
way to authoritarian rule by Napoleon. Creating the disorder of
revolution is a much easier task than restoring order out of the chaos
that has been unleashed.
Strong ingredients of class conflict were certainly present in the
French revolution. However, a dogmatic Marxist approach that sees
the revolution in just these terms is too simple. The functionalist
interpretation does draw attention to the discordant changes taking
place in the final years of the old regime. For the psychological
theorists, emphasis would have to be placed on the mass peasant
revolts driven by the deprivation of a failed harvest. But the dynamics
of revolution in terms of causes - and above all, consequences -
involved far more than just the relative deprivation of the peasantry.
Marxist, functionalist and relative deprivation theories provide only
limited frameworks for grasping the full significance of the French
revolution.
78 The Nation-State

D Russia 1917

Just as the French revolution provided the basis for liberal democracy,
so the Russian revolution of 1917 signalled the origins of the communist
state. It was the arrival of a totally new type of regime - a regime backed
by an ideology and revolutionary movement which sought to overthrow
the liberal democracies of the West. Without doubt, the Russian
revolution was a decisive moment in the history of the twentieth
century.
Davies suggests that his J-curve theory helps to explain the Russian
revolution. Important reforms implemented between 1860 and 1904
were followed by a period of decline. By the time of the revolution,
expectations were running far ahead of the Tsar's capacity to satisfy
them. The main reform was the emancipation of the peasantry in 1861.
Other important reforms included a modern legal system, state-
sponsored industrialisation and a generalliberalisation of society.
But even these reforms enhanced the feeling of relative deprivation.
The peasants were legally free, but most were burdened by heavy debts.
Furthermore, expectations raised by political reforms were then dashed
by the Tsar's inability to push ahead with further, more radical,
reforms.
Instead, reforms oscillated with repression - a perfect formula for
fostering relative deprivation. Though an attempted revolution in 1905
failed, the hardships imposed by Russia's involvement in the First World
War created another revolutionary opportunity in 1917. This time, the
chance was not lost. The Bolsheviks exploited the opportunity and
established the world's first communist party state.
The relative deprivation approach provides a framework for describ-
ing the Russian revolution but does not fully explain it. Neither does it
fully explain why the 1917 revolution succeeded and the 1905 revolution
failed. The historical approach offers more insight here. The interna-
tional situation profoundly influenced domestic developments. Russia's
defeat by the Western powers in the Crimean War of 1854-55 provided
the catalyst for the Tsar's attempts to 'catch up' with the West by
introducing modernising reforms. But these could not bridge the gap
with the West, a failure that contributed to the Tsar's ultimate demise.
More important still, the First World War destroyed the profession-
alism of the army. This meant it could not be an efficient tool of
domestic repression. Under the cumulative impact of military disasters,
incompetent leadership, economic chaos, war weariness and mounting
civil unrest, the Tsarist regime disintegrated in February 1917. The
provisional government that replaced it made the fatal mistakes of
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 79

continuing to fight the war and not carrying out land reform.
Conditions were ripe for a seizure of power, and the communists took
over with surprising ease.
As with the French revolution, overthrowing the old system proved
easier than consolidating power. Confronting international and domes-
tic opposition, the communists fought a protracted civil war that lasted
until 1921. Another similarity with the French revolution was the nature
of the post-revolutionary political system. A centralised, bureaucratic
state created order and consolidated power.
Thus Skocpol believes that the French and Russian revolutions can
both be understood in terms of peasant revolts coinciding with the
failure of rulers to keep control of their populations in situations of
international conflict. In the Russian case, the ideology of Marxism and
the experience of industrialisation (both within and outside the Soviet
Union) were used to plan the transition to an industrial society.

o Iran 1979
When the Shah of Iran fled his country to be replaced in power by
Ayatollah Khomeini, nobody could doubt that a revolution was under
way. A pro-Western absolute monarch committed to economic devel-
opment was overthrown by a 76 year-old religious leader committed to
Islamic fundamentalism. Although the new regime lost some of its
revolutionary fervour in the 1980s, the Iranian revolution has, like the
French and Russian revolutions before it, influenced the outside world.
Encouraged by the success of their Iranian brethren, Islamic fundamen-
talists have challenged the authority of other regimes. Large-scale
fundamentalist disturbances have put a mostly secular and socialist
regime in Algeria under mounting pressure, for instance. Communist
leaders in the largely Islamic southern republics of the Soviet Union
donned nationalist and separatist garb, as they felt the fundamentalist
wind on their necks. With the break-up of the Soviet Union, the fear that
the Muslim population of western China might try to form its own
independent state has gained renewed importance in Beijing.
In contrast to France and Russia, Iran's old regime had not been
ravaged by war nor had it suffered economic collapse. However,
development based on Iran's oil wealth had led to rapid social
change. In particular it created a dislocated urban peasantry, ripe for
fundamentalist mobilisation. This class saw the wealth of the Shah's
elite and the merchant class, but was not allowed to share it. But the
repressive capacity of the state (including an efficient and feared secret
police) remained in existence right up to the revolution. The Iranian
80 The Nation-State

revolution does not fit in with Skocpol's theory of revolutions taking

place in societies where the state has lost the capacity to govern. Indeed,
Skocpol (1982) argues that the revolutionaries themselves destroyed this
capacity. Khomeini himself was exiled in France, and took no active
part in the revolution, although he undeniably controlled affairs from a
distance. Yet in the face of mass demonstrations, the Shah's power
simply and rapidly dissolved.
The Iranian revolution showed the continuing capacity of ideas to
shape political behaviour. It symbolised the re-emergence of Islam as a
potent political force. Islam is the predominant religion in the Middle
East and North Africa. However, there are internal theological divisions
within Islam, notably between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims. In Iran, the
more militant Shi'ites are in a majority. The Shi'ites believe that religion,
politics and society are (and should be) inextricably linked. Religion is
the foundation of all other aspects of life, and nothing can be divorced
from it. Law should not be secular, but must be based on Islamic
precepts. Thus traditional Islamic punishments such as stoning adult-
erers to death and amputating the limbs of thieves, should be enshrined
in public law. Similarly, the state is legitimised by reference to Islamic
principles, not by Western ideas of liberal democracy.
Another feature of Islamic fundamentalism is the rejection of foreign
domination. The slogan 'neither East nor West' became a clarion call of
the revolution and has played a substantial role in the revival of Islam.
Encouraged by Khomeini's own development of Islamic thinking,
Iranian Shi'ites also accept that the ulama (the clergy) should rule
directly, and not simply be satisfied with advising temporal rulers. In
short, the revolution established a theocracy - government by priests -
in Iran.
In the late 1980s, theocratic power retreated. Faced with ineffective
government, the fundamentalist clerics lost ground to the more
pragmatic politicians and administrators. Khomeini's death in 1989
accelerated this process. At the beginning of the 1990s, there were two
separate and competing sources of power in Iran - the theocrats and the
temporalists. For example, the more secular leaders wanted to release
Western prisoners held in Iran without telling religious leaders. They
feared that if the news was made public in advance, the ulama would
whip up popular opposition to the plan.
The relative deprivation approach offers more help in understanding
the Iranian revolution. Iran's gas and oil reserves produced rapid
economic growth in the 1960s and early 1970s. But in 1973 the economy
was rocked by the oil crisis. The resulting slump in world demand for
Iranian oil left the Shah unable to satisfy popular expectations that had
mushroomed in the boom years.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 81

Davies' J-curve theory establishes the background of frustration in

pre-revolution Iran. Something more is needed to explain why, in the
Iranian case, popular disaffection led to the overthrow of the govern-
ment by a revolutionary movement. The answer seems to be that the
Shah never established a social or ideological base to his regime. Instead,
he chose to build his position on a combination of periodic handouts
and a strategy of creating divisions among his opponents. When a well-
organised opposition emerged, with deep cultural roots in the popula-
tion, the foundations of his authority proved to be insubstantial.
Furthermore, the ostentatious pro-Western style of the Shah gave the
ulama a focus around which to rally their opposition. Rapid economic
change in Iran had produced massive social change. During the boom
years, the urban population had grown dramatically. On the eve of the
revolution, half of the Iranian population lived in cities. The urban
masses proved to be key players in the overthrow of the Shah, although
they were by no means the only disaffected group involved.
It took many years for the full impact of the Russian and French
revolutions to emerge. It is therefore too early to assess the impact of the
Iranian revolution on the world. The evidence so far suggests that rule
by clerics in accordance with the Koran is unlikely to facilitate effective
government in a complex modern society. Here we can see similarities
with other revolutionary movements of very different complexions.
Overthrowing the old regime is one thing. Knowing what to do after the
revolution is another. Revolutionary agitators rarely make effective
administrators.
As with the French and Russian revolutions, the impact of 1979 has
not been confined to the host country. Although Iran's leaders have
encouraged the establishment of strict Islamic states elsewhere, their
attempts to export the revolution met with little success. True, most
Muslim states experienced an Islamic revival, stimulated in part by
events in Iran. This resurgence was strongest in states that had
experienced (a) rapid economic growth and subsequent dislocation;
(b) massive inequalities in urban areas; and a (c) period of pro-Western
and relatively secular rule (Keddie 1991, p. 304). But only in Iran did
these conditions lead to revolution. The events of 1979 were an Iranian
as much as an Islamic revolution.
However, the upsurge in Islamic fundamentalism has had profound
effects on governments, especially but not only in the third world. It has
created conflict both within states (governments reacting to the rise of
Islamic groups within society) and between states (for example,
antagonism between Iran and the United States). The Islamic revival
has provided a rallying cry behind which third world peoples can protest
against the continued influence of the West on their societies. Islam is a
82 The Nation-State

non-Western view of the world which is always prone to become anti-

Western. Whatever the future may hold for Islamic states, there is no
doubt that the revolution in Iran was one of the most remarkable and
surprising revolutions ever to take place in the third world.

• 1989: the year of revolutions

The French, Russian and Iranian revolutions were all cases where an
established traditional order was overthrown by a revolutionary move-
ment. In 1989 the countries of Eastern Europe witnessed a very different
kind of political change. A relatively new political order, largely
imposed by the Soviet Union, was swept aside.
As with the French, Russian and Iranian revolutions, the events of
1989 marked a turning-point in world history. Furthermore, the 1989
experience provides an important insight into the causes of revolution.

D Documenting the revolutions

Although the 1989 revolutions formed a single, connected series of
events, the course of political change was different in each country. In
Poland, Solidarity had been challenging the dominance of the ruling
party throughout the 1980s. The political change was a protracted and
incremental process culminating in a 'negotiated revolution'. In stark
contrast, the brutal Ceaucescu regime in Romania capitulated rapidly,
with little forewarning. Table 4.1 provides a comparative chronology of
the key events that swept communist parties from power across Eastern
Europe.
The character of the regimes that emerged after the revolutions
also varied. In Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, the communist
party state was replaced by multi-party parliamentary democracy. In
Romania and Bulgaria, the leaders have been changed, but many
communists still play leading roles in politics. There has been a shift
in the locus of power - in Romania the ruling Ceaucescu 'dynasty' was
swept aside - but the new leaders were all major figures before the
revolutions. Many noncommunist members of the Romanian National
Salvation Front (NSF) resigned after its victory in the May 1990 General
Election, claiming that the NSF was nothing more than 'old wine in new
bottles'.
The East German population chose a different (and unique) option:
reunification with West Germany. In reality, this has been less a process
 RevoLution, IdeoLogy and PoLiticaL Change 83

of unification, and more a process of absorption of East Germany by its

larger and more affluent Western neighbour.

D Interpreting the revolutions

So, despite many common factors, both the course of revolution and the
nature of the post-revolutionary state in each country were shaped by
factors specific to each nation. However, viewing the political upheavals
of 1989 as a whole does provide insights into the nature of political
change.
First, the poor economic situation in Eastern Europe was extremely
important. In some countries, the economic well-being of the population
was declining. The 1970s and 1980s had seen a gross misuse of resources.
Instead of investing in the future, the communist governments had
attempted to shore up their short-term positions. Investment capital and
loans from the West had been used to keep prices low and to maintain
employment. The economies were becoming increasingly inefficient,
and the governments lacked the means to pay their mounting debts to
Western banks.
Furthermore, when people made comparisons with the lifestyle in
Western Europe, feelings of relative deprivation intensified. This was
most obvious in East Germany, where the population could watch West
German television and see what they were missing. Even in other
countries of Eastern Europe, images of Western affluence were im-
portant - and images of Western inequality were ignored.
Secondly, this deprivation was not confined to the economic sphere.
Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and gLasnost in the Soviet Union put
the ending of authoritarian rule on the agenda of Eastern Europe for the
first time in decades. It proved almost impossible for the ruling parties to
satisfy the new demands placed on them. The experience of Eastern
Europe confirms that limited reform is more dangerous for authoritar-
ian regimes than no reform at all. Every new reform loosened the
communist party's control over society, but only heightened expecta-
tions for further change. Every new freedom allows voices to be raised
against the restrictions that remain. Authoritarian rulers faced with
pressures for reform confront a dilemma. If they refuse to bow before
the winds of change, they have to fall back on repression. Any support
they may have had plummets. If the rulers do liberalise, they may
simply be blown out of power.
In China, one of the few communist states to survive the events of
1989, conservative leaders refused to negotiate with the protesters in
Tiananmen Square, and chose repression. Only with the advantage of
84 The Nation-State

Table 4.1 1989 - A year of revolution

Hungary Poland GDR (East Germany)

January 11 Law of Association 16 Central Committee 15 Demonstrators
permitting agrees to talks with demanding freedom of
independent political opposition expression arrested in
parties passed 20 Lech Walesa agrees Leipzig
26 Imre Nagy's body to talks
exhumed
28 Pozsgay calls 1956
revolt a 'popular
uprising' and not a
'counter-revolutionary
movement'.
February 11 Government 6 Round table talks
accepts need to move between government
to multiparty and opposition begin
democracy
28 Government
announces that border
fences with Austria to
be taken down
March 29 Gorbachev
reported to have
pledged not to
intervene in Hungary's
affairs
April Mass protests to 5 Agreement reached
oppose plans to dam on free elections
the Danube at
Nagymcras
May Dismantling of border Demonstrations in
fences with Austria Berlin and Leipzig
starts against invalidity of
GDR elections
June 24 New reformist 4 Solidarity crush
leadership elected communists in first
round of elections
July 6 Kadar dies. Nagy GDR leaders protest
formally rehabilitated about Hungary's
relaxed border
controls with Austria
August 7 Coalition parties GDR refugees start to
abandon communists flood across border
17 Jaruzelski accepts into Hungary and on
offer of Solidarity into Austria
government
24 Mazowiecki sworn
in as prime minister
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 85

Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Romania

15-21 Demonstrators 19 All cultural January
marking anniversary relations with
of Jan Palach's suicide Hungary broken off
in 1968 met by police
repression

21 Vaclav Havel February

imprisoned for anti-
state activities

Six former party and March

government officials
arrested after
criticizing Ceaucescu

17 Hungarian TV 60 ethnic Turks killed April

interview with Dubcek during demonstrations
seen throughout against forced
Czechoslovakia assimilation
17 Havel released Huge exodus of ethnic May
from jail Turks begins

June

July

21 300 arrested in August

demonstrations on the
anniversary of 1968
Soviet invasion

cant.
86 The Nation-State

Table 4.2 continued

Hungary Poland GDR (East Germany)

September 12 New Solidarity-led The exodus gathers
government sworn in pace. Weekly
with only 2 communist demonstrations in
ministers Leipzig against the
government
10 Opposition 'New
Forum' established
October 12 HSWP becomes 2 20,000 march in
HSP and condemns its protest through Leipzig
past 7 Gorbachev visits
23 New Hungarian Berlin and urges
Republic proclaimed reform
18 Honecker quits -
replaced by Krenz
November 26 Presidential 7 Entire Cabinet
elections postponed to resigns
allow opposition 8 Entire Politburo
parties to prepare resigns
8-9 Berlin Wall
opened

December 21 National Assembly 29 People's Republic 2 Demonstrations

votes to dissolve itself abolished. Leading continue. Stasi offices
to pave the way for role of communists ransacked
elections removed from 4-6 Entire communist
constitution leadership resigns
6 General Election
date announced

Notes: HSWP - Hungarian Socialist Workers Party (Communist Party)

HSP - Hungarian Socialist Party
Stasi - State Security Service (GDR Secret Police)
Securitate - Romanian Secret Police

Sources: The Observer. Tearing Down the Curtain (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1990).
Humphrey, S. 'A Comparative Chronology of Revolution, 1988-1990', in G. Prins (ed.)
Spring in Winter: The 1989 Revolutions (Manchester University Press) pp. 211-40.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 87

Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Romania

September

28 300 protestors 24 Mladenov resigns - 16-17 Lazlo Tokes October

arrested in 10000 rally leadership thrown into ousted as Head of his
in Prague turmoil Reformed Church in
Timisoara

17 Police attack 10 Zhivkov ousted in 15 Demonstrations November

protestors in Prague 'coup'. Mladenov against low pay put
18-19 Mass demon- takes power down in Brasov
strations against use 18 Mass
of police violence demonstrations for
19 Civic Forum democracy in Sofia
formed
24 Politburo resigns.
Dubcek addresses rally
in Wenceslas Square
3 New communist- 11 Communist party 16-17 Supporters of December
dominated proposes to end its Lazlo Tokes gather in
government monopoly of power Timisoara. 71 killed as
announced - rejected and move to army move in
in nationwide multiparty democracy 21 Ceaucescu shouted
demonstrations down as he addresses
7 Government rally in Bucharest.
collapses Security forces fire on
10 New mainly crowds
noncommunist 22 Army changes side.
government sworn in Cea ucescus try to flee.
28 Dubcek elected Fighting between army
president of Federal and Securitate forces
Assembly 25 Nicolai and Elena
29 Havel elected State Ceaucescu arrested,
President tried and executed
27 National Salvation
Front seize power.
Free elections
promised.
88 The Nation-State

hindsight will we know whether this was truly an effective response, or

if it merely delayed the inevitable.
In Bulgaria, the ruling communists did manage to keep a grip on
power through a policy of reform. After removing the ageing and
unpopular party leader, Todor Zhivkov, the communists consolidated
their position by announcing a series of reforms. They thus largely pre-
empted reform demands from the population. Unlike Czechoslovakia,
Hungary and Poland, there was no history of organised or coherent
opposition to the ruling party in Bulgaria.
Thirdly, the importance of external factors can be seen. In many
ways, the revolutions of 1989 were revolutions against imperialism.
Rather than bracket the revolutions of 1989 with those in France, Russia
and Iran, we should perhaps link them with the American War of
Independence and anti-colonial civil wars in the third world. Commun-
ist party rule had been largely installed from outside by the Soviet Red
Army at the end of the Second World War. The parties' support in
Eastern Europe did not run very deep, and had been eroded over the
years through a combination of economic mismanagement and political
repreSSIOn.
The external context changed dramatically, once Gorbachev aban-
doned the Brezhnev doctrine - the presumption by Soviet leaders that
'the gains of socialism were irreversible', and that they had a right to
intervene in the internal affairs of their East European neighbours to
ensure this. He replaced it by the Sinatra doctrine - the leaders of
Eastern Europe were now free to do it 'my way'; Moscow would not
intervene, whatever the outcome. With the Soviet bogeyman no longer
threatening to call, East European leaders had lost their key weapon
against reform. Unwilling to respond to the new political realities, the
rulers were out of step both with Moscow and their own people. For the
people, the disappearing threat of the Red Army encouraged them to
push harder for change. This was particularly so in Hungary and
Czechoslovakia, where memories of popular movements crushed by
Soviet tanks were still cherished, even by those too young to have first-
hand recollection.
So, in retrospect, we can see that by 1989 Eastern Europe was ripe for
revolutionary political change. Regimes with little support and popular
legitimacy suffered power deflation as a period of economic decline
coincided with the loosening of oppression. For the first time in thirty
years, the glimmer of a chance to change the 'system' appeared. Many,
perhaps most, people in Eastern Europe had put up with the communist
system for so long because they reckoned that they had no alternative.
When the chance of an alternative did arise, it was seized without
hesitation.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 89

Unable to express their real opinions through the ballot box, the
people voted with their feet. Whether by leaving the country in droves,
as in East Germany and Bulgaria, or by taking to the streets in
demonstrations, the popular verdict on communist party rule was
decisive. Faced with such opposition, the only possible way for the
communists to keep power was to put the lid back on by force. In both
Czechoslovakia and East Germany, force was initially used against the
protesters, but it failed. The demonstrators were not deterred: in fact the
use of state violence against peaceful protests swelled the ranks of the
demonstrators. The governments' bluff had been called. Once the use of
firearms rather than truncheons and hoses was ruled out, the advantage
clearly passed to the demonstrators.
With one exception, the revolutions of 1989 were remarkably peace-
ful. That exception was Romania. Initially, when demonstrations
against Ceaucescu broke out, the army used great violence, and
hundreds of people died. As the demonstrations continued, key sections
of the military changed sides and joined the demonstrators. It could be
argued that Ceaucescu's regime, in fact, fell to a coup in support of a civil
uprising. Military intervention certainly changed the course of the
revolution. Members of the Securitate (the secret police), fanatically
loyal to Ceaucescu, spread confusion and terror by shooting indiscrim-
inately at anyone within range. The anti-Ceaucescu soldiery had the task
of flushing the snipers out of hiding in government and party buildings
(linked by secret tunnels, enabling the snipers to move around).
The revolution became theatre. Crowds gathered to watch the
fighting, to witness the revolution being carried forward on their behalf
by the army. Some spectators got too close to the action, and were hit.
Nicolai Ceaucescu tried to escape by helicopter, but was captured.
Together with his wife, Elena, he faced a drumhead trial and was
executed on Christmas Day 1989. Though hardly a model of legal
procedure, this event was decisive. With their leader dead, Securitate
resistance petered out. Thanks to teenage conscript soldiers, the
Romanian people had prevailed - at least for the time being.
In France, Russia and Iran, the real political revolution came after the
transfer of power. As yet, 'post-revolutionary revolutions' have not
occurred in Eastern Europe. One explanation is that the transfer of
power has not been completed. The old order has been overthrown, but
the transition to a new order is still taking place. By 1991 the 'umbrella'
organisations that came to power in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and
Poland were finding it difficult to maintain their cohesion (see Chapter 10).
In Bulgaria and Romania, the communists (under a change of label)
remained the dominant political force. In these two countries, it was
debatable whether a real revolution had taken place.
90 The Nation-State

But the revolutions in Eastern Europe were very different from those
in France, Russia and Iran. With the possible exception of Bulgaria and
Romania, they clearly marked a transition from authoritarian rule to
liberal democracy. The conflicts and pressures that emerge in the
process of building a new political system should be resolved through
the democratic procedures that are being put in place. Some reckoning
of accounts for the injustices of the communist era is undoubtedly
taking place. However, the post-revolutionary reigns of terror that were
a feature of the French and Russian revolutions are unlikely to be a
feature of the postcommunist political systems of Eastern Europe.

• Ideology and revolution

The impact of ideology on social and political change has long been a
matter of dispute in the study of politics. This controversy can be traced
back to Marx and Weber. For Marx, technology was the real engine-
room of social change. Once an economic system such as feudalism had
been outdated by technological developments, it was doomed. The
divisions that emerged in society would eventually revolutionise the
political, as well as the economic, order. Ideology played a dependent
role: its main purpose was to bolster up the ruling class with moral and
political argument. But the ideology of dominant groups could at best
only delay the timing of their disintegration.
Reacting against Marx's determinism, the German sociologist Max
Weber (1930) sought to prove that ideas had an independent impact on
political change. In his classic study, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit
of Capitalism, he argued that the rise of capitalism was partly
attributable to the impact of Protestant religion. This was because
Protestantism was an individualistic religion which encouraged people
to seek their fortune, and work hard for the glory of God.
But rather than frittering wealth away in pursuit of life's pleasures,
Protestantism encouraged thrift, and thus the saving or reinvestment of
profits. This outlook, argued Weber, facilitated the growth of capital-
ism in the West - a case of ideas affecting economics, rather than the
other way about. These conflicting assumptions about the impact of
ideas are echoed in the analysis of revolutions. Voltaire and other
writers of the eighteenth-century enlightenment ferociously attacked
the injustice and absurdities of absolutist monarchy. Was the French
revolution the outcome of ridicule and exposure (ideas) or did it reflect
the rise of the bourgeoisie (economics)? Was the Russian revolution
successful because the masses recognised the superiority of socialism, or
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 91

because of the successful organisation and skilful tactics of the

communist party leadership? Did the Iranian revolution stem from the
resurgence of Shi'ite religious fervour, or from the impact of economic
modernisation? Did the demonstrators in Eastern Europe in 1989 aspire
to the values of liberal democracy, or were they driven by more
materialistic desires?

o What is an ideology?
To answer such questions, the first task is to define 'ideology'. We view
an ideology as a public system of beliefs and values about human
society. 'Public' because a purely private and personal belief-system does
not qualify as an ideology: it must have an identity beyond anyone
individual. 'System' because ideology implies an organised set of ideas.
It is more articulated, more precise than, say, a political culture (see
Chapter 6). 'Beliefs and values' because ideologies encompass the 'is'
and the 'ought'. An ideology is action-related, providing both an
analysis of existing society and an emotionally charged ideal to aim at
(though this ideal may be presented as a reversion to the good old days).
'Human society' finally, because ideologies are inherently social and
political in content.
Ideologies, as we have defined them, are distinguished from outlooks,
creeds and traditions by their more coherent and intense character.
However, the boundaries are hard to draw. The conservatism of Ronald
Reagan might not be an ideology; that of Margaret Thatcher probably
was. Ayatollah Khomeini certainly had an ideology - but what about
the Archbishop of Canterbury? Marxism is an ideology - but what
about social democracy? In practice ideologies are identified by the
intense desire of their adherents to transform the world in accordance
with their key values. This contrasts with outlooks, movements and
political cultures that either favour the status quo or are just pragma-
tically reformist. Exhibit 4.2 gives capsule definitions of the major
ideologies of contemporary politics.

DHow do ideologies arise?

There are two main approaches to answering this question - the strain
theory and the interest theory. For the first, ideology is a symptom and a
remedy; for the second, a mask and a weapon. In the strain theory,
people flee anxiety; in the interest theory, they pursue power (Geertz
1964).
92 The Nation-State

Exhibit 4.2 The 'isms of Politics

Capitalism
The economic system of 'free enterprise' based on private ownership
producing for profit in the open market. In practice, market
competition often needs to be sustained or modified by government
intervention. All capitalist countries today have mixed economies
with varying amounts of state ownership, regulation (e.g. of employ-
ment conditions) and market intervention (e.g. through subsidies or
import quotas).

Communism
Karl Marx and his followers held that communist revolution was
historically inevitable. With material abundance and property held
in common, communism should be untainted by the exploitation and
class conflict inherent in capitalism. Even if Marx's analysis is
correct, the problem is how to get there. Far from creating ideal
societies, communist regimes became bureaucratic dictatorships
under which oppression, exploitation and alienation increased
rather than disappeared .

Conservatism
Less an ideology, many conservatives would say, than a cast of mind.
Conservatives reject social engineering for its own sake; they accept
that people are imperfect, different and unequal. The wisdom of the
past is secreted in society's traditions and institutions; these should
be respected. Change is therefore justified only where it is clearly
necessary. Conservative parties vary considerably, some being
pragmatic, others more openly doctrinaire or reactionary.

Environmentalism
Green parties and movements have grown rapid ly since the 1960s in
much of the first world. Moderate environmentalists ('light greens')
criticise waste and pollution, and stress the need to protect the
environment. Fundamental environmentalists ('dark greens') com-
pletely reject the priority of consumerism and economic growth, and
call for a different lifestyle based on conserving non-renewable
resources.
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 93

Fundamentalism
Religious fundamentalists believe in the literal truth of the holy
works central to their faith (the Bible, Koran, Torah) and the strict
application of its teachings. Fundamentalists tend to press their
political views strongly and are often intolerant of those who do
not share them. The growth of the religious right has been striking in
the US politics since the 1970s. Islamic fundamentalism achieved
international prominence with the Iranian revolution. Rising funda-
mentalism generates inter-faith conflict; violence between Hindus,
Muslims and Sikhs has become very marked in Indian politics.

Fascism
Classic (pre-1945) fascism was a synthesis of extreme nationalism
and anti-marxist socialism. State and nation become one: as
Mussolini put it, 'everything in the state: nothing against the state,
nothing outside the state'. Totalitarianism is the essence of fascism.
The individual is totally subordinate to the state, under an autocratic
ruler (Fuhrer or Duce). Glorying in struggle and sacrifice, the fascists
regarded war and conquest as the nation's supreme expression. Neo-
fascist parties, centred upon hostility to immigrants and ethnic
minorities, have been a feature of postwar European politics.

Feminism
Has deep roots in Western society, but its modern growth dates from
the 1960s and 1970s. There are many tendencies, usually at logger-
heads and sometimes aligned with other political movements (e.g.
socialism). In its broadest sense, however, feminism is the demand
for women's political, social, economic and sexual equality with
men.

Liberalism
Associated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries with the
elimination of feudal remnants and aristocratic privileges, liberal-
ism was linked with the doctrine of laissez-faire: the maximum of
individual liberty and the minimum of state intervention in society
and the economy. However, the commitment to individual liberty
drew some strands of liberalism towards more state intervention
('social liberalism'), while others cling to laissez-faire (libertarians).
94 The Nation-State

Nationalism
The belief that a particular group of people is a natural community,
which should live under a single political system. Nationalism is
often linked to a struggle for independence and political self-
determination. It can, however, also be a convenient tool for
political leaders to mobilise support and overcome opposition by
stressing internal or external threats to national unity. Nationalism
has been a common ingredient in numerous international and civil
conflicts; most recently, the collapse of communist rule has un-
leashed nationalist forces throughout Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union that threaten to be uncontrollable.

Racism
The belief that races are inherently unequal, and that people should be
treated according to their race of origin. Racist political movements
are intrinsically intolerant (individuals do not matter, only their race),
and drawn to violent and simplistic solutions. The Nazi regime of
Adolf Hitler in Germany (1933-45) was racist and anti-Semitic: the
(German) master race was destined to subjugate and enslave lesser
races. Hitler's 'Final Solution' for what he saw as the racial struggle
was to exterminate Jews and other so-called 'sub-humans' (Gypsies,
homosexuals, the mentally or physically handicapped) altogether. In a
less ideological form, racist attitudes remain widespread.

Socialism
A creed with many variants, but all socialists are broadly committed
to the idea of equality and to policies intended to bring it about.
These traditionally included the collective ownership of the economy
as well as extensive welfare measures. Unlike communists, socialists
have generally rejected revolution as a means of achieving socialism
and have insisted on parliamentary methods. The emphasis upon
collective ownership has also been de-emphasised by many socialist
parties. What remains are moderately reformist parties with egali-
tarian intentions.

To explore further
R. Eccleshall et al. (1984) Political Ideologies: An Introduction
(London: Hutchinson).
B. Goodwin (1987) Using Political Ideas (New York: Wiley).
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 95

The strain theory maintains that ideologies arise in response to social

dislocation; they are a symptom of a malfunctioning society. For
example, the rise of fascism in inter-war Germany is often attributed
to the desire among Germans for a simple, all-embracing solution to the
problem of mass unemployment and economic insecurity. Similarly the
spread of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran's cities might be explained in
terms of the need of slum-dwellers for an ideology that gave meaning
and validity to their lives.
The strain theory is advocated by those authors who adopt a
functional approach to revolutions. The presence of ideology is
regarded as a sign that the political system is not in equilibrium with
society. The virtue of the strain theory is that it does explain why
ideologies often gather momentum in times of crisis and gradually lose
their momentum thereafter.
The interest theory maintains that the function of ideology is to
rationalise interests. It provides a gloss to self-interest, showing why the
interests of a particular social group do deserve special treatment from
the government. Thus for Marxists the 'dominant ideology' of capital-
ism uses values such as freedom and property rights to rationalise the
continued exploitation of workers by employers. From this perspective,
ideologies are necessarily distorted and selective (a point emphasised by
Mannheim (1954), who then failed to confront the objection that this
applied as much to his own interpretation of reality as to anyone else's).
In contrast to the strain theory, interest theory views the production
of ideology as a normal part of politics. The interest theory is advocated
by those authors who view politics as a continual struggle, rather than as
a search for equilibrium within society. Marxists are the clearest but not
the only advocates of the interest theory. The virtue of this approach is
that much of political debate can indeed be understood, as Ambrose
Bierce put it, as 'a strife of interests masquerading as a conflict of
principles'. Its weakness is that the 'interests' of a particular group are
not a given but are themselves defined by values and ideology. Whether
people give priority to their ethnic, class or religious interests reflects the
values of their society. So ideology re-enters by the back door.
Both the strain theory and the interest theory root ideology in the
social structure. Neither regards ideology as an independent force. We
would be inclined to give more independent weight to ideology than
either theory, noting that ideologies have a natural base among
intellectuals who are prominent in so many revolutions. Ideological
intellectuals are responding neither to self-interest nor to social strain
but to the play of ideas itself. In addition, once an ideology 'takes off' in
the wider society, it gains a momentum of its own. For example, the
American ethos of equal opportunity may be a rationalisation of
96 The Nation-State

inequality but it has been used by less privileged groups (such as blacks)
to justify remedial policies (such as affirmative action).
Similarly in communist party states Marxism was an ideology that
constrained rule by the communist party as well as justifying that rule.
Those who start off exploiting an ideology often end up as prisoners of
it.

D The end of history?

The French revolution was an ideological factory, which generated the
intellectual weapons of politics: democracy, liberalism, conservatism,
nationalism, socialism. The ideological fray was joined by other
contestants (communism, racism, fascism) and in our own time by
other contenders again (feminism, environmentalism). Some 'isms' of
politics are summarised in Table 4.2. Though the challenge of fascist
and racist doctrines was acute in the first half of the twentieth century,
this was overshadowed by the enduring antagonism between liberal
democracy (an amalgam of ideas) and marxist communism.
With the demise of communist party control in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union, and the crises facing the remaining ruling communist
parties, it is widely held that communism is now dead. For the American
policy analyst Fukuyama (1989), this means that we have witnessed 'the
end of history'. Marxism, and the political systems professing allegiance
to it, challenged liberal democracy as well as capitalism. The challenge
has comprehensively failed. Although conflicts will continue to arise,
they will not involve a fundamental alternative to liberal democracy.
According to Fukuyama, the great conflict of ideology and ideas that has
been going on in European and then world politics since the French
revolution is now over; liberal democracy remains as the only legitimate
ideology left in the world.
There has been much debate over the validity of Fukuyama's ideas. In
particular, the Gulf War of 1991 was taken by many as ample proof that
history was alive and kicking. He has countered by arguing that
whatever the Gulf War was about (mainly oil), it was not a war over
ideas or ideologies. This may be true, but to forecast an unchallenged
future for the ideology of liberal democracy risks several pitfalls.
The defeat of fascism did not mark the end of history, just the end of
one historical epoch. With the death of communism, another historical
epoch has passed, but new conflicts over ideas will rise to dominate
world affairs. The long-term future of the postcommunist societies of
Eastern Europe is still far from clear. There are signs that the tolerance
of minorities necessary for the effective functioning of genuine liberal
 RevoLution, IdeoLogy and PoliticaL Change 97

democracy is not yet ingrained in the political cultures of some East

European nations. Nationalism and ethnic conflict, rather than democ-
racy, may prove to be the Leitmotifs of the region, with profound
implications for European security.
Nationalism is a powerful force throughout the world. It remains a
major cause of conflict between states, and subnational ethnic conflicts
are also a major cause of conflict within states. Before the communists
took power, the Balkan region of South-East Europe was a byword for
murderous ethnic feuds and political instability. As Yugoslavia slid into
civil war between Serbs and Croats in 1991, it has become so again. As
the Soviet Union breaks up, Balkan-style conflict is a real danger - but
on a vastly greater scale. The world's largest democracy, India, faces
severe religious, ethnic and separatist pressures, above all in Punjab and
Kashmir. And now, the countervailing rise of Hindu nationalism calls
into question the very conception of Indian democracy at independence
as a liberal, secular and pluralist state.
Although Hinduism is a traditionally tolerant religion, rising inter-
faith conflict in India highlights one of the great challenges to the
dominance of liberal democracy - Islam. The challenge of Hinduism
may not be particularly strong outside India, but the challenge of Islam
is. Despite the de-radicalisation of the Iranian revolution, the resurgence
of Islamic fundamentalism has been a feature of recent history. The
conflict between secularism and theism that has taken place in Iran is a
pertinent example of one of the great battles for faith and belief that will
face many nations in the twenty-first century. It may also intensify the
emerging conflict between the developed, secular, first world and the
relatively deprived, and frustrated, third world.
The conflict between liberal democracy and communism may be over,
but new conflicts over political ideas are not slow to appear. Further-
more, within the developed nations of the first world, liberal democracy
will be forced to make adjustments to meet the new challenges of the
day. The transition from materialism to postmaterialism; the growing
importance of ecological concerns; movements towards political inte-
gration between nations; such factors suggest that the death of history
has been greatly exaggerated.

Summary
1. Evolutionary change is the gradual transformation of politics and society.
Revolutionary change entails a fundamental change in the distribution of
power in a nation and the alteration of social values, social structures and
political institutions.
98 The Nation-State

2. The Marxist theory of revolution stresses the inevitability of revolution as

a consequence of class conflicts in society. Marx's revolutionary theory was
adapted by subsequent communist leaders, most notably Lenin in Russia and
Mao Zedong in China.
3. The functionalist theory sees revolution as a response to a failure to govern
effectively. Revolutionary situations occur when the government is unable to
cope with the pace and number of pressures for change. Leaders are swamped
by the demands being placed upon them, and are unable to satisfy popular
expectations.
4. Relative deprivation refers to the difference between what people perceive
they are getting and what they feel they are entitled to. It forms part of the
social psychological approach to understanding the origins of revolutions.
5. Skocpol suggests that revolutions occur when the capacity of the state to
govern and coerce has already decayed in the face of both internal and external
crises. In these circumstances the actual seizing of power can be quite
straightforward. The real revolution begins when the new regime attempts to
impose its vision on opposition groups.
6. An ideology is a public system of beliefs and values about human society.
Ideologies are identified by the intense desire of their adherents to transform the
world in accordance with their key values.
7. The strain theory suggests that ideologies arise in response to social
dislocation. In contrast, the interest theory suggests that the function of
ideology is to rationalise interests.
8. Nationalism and Islam present the greatest threats to liberal democracy's
position as the world's dominant ideology. The collapse of communism is
unlikely to represent the 'end of history'.

Discllssion points
1. Is a 'peaceful revolution' a contradiction in terms?
2. 'Overthrowing the old order without mass popular support is easy. Ruling
the new order without mass popular support is impossible'. Is this true?
3. 'Far from preventing revolution, reform often accelerates it'. Why?
4. Are the following ideologies?
(a) feminism
(b) the green movement
(c) Islam
(d) liberal democracy
(e) capitalism
5. Has history ended?
6. Is liberal democracy the final form of government?
 Revolution, Ideology and Political Change 99

Kcy. rc,H.iin nu
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (first pub. 1848, many editions) The Communist
Manifesto. One of the most influential political works of the modern era.
Cohan, A. (1975) Theories of Revolution (London: Nelson). A lucid analysis of
Marxist, functionalist and social psychological ideas on revolution.
Skocpol, T. (1979) States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of
France, Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). A justly
influential work.
Bakhash, S. (1985) The Reign of the Ayatollahs (London: Tauris). An accessible
introduction to the Iranian revolution.
The Observer (1990) Tearing Down the Curtain (London: Hodder & Stought-
on). One of several 'journalistic' guides to the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe in 1989.

Furthcr rcading
Avineri (1968) and Tucker (1970) are readable guides to Marxian ideas on
revolution. The functionalist view of revolution is presented by C. Johnson
(1966). On the social psychological approach, see Davies (1962) and Gurr
(1972). More current work on this approach is reviewed by Gurr (1980). Cohan
(1975) provides a lucid analysis of all these approaches.
On the comparative history approach, see Brinton (1938, republished 1965)
or Skocpol's influential study (1979). O'Sullivan (1983) is a useful edited work
in this tradition, and covers all three of the revolutions we have considered.
For accessible studies of individual revolutions, see A. Goodwin (1987) on
France, Kochan (1970) on Russia and Skocpol (1982) or Keddie (1991) on Iran.
Prins (1990) contains chapters by influential East European figures, many of
whom played prominent roles in the overthrow of the communists. On
ideologies and change, Geertz (1964) was an influential statement on strain
theory; more general introductions to ideology can be found in Eccleshall et al.
(1984) and Christensen et al. (1971). On whether or not 1989 marked 'the end of
history', there is no better place to start than Fukuyama's (1989) controversial
article.
 • Chapter 5 •
The Nation-State
in One World
Interdependence and the The first world: the driving
nation-state 100 force 113
The global economy 102 The second world: from
The global village 109 isolation to integration 119
The global ecology 111 The third world: dependence
or interdependence? 124

• Interdependence and the nation-state

In 1492 Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic seeking a

western passage to India. To his dying day, Columbus believed he had
landed in India (hence the 'West Indies') but had in fact 'discovered'
America. His epic voyage had momentous consequences. The conquest
of the New World of the Americas by the European powers changed the
nature of world politics. Great empires like those of Rome and Egypt
had risen and fallen before, but the European powers, with their ships,
guns and trinkets, opened up the world on an unprecedented scale.
Five hundred years later, even an explorer like Columbus would have
been astonished at the world he had played a part in creating. Today, all
national governments operate in an interdependent world. Information,
money, weapons, technology, pollution, values, radiation, food, comp-
uters, deals, images, aid, tourists, drugs, diseases, data - all flow rapidly
round the globe, giving national governments more opportunities but
also posing more threats to their traditional authority.
In truth, states have always been influenced by what happens outside
their borders. Key events in world history such as the French and
Russian revolutions echoed round the world, even without television
and fax machines. The Vatican was a powerful transnational organisa-
tion long before anyorie had heard of the Ford Motor Company. We
must avoid the mistake of assuming that what is important must
therefore be new.

100
 The Nation-State in One World 101

More generally, governments have always been the agencies through

which societies deal with each other: this is one of their core functions.
They have always sought to manipulate the outside world to their own
advantage - and to develop 'domestic' society to further their inter-
national ambitions.
Throughout history, warfare, taxation and state-making have gone
together. States have made war - and wars have made states. For
instance, the origins of the modern European state lie in efforts by
monarchs to raise the money and manpower needed to fight wars.
Without the stimulus of competition between states, modern govern-
ments would be far slighter institutions than they are today.
What then distinguishes interdependence in today's world? How does
it differ from interdependence one, two, or even five hundred years ago?
We suggest three contrasts. The first is that interdependence is now
global and not merely international. Automobile companies design
world cars, major powers can launch missiles that cross continents,
and pollution is a global problem. In the past, interdependence was
restricted more to neighbouring countries and regions.
The second contrast is the sheer scale of interdependence today.
There is more of it, in more areas of life, than in the past.
The third contrast lies in the variety of levels and institutions through
which interdependence operates. States must confront not only other
states but also intergovernmental actors, such as the United Nations,
and nongovernmental actors, such as IBM and other transnational
companies. States must recognise that other groups in society, such as
firms, universities and regions, also have links with the outside world.
Prosperous regions look across national borders as often as to the
national capital. In short, the boundaries of the state have become more
porous than ever before.
For students of politics within the nation-state, the implications are
profound. We can no longer examine politics within states as though
they bore no connection to politics between states. Instead, the two are
intimately related. This does not mean global forces are replacing the
role of the state. Far from withering away, states are in some ways
widening their responsibilities in response to these challenges.
This chapter aims to describe those features of the global context that
impinge most on national decision-makers. (For good introductions to
world politics as such, see Ray 1990, or McKinlay and Little 1986).
Specifically, we focus on the global economy, the global village and the
global ecology. We then explore the challenges thrown out by inter-
dependence to each of the three worlds. Thus a 'one world' perspective
does not rule out'a 'three worlds' perspective: rather, we have three
worlds in one.
102 The Nation-State

• The global economy

The global economy is a, perhaps the, crucial dimension of interdepen-
dence. If Karl Marx were alive today, he would certainly place much
more emphasis on international economics, and less on economic
inequalities within nations, in explaining the dynamics of politics.

D The trading world

The international division of labour means that goods can be made in
whichever country can produce them to the combination of quality and
cost demanded by customers. Thus, world trade has a natural dynamic.
Between 1980 and 1989, world trade grew by about half. Over the same
period, world production increased by just a quarter.
International trade is now a feature of every nation's economic
activity. At the end of the First World War, only Europe depended on
food imports. The rest of the world relied mainly on local food. Now,
only North America and Australia are effectively independent of food
imports (Segal 1991, p. 61). The economic dynamic of international
trade springs from the fact that all participants can benefit from it. The
political dynamic is that not all countries benefit equally.
Economic production, and in particular manufacturing, is now spread
throughout the world. Manufactured goods are often the product of
more than one nation. This book, for instance, was written in England,
printed in Hong Kong and sells mainly outside the United Kingdom.
Manufacturers search for cheap, reliable labour and plentiful raw
material supplies. Countries like South Korea and Taiwan became
centres for inexpensive production in the 1960s and 1970s. More
recently, Thailand and even communist states like Vietnam and China
have become attractive (that is, cheaper and more reliable) options for
many companies. In 1990, the main overseas manufacturing site for
Japan's electronics industry was still the United States (127 plants), but
other countries were catching up. Taiwan (98 sites), Malaysia (94),
Korea (68), Singapore (63), Thailand (46), the UK (43) and China (31)
have all become major centres of the Japanese electronics industry.
The development of a world economy means that the rhythm of
economic activity is similar across the globe. Policy-makers in every
country share a global context formed by the cycle of growth, recession
and recovery.
The biggest players, namely Germany, Japan and the United States,
help to shape the level of economic activity in the world. Hence, in their
 The Nation-State in One World 103

own interests, the national economic policies of these countries must

take account of the international consequences of their policies. For
many smaller countries, especially in the third world, the state of the
global economy is simply a given factor.
Even major industrial countries cannot buck global economic trends.
This was a lesson learned painfully by President Mitterrand of France.
At the start of his socialist administration in 1981, he unwisely expanded
the French economy. The resulting problems included a trade deficit, as
export sales could not keep pace with the surge of imports. Within two
years the government was forced to change direction and introduce
austerity policies.

o The competition state

International markets pit country against country in a battle for trade
- and hence for investment, secure jobs and re-elected governments.
This has led to the emergence of the 'competition state' (Cerny 1990,
pp. 220-9). The object of the competition state is to stimulate private
companies to achieve greater international competitiveness. The com-
petition state seeks also to attract 'inward investment' from transna-
tional companies. In the 1990s it is the transnational investor, not the
national government, that calls the tune.
The competition state must look both inwards and outwards.
Domestically, it must seek to provide a well-educated, well-motivated
workforce as well as a stable social and political environment.
Externally, it must compare its own performance with competitor
countries. A country may increase the proportion of its school-Ieavers
going onto further education but still fall behind because other countries
are improving even faster. As Grant (1990) notes in a discussion of
national industrial policy, 'no matter how the economy is to be guided,
the process must relate more to international competitive conditions
than to internal political preferences'. Thus, if a policy such as
privatisation seems to work well in one country, then it is likely to be
exported - though not always with the same success (Gayle and
Goodrich 1990). An indirect effect of the global economy is therefore
to speed the diffusion of policy across nations and to decrease the ability
of governments to 'get away with' ineffective economic policies.
However not all states become competition states. Some governments
just ignore the problem of declining competitiveness. Where conflicts
within a country run strong, or special interests are well entrenched, it
may not even be in a government's short-term political interest to
attempt painful solutions to long-term problems. For example,
104 The Nation-State

Exhibit 5.1 Australia: sliding down the first division

Competition states do not emerge easily, particularly in countries

that achieved a high standard of living in a less demanding era.
Australia is an excellent example. It is often described as a first world
country with third world trading patterns. Twenty-one of its top
twenty-five exports are agricultural products and minerals, com-
modities that have suffered a long-term decline in relative prices. A
tradition of protectionism (imposing barriers against imports) meant
Australian industries could survive without being internationally
competitive. As a result, the economy now suffers from a persistent
excess of imports over exports, rising foreign debt, and a decline in
the value of its do llar.
The obvious solution is to open the economy to international
competition. But in the short run this causes more problems,
economic as well as political, than it solves. Australian governments
must simultaneously prepare the country for competition, maintain
the social fabric, and seek re-election (Emy and Hughes 1991, p. 78).
Perhaps it is not surprising that until the late 1980s, many govern-
ments ducked the first of these tasks to concentrate on the last.

governments in Australia and Britain have more experience than most

first world states of managing economic decline. In both countries,
prime ministers have discovered that a short-term boom in the run-up to
an election buys political popularity, even if it harms long-run economic
performance (see Exhibit 5.1). This illustrates an important point.
Global interdependence does not always, and certainly does not
quickly, call forth an 'appropriate' response from governments. Politics
within the nation-state still makes a difference, especially to the
popularity of governments.

o National variations
Although all countries are touched by the international economy, they
are not all affected equally. There are vast differences in the extent to
which foreign trade is important for nations. The countries with the
largest domestic markets (Japan, United States) have most impact on the
world economy but also most insulation from it, an enviable position
indeed. At the other extreme, smaller, newly industrialising countries
 The Nation-State in One World 105

Singapore

Hong Kong
--
--
195%

11 7%

Belgium 81 %

Netherlands 53%

Austria 44%

South Korea 36%

Norway 36%

Sweden 36%

Canada 33%

Denmark 31%

United Kingdom 30%

West Germany 30%

New Zealand 28%

Finland 25%

France 22%

Australia 20%

Japan 18%

United States 12%

10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Source: The Economist Book of Vital World Statistics (London: Hutchinson, 1990).

Figure 5.1 Trade as a percentage of gross domestic product, 1988

(for example, Singapore and Hong Kong) live from trade and must
respond rapidly to market changes (Figure 5.1).
Even the biggest countries are not exempt from international
pressures. In the 1980s America's massive trade and budget deficits
cost it some credibility in international financial markets. Despite
Japan's undoubted economic strength, it is almost totally dependent
on raw material imports - most notably energy.

o Transnational corporations
Companies that operate across national boundaries are known as
multinational or transnational corporations (TNCs). Muscovites
106 The Nation-State

munching on MacDonald's quarterpounders and Beijingers biting into

Kentucky Fried Chicken are a sign that even the historic bastions of anti-
capitalism have fallen under the spell of TNCs. But these examples are
merely the tip of a very large iceberg. As Clarke (1992) says, '[TNCsl are
more than ever the arbiters of international investment'.
The largest TNCs are very powerful actors in the world economy. As
Table 5.1 shows, the economic activity of many of the largest
corporations exceeds that of many developed nations. Clarke estimates
that by the year 2000, TNCs will account for 50 per cent of all industrial
production. Trade in certain commodities is already firmly the preserve
of TNCs. Between them, five TNCs controlS0-90 per cent of all world
trade in cereals (excluding rice) and the world's chemical production is
almost entirely controlled by 30 large corporations. Although cartels of
dominant producers do exist, they are rare in the modern world. As
such, TNCs should not be viewed as manipulators of the system, but as
privileged and powerful actors within it.
In their relations with national governments, the TNCs hold the ace
card of mobility. They can always take their businesses elsewhere.
Assembly, production and research facilities can be moved to another
country if existing sites prove unsatisfactory. Through this leverage,
TNCs can impose conditions on their host governments. These vary
from straightforward financial incentives to set up shop in a country to a
commitment by the government to improve the technical training of its
workforce. This leverage applies not only to national governments but
also to regional or state governments in which the proposed facility will
be located. In other words, competition for inward investment is within,
as well as between, countries.
But governments, especially in the first world, also have some
powerful cards to play. They can influence the TNC's ease of access
to the country's domestic market and they may also be a route of entry
into a larger trading bloc. For example, Japanese car companies had to
begin producing cars in the American and European markets if they
were to become global companies and get round protectionist pressures.
Furthermore, once an investment has been made in new plant, heavy
costs can be incurred in closing it down. Plant is not as mobile as money,
and not many countries may have the calibre of workforce needed to
host a research and development facility.
Finally, TNCs are not united actors. They are organised along
national or regional lines, which in a sense reconstruct national
identities within the larger transnational organisation. The Hong Kong
plant competes against the one in Singapore for the contract to build the
company's new computer. In the twentieth century, firms competed in a
world of nation-states. In the next century, nations will compete in a
 The Nation-State in One WorLd 107

Table 5.1 The economic might of transnational corporations

Rank US $ billion Rank US $ billion
1 United States 4,235.0 a 47 Mobil 44.9
2 Japan 2,664.0 48 Hong Kong 41.8 a
3 USSR 2,356.7 50 BP 39.9
7 Great Britain 556.8 51 Greece 39.5
8 Canada 352.0 52 General Electric 35.2
15 Netherlands 175.3 56 Pakistan 32.0
16 Australia 159.6 a 58 Texaco 31.6
22 Belgium 114.9 60 Toyota 31.6
23 Sweden 105.5 61 Colombia 31.0
24 General Motors 102.8 62 Daimler-Benz 30.2
25 South Korea 94.1 63 Du Pont 27.1
26 Denmark 78.7 64 Matsushita 26.5
34 Finland 70.4 65 Malaysia 25.8 a
35 Exxon 69.9 69 Volkswagen 24.3
36 Dutch/Shell 64.8 71 New Zealand 23.5 a
37 Ford 62.7 73 Hitachi 22.7
39 Norway 60.1 75 Chrysler 22.5
41 South Africa 58.1 76 Philips 22.5
45 Nigeria 51.6 77 Ireland 21.7
46 IBM 51.3 78 Nestle 21.2

Notes:
A selective comparison of gross domestic product for selected nations and gross annual
sales for selected corporations in 1986. All figures are in US dollars (billions). The
number at the left indicates the unit's rank in the top 100.
a = Gross Domestic Product; other countries, Gross National Product.

Sources: James Lee Ray, Global Politics (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1990),
pp. 318-19 and CIA, The World Factbook 1989 (Washington, D.C.: CIA, 1989).

world of transnational corporations. In practical terms, this means that

a shrewd government can form alliances with the local branch of a
TNC. In a joint effort, they seek to squeeze more resources from
company headquarters in New York or Tokyo, where global invest-
ment decisions are reached.
Third world countries are in a weaker position in their relations with
TNCs. Most TNCs have their headquarters in the developed world. The
United States, Japan, Germany, Britain and France are favoured homes.
Of the top 100 TNCs, only six have headquarters outside Western
Europe, Japan and America. Many 'TNCs' are in fact American
companies operating internationally. Profits made from local labour
and resources in the third world are often 'exported' to the TNC's base
108 The Nation-State

in the first world. Between 1979 and 1985, about $88 billion was
transferred in this way (Iba 1990, p. 105).
Despite this, many third world nations welcome TNCs with open
arms. They are often more enthusiastic about inward investment than
first world countries, which already have a large and diversified
economic base. The attractions of TNCs to third world countries are
that tax revenues are increased, local employment is created, economic
efficiency is increased, access to consumer goods is expanded, and
technological innovations are imported into the host country by the
TNC. The host country may not get as much as it thinks it should from
the TNC, but judges that something is better than nothing.
Third world nations may also benefit as the TNCs use the cheap
labour of third world producers as leverage against their workers in the
first world. When Pirelli workers in Milan went on strike in 1978, the
management simply stepped up production of tyres in its Brazilian
factories to make up lost production in Italy. By keeping wages low and
enforcing strict control over the workforce, third world nations can
make themselves attractive alternatives to producing in the first world.

o The financial world

The financial world has shrunk most of all. Aided by computer
networks, financial information can be flashed around the world
instantaneously. Capital flows across the world in seconds: it is the
most mobile and liquid of all commodities. With major share-trading
centres in London, New York and Tokyo, when one market shuts
down, another wakes. Money never sleeps. As the world gets richer, so
the stock of capital increases; as capital grows, so does the impact of the
financial markets on the world economy.
In consequence, the collective power of financial markets exceeds that
of any goverment. As Margaret Thatcher said, 'You can't buck the
markets.' Old boy networks in London and Tokyo give governments
considerable leverage over their national financial centres, but the world
market is beyond the reach of anyone government, even the United
States.
In making financial decisions, governments must therefore consider
the reaction of the markets. If the markets lose confidence in a country's
economic policies, investments are withdrawn and loans to governments
or individuals cost more. In extreme cases, loss of market confidence can
drive a country to virtual bankruptcy. Market confidence is a fragile,
uncertain affair, needing regular stroking to calm a tendency to
overreact and panic. Ironically, although all markets are based on
 The Nation-State in One World 109

risk, financial traders seek to minimise it (even more ironically, Tokyo's

stock exchange is built in an earthquake zone!). Markets look for
cautious and conventional financial policies from the countries in
which they invest. Not all governments deliver, but those that don't
will pay an increasingly severe price .

• The global village

In communications terms, we live in a global village. The world has
been compressed into a television set. In 1776 it took fifty days for news
of the English reaction to the American Declaration of Independence to
get back to the United States. In 1950 British reaction to the outbreak of
the Korean War was broadcast in America in twenty-four hours. With
advances in satellite broadcasting, reports filmed in Britain now take a
mere 25 seconds to reach American TV screens (Flammang et al. 1990,
p.378).
We now take for granted the almost immediate transmission of
newsworthy events around the world. When the allied powers launched
attacks on Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War, news reporters in Baghdad
broadcast live to the world as the missiles whizzed overhead on their
way (sometimes) to their programmed target. The American CNN cable
news network supplied coverage of the conflict around the clock and
across the globe.
The world has also been shrunk by the growth in mass travel.
Tourism is now the world's largest industry. The growth of tourism
exposes the host nation, and the traveller, to international standards of
transport, communications and consumption. As a result, both sides
develop a broader, and sometimes more critical, perspective on their
own society. Tourism becomes a form of international political
socialisation. For instance, in the summer of 1991, the cities of Western
Europe were full of young tourists from Eastern Europe, experiencing
for the first time the pleasures - and the prices - of London, Paris and
Rome. Long-distance travel also opens up the possibility of mass
migration from poorer to richer parts of the global 'village'. This
creates new tensions of its own. By the early 1990s, support for right-
wing movements was growing in several European countries, in protest
at the presence of guest workers and immigrant groups. In this respect,
the world is closing rather than opening. Immigration controls between
the first and third worlds have grown stricter over the years.
What difference has global communication made to national govern-
ments? In essence, it has created more open societies. It is now harder
than ever for governments to isolate their populations from inter-
110 The Nation-State

national developments. Even communist party states found it difficult to

jam foreign radio broadcasts aimed at their countries. When Gorbachev
was deposed as President of the Soviet Union for sixty hours in August
1991, and imprisoned in his holiday villa, he still managed to get news
from foreign radio broadcasts.
The concrete and barbed wire of the Berlin Wall were unable to
prevent radio and television signals reaching the East from the West.
'Spiritual pollution', as the Chinese call it, could not be avoided. Eberle
(1990, pp. 194-5) commented that 'the changes in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union have been as much the triumph of communication as
the failure of communism'. For better or worse, in the global village, all
governments run the risk of being judged by the standards of the best.
First world governments also face the problem of 'foreign' penetra-
tion of their airwaves. Countries with a tradition of state regulation of
the media, such as France and Britain, face a growing challenge from
satellite broadcasts, over which they have no legal jurisdiction. Hence
anxious governments are seeking to develop tighter international
regulation of communications.
This illustrates an important general point. As interdependence
develops, often driven by technology, so governments seek to collab-
orate to try to retain or regain their traditional authority. Functional
integration (of which technological interdependence is an example)
stimulates political cooperation, but the political response tends to be
slow, delayed and partial. Computers talk more easily across national
boundaries than governments do. In any moves towards integration,
politics more often lags than leads. For example, unlike the United States
with its integrated coast-to-coast system, Europe's antiquated air traffic
control system is based on national centres that hand over control of the
flight to the next country as the plane proceeds. An integrated European
control system is technically feasible but politically complicated.
The impact of the global village depends on whether a country is a
sender as well as a receiver of communication. The prime example of a
'sender' nation is the United States. Critics allege that American primacy
in such fields as films and television enables it to spread American values
in a form of 'cultural imperialism'. As you read this, somebody
somewhere in the world will be watching Captain James T. Kirk of
the Star Ship Enterprise boldly going where no man has gone before. A
botde of Coke or a packet of Marlboro is still a statement of high
fashion in Beijing or Ouagadougou, even though such symbols are
losing appeal among health-conscious Americans. The centrality of
American symbols to 'world culture' eases the entry of American
products into many a market; to critics, this is 'Coca-colonialism' at
work.
 The Nation-State in One World 111

For governments in 'receiver' countries, however, the impact of the

global village is more threatening. Television is a 'window on the West',
particularly for elite groups. But television and radio also affect popular
aspirations. Mass communications increase awareness of inequalities
within nations, between nations, and indeed, between the three worlds.
In this connection, 'the revolution of rising expectations' is a useful, if
glib, phrase. Governments in the third world must confront populations
that are aware of higher living standards elsewhere in the world. Both
rulers and ruled realise that these standards cannot be achieved quickly,
if at all; but the awareness of such standards is important in itself.
Emerging nation-states also find it hard to develop a national identity
among their people when television (one of the few national media in
most developing countries) is filled with cheap and popular American
television programmes .

• The global ecology

The final area in which the world is getting smaller is the global ecology.
The nuclear cloud that crossed Europe after the Chernobyl nuclear
reactor exploded in 1986 was a stark reminder that international
boundaries count for nothing in the ecology. In similar vein, nuclear
testing since 1945 by Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, China
and France has released large quantities of radiation into the atmo-
sphere (and into outer space). This radiation is 40000 times greater than
the bomb dropped on Hiroshima and may kill two million people,
mainly through cancer, in the centuries to come.
Furthermore, concern is growing about global warming and the
depletion of the ozone layer caused by increased carbon dioxide and
chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gases. The problem has been heightened by
the depletion of the rain forests, which reduces nature's ability to extract
carbon dioxide from the air (World watch Institute 1990). The first
world has certainly played its part in releasing these gases into the
atmosphere over the years, but the second and third worlds are also
major contributors.
How have global ecological problems affected politics within the
nation-state? In many ways, remarkably little. The response of national
governments has fallen far short of what is needed to re-establish
stability in the global ecology. This is a remarkable 'tribute' to the
continued pre-eminence of the nation-state in modern politics. Environ-
mental problems at the global level seem to be regarded as everyone's
problem - and therefore as no one's.
112 The Nation-State

A short-sighted policy, for sure, but in a sense understandable. For

each individual country knows that it only makes a small contribution
to the global pollution problem. However green it becomes, it cannot
solve the problem by itself. If it cuts back on its own pollution, but other
countries do not, the country will just have suffered pain without gain.
The main exception here is the United States, which could make a
difference by itself but so far has been too complacent to bother.
In political science, this problem is often described as the 'tragedy of
the commons'. This refers to the tendency for common lands to be over-
grazed and for oceans to be over-fished. In other words, short-term
particular interests take precedence over long-term collective interests.
The only solution to such problems is to establish some transnational
body with the authority to enforce collective interests. Even in an
interdependent world, this is hard to achieve.
It is, of course, true, that virtually all Western leaders now present
themselves as 'green'. The political map of the first world has changed
as the traditional red and blue rivalries become tinged with green. But
how much can the first world do? Countries like China and India argue
that only the West can afford the 'luxury' of ecological concern. Leaders
of less-developed nations are prepared to continue polluting to increase
economic development. Furthermore, it is only in the most developed
nations that ecological concerns are becoming an electoral issue.

D Population growth
One factor that influences the amount of pollution is the number of
people in the world. The rate of population growth is slowing down, but
world population is still increasing by three people each second. Further,
the rate of change is not evenly spread. In the United States, Canada,
Japan, New Zealand, Australia and much of Western Europe, the
fertility rate has now dropped below the population replacement rate
of 2.1 children per couple. The World Bank (1990) calculates that the
population of the first world will peak in about 2020 and then begin to
fall back. Fertility rates are also decreasipg in Eastern Europe, and
dropping towards the 2.1 point.
Population growth is also decreasing in the third world. However, it
still greatly exceeds the 'population replacement' rate. If current trends
continue, the population of the third world will have more than doubled
by 2025 to about 8 billion. This places a great strain on third world
governments which face the task of making the economy grow faster
than the number of mouths.
 The Nation-State in One World 113

• The first world: the driving force

The first world is the motor force for the entire world system. Between
them, the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain and France account
for just under half of all world imports and exports. Add in Canada and
the rest of Western Europe, and the first world's share of global trade
increases to over two-thirds.
Yoked together by economic interdependence, the governments in
these countries communicate regularly, both bilaterally and through
numerous intergovernmental bodies. The notion of 'national sover-
eignty' remains a potent symbol and a card of last resort, to be played in
the event of major disagreements between governments. When push
comes to shove, governments can go their own way, a fact that limits the
pace and extent of political integration. But people in lifeboats achieve
nothing by jumping overboard. The reality is interdependence.

o From regulation to markets

From the end of the Second World War, the United States played the
leading role in the international economy. Its aid to European powers
after 1945 helped to rebuild devastated countries. The United States also
fostered economic recovery in Japan and South Korea. Ironically, Japan
has now risen to challenge America's dominant position.
Until the 1970s the United States was said to 'manage' the world
economy. From 1945 to the early 1970s the Bretton Woods system kept
the exchange rates of the developed economies fixed - with occasional
permitted adjustments - to the American dollar ('Bretton Woods' is the
name of the place in New Hampshire, USA, where the conference was
held in 1944 that put together this system of postwar economic
management). The dollar was in turn fixed to the price of gold.
This seemingly technical scheme had deep implications. It meant, in
effect, that the United States was the only country that could control its
own economy with impunity. Other nations had to respond to changes
in the American economy to ensure that their currencies stayed pegged
to the dollar. In effect, they surrendered a degree of economic
sovereignty in return for stability in the international trading system
(Ray 1990, ch. 7). However, this was considered a reasonable price to
pay to prevent a slide back to the 'beggar-my-neighbour' trading policies
of the interwar years.
The Bretton Woods system was an attempt to regulate the financial
system of the developed world. It ultimately failed because it placed too
114 The Nation-State

much of a premium on the strength of the American economy. Dollars

became highly desirable. As other nations accumulated dollars, the
United States began to encounter severe inflationary pressures.
Although attempts were made to find new forms of regulation, these
too proved to be unsuccessful. As a result, the world has moved towards
deregulation of international exchange rates. Some new formal regula-
tions have emerged. For example, the Exchange Rate Mechanism of the
European Community sets upper and lower limits for the exchange rates
of member nations. But in general, the world's major currencies now
float on international exchanges unencumbered by constraints of
ceilings and floors. This deregulation allows capital to move relatively
unhindered across the world, but nation-states probably have even less
economic sovereignty now than under the Bretton Woods system.
Markets have taken over where the United States left off.

D From markets to blocs?

In responding to interdependence, the world's leading nations face two
options. One is to continue to fine tune the operation of the world
market, through such means as Group of Seven (G-7) summit meetings.
These conferences bring together leaders of the United States, Japan,
Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada (with the President of the
European Commission as an occasional participant). Alternatively,
countries can retreat into regional trading blocs that offer free trade
within the bloc but tariffs and restrictions against outsiders.
Some countries, such as Britain, have a long tradition of free trade;
they favour the first option. Others, such as France, have an equally long
tradition of protectionism; they support the second option. The
decisions reached on these issues in the 1990s will profoundly affect
the nature of economic interdependence well into the next century.
The European Community (EC), which contains leading European
powers such as France, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, is the
most-developed bloc (for other intergovernmental organisations invol-
ving European states, see Table 5.2). The EC has already acquired the
status of a weak confederation, pooling some of the sovereignty of
member states. The EC is the most important single illustration of first
world countries coming together to achieve together what could not be
achieved separately.
However, the Americans and the Japanese claim that economic
integration in the European Community is creating a 'fortress Europe'
which they will be unable to penetrate. The EC's Common Agricultural
Policy, which gives massive subsidies to small-scale and inefficient
 The Nation-State in One World 115

Table 5.2 Membership of major international organisations in

Europe, 1991
EC NATO NC BLUX WEU OECD EFT A ECSC CE

Austria + +
Belgium + + + + + + +
Britain + + + + # +
Denmark + + + + # +
Finland + + +
France + + + + + +
Germany + + + + + +
Greece + + + + +
Iceland + + + + +
Ireland + + +
Italy + + + + +
Luxembourg + + + + + + +
Netherlands + + + + + + +
Norway + + + + +
Portugal + + + # +
Spain + + + +
Sweden + + + +
Switzerland + + +
-- --- - - --- --- --- --
Notes:
+ = member
# = left EFT A to join EC (EFT A and EC have now agreed to a single free trade zone)

EC = European Community
NATO = North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (includes non-European nations)
NC = Nordic Council
BLUX = Benelux customs union
WEU=Western European Union
OECD = Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (includes non-
European nations)
EFT A = European Free Trade Association
ECSC = European Coal and Steel Community (precursor to EC)
CE = Council of Europe

farmers, is a prime example. It effectively prohibits large-scale food

imports from efficient producers in the United States and from low-cost
producers in the third world.
Partly in response to the emergence of the European market, moves
towards another great economic bloc are taking place across the
Atlantic. Canada and the United States have agreed a free trade zone.
Negotiations are taking place to allow Mexico to join, with the
116 The Nation-State

possibility that much of Central and South America will end up inside
this 'wall'. This market will be even larger than Europe and will contain
a judicious mix of high-tech (USA, Canada) and low-cost (Mexico)
producers.
The Pacific region could provide the third trading bloc. This is a
difficult area to define. It is generally taken to mean the Asian nations of
the Pacific, but can be extended to include Australia, New Zealand, the
eastern coast of the Soviet Union and the western coast of the Americas.
The Pacific nations have yet to mirror the process of economic
integration in North America and Western Europe. The Association
of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), established in 1967 by Indonesia,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore, does not include
South Korea and Japan. This limits its impact on the region's affairs.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, established in
1989, also needs time to develop. Its original members were the ASEAN
nations plus South Korea, Japan, the United States, Canada, New
Zealand and Australia.
However, as the Pacific region develops organisationally, it will
undoubtedly play a major role in world economic affairs in the
twenty-first century (see Figure 5.2). As early as the beginning of the
1980s, the United States was conducting more trade across the Pacific
than the Atlantic - a sign of the shift in global economic power.
To date, the main conflict between blocs has been between Japan and
its Western trading partners. This stems from Japan's trade surplus.
Governments elsewhere in the first world face tricky problems in
responding to this problem. The visibility of Japanese cars on the
roads often brings the problem into the public realm. As consumers,
citizens show a preference in the market for Japanese cars. But the
domestic automobile industry shouts long and hard for protection - and
opinion polls show that most voters are sympathetic to generous
treatment for home-based companies. One solution is to try to reduce
Japan's trade surplus. In 1990, Japan and the United States agreed the
Structural Impediment Initiative. The Japanese agreed to increase
domestic spending that would, it was hoped, increase imports from
the United States.
Another way round the problem is a 'Trojan Horse' policy of direct
investment by Japan's companies in Western countries. For example,
Japanese car companies have set up manufacturing and assembly plants
in the United States and Europe. Cars produced in these countries do not
count as imports and hence avoid tariffs and quotas. As Figure 5.3
shows, the international automobile industry is linked through an
intricate web of joint ventures and manufacturing and marketing
agreements. In a sense it is misleading to call Nissan a Japanese firm
 The Nation-State in One World 117

(a) The twentieth-century world: a Eurocentric vision

(b) The twenty-first century world: power to the Pacific?

Figure 5.2 Eurocentric and Pacific-centred views of the world

 ......
......
~ 00
"""\ 90% -~

,- La~~~:'{,hini \,
---
~1

20%
-L
RoverGroup "'\
~ BRITAIN ~
\oj

- Equity stake Joint venture/Manufacturing/Marketing agreement Under consideration

Source: By kind permission of G. Segal, The World Affairs Companion (London: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
Figure 5.3 World automobile manufacturing
 The Nation-State in One World 119

in many senses, major companies in the first world are global

companies. However, strategic control (e.g. of Nissan's major invest-
ment decisions) unquestionably remains at head office in Japan.
The fears of protectionism in the first world should be allayed by the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). GATT was formed
in 1948 to act as an international forum to encourage free trade between
nations. Its aim was to remove both formal (for example, tariffs and
quotas) and informal (for example, legal standards) barriers to free
trade. It has around 100 member nations drawn from all three worlds.
In the 1980s GATT negotiations ran into severe problems. Foremost
among these was the question of food trade. The Cairns Group of
nations that export farm produce (including Australia and New
Zealand), in alliance with the United States, pointed out that the EC's
Common Agricultural Policy placed unfair obstacles on food trade with
the EC. For a country like New Zealand that traded heavily with Britain
before the UK's entrance into the community, EC agricultural policy
was a devastating blow. The more integrated and protectionist the EC
becomes, the more Australia and New Zealand will come to see their
future linked to the Pacific region.
It is difficult to predict how strong these three trading blocs will
become. It is even harder to see how they will relate to each other. Some
fear that there will be intense competition between the three blocs, with
internal markets developing that are difficult to penetrate from outside.
However, the counter-argument is that the nations of the first world are
all so integrated already that any attempt to place barriers around the
blocs will lead to 'mutually assured economic destruction'. Free trade
within blocs does not necessarily mean more restrictions on trade
between them. In either case, a major task for all first world states is
to assess how they will relate to these blocs.

I !he sec?nd world: from isolation to

Integration
In this section we discuss the momentous changes that occurred in the
second world's role in global politics in the 1980s. This period saw
increasing contacts between communist states and the first world. In
China, the post-Mao leadership opened the door to expanded economic
contacts both with the west and with China's non-communist neigh-
bours. In Europe, the demolition of the Berlin Wall and the removal of
the political, economic and military barriers that previously divided
Europe into East and West have fundamentally altered the political
120 The Nation-State

landscape of the continent. As a result, the second world is now

becoming more closely integrated into the international economic
system than ever before.

D The old order: problems of isolation

For many years, communist party states strove to insulate themselves
from the international economy. Except for Yugoslavia, the Soviet
satellites of Eastern Europe turned their backs on the West and looked
East towards the Soviet Union. In East Asia, China and North Korea
also became closed economies. In North Korea, radio sets are still made
so that they can only receive broadcasts from the the state radio station.
The Berlin Wall was the most potent symbol of barriers between the
second and first worlds. Erected in 1961, and torn down by the people in
1989, the wall prevented East Germans from escaping to the West.
Many of those who tried to get across were shot.
Economically, the Soviet Union built its own international trading
bloc, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). This
was set up in 1949 largely as a response to the establishment of the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Western
Europe. COMECON's stated goal was to help communist party states
to develop by integrating their economies. However, it also sought to
cut Eastern Europe off from its traditional European orientation, and to
use the more developed economies of Eastern Europe for the benefit of
the Soviet economy.
Many in Eastern Europe regarded COMECON as a kind of Soviet
economic imperialism. As S. White et al. (1990, p. 12) note, COME-
CON's programme of economic integration was 'regarded with more
enthusiasm in Moscow ... than in the countries of Eastern Europe'. But
it has to be said that the Soviet Union fostered the postwar economic
recovery of Czechoslovakia and East Germany by providing subsidised
energy and raw materials.

D The collapse
Despite all this, by the 1980s none of the major communist party states
had completely avoided being pulled into the international economic
order. The motive for opening up to the Western world was economic.
Faced with economic stagnation, communist party states began to look
to the West for advanced technology - and the loans to pay for it. China,
a nation that had turned inwards and advocated self-sufficiency for
 The Nation-State in One World 121

many years, adopted an open-door policy in the late-1970s. Foreign

companies were invited to invest in the country.
In Eastern Europe, several countries sought joint ventures with the
West, and applied for loans from Western banks. However, the East
European nations did not use these loans wisely. In the longer term,
loans merely served to intensify economic problems. Rather than
treating the disease, the ruling parties chose to deal with the symp-
toms. Foreign funds were not invested into projects that would generate
long-term growth, but were used instead to 'buy off' the industrial
working class. Thus the loans were used to keep loss-making industries
going and to subsidise the price of food to maintain workers' purchasing
power. As such, the capital inflow only helped to sustain inefficiency. It
did not create the surplus needed to repay the debts.
Two factors then emerged. First, ruling parties found themselves
caught in a vicious cycle of subsidy. Subsidies created an expectation
that essential goods would always be cheap, thus making it harder to
raise prices towards the true cost of provision. The greater the subsidy,
the louder the complaints if they were removed. In Poland, successive
party leaders tried to break out of this 'subsidy cycle'. Each time price
rises were announced, the result was a rash of strikes and violence.
Secondly, huge debts mounted up. When Poland's communists
handed power to Solidarity in 1989, the country's external debt stood
at $40 billion - half its annual product. Similarly, in Bulgaria the
national debt increased from $3.6 billion in 1984 to $10.5 billion in
1989, a threefold increase in five years. Eventually, the system cracked.

D The new order: problems of integration

For postcommunist regimes, relations with the international economic
order are now a pressing concern. COMECON was dissolved in 1991
so, from a position of isolation, ex-communist states must place external
relationships near the top of their agenda. The task is enormous (see
Exhibit 5.2). The industrial plants of Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union are inefficient and heavily polluting. They produced goods of
indifferent quality, to meet the demands of central planners rather than
the market. They are managed by people for whom concepts such as
market research, advertising and risk-taking are, literally, foreign.
Germany illustrates the uncompetitive nature of production under
communism. After reunification, the economy of East Germany
contracted by a third in two years, while the West German economy
grew by 7 per cent over the same period.
122 The Nation-State

Western industrialists who visit factories in postcommunist countries

are invariably shocked by what they find. For example, John Harvey-
Jones, ex-chairman of British-based transnational leI, wrote (1991) as
follows.
visiting factories in Eastern Europe is like taking a trip in a time machine.
Investment occurred in periodic, vast, centrally-directed dollops. Thereafter
the manufacturer's task was merely to maintain the planned output. There
were no benchmarks for change of any sort - be it quality, cost or quantity.
There were draconian punishments for failure and little reward for success,
even at meeting the fossilised plans of the central bureaucrats. To keep things
running at all took superhuman determination. The wonder is not that the
system collapsed but that it took so long to do so.

Map 5.1 The Baltic Republics

 The Nation-State in One World 123

Exhibit 5.2 The Baltic Republics: Joining the World League

As the Soviet Union fell apart in 1991, the small Baltic States of Estonia,
Latvia and Lithuania were the first to achieve independence. The
problems they face in entering the world economy illustrate the
difficulties of shifting away from the centrally planned Soviet trading
bloc. They also show the enormous problems of late entry into the
world trading system.
The Baltics do have some advantages over other Soviet republics .
They are situated close to Western Europe: Estonia is just fifty miles
from Finland. Even when it was a Soviet republic, Estonia exported
chairs to IKEA, the Swedish furniture group . The three states are
already more prosperous than many other Soviet republics, and with
the advantage of a larger 'non-state' economic sector.
But the newcomers also face deep-seated problems. The Soviet empire
was economically integrated. As a result, Latvia has no facilities to
produce iron and steel, and all three states depend heavily on the East
for fuel. So the links with the East cannot easily be broken. Foreign trade
requires dollars and deutschmarks, the Baltic states have almost none.
Moreover, unlike the rest of Eastern Europe, the Baltics have to develop
their own currencies from scratch . Population transfers under commu-
nist ru le also mean that they inherit substantial minority populations.
About a third of Latvia's population is Russian.
With Western European countries already organised into the trading
blocs of the EC and EFT A (European Free Trade Association), the Baltic
republics will not find it easy to enter these markets. Even if they do,
they face the root problem of uncompetitiveness. Latvia has a large
bicycle industry but its products were made to Russian standards.
Western mountain bikes, with their gaudy colours, index gears and
high-tech tubing, were totally beyond the comprehension of any central
planner in the Soviet Union. Would you buy a Latvian bi ke?

To be able to compete on the international market, economic reforms

will have to be pushed through at home. This is the major example in
today's world of how economic interdependence leads to the reshaping
of domestic society. The political load borne by the new leaders of
postcommunist states is therefore enormous. As these societies move
towards market economies, unemployment and prices will escalate, at
least in the short and medium term. Populations with expectations of
instant affluence for all will discover how costly is the transition to a
market economy. Even a mature market economy has losers as well as
winners. Many people are reluctant to abandon the minimal guarantees
124 The Nation-State

provided by the planned economy: cheap and sufficient (if poor quality)
food, transport and accommodation. These countries may prove
vulnerable to simplistic nationalist appeals from populist leaders
offering instant solutions. The political impact of paradise postponed
may prove substantial.

I The third world: dependence or

interdependence?
In a sense, the countries of the third world are the most international of
all. Many have vulnerable economies heavily dependent on the export of
one commodity. For example, copper accounts for 88 per cent of
Zambia's exports. Others are indebted to international banks. For
example, over half of Argentina's exports earnings should go on paying
off the interest on its massive foreign debt. Still others, particularly
among the poorest countries of the 'fourth world', can barely survive
without support from international bodies and assorted charities. None
have even the modest insulation from the world economy provided by
the large, diversified domestic markets of the United States, the
European Community and Japan.
So even more than in the first and second worlds, politics in the third
world must be placed in an international context. And here the big
question is, why does underdevelopment persist? Two main theories
exist side by side. On the one hand, the liberal theory argues that
opening up the economies of the third world to free trade and
international competition is the only way forward. This theory is
severely critical of the way many ruling politicians in the third world
have distorted the operation of the market in their countries. The liberal
theory is popular among governments in the first world, and the
intergovernmental bodies they dominate. Often simplistic, it none-
theless offers one way forward for the third world.
On the other hand, the dependency theory suggests that the whole
international economy operates to the disadvantage of the third world.
What appears as interdependence in Japan can be seen as dependence in
Jakarta. The 'escape' from poverty promised by liberal advocates of
economic integration is a cruel illusion. Like an addictive drug, the
escape route turns into a prison of its own. According to dependency
theory, the only solution is to change the entire nature of the relation-
ship between the first and the third worlds. Popular in the third world,
indeed developed largely in Latin America, this account offers a sharp
analysis but unclear solutions to the problem of underdevelopment.
 The Nation-State in One World 125

D Liberal theory

In its simplest form, liberal theory suggests that, if allowed to evolve

naturally, unhindered by government intervention, free markets and
competition will stimulate economic growth. Eventually, the developing
nations will catch up. As Blake and Walters (1976, pp. 29-30) put it,
'Liberal economists feel that less-developed countries can facilitate the
modernization process by exposing their domestic producers to external
competition. '
The continuation, if not the causes, of underdevelopment are blamed
on bad government. Trade policies of third world governments depart
too far from the ideal of free trade. Thus economic underdevelopment is
blamed on political mismanagement. The leaders of third world
countries too often regard the state as a resource to be exploited for
the benefit of themselves, their friends, their allies, or their ethnic group.
Rulers are more concerned about short-term success or survival than the
long-term development of their economies. In Argentina, for instance,
the military regime borrowed heavily to finance arms purchases that
were used in the ultimately futile attempt to wrest the Falkland/
Malvinas Islands from British control in 1982. Western countries, it
must be said, are always keen to supply weapons to virtually any third
world country willing to buy them.
The liberal argument is propounded by some of the most influential
international organisations in the modern world. Both the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund are committed to encouraging
third world governments to open their economies to free trade. But they
do not claim there is no role for government. Rather, the key to effective
development is taken to be the interaction between markets and
government.
In the 'shining examples' of Japan and Korea (see Exhibit 5.3), the
governments did intervene in the economy. Both countries protected
infant industries from competition during the postwar decades until
they were able to stand unaided. But crucially, policy-makers sought to
guide private companies towards success in the marketplace. They did
not aim to create the planned economies of the second world, nor even
the nationalised industries then widespread in Western Europe. Inter-
national and domestic competition was encouraged by a convertible
currency as soon as the economy could bear it, and so relative prices
were not distorted. In the current liberal theory of development,
governments 'kick-start' firms and industries that might not otherwise
get moving, but once the industrial motor is running, it is expected to
generate its own power.
126 The Nation-State

Exhibit 5.3 South Korea: promotion from the third division

South Korea is one of the fastest-growing countries in the world.

Since the mid-1960s, its economy has expanded at an average of
around 10 per cent per year, a doubling time of just eight years. In the
early 1990s, the growth rate was still about 8 per cent per year. But
both domestically and internationally, South Korea now faces new
challenges brought about by its own success.
Internally, South Korea has experienced an early form of the 'post-
industrial revolution' (see pp. 141-2). The middle classes are no
longer content with washing machines and videos. In a traditionally
authoritarian society, they now demand political freedoms as well.
Internationally, South Korea, like other third world countries, is
paradoxically feeling an unwelcome chill as the Cold War ends. The
threat of communist domination of East Asia has now all but
disappeared. So, too, has the need previously felt by the United
States to foster economic development in this bulwark against
commUnIsm.
Once nations reach a certain level of economic development, they
hit a 'poverty gap'. This means they lose access to preferential low-
interest loans from organisations such as the World Bank and the
IMF. They are expected to become full players in the international
community. They are also expected to shoulder the burden of
protecting their own interests. South Korea was, for example, one
of many countries lobbied by the West to foot the bill for the 1991
Gulf War.
In short, the transition from third to first world is painful. Just as
promoted teams often change their coach, so South Korea's emer-
gence may destroy the power of the modernising, authoritarian elite
that brought the country to where it is today - on the brink of
promotion to the first world.

o Dependency theory
Opponents of the liberal theory argue that the very structure of the
world system means that development will not take such a smooth path.
Opening up domestic economies to free trade and international
 The Nation-State in One World 127

competition will only widen the gap between the rich and the poor.
Modernisation started at different times in different countries. The
ones that started earlier therefore have comparative advantages over the
late starters. The market always favours the well endowed over the
poor, so free trade will accentuate disparities. As N. Smith (1984, p. xi)
puts it, 'uneven development is the hallmark of the geography of
capitalism' .
Writers such as Frank (1981) and Amin (1977) argue that although
formal colonialism is not a common phenomenon today, economic or
neocolonialism persists. John Kautsky (1972, p. 60) defined economic
colonialism as

an economic relationship prevailing between an advanced industrial country

and an underdeveloped one, where the underdeveloped country serves,
through investment from capital principally from the advanced country, as
a supplier of raw materials for the industry of the advanced country. In time,
the underdeveloped country can also come to serve as a market for some of
the finished goods of the advanced country.

'Neo-colonies' remain dependent on their first world patrons. This

enables the ex-colonial powers to reap the economic benefits of
colonialism without paying the political and financial price. Central
to the theory of dependent development is the concept of a comprador
class. This consists of local managers who take over the economy once
the colonialists depart. These business people have an interest in
maintaining the colonial economic relationship. Local managers derive
great wealth from trading with their patrons overseas. As such, it is in
their interest to maintain the relationship, even if the local workforce is
heavily exploited.
Because the modernisation of the developing nation depends on the
first world patron, national development is distorted. The whole pattern
of the client economy is shaped by the demands of the patron. What we
see is not development proper but 'the development of underdevelop-
ment' (Frank 1969).
In particular, third world economies concentrate on commodities and
minerals that the first world needs. Concentration on the development
of one commodity may bring short- or even medium-term gains, but it is
at the expense of more balanced development in the economy as a
whole. If frost kills its coffee bushes, Colombia faces severe and
immediate problems. At least a third of its legal exports come from
coffee (cocaine is its largest illegal export). Many third world economies
are equally dominated by the production of a small number of
128 The Nation-State

commodities. This makes them very sensitive to changes in the tastes

and economies of the first world. Who would be a tea producer when
the first world is switching to coffee?
Why don't commodity producers form a cartel to force up the price of
their produce? One problem is diversification of third world suppliers -
the more producers there are, the greater the alternatives for first world
purchasers. If Colombia increases the price of its coffee beans, then the
big coffee firms will just turn to Brazil, Costa Rica or Kenya. Another
problem is that national governments must be able to control the
production of that commodity in their territory. After seizing power
in Libya in 1969, Colonel Qadafi threatened to take over any company
that did not cut oil production and raise prices. Other nations have not
possessed the same ability or desire to control commodity producers.
The wave of privatisation that swept the third world (and in particular,
Africa) in the 1980s and 1990s further reduced the possibility of building
effective producer cartels in the future.
The only cartel of commodity producers that proved capable of
exerting pressure on the developed world was the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Its decision to quadruple oil
prices in 1973 had an enormous impact on the world economy.
However, as Strange (1988) notes, the oil-dependent nations of the
first world learnt quickly from their experience. Oil companies moved
their prospecting and exploration efforts to non-OPEC areas, consumer
states diversified their energy supplies, and countries such as Japan
negotiated their own independent agreements with suppliers. By the
1990s even OPEC, the most powerful of commodity cartels, had lost its
stranglehold on the first world.
Dependency theorists point to capital outflows from the third world
to the first. By comparison, the amount of aid granted to third world
countries pales into insignificance. In 1989 the West gave the third world
£30 billion in aid, but the third world gave the West £93 billion in debt
repayments. Africa's burden of debt exceeds the continent's GNP.
Except for Egypt, Israel and a handful of countries in dire distress
(such as Tanzania), foreign aid averages only around 2 per cent of gross
national product (GNP) in third world nations - about as useful as a
sticking plaster on a severed artery.
The outflow of money from the third world forms part of the debt
crisis. This too shows the dependency of the third world, but in this case
'interdependency' is the more accurate term. In the 1970s Western banks
found their deposits swelled by petro-dollars - the massive profits of the
oil-producing nations. The banks were looking for customers, and many
third world governments were looking for loans. Billions of dollars were
 The Nation-State in One World 129

loaned to second and third world nations. At the peak in the mid-1980s,
Mexico and Brazil owed about $100 billion each. Many countries could
not even afford to pay the interest on the debts. As a result, international
attempts to get to grips with the debt crisis involved giving new loans to
countries such as Mexico merely to allow them to payoff the interest on
old loans. As Clarke (1992) says, 'If major debtor countries were
declared bankrupt, as technically they were, then some major banks
in the West would be ruined and international finance would be thrown
into chaos. It was everyone's problem.'
In the long run, the debt crisis will help to ensure the triumph of the
liberal theory of development. Many countries in the third world are
turning away from commercial banks towards the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). The IMF is an increasingly important actor in
the management of the world economy. Contributions to the IMF come
from member nations. Voting power within the organisation is based on
that nation's contribution and the size of its national economy. The
United States is the dominant partner in the IMF with around 20 per
cent of voting power. As any change in IMF rules requires an 85 per cent
majority in favour, the Americans have, in effect, veto power.
The debt crisis of the 1980s has given the liberal theories a great
opportunity to be asserted in the third world. IMF loans are much more
attractive than private loans in terms of repayments - but there is a
catch. To qualify for an IMF (or World Bank) loan, nations must in
practice surrender a degree of control over their economic policies. The
IMF will stipulate certain economic policies that have to be implemen-
ted if the loan is to be granted. In particular, the IMF encourages the
opening up of domestic industries to international competition, and the
primacy of market forces over state planning. Many Western govern-
ments support this policy. In 1991, the British Foreign Secretary said,
'governments which persist with repressive policies, with corrupt
management or with wasteful and discredited economic systems should
not expect us to support their folly with scarce aid resources which
could be used better elsewhere'.
Desperate to pull themselves out of the trough of debt, many third
world governments have accepted first world principles of economic
development. In 1991, for example, the Indian Government announced
it would eliminate many subsidies, reduce tariffs on imports and exports
and privatise up to a fifth of its public sector. Five weeks later, it sought
loans of $15 billion from the West to help service its foreign debt of $70
billion. Ironically, the liberal theory of development is carrying all
before it precisely because of the dependence of the third world on
the first.
130 The Nation-State

SII 111m a rv

1. The boundaries of the state have become more porous than ever before.
Although contacts between nations exist at many levels, states are widening
their responsibilities in response to the challenges of the interdependent world.

2. The international division of labour means that goods can be made in

whichever country can produce them to the combination of quality and cost
demanded by customers. The economic dynamic of international trade springs
from the fact that all participants can benefit from it. The political dynamic is
that not all countries benefit equally.

3. Until the 1970s, the United States was said to 'manage' the world economy
under the Bretton Woods system. However, in the 1980s, America lost its
dominant position. In the 1990s, no single nation is powerful enough to
dominate the world economy.

4. The creation of supranational trading blocs has increased fears of growing

protectionism in the first world. However, the first world nations are so
dependent on trade that any protectionist war would severely damage the
economies of all.

5. After a period of economic and political isolation after 1945, virtually all
second world countries are now seeking to become integrated into the
international economic system. However, their economies are so backward
and inefficient that this transition will be a painful process.

6. The liberal theory suggests that third world nations must open their
economies to international competition if they want to develop. Dependency
theorists disagree, and claim that this will only widen the gap between the
developed and underdeveloped nations.

7. Dependency theory suggests that formal colonialism has been replaced by

economic colonialism. The ex-colonies of the third world are economically
dependent on their first world patrons for markets and investment.

8. One of the key concerns for third world governments is the size of its
national debt. Unable to pay back loans to Western banks, some third world
countries have turned to the IMF and the World Bank for loans to pay the
interest. In return for these new loans, the third world countries have to agree
to Iiberalise their economies.
 The Nation-State in One World 131

Discllssion points

1. Does the nature of the world economy mean that countries in the third
world can never catch up with those in the first world?
2. Which transnational companies are most visible in your country? Do they
strengthen or weaken the economy? What is their political role?
3. Explore the implications of the global economy for democracy within the
nation-state.
4. 'As all good Marxists know, economics determines politics'. Do you
agree?
5. Are postcommunist states becoming economic colonies of the first world?

Key reading

Ray, J. (1990) Global Politics (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin). A compre-

hensive introduction to world politics.
Little, R. and Smith, M. (eds) (1991) Perspectives on World Politics, 2nd edn,
(London: Routledge). An up-to-date and well-organised reader, which
examines world politics from three perspectives.
Segal, G. (1991) The World Affairs Companion (London: Simon and Schuster).
A good and accessible introduction to international affairs.
Instituto del Tercer Mondo (1990) Third World Guide 91192 (Montevideo:
Instituto del Tercer Mondo). A view from the third world of the problems
facing the region in the 1990s. Also contains country profiles of every nation
in the world.
Blake, D. and Walters, R. (1976) The Politics of Global Economic Relations
(Englewood Cliffs, N.].: Prentice-Hall). A good introduction to the various
approaches to development and underdevelopment.
132 The Nation-State

Further reading
Any student of the development and origins of the modern world system should
start with Wallerstein's (1974, 1980) seminal works. Kennedy (1988) is also very
influential on the rise and fall of the great powers.
More general introductions to world politics include Ray (1990), Calvocor-
essi (1991), Hockling and Smith (1990), and Segal (1991). Claude (1971) is a
readable introduction to international organisations. Keohane and Nye (1972)
and Keohane (1984) are both influential works on global interdependence. The
books by Strange (1986, 1988) are both good places to start on the impact of
the deregulation of the world economy. Jenkins (1987) also analyses the
interaction between states and markets with specific reference to the role of
TNCs.
On theories of development and underdevelopment, Kautsky (1972) and
Amin (1977) are both important texts on imperialism. Hirschmann (1958)
remains an influential work on liberal theories, and the World Bank (1990) is
an up-to-date and highly influential vision of the importance of free trade to
development. Blake and Walters (1976) and Spero (1977) both contain useful
introductions to the liberal, Marxist and structuralist views.
For the specific problems facing third world development, the Third World
Guide (1990) is a readable and accessible starting-point. Chan (1987) assesses
the problems from African perspectives. For the impact of the debt crisis, see
George (1988). Warnock (1987) is a useful introduction to the global food
problem.
 .PART3.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
OF POLITICS
Government does not work in isolation, unaffected by the society of
which it forms part. Much of the variation in regime types, for
example, can be accounted for in terms of the characteristics of
society, especially its culture and level of economic development.
This part examines the central links between society and state.
Chapter 6 looks at the attitudes of people towards government,
while Chapter 7 discusses their participation in it. Because of their
growing importance worldwide, elections and voting behaviour are
separately examined in Chapter 8. Particularly in liberal democra-
cies, interest groups form an important link between society and
government; they are the subject of Chapter 9. Parties are also
central to the way interests and preferences are placed on the
political agenda, though parties select and combine demands where
interest groups express them. Chapter 10 examines parties.
 • Chapter 6 •
. Political Culture
The first world 136 Political socialisation 147
The second world 142 Elite political culture 151
The third world 145

'The strongest is never strong enough unless he succeeds in turning

might into right and obedience into duty.' So wrote Rousseau in the
eighteenth century, and rulers the world over have taken his saying to
their hearts. For instance, under communist rule in the Soviet Union
two- and three-year-olds were taught to sing nursery songs about Lenin;
four- and five-year-olds to decorate his portrait; and six-year-olds were
allowed to lay flowers at Lenin's statue. When communist power
collapsed, junior school teachers were suddenly shorn of the role
models which they had been presenting to Soviet children for genera-
tions. They did not know what to teach.
Attempts to foster loyalty to the regime are not of course restricted to
communist states. Civics classes in American high schools, and the
presentation of the monarchy to British children as a benign institution
worthy of affection and allegiance, represent other ways in which rulers
have tried to transform might into right, obedience into duty. Whatever
the success of these attempts, a regime based on popular acceptance of
its authority is likely in the long run to prove more effective and hence
more durable than one based purely on force. As the Chinese proverb
says, 'You can conquer a kingdom on horseback but you cannot rule
from there'. It is this impact of popular opinion on the stability and
effectiveness of regimes which makes the study of popular attitudes
towards politics so important.
The study of a people's orientations to politics is the study of a
country's political culture. The concept of political culture is essentially
psychological: it refers to what people think about politics - to their
beliefs, values and emotions. It does not refer to actual political
behaviour. Indeed behaviour may conflict with prevailing attitudes.
For example, the amount of popular participation in democracies is
distinctly limited despite a participant political culture. Yet the fact that
many people in liberal democracies believe they can influence political
decisions, even though they choose not to do so, gives an important clue

135
136 The Social Context of Politics

to the way in which liberal democracies function. In this chapter we

discuss political culture in each of the three worlds. We then examine
how people acquire their political attitudes. We conclude with a
discussion of elite political culture .

• The first world

There are two approaches to the analysis of political culture in the first
world. The liberal (or behavioural) account argues that most democ-
racies do have a national political culture. This is a product of history
and is transmitted across the generations through social institutions
such as the family. The alternative radical (or Marxist) account rejects
this neutral interpretation. It suggests instead that political culture is the
product of an attempt by dominant classes to impose their values on
subordinate groups. This is achieved through formal mechanisms such
as the mass media and the education system.
Thus, where liberals study the transmission of values across the
generations, and call this socialisation, radicals study the transmission
of values across the classes, and term this indoctrination. Where liberals
assume that a national political culture can emerge naturally from
socialisation and history, radicals argue that in capitalist society any
national culture is bound to be a fragile affair. It needs constant shoring
up by those who benefit from the system. We will consider these two
approaches and then turn to an examination of 'postmaterialism' as an
element in the political cultures of the first world.

D The civic culture

The liberal interpretation of political culture was presented in Almond
and Verba's The Civic Culture (1963). Based on surveys conducted
during 1959-60 in the United States, Britain, West Germany, Italy and
Mexico, this landmark study tried to identify the political culture within
which a liberal democracy is most likely to survive and develop (see
Figure 6.1).
Almond and Verba distinguished three pure types of political culture:
the parochial, subject and participant. In the parochial political culture,
people are only vaguely aware of the existence of central government -
as with hill tribes whose life is largely unaffected by national decisions
made by the central government. In the subject political culture, citizens
see themselves as subjects of a government rather than as participants in
the political process - as with people living under a dictatorship. In the
 Political Culture 137

Parochial
culture

Participant The civic Stable

culture culture democracy

Subject
culture

Figure 6.1 Almond and Verba's theory of the civic culture

participant political culture, cltlzens believe both that they can con-
tribute to the system and that they are affected by it.
Almond and Verba's idea was that democracy is likely to be most
stable in societies where a participant political culture is balanced by the
survival of subject and parochial attitudes. This mix is termed the 'civic
culture'. In this culture the citizen is active enough in politics to express
his or her preferences to government but is not so involved in particular
issues as to refuse to accept the decisions made by the elite. The citizen
feels capable of influencing the government but often chooses not to do
so, thus giving the government a measure of flexibility.
The authors concluded from their surveys that of the five countries
they had studied, Britain came closest to the civic culture and was
followed by the United States. In both societies respect for and trust in
government was high, while the duty to participate was widely accepted.
So too, was the belief that such involvement could make a difference.
The main contrast between the two countries was that the subject
political culture remained more important in Britain than in the United
States, where participant attitudes predominated.
Though not included in Almond and Verba's study, we can look to
Australia for an example of a liberal democracy which is not fully
underpinned by its political culture. Australia's political culture has
been described as 'subject participant'. Most Australians are highly
conscious of the benefits they expect from government but they do not
display a similar obligation to participate. Australians rely heavily on
public provision but at the same time are frequently contemptuous of
those who provide it (Emy and Hughes 1991, p. 121). As Hancock put it
in 1930, 'Australian democracy has come to look upon the state as a vast
138 The Social Context of Politics

public utility, whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the
greatest number . . . . To the Australian, the state means collective
power at the service of individualistic "rights".' These attitudes have
not proved incompatible with a democratic system in Australia but they
have surely not contributed much to it.
Almond and Verba's surveys were conducted in 1959-60, near the
high tide of postwar complacency about the performance of liberal
democracy. In the following thirty years most liberal democracies
wallowed in more turbulent waters. The Western world experienced
political fallout from Vietnam and student activism in the 1960s, from
the economic recession of the 1970s, and from the growth of non-
conventional forms of political participation in the 1980s (e.g. the anti-
nuclear movement) and the 1990s (e.g. ecology groups).
As Almond and Verba noted in their up-date (1980), these events left
their mark on Western political cultures. In Britain and the United States
trust in government declined. This represented a shift away from the
civic culture towards a more pragmatic and instrumental attitude to
politics. Yet in neither Britain nor the United States was the political
culture transformed. Most Americans and many Britons still take pride
in their political systems. Discontent is focused more on the perfor-
mance of governing parties than on the entire political process.
More recent surveys suggest that the pattern noted by Almond and
Verba still holds good. In a study of European countries, Inglehart
(1988) noted that the French, Italians and Greeks ranked low on
measures of political satisfaction, trust in others, life satisfaction and
happiness. And these countries have been characterised by large anti-
system parties. More stable democracies, suggests Inglehart, have a
reservoir of support which can sustain them through bad times:
Even when democracy has no answer to the question, 'what have you done
for me lately?' it may be sustained by diffuse feelings that it is in essence, a
good thing. These feelings may in turn reflect economic and other successes
that one experienced long ago or learned about second hand as part of one's
early socialisation (p. 1205).

Four main criticisms have been directed at the theory of the civic
culture (Barry 1978; Almond and Verba 1980). First, political culture
may reflect the political system rather than determine it. In a democracy
people may think they can influence government because they can in fact
do so; if democracy ended, then so too would the civic culture. So, far
from being a cause of stable democracy, as Almond and Verba claimed,
a civic culture might just be a consequence of democracy. If this is so, the
initial question - what makes a stable democracy? - remains unan-
swered.
 Political Culture 139

Secondly, Almond and Verba probably overestimated the extent to

which Britain had a civic culture, even in the late 1950s. After all, there is
a long tradition of unorthodox political protest in Britain, especially of
urban disorder and riots against new taxes. Almond and Verba's own
survey found that 58 per cent of Britons agreed that 'People like me
don't have any say in what the government does'. This evidence
supports Heath and Topf's claim (1987) that 'political cynicism has
been a long-standing feature of British political culture'. Like many
Americans of the time, Almond and Verba were prone to look at Britain
through rose-tinted spectacles.
Thirdly, the importance Almond and Verba attached to democratic
governments having flexibility in their decisions led some critics to
doubt whether anything 'democratic' remained in the authors' concept
of liberal democracy. Pateman (1980) may have gone too far in
describing The Civic Culture as 'a celebration of political apathy' but
certainly the liberalism of the book is more apparent than any
commitment to participatory democracy.
Fourthly, Almond and Verba gave little attention to political
subcultures. These are groups in society whose political attitudes
deviate sharply from the national culture. Does it make sense to speak
of American, Australian or even Dutch political culture, given the
diversity of groups within these countries? In fact, is 'political culture'
anything more than a fancy term for the dubious concept of 'national
character'? Some critics allege that subcultures of class and race are so
strong in Western societies that it makes no sense to speak of a national
culture. This final point is the basis of the radical account of political
culture to which we now turn.

o Ideological hegemony
For Marxists, a major task was to explain why the working class did not
rebel against its exploited position under capitalism. Marx himself
suggested one interpretation when he wrote that the ideas of the ruling
class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. In a famous phrase, he
suggested that those who control the means of material production
also control the means of ideological production. Yet despite this, Marx
himself believed that in the long run a crisis of capitalism would cause a
working-class revolution.
Most modern radicals have abandoned this prediction. They recog-
nise that capitalism has 'delivered the goods'. They now give more
weight to the 'superstructure' (i.e. the culture) in shaping working-class
140 The Social Context of Politics

attitudes. For many modern Marxists, in particular, the battle of ideas is

almost as important as developments in the economy. For example, the
Italian Marxist Gramsci (1971, written 1929-35) felt that dominant
classes exercised power over subordinate strata as much through
persuasion as through coercion. He used the term 'hegemony' to
describe how one class can dominate another without resort to brute
force (R. Simon 1982).
Whatever the precise position particular radicals adopt, they all agree
that political culture is not a neutral product of a country's history.
Rather, political culture is 'meaning in the service of domination'
(Thompson 1990). It is viewed as the outcome of a more-or-Iess
conscious effort by dominant classes to legitimise their social and
economic power. To this end, the cultures of liberal democracies
emphasise values which divide the working class, such as individual-
ism, competitiveness and materialism. These cultures also offer an
artificial sense of cross-class unity, through religious, nationalist and
racist values. The mechanisms by which this political culture is
transmitted include the mass media, the education system, business
organisations and churches.
In the radical account, the hegemony of the ruling class is always
superficial. Working-class people may accept dominant values in the
abstract (e.g. agreeing with a pollster that trade unions are too power-
ful) while still being willing to take radical action in their own life (e.g.
by going on strike). Thus working-class political culture is not just a
passive acceptance of dominant values. It also includes ideas of
solidarity drawn from the local working-class community and perhaps
also some elements of left-wing ideology introduced through a trade
union or a socialist party (F. Parkih 1971). These various 'value streams'
compete with each other not just at the party level but also within the
belief systems of individuals. Thus it would be wrong to regard the
radical view of political culture as nothing more than a simple
conspiracy theory. In fact it gives more weight to subcultures than the
behavioural view.
The radical theory of political culture has weaknesses of its own.
Above all it presumes that subordinate classes are naturally left-wing
but are seduced away from the path of revolutionary righteousness by
the 'dominant ideology'. But there may be more truth in viewing the
working class as naturally conservative (at least with a small c). Indeed
Lipset (1983, first pub. 1960) argues that features of working-class life
such as limited education and economic insecurity propel manual
workers to an authoritarian view of politics. This is even without the
'lift' provided by the dominant culture.
 Political Culture 141

D Postmaterialism

From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, the Western world witnessed a
period of unprecedented economic growth. 'You've never had it so
good' became a cliche which summarised the experience of a postwar
generation. This was also a period of relative international peace. A
generation grew up with no experience of world war.
According to Inglehart (1971), these factors led to 'a silent revolution'
in the political cultures of Western democracies. A new generation of
'postmaterialists' emerged - young, well-educated people who took
their material well-being for granted and were more concerned with
postmaterial values. These included lifestyle issues such as ecology,
nuclear disarmament and feminism. Postmaterialists are not satisfied
with a loaf of bread; they also insist that it should be wholemeal and
additive-free! Postmaterialists are also more attracted to organisations
giving real opportunities for individual participation. They are elite-
challenging advocates of the new politics rather than elite-sustaining
foot-soldiers in the old party battles.
As a rule, the more affluent a democracy, the higher the proportion of
postmaterialists within its borders. In Europe postmaterialism came first
to, and made deepest inroads in, the wealthiest democracies such as
Denmark, the Netherlands and West Germany. With the exception of
Norway, the affluent Scandinavian countries have been receptive to
post materialist ideas (Knutsen 1990). The United States was also in the
first wave of postmaterialism. In the early 1970s, American studies
found a concentration of post-materialists among yuppies - young,
upwardly mobile urban professionals, especially those in the wealthiest
state of all, California (Miller and Levitin 1976). Postmaterialism is less
common in poorer democracies with lower levels of education: Greece,
Ireland, Spain and Portugal (Inglehart 1990).
Even in the richest countries, postmaterialists remain a small minority
of the total population. But they are an active, opinion-leading group -
and therein lies their significance.
The recession of the 1970s and early 1980s slowed down the spread of
postmaterialism. At least in the Nordic countries, the younger genera-
tions became more materialistic than the generations which preceded
them. Indeed in the depths of the recession some writers dismissed
postmaterialism as nothing more than a fragile flower of sunshine
politics. Certainly it seems likely that the 1960s generation, socialised
in an era of 'flower power' and Vietnam, will remain distinctly radical as
it moves into positions of power.
142 The Social Context of Politics

But as the world economy recovered towards the end of the 1980s, so
too did postmaterial values. As long as the world avoids another major
economic downturn, it seems likely that postmaterial values will spread
further. This is partly because education (and not, contrary to
Inglehart's theory, income) is the best single predictor of postmaterial-
ism. Educational standards are continuing to rise throughout the world.
But another factor also encourages the diffusion of postmaterialism. It is
least popular among the oldest and least educated generations. As these
are replaced, so postmaterialism will become more widespread -
provided, that is, the young do not lose all their postmaterial sheen as
they move through the life-cycle!

• The second world

Communist party states provided an excellent laboratory in which to
examine the impact of the state on political culture. A key aim of all
communist systems was to change fundamentally the way people
thought and behaved. Especially in China and Albania, the ruling
parties tried to impose cultural revolutions alongside the industrial and
technological revolutions. The intention was to speed up the transition
from old attitudes to a new socialist political culture. The aim was a
new 'Communist Man and Woman', who would live in a classless,
socialist, atheist society which lacked all the poisons inhaled under
capitalism. The ruling parties intended to bring about this transform-
ation through education: both in the formal education system and
through control of cultural works. The emphasis was in the first
instance on persuasion, rather than on force.

D The failure of transformation

This transformation of political culture never came about. Communist
rule created changes in political culture but these changes were not
always in the direction that the party wanted. In consequence,
communist leaders altered their aims as the party recognised that the
new communist personality was not emerging. Take the Soviet Union
and China as examples. In both countries, the new communist rulers
were committed to increasing mass participation in politics. The old
feudal systems had been characterised by passive acceptance of
 Political Culture 143

authority - what Weber called traditional authority (see p. 17). In

order to bring about a revolution in political culture, the communist
citizen was to become an active participant in political life. Mass
campaigns were organised to ensure that every person was involved in
politics.
In China these activities ranged from participation in land reform
programmes to campaigns against the 'three evils': corruption, waste
and bureaucratic red tape. However, mass participation in these
campaigns did not of course show that communist men and women
had been created. If you did not conform by taking part in active
political acts, then you faced the risk of being branded an enemy of the
people. So you participated anyway. In a study of Russian political
culture, S. White (1979, p. 11) referred to the concept of 'two persons in
one body'. The public person repeated the phraseology of the autho-
rities when required and took part in ritual demonstrations of unity. But
the 'hidden' person retained a set of older attitudes towards politics and
society. In fact, fear created citizens who outwardly conformed, but
inwardly adopted strategies designed to ensure their own survival. Thus,
the realities of communist rule encouraged changes in political culture
that ran counter to the party's professed aims.
Furthermore, once the ruling parties realised that the new communist
personality was not appearing, they relied on traditional political
culture. For example, if you cannot get the people to participate
actively in politics, then the next best option may be for them to accept
authority passively - as they did in the precommunist era.
The continuing importance of the family in China is an example of
this point. Traditionally the family, and not the state, provided welfare
care for the old and the young. If this is encouraged, it removes a
potentially expensive burden from the state. However, the cost is that
family socialisation maintains traditional, precommunist attitudes
towards society. This runs against the party's aim of creating a new
political culture.
Ruling communist parties were therefore inconsistent in their
attempts to modify political culture. This was nowhere more evident
than in the policy towards the many nationalities of the Soviet Union.
Official acceptance of non-Russian languages and the persistence of
local cultures helped to maintain nationalistic feelings. Yet at the same
time, resentment towards Russian 'occupation' increased, because of the
central government's attempts to maintain control over the republics.
Heightened hostility to an imposed political order, combined with
strong local political cultures, created an irresistible force for change
once Gorbachev loosened the reins of government in the 1980s.
144 The Social Context of Politics

OPolitical
communzsm
~ulture and the collapse of

The dramatic collapse of communist rule in Eastern Europe in 1989 was

evidence of the importance of political culture in explaining whether
regimes survive. It confirmed David Hume's eighteenth-century saying
that all power rests ultimately on opinion. The failure of East European
regimes to establish a reservoir of legitimacy among their populations
was the underlying cause of their downfall.
Almost everywhere, the precommunist cultural heritage proved
highly resilient in the face of official attempts to reconstruct it.
Indeed, such cultural traditions were sometimes strengthened by
providing a focus of opposition to communist rule. In Poland, for
example, the Catholic Church became the major source of opposition to
the ruling party, and a strong counterweight to communist rule.
Czechoslovakia's political culture was also out of tune with strong
one-party rule. Between the two world wars Czechoslovakia was the
most democratic country within Central and Eastern Europe. The
memory of this period, particularly among the country's large middle
class, limited the acceptability of authoritarian rule.
The failure of communism to set down firm roots in Eastern Europe is
due in part to its imposition, in most countries, by the Soviet Red Army
after the Second World War. For the most part, communism lacked any
national political characteristics. In places where communist parties
came to power through indigenous revolution, the process of winning
the revolution entailed adapting communism to the concrete realities of
those societies. Socialism in China was socialism with Chinese char-
acteristics, in Cuba with Cuban characteristics, and so on. In Eastern
Europe, when leaders tried to take national interests to heart, as in
Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviets intervened to
restore the old system. Thus the political culture of the elites was out of
step with the political culture of the masses, and finally this tension
proved to be untenable.
The revolutions of 1989 also show the importance of elite political
culture. As Schopflin (1990) points out, 'an authoritarian elite sustains
itself in power not just through force and the threat of force but, more
importantly, because it has some vision of the future by which it can
justify itself to itself. No regime can survive long without some concept
of purposiveness.' In the initial phase of industrialisation, communist
rulers could feel their planned economies were producing results. Indeed
economic development gave some Eastern European regimes (such as
Hungary after widespread economic decentralisation in 1968) signifi-
cant 'instrumental legitimacy' among the population.
 Political Culture 145

But by the late 1980s economic progress had given way to decline. The
planned economies had reached a dead end while party rule prevented
political reform. As even nominal support from intellectuals faded, so
party officials began to lose confidence in their own right to rule. In the
end, communist rule was toppled so easily because it had already been
weakened from within.
Despite the persistence of traditional political cultures, the nations of
Eastern Europe cannot simply pick up from the 1940s as if communist
rule had never happened. Just as the political culture of the precommu-
nist years affected the nature of communist rule in Eastern Europe, so
the nature of postcommunist rule will be shaped by what preceded it.
For example, workers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe used to
joke that they pretended to work and the state pretended to pay them. A
serious point lies beneath the humour. If the economies of postcommu-
nist states are really going to recover, then a new entrepreneurial spirit
needs to be built. But this new culture has yet to emerge. Indeed,
throughout Eastern Europe there is concern about what the future will
bring. Despite the poor performance of communist economies, the
population had become used to a measure of economic security: cheap
housing, cheap food, low unemployment, and so on. Rising inequalities
and mass unemployment appear to be inescapable results of the move
towards more efficient market economies. The cultural legacy of
communism may yet prove to be a reluctance to leave behind the
equality of poverty that had become such a feature of economic life
under communism .

• The third world: local political cultures

If the political cultures of the first world have a strong participant
element, and those of the second world a strong subject element, can the
third world be seen in terms of parochial political cultures? Parochial
cultures are those where citizens are not concerned about national
government; they see themselves as neither contributing to, nor being
affected by, central decisions. Undoubtedly the state is weaker in the
developing than the developed world. It penetrates less deeply into
society and so provides only a weak focus of public attention. But is the
parochial culture a cause of the weak state, as advocates of the cultural
approach claim?
The answer is yes, to an extent. Certainly the post-independence
generation of third world leaders sought to nationalise the political
culture in the belief that this would strengthen the authority of the state.
Primary education stressed allegiance to the nation rather than the
146 The Social Context of Politics

ethnic group. The mass media reported national as well as local events
and often recalled memories of the heroic struggle for independence.
But just as communist party states failed to create the new man and
woman, so too have attempts to transform third world political cultures
met with very little success. In consequence, efforts at nation-building in
the developing world have become little more than ritual in recent
decades. Primary school children may be given the national flag to wave
when the Education Minister comes to visit, but true nation-building
can not be achieved so easily.
Besides the inherent difficulty of reshaping a culture, third world
governments face the problem of the continuing authority of traditional
leaders. Because the institutions of the state are underdeveloped, central
governments are often forced to administer localities through tradi-
tionalleaders, which in practice contradicts their own efforts at nation-
building. For example, the Education Minister may supposedly be
visiting an area to open a new modern school. But the real purpose is
to cement an alliance with traditional local leaders. Nation-building
without state-building is inevitably a hollow exercise.
A parochial culture implies that many people are only dimly aware of
the national government. However this does not mean that citizens of
third world countries are politically naive. In fact they are often well
aware of the intricacies of local and ethnic politics through which
resources are, in reality, distributed. For example the Hausa-Fulani
emirates in Northern Nigeria, based on the unquestioned authority of
the emir (the traditional religious ruler known as 'the shadow of God'),
are resilient political systems which have survived successive changes of
regime at national level. The emirate is at least as important a focus of
attention as the national government. To describe these non-national
cultures as subcultures is to understate their significance. Many third
world countries are best considered as plural or poly-cultural societies
rather than as countries with a weak national culture and distinct
subcultures. In India, for example, where state institutions are fairly
well established, the great variety of religions and the complexities of the
caste system are fundamental to an understanding of the country's
politics. From this perspective, then, it is better to describe political
cultures in the third world as local than as parochial.

o Tradition and modernity

Many authors have argued that tradition is a major quality of third
world cultures. Traditional relationships are modelled on the idea of
kinship. They are based on the personal qualities of the participants and
 Political Culture 147

embrace a wide range of activities. In politics this means that politicians

and civil servants have obligations to kin, friends and supporters which
conflict with a 'modern' interpretation of their role. The modern idea of
a bureaucrat applying rules in an impersonal way, or of politicians
seeking fairly to balance the claims of competing interests, is alien to this
traditional perspective. Hence Western observers often describe as
'corrupt' activities which in the less-developed countries themselves
are viewed as straightforward fulfilments of social obligations - as a
matter, sometimes literally, of jobs for the boys (but less often for the
girls) .
This distinction between tradition and modernity is useful in under-
standing the politics of the third world. Often conflict between the
modern and the traditional makes the tension between the capital city
and the countryside more intense. But the traditional and the modern
can coexist and even combine. Indeed, traditional Confucian political
culture has probably contributed to economic development, not only in
Japan, but also in Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. Japan is
economically successful partly because it is not a 'modern' (that is,
individualistic Western) society.
In the third world, traditional loyalties, such as those to an ethnic
group, can provide an effective mode of political mobilisation as well as
giving people a support network as they move from the traditional
countryside into the modern cities. So today most political scientists
would argue that at least some elements of traditional culture provide a
resource for, rather than a barrier to, economic development .

• Political socialisation
Political socialisation is the study of what, when and how people learn
about politics. Learning a political culture is very different from
acquiring a formal academic skill, such as a knowledge of history,
which consists largely in transmitting information from teacher to
student in an educational setting. Political socialisation is a much more
diffuse and indirect process. It involves the development of political
emotions and identities (what is my nation? my religion? my party?) as
well as the acquisition of information. Political socialisation takes place
through a variety of institutions - the family, the peer group, the
workplace - as well as formal education. It is as much influenced by
the context of communication as its content. For example, a child's
attitude towards politics will be influenced at least as much by his or her
experience of authority at home and at school as by what parents and
teachers say the child's attitude to politics should be.
148 The Social Context of Politics

Finally, political socialisation is a lifelong process in which basic

political outlooks mature in response to events and experience; there is
no point at which the skill is finally acquired and the learning finally
stops. It is a process without any apparent final product.

D Liberal and radical theories

Liberal and radical theorists of political culture differ in their treatment
of political socialisation (see Table 6.1). There are two key contrasts
here. One concerns timing. The liberal view is that basic political
loyalties are formed when young. The radical view is that adult
experiences are just as important. The second contrast is over how
adult socialisation takes place. The liberal view is that adult socialisa-
tion, like the child's, is the unplanned result of a variety of personal
experiences. These include life-cycle events such as marriage and
parenthood. The radical view, on the other hand, is that socialisation
is a much more systematic process. As Miliband (1969, p. 163) puts it,
socialisation 'is, in large part, the result of a permanent and pervasive
effort, conducted through a multitude of agencies, and deliberately
intended to create a "national supra-party consensus'''. We will
examine both views, beginning with the liberal interpretation.
The liberal view is that core political identities are acquired in early
childhood, when the family is the crucial influence on the child. In late
childhood, these attachments are supplemented by a marked increase in
information. The main effect of adolescence is to refine the child's
conceptual understanding, building on information already acquired.
These three stages of socialisation - early childhood, late childhood and
adolescence - prepare the child for adult political life.
In adulthood, childhood learning is applied to participation in
politics, though eventually participation tails off in old age (Figure 6.2).

Table 6.1 Liberal and radical perspectives on political socialisation

From/to Main agency Timing Style

Liberal One generation to Family Childhood Unplanned
the next
Radical Dominant class to Media Adulthood as Deliberate
subordinate classes well as
childhood
 Political Culture 149

Political learning
Political participation
high

-'-- .....
....
....
....

/
/
/
"
"
'" "
low
---------
Early Late Adolescence Young Middle Old age
childhood childhood adulthood age

Figure 6.2 Political learning and participation across the life-cycle:

the liberal view

Adult experiences will deepen and modify, but not usually transform,
the outlook acquired when young. So the liberal view is based on the
'primacy' model of socialisation - the idea that early political learning is
critical because it provides a framework within which information
acquired in adulthood is interpreted (see Exhibit 6.1).
The radical interpretation of socialisation does not discount the
importance of childhood. Education, in particular, can help to build
loyalty to the status quo. Miliband (1969, p. 214) again: 'educational
institutions at all levels generally fulfil an important conservative role
and act, with greater or lesser effectiveness, as legitimating agencies in
and for their societies.' But the radical approach also places emphasis on
the 'recency' model. This is the idea that current information carries
more weight just because it is contemporary. Adult reality carries at
least as much socialising power as childhood myths. You may be taught
as a child that Venice is a beautiful city but it is only by visiting it
yourself, and smelling the stench of the canals in the summer, that you
form a real opinion.
Thus the radical view stresses the importance of adult experiences.
Some of these events, such as foreign travel, will be personal. But the
most politically significant adult experiences will be collective events
such as depression and war. Inevitably, these broad developments will
be experienced, at least in part, through the media. Because the radical
150 The Social Context of Politics

Exhibit 6.1 The benevolent monarch:

how British children see the Queen

Since 'the child is father to the man', students of political socialisa-

tion must start with the young. In a fascinating study of the attitudes
of British children to the monarchy, Greenstein et at. (1974) asked
eighty lo-13-year-olds in the south-east of England to complete a
story in which the Queen, hurrying in her car to a meeting for which
she is already late, is stopped by a traffic policeman. As told by the
chi ldren, 53 per cent of the stories involved the policeman showing
deference to the Queen; less than a quarter ended with the Queen
being punished. One girl even refused to accept the assumption that
the monarch could possibly be late for a meeting! Here are two
typical replies:
'What are you doing driving so fast, my luv? I've got a good mind to fine
you.' And then the Queen shows her credentials and the policeman says,
'Oh pardon me, Madam. You'd better be getting along. Otherwise you'll
be late for the meeting.'
[After stopping the car and talking with the chauffeur, the police looked
in the back] and they saw the Queen, and they all went red. And they
sa id , ' We're sorry , Your Majesty. We didn ' t mean to disturb you, but
please don't go so fast because it might be dangerous and might cause an
accident.' And the Queen said, ' J'1l tell my chauffeur not to go so fast.'
And the policeman said, 'We thank you ,' then bowed and went away.
After noting that many children view the Prime Minister as merely a
helper of the Queen, the authors conclude: 'surely no other
democracy begins its political socialisation process by introducing
its children to such explicitly non-democratic mythology.'

account gives more priority to adult experiences, it regards the mass

media as an important socialising agent, and the family as less
significant, than the liberal approach.
Further, Marxists regard the mass media as conservative in tone. This
is because some media are privately owned (e.g. the national press in
most countries) and others are run or at least licensed by the state (e.g.
many television networks). In both cases, the argument runs, news is
produced by middle-class professionals who are unsympathetic to
viewpoints which fall outside a narrow range of acceptable opinion.
Thus we reach a position where the radical account views socialisation
as a process of class indoctrination executed through the media. In
 Political Culture 151

contrast, the liberal account sees socialisation as a means for transmit-

ting values across the generations through the family.
The two processes are not incompatible. To an extent both may
operate. However, we are broadly in sympathy with the liberal view of
socialisation. The family is a cradle of opinion which develops core
identities during a person's most formative period. Because the family
and other social networks such as peer-groups are so important, no
rulers anywhere are in a position to produce a political culture to order.
The failure of communist regimes to reshape the political cultures of the
countries they ruled, despite the ruling party's monopoly of the media,
illustrated this point.

• Elite political culture

Elite political culture consists of the beliefs, attitudes and ideas about
politics held by those who are closest to the centres of political power. In
countries with a parochial or subject political culture, elite political
culture is of primary importance. But even where mass attitudes to
politics are well developed, as in modern liberal democracies, it is still
the views of the elite which exert the most direct and profound effect on
political decisions.
The values of elites are influenced by, but distinct from, the national
political culture. For example even in liberal democracies, where party
competition gives politicians an incentive to respond to popular
concerns, studies have shown how the values of elites differ from those
of the general public. Elites generally take a more liberal line on social
and moral issues. Stouffer's (1966) famous survey of attitudes in the
United States to freedom of speech demonstrated this. Conducted
during 1954, this study showed that most community leaders main-
tained their belief in the right of free speech for atheists, socialists and
communists at a time when the attitudes of the general public were
much less tolerant. More recent surveys have shown a striking increase
in the American public's support for free speech for such groups
(Sullivan et al. 1982). None the less, it was crucial to the cause of free
speech in the United States that elites remained committed at a time
when the principle was under strong attack.
Elite attitudes in Britain are equally distinctive. The reason why
Britain has not reintroduced capital punishment and has continued to
allow a trickle of non-white immigration into the country, despite the
opposition of a majority of the electorate to both these policies, is that
members of the elite are more likely to approve of these policies. Implicit
152 The Social Context of Politics

agreement between party leaderships on these issues has proved strong

enough to survive the pressures of electoral competition.
The liberal outlook of elites owes much to their formal education. In
many liberal democracies, politics has become a largely graduate
profession, a trend which the second and third worlds are now
following. The experience of higher education helps to build an
optimistic view of human nature, strengthens humanitarian values
and encourages a belief in the ability of politicians to solve social
problems (Astin 1977). A degree in a social science subject (such as
politics) seems to be a particularly liberating experience!
While no one can object to educated politicians. this trend does have
one unfortunate result. It sharpens the division between a well-educated
liberal elite and a less tolerant, more parochial underclass. In its turn,
this cleavage prepares the ground for the periodic emergence of
authoritarian working-class protest movements such as the Wallace
movement in the United States in the 1960s, Le Pen's National Front in
France in the 1980s and various right-wing moverrients in Europe in the
early 1990s. A central aim of these movements is to recapture politics
for ordinary people - to remove from office what George Wallace
called the 'pointy-headed namby-pambies' who, he claimed, formed
Washington's political establishment. The message is, perhaps, that
elite political culture should not depart too far from the contours of the
national culture.
Elites differ from the public in how they think about politics as well as
in what they think. Members of political elites generally have belief
systems which are more intensely held, more coherent, more stable over
time and supported by more information than is the case for the mass
public. In a sense, it is only the members of elites who have systems of
political beliefs at all (Converse and Markus 1979).
The most important dimension of elite political culture is the attitudes
which politicians hold towards each other. There are a range of
possibilities here. Is elite competition absolute, as in countries such as
Northern Ireland which are engaged in, or on the edge of, civil war? Or
is strong conflict held in check by agreement on the rules of the game, as
in Britain and New Zealand? Or is elite conflict subsumed beneath a
shared opposition to non-elites or emerging counter-elites, as with the
attitudes of some traditional ruling classes to the emergence of the
working class during industrialisation?
The political consequences of these attitudes are highly significant.
For example, one interpretation of America's Watergate scandal, during
which President's Nixon's supporters engaged in such illegal acts as
break-ins and phone-taps against their Democratic opponents, was that
the President and his aides saw the political world in the frighteningly
 Political Culture 153

simple terms of 'us' against 'them'. Nixon was willing to dispense with
the normal rules of the political game in order to ensure that his enemies
got what they deserved.
By contrast, the prospects for political stability are improved when
party or group leaders are willing to compromise to allow the
expression of other interests or values. Lijphart (1977) argues that an
accommodating attitude among group representatives in divided socie-
ties such as Austria and Holland provided a recipe for stable govern-
ment in the 1950s and 1960s. At this time, religion still strongly divided
these societies. However, politicians of all the major parties accepted the
right of each religious grouping to a fair share of state resources. These
groups - Catholic, Protestant and secular - were then free to distribute
these resources more or less as their leaders wanted. This attitude of 'live
and let live' successfully contained potentially explosive divisions, and
showed the importance of elite values in shaping the operation of the
political system.

Summary
1. Political culture refers to the overall pattern formed by a population's
political beliefs, attitudes and values. Political culture matters because, as the
collapse of communism shows, the long-term prospects for a regime depend
largely on its legitimacy.

2. According to Almond and Verba, liberal democracy is likely to prove most

stable when participant attitudes among most of the population are balanced
by a more apolitical approach among a minority. However critics suggest that
the 'civic culture' (as this mix of atttitudes is called) results from experience
with a democratic system, rather than being a cause of democratic stability.

3. In the second world, communist rulers initially tried to transform political

culture so as to create the new communist man and woman. However, this
experiment soon failed. Traditional cultures, based on family, nationalism and
religion, proved highly resilient. Communist propaganda soon became little
more than a ritual affirmation of the party's hold on power.

4. In the third world, local or regional politics are often a more important
focus of attention than the national government. This means that the national
political culture is less important.

5. Political culture is passed on through political socialisation - the process by

which people acquire their understanding of politics and their place within it.
154 The Social Context of Politics

6. The 'liberal' view of socialisation sees it as a natural process through which

culture is passed on across the generations, mainly through the family. By
contrast 'radicals' view socialisation as a deliberate and ongoing process of
class indoctrination carried out through the media.

7. Elite political culture has the most direct impact on public decisions. In
liberal democracies, well-educated elites are often more liberal on social and
moral issues than are the general public.

8. The attitudes of sub-elites to each other bear strongly on the nature of

politics in a particular country. Do the leaders of one party respect, tolerate or
hate their opponents? How much respect do civilian and military leaders have
for each other?

Discussion points
1. 'Any fool can govern through martial law' (Cavour). 'You can make a
throne from bayonets, but you can't sit on it for 10ng'{Boris Yeltsin, President
of Russia, on the failed coup of 1991). Who's right?
2. What does the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe indicate about
the importance of political culture?

3. 'Socialisation equals indoctrination.' Does it?

4. Will postmaterialism eventually reshape the nature of politics In the
Western world?
5. Does your country have a 'civic culture'?
6. Describe the impact of the media on your own political socialisation.

Kc\. rC.l(.iin(r
h

Almond, G. and Verba, S. (1963) The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.].: Princeton
University Press). A classic study which has dominated later thinking about
political culture.
Almond, G. and Verba, S. (eds) (1980) The Civic Culture Revisited (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press). Contains several commentaries on the
original study together with updates on the countries covered.
Gibbins, J. (ed.) (1989) Contemporary Political Culture: Politics in a Post-
modern Age (London: Sage). A collection of essays covering neoconserva-
 Political Culture 155

tism, new politics, postmodernism and postmaterialism as well as political

culture generally.
Inglehart, R. (1990) Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Society (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press). A series of essays about value changes in
Western democracies by the inventor of the concept of postmaterialism.
Miliband, R. (1969) The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson). A clear but powerful statement of the radical position.

Further reading
Almond and Verba's The Civic Culture (1963) must remain the starting-point
but it needs to be supplemented by the follow-up, The Civic Culture Revisited
(1980), edited by Almond and Verba. Barry's (1978) discussion is another good
short analysis. Gibbins (1989) is a recent collection of essays on similar themes.
For the Marxist approach to political culture, Miliband (1969) can be
supplemented by F. Parkin (1971) and Abercrombie, Hill and Turner (1980).
Putnam (1976) provides an excellent American discussion of dite political
culture.
A standard text on political socialisation is Dawson, Prewitt and Dawson
(1977). On communist states, see Brown (1984), Brown and Gray (1979) and,
on the Soviet Union specifically, S. White (1979) and Tucker (1987). On the
third world, see Pye and Verba (1965) and Peil (1976).
 • Chapter
Political Participation
7.
Types of participation 156 Public opinion 170
The first world 157 Opinion polls 172
The second world 162 The media 173
The third world 167

While political culture is the study of people's attitudes towards

government, political participation is the study of actual involvement
in it. Political participation is activity by individuals formally intended
to influence who governs or how they do so. This chapter examines the
overall patterns of citizen involvement in politics. The next chapter
looks specifically at participation through the ballot box. Participation
by groups rather than individuals is reserved until Chapter 9.
In all three worlds, governments now call on the public to play at least
some part in the political process. Only a few regimes deny the masses
any formal political role at all. These are traditional regimes, where
politics remains the exclusive preserve of a tiny elite, and those military
governments which do not even bother with a democratic facade .

• Types of participation
We can distinguish between voluntary participation, regimented parti-
cipation and participation as personal manipulation. In liberal democ-
racies, voluntary participation is the norm. People can choose whether
to get involved (e.g. by voting or abstaining) and how to get involved
(e.g. by joining a party or signing petitions). The main exception to the
voluntary nature of participation is compulsory voting, found in a few
countries such as Australia, Belgium and until 1970 the Netherlands.
In communist states regimented participation was the norm. This
involved the expression of support for, rather than the selection of,
government personnel and policy. Its main function was to mobilise the
people behind the regime in an effort to strengthen the authority of the
government. Regimented participation is still characteristic of unre-
formed communist states such as China. However postcommunist states
are seeking to move from regimented to voluntary participation.

156
 Political Participation 157

In the third world the patron-client relationship is a typical form of

participation. Here low-status individuals offer political support to their
patrons (employers, chiefs or religious leaders) in exchange for a
measure of protection. These favours might be a job or a guarantee
that food will be supplied if the crops fail. The patron-client relation-
ship is essentially a personal exchange: for example, 'You vote for me
and I'll help you get a job with the government'. However the
relationship is between people with vastly different resources; hence it
is a form of manipulation .

• The first world

The most striking fact about political participation in liberal democra-
cies is how little of it there is. Voting in national elections is the only
form of participation in which a majority of most populations engages
(Verba, Nie and Kim 1978, pp. 58-9). In some countries, especially in
Scandinavia, most people also turn out for local elections. However,
throughout the democratic world anything beyond voting is the preserve
of a minority of activists. Indeed the activists are outnumbered by the
totally inactive - people who neither vote nor even follow politics
through television.

D How much, by whom, so what?

We can divide the population into three main participation groups:

1. The small number of activists who are mostly foot-soldiers in the

party battle which rages around and above them.
2. The voters who are the overwhelming majority.
3. The inactives who ignore politics altogether.

Figure 7.1 shows how these three groups form a 'diamond' of

participation, with most people in the middle category.
Few though they are, political activists tend to specialise in particular
forms of participation. For example a British survey taken in 1984-85
showed that among those people who did more than vote, four
subgroups could be distinguished: (1) protesters, (2) election campai-
gners, (3) people active in community groups and (4) people who
specialised in individual contacts with officials, politicians or the media
(Parry and Moyser 1991). Most legislators are familiar with constituents
in this last category. It covers those who feel compelled to send in a long
158 The Social Context of Politics

---->,:--_ _ ACTIVISTS

-/-_ _ _ INACTIVES

Figure 7.1 The diamond of political participation

letter each week about their pet topic! But it should not be forgotten that
the overwhelming majority of citizens in liberal democracies - about
three in four in Britain - only participate, if at all, in the electoral aspect
of politics.
Political activists are far from a cross-section of society. In most
liberal democracies, participation is greatest among well-educated,
middle-class, middle-aged men. Furthermore the highest layers of
political involvement show the greatest skew. For example, many
women enter the polling booth but far fewer occupy the highest offices
of state. Women leaders such as Gro Harlem Brundtland (twice Prime
Minister of Norway in the 1980s), Indira Gandhi (Prime Minister of
India, 1966-77) and Margaret Thatcher (Prime Minister of Britain,
1979-90) still attract extra attention because of their gender (the same
cannot be said of Vigdis Finnbogad6ttir, President of Iceland since 1979,
even though she was the first woman in the world to be a democratically
elected head of state). Similarly a degree is not a requirement for voting
but in many countries it is now virtually a precondition of becoming a
government minister. The message is clear: patterns of political
participation reflect existing inequalities in society; those who partici-
pate most are those who already have the most.
What explains this bias in participation towards upper levels of
society? Differences in participation can be explained by differences in
political resources and political interest. Politically relevant resources
include: education and the access it gives to information; money and the
ability it gives to afford time for political activity; prestige and the
advantage it provides to obtain a respectful hearing; and such inter-
personal skills as the ability to speak in public and to present one's views
in persuasive fashion. The advantaged have more of these resources and
 Political Participation 159

they also show more interest in politics. In addition, the advantaged are
more likely to be brought up in a family and attend a school where an
interest in current affairs is encouraged.
We can apply this framework to the question of the under-representa-
tion of women at the higher levels of politics (see Exhibit 7.1). What
explains this almost universal pattern? Women generally have less
formal education than men. They have child-bearing and, often,
home-making responsibilities, which cut into their political time. And
they sometimes lack the confidence needed to throw themselves into the
hurly-burly of politics. Thus women, as a group, have fewer political
resources than men.
In addition, of course, women still face the high hurdle of discrimina-
tion from sexist male politicians. These men claim that women are
'unsuited' to politics - and then use the scarcity of women in high office
to prove their point!
One effect of the 'up-market' bias in participation is that those at the
bottom of the pyramid of participation often feel alienated from those at
the top. For example, many women feel, with justification, that politics
is a male preserve. In itself this belief discourages participation by
women, thus forming a vicious circle. A similar cycle applies to other
under-participating groups, such as ethnic minorities. The sense of
distance from the political system among non-participants is a weak-
ness of liberal democracies.
A second consequence of the unrepresentative character of political
activists is some built-in bias against radical values. Like other groups,
middle-aged, middle-class men will, as a rule, seek to defend their own
interests. They will not usually make waves against a system which has
served them well. The political agenda naturally reflects the concerns of
these middle-class activists. By definition, the inactives will only be
heard if someone else speaks for them. This problem has been reduced in
Europe (though not the United States) by trade unions and socialist
parties. These organisations have provided an alternative channel of
entry into politics for many working-class people who would otherwise
have been inactive. But liberal democracies, like other forms of
government, will always be biased towards the interests of the activists.

D New politics
Not all middle-class participants are on the right of the political
spectrum. The middle-class never was politically uniform and, with
the spread of postmaterial values, has become less so. In fact, young,
radical, well-educated postmaterialists were the key force behind the
160 The Social Context of Politics

Exhibit 7.1 Women in government

Norway

Sweden

Finland

Denmark

Germany

United States

Spain

Netherlands f - -

Belgium -
France -
Britain (O%)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Sources: The Guardian, 26 March 1991; United States Government

Manual, 1990.
Figure 7.2 Percentage of women cabinet ministers following most
recent general elections

Out of all the countries In Europe and North America, the

Scandinavian countries have the highest proportion of women
cabinet ministers. Norway leads, with women occupying almost
half the top posts. This reflects a long tradition of female participa-
tion in Norwegian politics. Norway was the first independent
country to give the vote to women, in 1913 (Australia, Finland and
New Zealand came earlier but they were then dependencies).
Campaigns to increase female representation have received financial
support from the state. In addition, the leading parties introduced a
system of quotas in 1973. The aim of the quotas is to ensure that each
gender provides at least 40 per cent of elected representatives, not
just candidates.

Source: B. Nicholson, 'Increasing Women's Parliamentary Repres-

entation: The Norwegian Experience' (Newcastle upon Tyne: Centre
for Scandinavian Studies 1989) .
 Political Participation 161

'new politics' which emerged in the 1960s and has remained important
SInce.
New politics is a style of participation which goes beyond, and
sometimes even excludes, traditional participation through political
parties and election campaigns. Advocates of new politics are willing
to consider new (or, rather, very old) forms of participation: demonstra-
tions, sit-ins and sit-downs, boycotts and political strikes. These
unorthodox modes of participation are usually in pursuit of broad,
rather than class-based, objectives: for example, nuclear disarmament,
feminism, protection of the environment (see Table 7.1). In some
democracies, including West Germany and Italy, unorthodox participa-
tion in the 1960s and 1970s extended further, to include violent activities
such as terrorism and kidnapping.
In the United States, where unconventional activity started earliest,
young radical students showed marked distaste for the middle-aged
politicians who had brought them Vietnam, Cambodia and Watergate.
In a few cases, such as the American civil rights movement and the
French 'events' of 1968, left-wing students established a fragile alliance
with less privileged but equally alienated groups - blacks in the United
States, sections of the working-class in France. Such alliances, when
achieved, had considerable political potential. But such partnerships
were rare. The new and the old were not natural partners.
Although new and old politics are very different in style, some leaders
of the new politics are making the switch to orthodox politics as they
age (mature?). The protest activists of the 1960s may well become the
political leaders of the 2000s. Certainly, except for their youth, the
unconventional activists of the 1960s were exactly the same type of
people who had long dominated the arena of orthodox participation:
well-educated, articulate people from middle-class backgrounds. As the
protesters of the 1960s move into positions of authority, not just in

Table 7.1 Old and new politics

Old politics New politics
Attitude to political system Supportive Critical
Vehicle of participation Parties Single-issue groups
Style of participation Orthodox Unconventional
Concerns Interests Values
Motives Instrumental Expressive
Typical age Middle-aged Younger
162 The Social Context of Politics

politics but in all the professions, so their impact on public policy will
Increase.
Is new politics, like postmaterialism, still a minority sport? Surveys
conducted in eight Western democracies in 1974 suggested the answer
was yes (the countries were Austria, Britain, West Germany, Finland,
Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. See Marsh
1990). In each country, less than half the population said they approved
of more extreme forms of protest, such as occupations, rent strikes and
blockades. In this survey the most radical countries were Italy and the
Netherlands; the Austrians were most cautious. Across all countries, the
young were most likely to be 'protesters'.
Figure 7.3 shows the results of this study for the United States (an
active but conventional population) and Finland (more inactives and
more protesters) .

• The second world

The dramatic transition from communist to postcommunist states
transformed the nature of political participation in the second world.
Essentially the change was from regimented to voluntary participation.
Furthermore, political involvement by the masses played an important
part in the downfall of the old regimes. To understand why, we must
begin by reviewing the traditional communist style of regimented
participation.

D Regimented participation
The quantity of mass participation in politics was always greater in
communist states than in liberal democracies. This was not just because
of the broader definition of the 'political' in socialist states. Citizens
were drafted in to sit on comradely courts, to administer elections, to
join para-police organisations, to serve on people's committees cover-
ing a range of local matters - and, in China, to kill off grain-eating
sparrows (see Exhibit 7.2).
This apparatus of participation derived from the Marxist idea that
all power at every level of government should be vested in soviets
(councils) of workers and peasants. Whatever the real significance of
this apparatus, citizens in communist party states had a wider menu of
participation opportunities than their counterparts in liberal demo-
cracies.
 PoLiticaL Participation 163

FINLAND

Protesters
(21%) Inactives
(25%)

UNITED STATES

Protesters
(20%)

Reformists
(36%)

Key:
Inactives will do little more than follow politics through the media.
Conformists will discuss politics and perhaps attend meetings. But they want nothing to
do with new politics.
Reformists will engage in conventional activity plus legal protests such as boycotts.
Activists will engage in both conventional and unconventional activity, including
illegal acts such as blocking traffic.
Protesters favour only unconventional participation, whether legal or illegal.
Note: this classification is based on attitudes towards participation, not actual
behaviour.
Source: A. Marsh, Political Action in Europe and the USA (Basingstoke: Macmillan,
1990), pp. 30-2.

Figure 7.3 Attitudes to participation in Finland and the United States

164 The Social Context of Politics

Exhibit 7.2 Regimented participation: China's sparrows

As every farmer knows, birds eat seeds. Most farmers accept the loss
of a portion of their crop as an occupational hazard. Not so the
Chinese Communist Party. In the early 1950s, it decided to fight
nature head-on.
In an extraordinary exercise in mass participation, the population
of China took up drums, pots and pans to create a nationwide
cacophony. Whenever a sparrow landed for a rest, it was bombarded
by noise and scared away. Eventually, the exhausted birds simply fell
from the sky and died.
Unfortunately, birds don't eat only grain . They are also partial to
bugs and insects. With the bird population decimated in the cities,
insect life flourished. Faced with a near plague, the authorities
despatched teams to wage war on the insects by digging up their
breeding grounds. But with the grass now gone, winter winds
whipped up the soil, creating dust storms across the cities of
northern China.
But did this really matter? For the communist authorities at the
time, the aim of involving the population in a mass campaign - no
matter how ridiculous - had been realised. For the party, the
campaign was a success. Rather than the end justifying the means,
the means had justified the end.

However, the quality of participation did not match its quantity.

Although the ruling party's desire for popular participation may origin-
ally have been genuine, the impulse to safeguard party control was even
stronger. Communist elites had to ensure that the participation of the
population always strengthened, and never weakened, the party's hold
on power. Although the masses in a communist party state were seen as
the source of all wisdom, Lenin argued that in the post-revolutionary
society, not everybody would be politically advanced enough to make
decisions on crucial points. The party was to be the vanguard of the
working class - an elite group of professional revolutionaries who
understood the masses' desires better than the masses themselves.
Therefore, in order to ensure that mass participation did not harm the
long-term interests of the masses themselves, all participation had to be
guided, directed and led by party members. The result was that
communist parties channelled political participation to an extent
unknown in the West.
 Political Participation 165

Eventually, this overtight control of participation harmed economic

development. A complex industrial society calls for technical and
administrative skills, proficiently applied. But experts need discretion
to perform well. So, well before the collapse of communism in 1989, a
participation crisis had developed in communist states. The system
required, but could not allow, genuine participation in decision-making
by functionally important personnel. It also needed something more
than sullen acquiescence by ordinary people.
When ruling communist parties did attempt to allow more freedom,
all the submerged opposition shot to the surface. Until 1989, the result
was usually another round of repression, often more intense than
before. The Hundred Flowers movement in China provides a classic
example. In 1956 the Chinese people were told to voice their criticisms
of the first six and a half years of party rule. The criticisms were so fierce
that not only was the campaign halted, but it was followed by a
campaign to 'rectify' the erroneous thoughts of those who had over-
stepped the mark.
Eventually some ruling parties did allow more participation, but only
in areas that did not threaten their monopoly of power. In particular,
emphasis was placed on introducing reforms that would give a kick start
to ailing economies. Managers were given more say in policy-making,
and political participation became more authentic on local, specific and
technical matters.
But, crucially, these reforms were not matched in the political sphere.
Because no real channels existed for airing grievances, people were left
with only one choice - either shut up and get on with life, or express
their protests outside the system. In either case, the party had lost touch
with the society it governed. Communist governments lacked feedback
mechanisms which would have attuned them to dangerous, indeed total,
changes taking place in their environment.
As long as repression and coercion continued, opposition could be
contained. Once the lid was taken off, hidden grievances steamed out.
Thus, ruling communist parties were damned if they didn't reform, but
overwhelmed if they did. They had sown the seeds of their own
destruction. The extent of the chasm between party and citizens
became abundantly clear with the collapse of communist control in
Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

D The transition to postcommunism

The old style of regimented participation was dismantled in the
transition from communism to postcommunism. The changes intro-
166 The Social Context of Politics

duced in the late 1980s were far more fundamental than any of the
earlier tinkering. Much of the demolition work was led by Mikhail
Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, the country which had previously been
most insistent on restricting its population to a subject role. In the mid-
1980s, Gorbachev's policy of glasnost (openness) allowed fuller
discussion of public issues. For the first time, problems such as
widespread alcoholism, prostitution and drug abuse were publically
acknowledged. In Eastern Europe, the environmental damage caused
by rampant industrialisation came to the fore with the liberalisation of
the press. This sparked off a social revolution that preceded the
political revolutions. Making information available was a funda-
mental condition of meaningful mass participation in politics.
In the late 1980s, glasnost was followed by a remarkable flowering of
informal groups in the Soviet Union. The long winter of suppression of
non-party groups gave way to a springtime of social development. By
1988 about 10 per cent of young people were active in informal
associations. Political groups, including liberal, environmental and
nationalist organisations, accounted for perhaps one in ten of these
members (Lampert 1990, p. 131). In the first world, such voluntary
participation would be taken for granted. In the communist world, and
in the Soviet Union in particular, it was a major stage in the retreat of the
party. Many people were gaining a new sense of political efficacy.
Previously they had just put up with things; now they were prepared to
fight for their rights.
In most of Eastern Europe, participation had never been as tightly
controlled as in the Soviet Union. Consequently reform gave way to
revolution at an earlier stage. Furthermore, many of the European
leaders had achieved acceptability because they were a better bet than a
hardliner installed by Moscow. Even so, once Gorbachev made it clear
that he was not prepared to intervene to defend out-of-touch East
European leaders, the regimes soon began to collapse. Mass protests
confirmed the party's loss of control and triggered its final disintegra-
tion.
Street demonstrations may be almost routine in Paris and Rome but
the same events carried infinitely more weight in Prague and Bucharest.
In the context of a system of regimented participation, street marches
were revolutionary, not just radical. For example, in October 1989,
thousands of people moved through the streets of the East German cities
of Leipzig and Dresden, fully aware of the lorryloads of police with live
ammunition waiting in the side streets. But the troops were not used.
The crowd had won.
In Romania, the crowd paid the heaviest of prices for defying a
dictator. On 21 December 1989, the 71-year-old Romanian despot,
 Political Participation 167

Nicolai Ceaucescu, decided to make a speech from the balcony of party

headquarters in Bucharest. The audience consisted of workers bussed in
from nearby factories. The authorities confidently expected that
Ceaucescu's speech would be greeted by the usual cheers and prolonged
applause. But, for once, things did not go according to plan. In an act of
immense courage the audience booed and hissed. Faced with a vocal
crowd, a confused and uncertain Ceaucescu retreated back into the
building. He then ordered his security police onto the streets at dead of
night to murder those who had dared oppose him.
Ceaucescu's confusion was probably genuine. His party apparatus
and secret police had proved so successful in suppressing dissent that
Ceaucescu was probably unaware of the true state of popular opinion.
He believed his own propaganda. He could not understand why the
crowd was so hostile. The emperor's nakedness had been exposed, and
Eastern Europe's only violent revolution had begun. Ceaucescu and his
wife were shot dead within the week.
Twenty months later, enough people found the courage to take to the
streets of Moscow to discourage an assault upon the Russian parlia-
ment, symbol of resistance to the attempted coup which had sought to
reimpose the supremacy of the party, the military and the KGB. In a
country with a subject political culture, this display of public activism
was a revolutionary episode. It sealed the fate not just of a coup but also
of the Soviet communist party, an organisation which a few years earlier
had been the most powerful party on earth.
Once postcommunist regimes had been created, the task was to create
more structured forms of voluntary participation through parties,
elections and interest groups. This was not easy. The populations of
many East European states had experienced regimented participation
under communist rule and seen mass participation on television during
its collapse. However, they had little experience of 'ordinary' voluntary
participation as understood in the first world. In the Balkan states such
as Bulgaria and Romania, and in the Soviet Union, communist rule had
simply continued a political tradition which had always denied the
masses an effective political voice. Managing the transition from
regimented to voluntary participation is a major challenge for post-
communist regimes .

• The third world

Mass political participation in the third world is typically limited in
quantity and manipulative in quality. This is not surprising. Populations
168 The Social Context of Politics

are poorly educated and often illiterate. Many people are hungry or sick.
The state has achieved only limited penetration of the countryside.
Political leaders are preoccupied with their own survival. In these
circumstances even the growing number of democratic countries in
the third world can hardly be expected to achieve the participation levels
of liberal democracies.

o Patrons and clients

In the third world, the patron-client relationship is the main instrument
through which ordinary people are brought into contact with formal
politics. This is a relationship of obligation and service between a high-
status 'patron' and some 'clients' of lower status. Lacking resources of
their own, clients provide allegiance to patrons in return for a degree of
protection and security. Patrons are landlords, ethnic leaders, employers
or just political entrepreneurs. They control the votes of their clients and
persuade them to attend meetings, join organisations or simply follow
their patron around in a deferential manner. (This explains why
political motorcades are so long!)
For example, in Sri Lanka, patron-client networks, based initially on
the patron's wealth and now on his access to the resources of the state,
largely determine how ordinary people vote. In Sri Lanka, as in many
other countries in the third world, these networks operate within a
particular ethnic group (Jayanntha 1991). So the patron-client relation-
ship is a distinctive form of participation, involving an unequal personal
exchange.
One reason for the strength of patron-client networks in the third
world is that formal channels of participation, such as political parties
and trade unions, are weak. But poverty and inequality are more
important causes. Poverty means the poor are vulnerable and need
protection. Inequality means the rich have the resources to provide it, in
exchange for political allegiance.

o Participation and development

The timing of independence also influences participation patterns in the
third world. Countries that only escaped from political colonialism after
the Second World War initially encouraged participation. They included
much of sub-Saharan Africa. The struggle for independence created
mass movements based on an ethos of participation, even though this
was not always put into practice. The nationalist party provided a
 Political Participation 169

vehicle through which people could partiCipate in politics. But this

mobilising culture, and associated party structures, soon decayed after
independence. In many states, participation withered. For example, only
one in four voters took part in the Nigerian General Election of 1983,
shortly before the military takeover. The military regimes which often
replaced mobilising independence movements were inherently suspi-
cious of popular participation.
Countries that achieved independence in the nineteenth century
(mainly in Latin America) have taken a different route. Mass participa-
tion has often been demanded but, until recently, rarely achieved in
anything like a stable form. Economic development, which has generally
progressed further in Latin America than in Africa, produced an urban
middle-class and proletariat. Both groups demanded entry into the
political system. These demands encountered a haughty response from
Latin America's conservative, aristocratic elites. Except in Costa Rica
and Venezuela, which have functioned fairly stably through the postwar
era, the result was political instability. Military governments and
civilian oligarchies confronted, and occasionally gave way to, populist
movements from the lower middle and working classes.
Peronism in Argentina was the classic example of a successful populist
movement involving mass participation. Between 1944 and 1955, Juan
Peron constructed an authoritarian regime which incorporated the
workers and previously excluded sections of the middle class into the
political process. But Peron himself rose to power through the army and
it was by a coup that he was eventually overthrown. Until the 1980s
mass participation in Latin America was limited in extent and when it
did erupt, tended to be manipulated by populist demagogues.
However, in the 1980s the generals of South America went into
retreat. Civilian regimes based on voluntary participation were estab-
lished throughout Latin America. For example, by 1990 Bolivia had
witnessed three orderly transfers of power between civilian presidents.
These new regimes were based on more stable and conventional forms
of popular participation than earlier waves of populism. This led
George Bush to claim in 1990 that 'in Latin America the day of the
dictator is over'. This remains to be seen. It is not yet clear whether the
new Latin American democracies have the staying power to survive the
enormous problems they confront: massive inflation, enormous debts,
an impoverished underclass and the looming presence of bourgeois and
military elites.
If the timing of independence is the crucial historic influence on
participation in the third world, the main contemporary influence is the
development strategy followed by governments. A socialist strategy of
development sought economic growth through mass mobilisation of the
170 The Social Context of Politics

population. It aimed to incorporate the peasants into politics so as to

overcome any resistance by traditional elites to the government's
development plans. Communist states in the third world, notably
China and Cuba, adopted this strategy. But other noncommunist states
have at one time or another also tried this approach: for example, India,
Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
However, the more common modernisation strategy in the third
world has been to seek economic development by deliberately reducing
mass political participation. Authoritarian rulers have sought to provide
transnational companies with a stable political environment and a
disciplined, cheap labour force. Brazil, Taiwan, South Korea and
Indonesia are examples of countries which have employed this ap-
proach, often with success. This strategy shows that the transition to an
industrial society can reduce, rather than improve, opportunities for
mass political participation.
Once this transition has been accomplished, new pressures and
demands arise. As countries like South Korea and Taiwan graduate
from the developing to the developed world, important sections of their
populations seek an increasing role in political affairs. Students and the
new middle classes are in the vanguard of these democracy movements.
These groups have benefited more than most from authoritarian
economic policies, but they are no longer satisfied by financial rewards
alone. The challenge to authoritarianism has been thrown down .

• Public opinion
The concept of 'public opinion' is often used in discussing electors'
attitudes to current events. Especially in the first world, pollsters report
on the state of public opinion, academics analyse it and politicians claim
it is firmly behind them. But what exactly is 'public opinion'? Broadly, it
refers to the aggregate views of the politically relevant section of the
population on the parties, politicians and policies of the day.
In the first world, the politically relevant population is virtually the
entire adult population. Nearly all adults have the vote, and are
represented in opinion polls, so their views enter the public realm by
these routes. Public opinion becomes an indirect, but significant, form of
participation. In much of the third world, by contrast, far fewer people
are regularly involved in national politics, even as spectators. Hence
'public opinion' shrinks and, in countries with very authoritarian
governments, shrivels up entirely.
There are three reasons why public opinion is most significant in the
liberal democracies of the first world. First, competitive elections give
 Political Participation 171

the political elite an incentive to listen to the public. Secondly, first-

world countries have national media around which public opinion can
crystallise. People have views on the issues of the day. By contrast,
politics in many third world countries operates on a more local basis,
making it difficult to speak of 'public opinion' on a national scale.
Thirdly, first world countries have the infrastructure needed to conduct
reliable opinion polls: lists of voters, accurate censuses and good
computing facilities.
What, then, is the significance of public opinion in the first world? In a
sense, public opinion pervades all policy-making. It forms part of the
environment within which politicians work. Is the public willing to
accept detailed advice on unsafe sexual practices? Has the education
system become a national scandal which will cost us votes unless we're
seen to act? If we go to war, will we be able to carry the people with us?
Politicians frequently make calculations of this kind, especially but not
only as an election approaches. Thus public opinion can influence
decisions without any explicit mechanism. Public opinion sits in on
many government meetings even though it is rarely minuted as a
committee member. Its role, however, is often negative - ruling ideas
out rather than bringing them in.
The influence of public opinion tends to decline as issues become
more detailed. The public is concerned with goals rather than means,
with objectives rather than policies. 'What policies politicians follow is
their business; what they accomplish is the voters' business' (Fiorina
1981). The public is concerned with a small number of important
objectives but most policies are routine, uncontroversial and special-
ist. Here organised opinion matters more than public opinion. Imposing
tariffs on the imports of cheap toys may be a fundamental matter for the
Toy Manufacturers' Association. Yet all the children want is well-
stocked shelves; and their parents are happy if the toys are safe as well as
cheap. Within this broad constraint, politicians have considerable
flexibility.
Even on important matters, the public is often surprisingly ill-
informed. This, too, limits the impact of public opinion. In 1984 as
many as 38 per cent of Americans believed that the Soviet Union was a
member of NATO, the miliary alliance set up to defend Western Europe
against a Soviet attack. In 1986, at the height of the debate over
American aid to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua, 40 per cent of
Americans supporting financial aid to the Contras did not know which
side their government was on (Flammang et al. 1990, p. 237). Similar
findings from other democracies confirm the ignorance of large sections
of the public, especially on foreign policy issues where governments
have traditionally had most room for manoeuvre.
172 The Social Context of Politics

Public opinion can evade trade-offs but governments cannot (though

they sometimes try!) This is perhaps the most important limit on the
influence of public opinion. In election campaigns, politicians can
promise the earth, but in office they must learn the language of
priorities. Public opinion may favour improved public services and
lower taxes but the government has to emphasise one or the other.
Politicians must respond to the pressures from the opposition parties,
interest groups and the international community, as well as public
opinion. They may find, in any case, that public opinion is itself divided.
So even in the most democratic of countries, government by opinion poll
remains a far-off dream - or nightmare .

• Opinion polls
'According to a new opinion poll ... ' is a familiar refrain in media
coverage of politics in the first world. The accuracy of opinion polls in
predicting election outcomes is now well established. In the United
States, where modern sampling techniques were introduced by George
Gallup in the 1930s, the average error in predicting the major parties'
share of the vote at national elections between 1950 and 1988 was a mere
1.5 per cent. Accuracy is similar, though not always quite as good, in
other democracies. But what is the broader significance of polls? Do
they contribute to, or detract from, democracy?
Opinion polls contribute to the democratic process in several ways.
They bring into the public realm the voices of people who would
otherwise go unheard. They are the only form of participation (apart
from the ballot box itself) in which all count for one and none for more
than one. Polls are also based on direct contact by interviewers with the
public; they get behind the group leaders who claim to speak 'on behalf
of our members'. Polls enable politicians to keep in touch with the
popular mood and polls give some insight into the reasons for election
results. In short, opinion polls oil the wheels of democracy.
Yet it would be wrong to overstate the impact of opinion polls.
Ordinary people answer the questions but they do not ask them. The
agenda is set in the capital city - in Washington and Wellington, Oslo
and Ottawa - by party officials and journalists who commission polls.
The concerns of the political elite, caught up in the intricacies of day-to-
day politics, differ from those of ordinary people. This reminds us of the
economist who conducted an opinion poll about inflation, only to
discover that many people thought, quite correctly, that it meant
blowing up tyres! More seriously, people may not even have thought
about the topic before answering questions on it. They may give an
 Political Participation 173

opinion where they have none; or agree to a statement because it's the
easiest thing to do ('yea-saying'). This leads to the criticism that opinion
polls construct, and even shape, public opinion at the same time as they
measure it.
Perhaps it is just as well, then, that most politicians take public
opinion polls with a pinch of salt. Even politicians who are sensitive to
public opinion often prefer to judge it from their mailbag rather than
through opinion polls .

• The Media
Communication has always been central to politics - and mass
communications are a key feature of modern politics. Coup-makers
are as aware of this as civilian politicians. Television centres, radio
stations and newspaper offices are always priority targets in a take-over.
A monopoly of the national media does not enable the conspirators to
control what people think, but at least it allows them to limit what
people know. And that makes it harder for the opposition to mobilise
against the new rulers. Control of the media puts the coup-makers in the
driving seat.
The 'mass media' refer to methods of communication which can
reach large numbers of people at the same time. Television and
newspapers are the most important; others are posters, radio, books,
magazines and cinema.
In contrast to opinion polls, the mass media are vehicles of downward
communication - from rulers to ruled - more than upward comm.unica-
tion - from the ruled to the rulers. Through a single television
broadcast, or a series of newspaper articles, presidents, generals and
prime ministers can now communicate directly with the majority of
their population.

D The first world

The mass media are most important in the first world, where television
ownership is the norm. Television is a direct, visual, credible and easily
digested source of essential political information. For example, the
television studio is now the main field of battle for election campaigns
in liberal democracies. Local party activists, once the assault troops of
the campaign, are now mere skirmishers.
Television has also transformed the skills needed to climb the 'greasy
pole' of politics. Rather than needing the oratorical ability to inspire a
174 The Social Context of Politics

big crowd, the trick now is to speak in clear but relaxed tones on
television, delivering the apt 'sound bite' that can be recycled on later
news bulletins. For masters of this art, such as Ronald Reagan in the
United States, politics becomes a matter of selling policies through
personality. For those who cannot adapt, such as Michael Foot (leader
of Britain's Labour Party 1980-83), retirement beckons. Now that
parliamentary proceedings are televised in many countries, politicans
need to consider the reaction of the ordinary viewer even when
addressing their fellow representatives.
Critics allege that politicians are trained to present a false image on
television. Was not Margaret Thatcher taught by her PR consultants to
speak lower and slower on television? Did not French President Fran<yois
Mitterrand have his teeth straightened so that on television he looked
less like Dracula? But the critics overstate their case. In fact, nothing
reveals the truth as ruthlessly as the camera's unblinking eye. Through
television, modern electorates have a fuller and -more accurate image of
their leaders than did previous generations. The camera may not tell the
whole truth, but neither does it lie.
It is, of course, true that television is at its most effective in portraying
personalities. Thus, television may well have encouraged a more
presidential style of politics, in which attention is focused ever more
strongly on the leading actors in the political drama. But we strike a note
of scepticism even here. Politics has always involved personalities. Did
not Abraham Lincoln and George Washington dominate their times as
much as Ronald Reagan and George Bush? Exaggerated estimates of
television's impact often arise from idealised assumptions about the
nature of politics BT - Before Television.
Of course, parties seek to exploit the power of television for their
own purposes and, when in office, their powers of persuasion are
considerable. They can invoke the big stick of the 'national interest',
threaten to revoke broadcasting licences, or simply withold information
from an unhelpful network. In countries with a strong state tradition
(such as France), arm-twisting of the media by the government is more
successful than in countries with a vigorous tradition of media
independence (notably the United States). But even in the United
States, the 'ins' have a head start in media manipulation over the
'outs'. Statements by the president are always more newsworthy than
those made by political opponents.
Many television networks operate under a legal obligation to provide
unbiased news coverage. Although impartiality is a difficult concept to
define, in many democracies television now offers more neutral cover-
age of events than newspapers ever did.
But even in the first world, newspapers should not be forgotten. In
 Political Participation 175

Britain, Japan and Scandinavia, most people still read a national daily
newspaper. In response to television, the role of newspapers has
changed from a source of information to a source of interpretation
and opinion. Newspapers also influence the television's agenda: a story
appearing on TV's evening news often begins life in the morning paper.
Where newspapers are organised on a local or regional basis (as in
New Zealand and the United States), or where circulation is low
(France, Italy) they tend to be less significant. Even here, however,
newspapers based in the capital city may remain a significant source of
communication among the political elite. In Italy, daily newspapers are
quality products aimed at a small but politically sophisticated public.
How much impact do the media have on how people vote in the first
world? This remains a matter of controversy. In the 1950s, before
television became pre-eminent, the reinforcement thesis held sway
(Harrop 1987). According to this, the media conserved but did not
change the political attitudes and behaviour of the electorate. Party
loyalties were transmitted through the family and, once developed, they
acted as a political sunscreen, protecting people from the harmful effects
of propaganda through the media.
This interpretation is a useful counter-weight to bland assertions of
media power. But it is not an adequate guide to the role of the media in
the 1990s. Party loyalties are now weaker, and television more
pervasive, than in the 1950s. For this reason, the agenda-setting view
has gained ground. According to this, the media in general, and
television in particular, influence what we think about, if not what we
think. Television directs our attention to the latest coup, drought or
war, even if it does not determine our reaction to these events.
The impact of television on the agenda of political discussion arises
from its selective coverage. If it's not among the headlines on the main
evening news, many people will never get to hear of it at all. In other
words, what does not appear on screen is at least as significant as what
does. Walter Lippman's (1922) view of the press is applicable to the
media generally: 'It is like a beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly
about, bringing one episode and then another out of the darkness and
into vision.' Here, perhaps, lies the real power of television.

o The second world

The media under communism
Under communism, the media played a 'top-down' role. The media
provided a means through which the ruling party could express its
176 The Social Context of Politics

achievements and priorities to the whole population. The communal

radio blasted out the official line through a network of loudspeakers. To
limit the spread of alternative perspectives, foreign stations were
jammed. But very little information filtered back up the media chain,
from the ruled to the rulers.
Communist theory took the media seriously. Lenin said that 'there is
no other way of training strong political organisation except through
the medium of an all-Russian newspaper'. More specifically, the dual
role of the media in communist states was to contribute to propaganda
and agitation. The purpose of propaganda was to instruct the masses in
the teachings of Marx, Engels and Lenin and to explain the history and
mission of the party. This was to be achieved not just through news and
information but also through other cultural products, including books,
films and opera. Agitation, on the other hand, was more specific. It
consisted in mobilising the masses behind specific policies. 'Agitators'
would work to reinforce party messages and would apply them to the
local level.
To achieve both objectives, ruling communist parties developed an
elaborate media network. Newspapers were pinned up for people to
read at no cost. They could also be bought at subsidised prices. Even
more stress was placed on the broadcast media, which provided a
simpler and more direct form of communication than newspapers,
especially for less-educated people. In China, most people have a radio
and most villages possess a television, even in remote areas. It is much
more efficient for the central party to communicate with local activists
through television than it is to send teams of 'agitators' out into the
countryside.
In practice, media coverage was boring and predictable. Journalists
were tightly controlled by the party, a policy guaranteed to destroy their
vitality. Propaganda became nothing more than the repetition of cliches.
People realised that official publications gave, at best, a highly selective
interpretation of events. No wonder one of the main uses for party
newspapers in China was for rolling tobacco! (The other main use is
easily guessed.)
The Soviet Union was an extreme example of tight control of the
media by the communist party. The title of the newspaper of the Soviet
communist party, Pravda, was ironically deceptive. Pravda means
truth, yet the version of the truth presented in its pages bore little
relation to life as lived by its readers. Often major disasters were not
covered at all. Even the explosion at Chernobyl nuclear power station,
which took place in 1986 after Gorbachev's policy of glasnost
(openness) had begun, initially received tardy and restricted coverage
in the Soviet media.
 Political Participation 177

Beneath the bland pronouncements of the media in communist states,

a few facts could be gleaned. If the harvest was not reported, it must
have been bad. If a leading party figure was no longer mentioned, he
must have been purged. Soviet specialists in the West sifted through
hundreds of bland pages looking for the key word odnako (however),
after which would come the nugget of self-criticism.
As in the West, 'letters to the editor' were also worth reading. These
were often used to expose instances of petty officialdom and local
inefficiency. But such incidents were always the fault of the official, not
the system.

The media and postcommunism

Against this background, the political time-bomb of glasnost in the
Soviet Union slowly ticked away. The more open the media became, the
more information was released demonstrating the true scale of the
Soviet Union's problems. In communist states, free media were
inevitably far more damaging to the regime than in the West, where
the underlying legitimacy of the regime was not in question.
As communist power waned, so the media discovered their vitality.
Newspapers which had been left unsold were suddenly snapped up by
eager customers. Even Pravda was used less often as a sunhat. Non-
party publications presented alternative political choices to an intrigued,
if sometimes bemused, public. The further this process went, the more
irreversible it became. The media were certainly an important factor, if
not a single actor, in the collapse of communism.
International images presented through the media were particularly
important (see pp. 82-90). The East German government could never
hide the fact that living conditions were better across the border in the
Federal Republic. Even the isolated Albanians became aware through
Western television of the depth of relative deprivation in their country
(Glenny 1990, p. 233). Images of Western affluence were a potent
stimulus for change throughout the communist world, even though
they were unrealistic. Television coverage of the collapse of communism
in one Eastern European country also presented a powerful stimulus to
radicals in neighbouring states.
As with any change in regime, control of television and radio stations
was an important stage in the final transfer of power to postcommunist
leaders. This was particularly true in Romania. There, the opponents of
Ceaucescu seized the television station and nervously broadcast to
whoever was watching. As the army switched sides, generals came in
to the studio to broadcast their conversion. In a sense, it did not matter
how many Romanians were watching. The dictator's authority was
178 The Social Context of Politics

being flouted, as anyone could see by turning on the TV. This illustrates
how, in the modern world, control of the television station has become
an important symbol of power.
The media remained a vital forum of political communication in the
first postcommunist elections in Eastern Europe. In many countries, the
dominant players also ensured they had the lion's share of media
resources. Newsprint was sometimes in short supply - and somehow
opposition publications would always be the last in the queue. Channels
for production and distribution of unofficial publications were often
primitive in the extreme. The communists had bequeathed one system of
media - and whoever controlled that system was in a strong position.
Journalists also found it difficult to develop an American-style adver-
sary relationship with politicians who had become national heroes. All
this gave postcommunist umbrella organisations an incentive to hold
elections quickly, before other parties could organise their own
communications. The reformed Bulgarian Communist Party, which
won the first 'free' elections, was particularly successful at exploiting
its dominant position in the media.
In a country like the United States, such restrictions on press freedom
would cause an outcry. In the exceptional conditions in Eastern Europe
after 1989, the media were about as free as could be expected.

o The third world

In the third world, national media are less developed and day-to-day
politics takes place within a smaller stratum of the population. Again,
however, we can distinguish between the print media and broadcast
media. Newspapers are generally elite publications, with circulation
confined largely to the big cities. Editors may not operate under strict
censorship but they are often fully aware that in a small country it does
not do to make too many enemies. Journalists and editors are high on
the hit list when repression strikes. In Argentina and Chile in the 1970s,
journalists were among those who were imprisoned and tortured - or
who just 'disappeared'.
Third world journalists often form part of the educated, urban elite.
For many of them, the countryside is something to escape from, rather
than report on. 'Everyone knows there is malaria in the countryside,'
said one newspaper editor in Tanzania, 'so why write about it?'
(Instituto del Tercer Mundo 1990, p. 114). Distribution problems
restrict newspaper penetration in rural areas, where many people
may speak a language which lacks written symbols. For example,
 Political Participation 179

most of Africa's 1600 languages and dialects are oral. The broadcast
media are a more practical form of communication to remote areas.
However, even where communist-style censorship is not practised, the
broadcast media usually adopt a top-down style of communication.
The voice of the capital reaches into the villages but not vice versa.
A traditional interpretation of the role of the media in the third world
is that they contribute to the 'revolution of rising expectations'. Even
people living in remote areas are made aware, through television, of
affluent first world lifestyles. This produces impossible demands on
governments to achieve rapid economic growth. When these expecta-
tions are frustrated, political instability results.
It is certainly true that television stations around the world pump out
US-made programmes. Virtually all the films shown on Latin American
television are from the North, mainly the United States. The same
applies to many TV series, where out-of-date programmes can be
picked up for a song. Even the poorest countries can afford black
and white favourites like 'I Love Lucy', while middle-income countries
might be able to manage early episodes of 'Dallas' and 'Dynasty'. All
this forms part of the 'globalisation' (Americanisation?) of the media
(see pp. 00-00) and has led to attempts by non-aligned countries to
·'decolonise' information through a New International Order in
Informatics and Communications.
But it is hardly credible to suppose that third world viewers aspire to
Dynasty-style lifestyles. After all, the function of these programmmes is
to provide escapist dreams for viewers in the first world, let alone the
third world. The effects of the media are more subtle than this. They
may encourage an awareness of what is happening in the next village, if
not the next world. When the newspaper reports that the government
has brought electricity to the next town, expectations grow that the
administration should extend the supply along the valley. Conflict
between regions and localities for the few resources available from the
centre is a strong feature of politics in many third world countries. The
media certainly strengthen this feature.

1. Political particIpation is activity formally intended to influence who

governs or how they do so.
180 The Social Context of Politics

2. In the first world, people can choose whether and how to get involved in
politics. Most are spectators, doing no more than following politics though
television and voting in national elections.

3. Orthodox political participation is greatest among middle-class, middle-

aged, well-educated men. This encourages a conservative cast to first world
politics. 'New politics' is a less conventional style of participation, based on
broad issues rather than narrow group or party interests. It appeals most to
young, well-educated radicals and fits uneasily with the 'old politics.'

4. Participation in communist states was more regimented and extensive than

in the first world. It was supervised by the ruling party which did not normally
permit criticism of its own performance. This style of participation was
unsuited to the effective management of complex, industrial societies.

5. Mass demonstrations in major cities were a trigger of communism's final

collapse. However, voluntary participation is an entirely new phenomenon in
many postcommunist states. It may not take root in all of them, least of all in
the Balkan countries with no tradition of accountable rule.

6. In the third world, political participation is limited, local and controlled by

elites. The patron-client relationship is the main means of control. Powerful
people offer a little protection to the powerless in exchange for their political
support. However, the extension of democracy to parts of the third world may
provide opportunities for more effective participation in political decision-
making to develop.

Discussion points
1. Suppose politicians in your country were selected (a) by lot or (b) by an
appointments board. What would be the effects of these methods of recruit-
ment? Would they be beneficial or harmful?
2. What difference would it make if most politicians were women?
3. Could communist regimes have continued in power indefinitely if ruling
parties had kept a tighter grip on mass political participation?
4. In the first world, does public opinion affect public policy even when it's
not election day? If so, how?
5. You are given total control over the media in your country. How much
power does this give you?
 Political Participation 181

Key reading
Crouse, T. (1973) The Boys on the Bus (New York: Random House). An
entertaining account of how American journalists covered the Presidential
Election of 1972. Still well worth reading.
Huntington, S. and Nelson, ]. (1976) No Easy Choices: Political Participation
in Developing Countries (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press). A
tough-minded but penetrating analysis.
Lampert, N. (1990) 'Patterns of Participation' in Developments in Soviet
Politics, ed. S. White, A. Pravda and Z. Gitelman (Basingstoke: Macmil-
lan), pp. 120-36. Reviews participation in the USSR, both before and during
the era of reform.
Marsh, A. (1990) Political Action in Europe and the USA (Basingstoke:
Macmillan). A summary of a classic comparative study of attitudes to
unorthodox participation.
Milbrath, L. (1981) 'Political Participation' in The Handbook of Political
Behaviour, vol. 4, ed. S. Long (New York: Plenum), pp. 197-240. A good
review of research on political participation.

Further reading
Verba and Nie's classic American study (1972) is probably the best example of
primary research on participation in the first world. For a British study in this
tradition, see Parry and Moyser (1991). On unconventional participation,
Barnes and Kaase (1979) is a major comparative study, based on Europe and
the United States. Marsh (1990) is an abridged students' version of this
influential research.
Discussions of participation in the second and third worlds are often tucked
away in broader books. However, on communist states in general, see Schulz
(1981). On the Soviet Union, the standard work is Freidgut (1979) while on
China, Townsend (1980) is still useful. On the collapse of communism in
Eastern Europe, see Gwertzman and Kaufman (1990) for a blow-by-blow
account. Prins (1990) and Glenny (1990) are more interpretive. For the third
world, see Clapham (1982) and Eisenstadt and Lemarchand (1981) as well as
Huntington and Nelson (1976).
There are few good comparative studies of the media though Semetko et al.
(1991) is an excellent discussion of agenda-setting in American and British
election campaigns.
 • Chapter 8 •
Elections and Voters
First world elections: Eleccorai systems 191
botcom-up or cop-down? 182 The social base of parties 196
Elections in the second world 184 Voting behaviour in liberal
Elections in the third world 190 democracies 203

The right to vote is probably the only political right exercised by a

majority of the world's population. Elections are the predominant
formal mechanism of orthodox participation in the modern world.
But the existence of elections does not always give voters the ability to
exercise a real choice. In parts of the third world, and until recently in
the second world, elections were more often designed to confirm rather
than select top political leaders. Even in the first world, most elections
do not yield a major change in the parties in office. We therefore begin
this section by looking at the significance of elections in each of the three
worlds. We then turn to more detailed issues: electoral systems; the
social base of parties; and, briefly, voting behaviour .

• First world elections: bottom-up or top-down?

There are two views about the role of elections in liberal democracies:
the bottom-up and top-down theories (Harrop and Miller 1987). The
bottom-up theory is the more orthodox. It stresses the extent to which
competitive elections render governments accountable to the governed.
The last election determines who governs; the thought of the next
election determines how they do so. This tradition emphasises the
upward flow of communication in the electoral process from the
bottom (the voters) to the top (parties and governments). Competition
between parties forces them to respond to the views of the electors.
This is a conventional picture but it has not gone unchallenged. T op-
down theorists such as Ginsberg (1982) are less positive about the
electoral process in liberal democracies. These critics argue that
'competitive' elections are in essence a device for expanding the power
of the elite over the population. Elections incorporate potential
dissenters into the political system, reduce popular participation to a

182
 Elections and Voters 183

mere cross on a ballot and encourage people to obey the state without
limiting its autonomy. Elections give a feeling of choice to voters, albeit
one restricted to a few broad 'packages' of proposals. As a result of this
'choice', the authority of governments over the voters is enormously
enhanced. So the top-down perspective implies that elections in
democracies are as much a con-trick as were those in communist states
- perhaps more so, because the con succeeds.
Bottom-up and top-down theories also offer contrasting answers to
the question 'Do parties matter?' The bottom-up view is that they do -
and so therefore does the electoral process which throws them in and
out of office. For example, a comparison of Britain in 1979, when
Margaret Thatcher came to power, and in 1990, when she left office,
surely shows the difference parties (and individual politicians) can
make. Had the Labour Party governed through the 1980s, trade
unions, nationalised industries and public-sector housing would surely
have avoided the battering they took under Conservative governments.
But the top-down view regards this as only a superficial analysis.
Privatisation and deregulation were in fashion throughout the first
world during the 1980s. In New Zealand, for example, a Labour
government introduced a broadly Thatcherite economic programme
(known as 'Rogernomics' after its arch-exponent Roger Douglas). Had
the Labour Party also been in power in Britain, perhaps it too would
have been forced to grasp the nettle of reform. From the top-down
perspective, then, problems matter more than parties. Whatever parties
may say before an election, they face similar problems, and seek similar
solutions, after they achieve office. The idea of party 'competition' is
another con.
Overall, research findings offer more support for the bottom-up view.
Competitive elections do make a difference to public policy. They
cannot be dismissed as just a sham. In Britain and the United States,
and probably in other democracies too, parties do differ in their
manifesto proposals and they generally implement their promises when
elected (Pomper and Lederman 1980; Rose 1984). However, govern-
ments are less successful with their big proposals - 'peace and prosperity
for all' - with which voters are most concerned.
As a result of these differences in party policy, clear contrasts exist
between those democracies where the left has dominated over the
postwar period (e.g. Sweden) and those where the right has been more
influential (e.g. Italy). 'Left-wing' democracies have (1) more inflation
but lower unemployment; (2) higher education spending but lower
military spending and (3) a larger public sector (Castles 1982). So, over
a period of a decade or more, parties do matter - and so therefore does
the electoral process which propels them in and out of office.
184 The Social Context of Politics

Elections in the West, as elsewhere, are a forge in which rulers try to

shape power into authority. The election result itself enables the
government to claim a 'mandate' from the people, a claim which often
succeeds in practice despite its dubious validity. For example, after
Ronald Reagan's crushing victory over President Carter in the United
States presidential election of 1980, opinion polls showed that the
electorate interpreted the result as a simple rejection of the fumblings
of Jimmy Carter. But this did not prevent the new President from
claiming the election gave him a 'mandate for change'. Freshly elected
governments retain the initiative in setting priorities and developing
policies. The voters are, at best, back-seat drivers.
Even referendums are more often used to reinforce existing policy
than to change it. By controlling the timing and wording of referen-
dums, governments can usually secure the desired result - as with the
British referendum on the Common Market in 1975 which was only held
after Britain had been a member of the EEC for two years. Referendums
expand elite power more than they contain it.
So our view is that competitive elections are best seen as an exchange
of influence between elites and voters. Elites gain authority in exchange
for responsiveness to voters. The voters gain influence in exchange for
obedience to decisions they only partly shaped. Elections benefit both
rulers and ruled .

• Elections in the second world

An old joke in the communist Soviet Union has a television reporter
coming onto the screen and announcing that the Kremlin has been
broken into, and next year's election results have been stolen. Perhaps
the real joke is that in the old days the theft would not even have been
announced! Although elections were always part and parcel of politics
in communist party states, little was left to chance, especially when it
came to challenging the party's hold on power.

o Elections under communist rule

Under communist rule, elections in the second world resembled the non-
competitive contests still found in some developing countries. In the
Soviet Union, for example, there was only one candidate - either a
member of the party or a non-member who had received party approval.
These 'contests' were truly elections without choice. Elsewhere, as for
example in North Korea and Poland, communist rule sometimes
 Elections and Voters 185

tolerated candidates from other parties, but only as minor partners of

the communists. Even then, the number of seats allocated to noncom-
munists was strictly limited. For instance in North Korea's Supreme
People's Assembly, only ten seats are reserved for noncommunists.
In some East European countries, the electoral style became more
relaxed in the 1980s. Hungary, Romania, East Germany and Poland all
introduced reforms which gave voters a choice of candidates if not
parties. But, again, ruling communist parties did not allow these
candidate-choice elections to threaten their supremacy. It was not until
communism collapsed that elections acquired real weight in the second
world.
What were the functions of elections in communist states? In theory,
they were supposed to mobilise the population behind the party's drive
towards a communist society. The nomination process allowed the
party to select candidates who had the qualities that the regime wished
to emphasise - an outstanding work record, say, or active involvement
in the community. The campaign itself informed citizens about party
achievements and priorities. People also had some opportunity to
express grievances about how their local area was run.
On election day, communist states made far greater efforts than
liberal democracies to achieve a high turnout (see Exhibit 8.1). These
efforts to maximise turnout generally succeeded. In 1975, for example,
only 65 of the 1.5 million people in Tadzhikistan in the Soviet Union
reportedly failed to vote! In North Korea the communists have claimed
100 per cent turnout and 100 per cent support for official candidates in
elections to the Supreme People's Assembly. Exaggerated though the
figures were, there is no doubt that most people did really turn out to
vote for the official candidate. Why make trouble for yourself?
Not surprisingly, people became disillusioned with such elections.
They were seen to be nothing more than a public demonstration of the
power of the party. This created a problem for those communist party
states that attempted to introduce limited democracy. For example,
China introduced direct elections for county-level assemblies after the
death of Mao Zedong. The rules required more candidates than seats
and a certain proportion of non-party candidates.
The elections went badly. Although the electoral process should have
been completed by the end of 1979, in 5 per cent of counties people had
still not been to the polls when the campaign was brought to a halt two
years later. There were three main problems. First, it proved difficult to
get people to stand against party candidates. Why risk danger in the
future by participating in the latest political whim? Secondly, many
people did not bother to vote. However, the electoral law required a
candidate to attain the support of more than half of those eligible to
186 The Social Context of Politics

Exhibit 8.1 Getting out the vote, communist style

Elections in communist party states did not permit any challenge to

the party's supremacy but the party still made enormous efforts to
maximise turnout. People in the Soviet Union found it easier to vote
than people in the United States, where individuals still have to take
the initiative in registering on a voters' list.
For example, in a referendum in the Soviet Union in 1990 (after the
process of political reform had begun), ships at sea radioed in the
results of voting among their crews; ballot stations were set up on
long-distance trains; and reindeer herdsmen and women were given
extra time to get to a ballot booth . Even orbiting astronauts were not
forgotten; referendum officials were at ground control to register
votes from the Outer Space constituency.
Ironically, turnout in many of the founding elections of the
postcommunist era was lower than in elections held in the commu-
nist period.

vote, so elections had to be rerun in many areas. Thirdly, local party

officials engaged in election-rigging and corruption. To its credit, the
central communist party acted swiftly when electoral fraud was
uncovered, but widespread corruption hardly encouraged confidence
in the new electoral system. This also shows one of the key problems of
all reforms in communist party states: those people charged with
carrying out reform are often the people who stand to lose most from
the reforms themselves.

D Elections and the decay of communist rule

Elections in a few states did playa role in the slow decay of communist
power which culminated in the convulsions of 1989. In Poland and, to a
lesser extent, the Soviet Union, voters used the opportunities provided
by freer elections to express their hostility to communist rule.
In Poland, the elections of June 1989 proved to be the final blow in the
collapse of communist power. The party did not intend these elections
to challenge communist rule. Indeed only a third of the seats in the Sejm,
the lower house, could be contested (though open elections were held for
all one hundred seats in the Senate). Yet the fact that Solidarity, the
 ELections and Voters 187

independent movement led by Lech Walesa, won all but one of the seats
they were allowed to contest created a legitimacy crisis that the Polish
communists could not survive. The communist party had no popular
mandate for continuing in power. The vote for Solidarity was a massive
rejection of communist rule. Two months later, Poland had the first
postcommunist prime minister in Eastern Europe.
In the Soviet Union, parliamentary elections held in March 1989 were
also a rebuff, if a less disastrous one, to the communist party. In some
seats, party and state leaders faced a genuine contest for the first time.
Many were defeated. Out went the Prime Minister of Latvia, the
President and Prime Minister of Lithuania and most of the party
leaders in Leningrad. In came Boris Yeltsin, a leading reformer, who
won 90 per cent of the vote in Moscow, despite communist harassment.
With a turnout of 90 per cent, these elections certainly contributed to
Gorbachev's attempt to encourage voluntary political participation in
the Soviet Union. But they also weakened the position of his own party.
This illustrates how hard, indeed perhaps impossible, had become the
task facing reform-minded communists by the late 1980s.

o Postcommunism: the founding elections

Just as 1989 had been the year of revolution in Eastern Europe, so 1990
was the year of elections (Table 8.1). The first wave of postcommunist
elections basically formed a sequence of founding elections (Bogdanor
1990). Not all the elections were fully competitive but they did help to
strengthen and confirm the postcommunist order. Indeed, Wightman
has referred to the June 1990 elections in Czechoslovakia as 'a plebiscite
for democracy'. As such, we can view these founding elections not as the
end of the transition to democracy, but as only the beginning of a long
and tortuous path. They did not give a full insight into the party systems
which are likely to predominate into the twenty-first century.
In several countries, the elections were clearly transitional: the broad
umbrella movements, which had demolished the crumbling structures of
communism, proved to be a dominant force. For example, in Czecho-
slovakia, Civic Forum (led by playwright Vaclav Havel) and its Slovak
equivalent, Public Against Violence, won 47 per cent of the vote and a
majority of seats.
Not all of these elections met first world standards of free competi-
tion. Indeed one of the choices facing postcommunist countries is
exactly which type of electoral system and democracy to adopt. As
the postcommunist order strengthens, the electoral system will be
 .....
Table 8.1 Eastern Europe and the founding elections 00
00

Country (population) Main religions Main languages Date of founding Dominant party
election
Poland (38.2m) Roman Catholic (95%) Polish June 1989 Solidarity

Hungary (1O.6m) Catholic (54%) Magyar Marchi April 1990 Hungarian Democratic
Hungarian Reformed (22%) Front

Romania (23m) Orthodox (70%) Romanian, Magyar, May 1990 National Salvation Front
Roman Uniate (10%) German
Roman Catholic (10%)
Lutheran (5%

Bulgaria (9m) Orthodox (85%) Bulgarian, Turkish June 1990 Bulgarian Socialist Party
Muslim (10%) (10%)

Czechoslovakia (15.6m) Catholic (65%) Czech, Slovak June 1990 Civic Forum
Protestant (5%)

Albania (3.2m) Made illegal in 1967 Albanian April 1991 Albanian Party of
(Muslim, Roman Catholic, Labour"
Greek Orthodox)*<"

* Forced to resign by popular protest; then joined coalition government

** Exact figures are unreliable as religion was officially proscribed until 1990.
 Elections and Voters 189

subject to considerable tinkering, partly to refine procedures and partly

in response to attempts by postcommunist parties to adjust the system to
their own interests.
The results of the founding elections of 1990 show the difficulty of
generalising about Eastern Europe as a whole. However, in most cases,
the electorate did give short shrift to the communists. They polled 16 per
cent of the vote in East Germany, 14 per cent in Czechoslovakia, 11 per
cent in Hungary and 17 per cent in Slovenia.
However, in Bulgaria and Albania, the ruling parties returned to
power, at least temporarily. Like many other 'communist' parties, the
Bulgarian Communist Party promised a decisive break with the past and
retitled itself as a Socialist Party. Two important factors helped the
Bulgarian socialists to victory. First, they had a head start through their
existing control of the media. Although other parties moved quickly to
start their own newspapers, they complained that their access to
newsprint was blocked, and they could not overcome distribution
problems in the countryside (Crampton 1990). Secondly, the opposition
was severely split. Over forty opposition parties stood against the
socialists, so limiting the impact of the anti-communist vote. In fresh
elections in 1991, however, the Socialist Party (i.e. the ex-communists)
lost ground heavily to the centre-right Union of Democratic Forces. For
the first time in 46 years, the communists were out of power.
In Albania, the Party of Labour (the communist party) lost heavily in
the cities but won the election thanks to strong support in rural areas.
The city-dwellers supported change but poor peasants in the country-
side feared it. Ironically, the communists had become the party of rural
conservatism. But the election created more problems than it solved.
The strength of the reform movement in the urban centres made the
country virtually ungovernable while the communists remained in
office.
Despite a system of one person one vote, the Albanian example shows
that popular legitimacy does not always accrue to those who win
elections. In a country with a strong urban-rural divide, a highly
motivated minority in the cities has the capacity to override the wishes
of the less-committed and less-organised majority in the remote
countryside.
One swallow does not make a summer. The transition from
totalitarianism to democracy is fraught with difficulties. Nationalism,
in particular, may prove to be the biggest obstacle to the development of
stable democracies in much of Eastern Europe. Certainly in Balkan
countries like Romania and Yugoslavia, authoritarian nationalism may
overpower liberal democratic governments. Competitive elections can
only establish themselves when agreement is reached on the boundaries
190 The Social Context of Politics

of the nation-state. In the Balkans, with its heritage of ethnic animos-

ities, that agreement may be a long time coming .

• Elections in the third world

Elections in the third world have taken the form of plebiscites held by
dictators to 'confirm' their own rule: for example by President (ex-
General) Zia of Pakistan in 1984. Or they have been notionally
competitive elections where one party has used bribery and coercion
to maintain its power (Mexico). Or they have taken the form of contests
where competition was permitted but only between candidates standing
on the same party ticket (Kenya). Only recently, in the 1980s and early
1990s, have elections offering a genuine choice between parties and
policies became more widespread, especially in Latin America and parts
of Africa. But the initial question about elections in the third world must
remain: Why was party and policy competition so rare - and for so long?
The answer lay in the limited extent of political development.
Competitive elections about policy are flesh added to the skeleton of a
national political system. Where there is no skeleton, there can be no
flesh. In the third world, national government is still weak. The masses
remain oriented towards local rather than national politics. Elites regard
the state as a profitable mine to be exploited and have little interest in
competitive elections which might endanger their grip over the state's
resources. Thus the state lacks the strength to sustain competitive
elections.
Even in the growing number of third world countries that do hold
competitive elections, the object of competition is usually specific
rewards rather than ideology. Votes are exchanged for particular
benefits which go to individuals, ethnic groups or communities.
Whereas class-based parties in the first world used ideology to justify
their promise of an improved standard of living for all their supporters,
the exchange in third world countries is more practical and specific.
When life is hard, the value of a vote lies in its cash value. In extreme
cases voters simply hand over signed ballots to local patrons who then
negotiate the best deal they can with candidates. In other cases, where
voters have acquired some independence from their patrons, they can
deal directly with the candidates. For example, in the Philippines under
President Marcos, 10-20 per cent of the electorate literally sold their
vote, often for the equivalent of a month's wages (eventually the massive
corruption in the 1986 election contributed to Marcos's downfall).
The exchange between voters and candidates can also operate on a
constituency basis. In Kenya, MPs are judged by their success in winning
 Elections and Voters 191

benefits such as rural development projects for their constituencies. If

they succeed, they are re-elected; if they fail, they are thrown out by the
voters. In the 1983 election, for example, 57 out of 150 incumbents lost,
a far higher proportion than in first world democracies such as Britain
and the United States (Barkan 1987, p. 230).
Through these mechanisms, elections in the developing world can
make some contribution to political integration, linking the central
government to local areas. The mere fact of participating in an election,
and the associated task of learning party symbols and some facts about
the party's philosophy, may also facilitate national awareness among
the population.
But elites drive elections in the third world. Rulers hold elections
because they feel their position may be strengthened if they can tell the
international community that they are an elected government. This is
one reason why reasonably free elections became more common in the
third world at the end of the 1980s. Western organisations made their
aid more conditional on the political performance of the recipient's
regime. At the same time, the Soviet Union became less willing to prop
up authoritarian regimes, as the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union
concentrated on its own domestic troubles. But even in many third
world countries that have held free elections, politics are still not
election -centred .

• Electoral systems
An electoral system is a set of rules for conducting an election. It is far
more than the procedures for translating votes into seats. One of the
most important features of an electoral system is its scope. Which offices
are subject to election is as fundamental as who has the right to vote. In
the first world, the United States is unique in its massive number of
elected offices, ranging from president to dog-catcher. At a lesser
extreme, Australians engage in much more electing than New Zealan-
ders (Crewe 1981, p. 231). Australians directly elect both chambers of
parliament; New Zealand's parliament is unicameral. Federal Australia
has two levels of elected subnational government: state and local;
unitary New Zealand has only the one, local level. Moreover, most
Australian states have two elected chambers.
The franchise (who can vote) is another important element of an
electoral system. In most democracies, the vote now extends to nearly all
citizens aged at least eighteen. The main exclusions are criminals, the
mentally incompetent, and (perhaps least defensibly) non-citizen resi-
dents such as guest workers. However, this 'universal' franchise is
192 The Social Context of Politics

relatively recent. For example, in many countries women did not get the
vote until after the Second World War. Few countries can match
Australia and New Zealand where women have been electors since
the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed women in Switzerland,
Portugal and Spain had to wait for the vote until the 1970s. Minority
groups have also been discriminated against until recently. In the United
States, until the mid-1960s, poll taxes and literacy tests were used to
deny the vote to Southern blacks. Aborigines were unable to vote in
Australia's 'whitefella' elections until 1962.
A universal suffrage does not guarantee a full turnout. In the
American presidential election of 1988, only one in every two Amer-
icans of voting age cast their ballot. In part, this is because the burden of
registering as a voter in the United States rests with the individual, rather
than with the bureaucracy. Many people, particularly among minority
groups and the young, just don't bother to register. In most other liberal
democracies, turnout at national elections exceeds 80 per cent. Where
voting is theoretically compulsory, as in Australia, Belgium and Greece,
the rate usually tips over the 90 per cent mark.

o Converting votes into seats

Most controversy about electoral systems centres on the rules for
converting votes into seats. The main types of electoral system are
shown in Table 8.2. The basic distinction is between majority and
proportional systems. In a majority system, the candidate(s) with the
largest number of votes in a particular area wins election. The classic
example is the system of 'first past the post', used in Britain, Canada,
India, New Zealand and the United States. Majority systems are based
on the very old idea of representing territory. Across the country as a
whole, majority systems usually give a substantial bonus in seats to the
party which leads in votes, thus encouraging government by a single
party which has a clear majority in parliament.
In a proportional system, by contrast, parties acquire seats in explicit
relation to the votes they receive. Proportional systems are based on the
more recent notion of representation for parties, rather than places.
Under proportional representation, majority governments are unusual
and coalitions are the norm.
Although 'first past the post' is the most influential majority system,
it is not the only one. Australia's lower house now uses the alternative
vote (AV, see Table 8.2). This takes into account more information
about voters' preferences than 'first past the post'. It was introduced in
 Elections and Voters 193

Table 8.2 Main types of electoral system in liberal democracies

MAJORITY SYSTEMS - 'winner takes all'

1. Simple plurality - 'first past the post' system

Procedure: Leading candidate elected on first and only ballot.
Where used: UK, United States, Canada, India, New Zealand, South
Africa.

2. Absolute majority - alternative vote ('preferential vote')

Procedure: Voters rank candidates. Bottom candidate eliminated and
these votes redistributed according to second preferences.
Repeat until a candidate has a majority.
Where used: Australia (House of Representatives).

3. Absolute majority - second ballot

Procedure: If no candidate has a majority on the first ballot, the two
leading candidates face a run-off.
Where used: France (presidential elections).

PROPOR TIONAL SYSTEMS - seats obtained by quota in multi-member

constituencies

4. List system
Procedure; Vote is cast for a party's list of candidates, though in most
countries the elector can also express support for individual
candidates on the list.
Where used: Israel, Scandinavia, most of continental Europe, including
Eastern Europe.

5. Single transferable vote (STV)

Procedure: Voters rank candidates. Any candidate over the quota (which
is essentially votes cast divided by one more than the number
of seats) on first preferences is elected, with the 'surplus'
transferred to the voters' second choice. When no candidate
has reached the quota, the bottom candidate is eliminated
and these votes are also transferred. These procedures
continue until all seats are filled.
Where used: Irish Republic, Malta, Tasmania, Australia (Senate, though
electors can choose a party ticket if they wish).
194 The Social Context of Politics

Australia because the Liberal and National Parties wanted to gang up

on the Labour Party. Under AV, they could exchange lower preferences
against the Labour candidate even if they both put up candidates in the
same seat. This worked because. both Liberal and National Party voters
disliked Labour most of all. This is an example of the extremely
common practice of electoral engineering: selecting or refining a
system to further the interests of the existing rulers.
The list system is the most common form of proportional representa-
tion (PR). It is used in most countries in Europe, West and East. The
general principle here is that the total number of votes won by a party
determines how many candidates are elected from that list. The number
of votes gained by the individual candidates on the list determines which
people are elected to represent that party.
List systems vary in allowing voters a choice over candidates within
from a party's list. At one extreme stands the closed party list used in
Israel, Portugal and Spain. Voters there have no choice over candidates
but simply vote for the party they prefer. Candidates are elected in
accordance with how far up they are placed on the party's list. For
example, if party X receives 40 per cent of the votes in a 200-seat
parliament, the top 80 candidates on its list would be selected. This gives
the central party bureaucracy enormous control over political recruit-
ment. At the other extreme lie the free party lists used in Switzerland and
Luxembourg. In these countries electors can vote for candidates drawn
from the lists of several parties. If 40 per cent of all the votes cast were
for candidates from party X, then the party would again be entitled to 80
seats. But these 80 winners would be those on the party's list who got the
most individual votes. Most countries give voters at least some choice
between candidates from a party's list.
Most list systems have a threshold of representation below which a
party receives no seats at all. The cut-off point is 2 per cent in Denmark
and 4 per cent in Sweden. Finland has no formal threshold at all. This
enabled two Green delegates to be elected in 1983, the first in the Nordic
region, with just 42045 votes (1.4 per cent of the total). Very small
parties can also gain representation in the Dutch and Israeli parliaments.
In the Dutch election of 1986, the Calvinist Reformed Political
Federation won a seat with just 83582 votes. The Netherlands, like
Finland, has no formal threshold and parties win seats with less than 1
per cent of the vote.
To achieve a proportional outcome, PR systems must use constituen-
cies returning several representatives. There is no way of proportionally
dividing one representative between several parties. By contrast major-
ity systems usually have single-member constituencies.
 Elections and Voters 195

o Evaluating electoral sysytems

What is the relationship between electoral systems and party systems?
This remains a matter of controversy in political science. In a classic
work, Duverger (1954) claimed that 'first past the post' strongly
favoured a two-party system while PR contributed to a multi-party
system. More generally, 'first past the post' was associated with strong,
decisive government. PR was found guilty by its association with
unstable coalition governments.
But in the 1960s a reaction set in against attributing weight to political
institutions such as electoral systems. Writers such as Rokkan (1970)
adopted a more sociological approach, arguing that social cleavages had
produced multi-party systems in Europe long before PR was adopted.
PR did not cause a multi-party system: rather, PR was adopted because
it was the only electoral system which would satisfy the numerous
parties thrown up by social divisions.
Much ink is spilt on the issue of which is the 'best' electoral system. In
truth, there is no such thing. Different methods work best in different
circumstances. For example, in countries with intense social divisions,
such as Northern Ireland and South Africa, a strong case can be made
for PR on the grounds that it will provide at least some representation
for parties based on minority groups. But where regular changes of
government occur under a majority system, as in Great Britain, this
argument for PR loses much of its force. Over a period of time, each
party gets its 'crack of the whip' - proportional tenure without
proportional representation.
In any case the same procedure can have different effects in different
countries. 'First past the post' has reinforced Protestant supremacy in
Northern Ireland but contributed to the 'swing of the pendulum' in
mainland Britain. Thus the electoral system which is most appropriate
for a particular country depends on the nature of its society, and
especially the relative size of the major social groups within it.
Nonetheless majority systems have been losing popularity over the
last few decades. Far from producing political instability, as those who
observed the rise of fascism had thought, PR has contributed to
continuity of policy in most of postwar Europe. The same parties often
continue in government for decades, with slight variations in their
coalition partners. By contrast, 'first past the post' can thrust parties
in and out of office. This is because the result in seats exaggerates the
result in votes. Canada is a good example. In 1984, the Conservative
Party won three-quarters of the seats on just half the vote.
196 The Social Context of Politics

The bias of 'first past the post' against smaller parties with evenly
spread support (including the Greens) has also become more apparent as
minor parties have gained ground. In the British election of 1983, the
Alliance of Liberals and Social Democrats received 7.8 million votes
(26%) but only 23 out of 650 seats (3.5%). Significantly, none of the
postcommunist states adopted a majority system for their founding
elections.
Movements for electoral reform have emerged in most of the
countries still using 'first past the post'. So far, however, little has
come of these efforts. The main reason for this is that parties elected
under one system have no incentive to change to another. Voices within
parties of the left, such as the Canadian Liberal Party and the British and
New Zealand Labour Parties, have expressed interest in reform. But
specific proposals have usually remained buried inside the party's
burea ucracy.
If 'first past the post' gives too little weight to smaller parties, PR
arguably gives them too much. Under PR, smaller parties are often in a
pivotal position in post-election coalition negotiations, able in theory to
form an alliance with either major party (in practice, ideology restricts
the range of feasible partners). In addition, advocates of decisive
government argue that coalitions tend towards the lowest common
denominator, acting in particular as a barrier against radical but
necessary change. For better or worse, it is difficult to see a figure such
as Margaret Thatcher emerging as a compromise coalition leader after
an election fought under PR!

• The social base of parties

Elections in liberal democracies are not fought afresh each time. They
show enormous continuity in the parties which contest them and in the
shares of the vote these parties obtain. To understand elections, we must
focus on parties, since it is parties that structure and limit the choices
available to the individual voter.
The stability of parties rests on their foundations in the social
structure. Most parties have core supporters, located in one segment
of society, which provide the party with a secure base of support. Most
often, parties represent a particular religion, class or language group.
These links between parties and social groups usually develop at crucial
points in a country's history. This means that we must look at the social
base of parties from a historical perspective.
 Elections and Voters 197

Exercise 8.1 Gulf War II: showing the effect

of electoral systems

The method used to count votes does make a difference. Here's an

example which, in our experience, usually produces a different result
according to how preferences are added up. The example is based on
votes for a series of policy options rather than votes for a party. It
also introduces some interesting ways of 'aggregating' opinions. The
larger the group taking part in this exercise, the better .

Imagine that Iraq has invaded Kuwait again. You have to vote on
what your country's response should be. Cast your vote(s) for these
options:

1. No action of any kind.

2. Economic sanctions only; no military action.
3. Military action to expel Iraq from Kuwait only.
4. Military action to expel Iraq from Kuwait plus sufficient military
action to make a future invasion of Kuwait unlikely.
5. As 4, plus deposing Saddam Hussein so he would no longer be a
threat to the region.

Voting systems:
A. Simple plurality
You can cast one vote only. Place an X beside your most preferred
option.
The option which receives the most votes (the highest 'plurality') will
win. This, of course, may be less than 50% of all the votes cast.

B. Alternative vote
Indicate your order of preference. Place 1 beside your 1st preference, 2
beside your 2nd preference, and so on.
lf no option receives more than 50% of 1st preferences, the option
with the lowest number of 1st preferences will be eliminated and the 2nd
preferences of those who voted for that option will be taken into
account. This process will be repeated until one option achieves an
absolute majority (i.e. at least 50% + 1) of the votes cast.

C. Approval voting
You express your 'approval' for as many or as few of the options as you
wish. Place an X beside each of those options of which you approve.
That option will win which receives the most votes.
cont. ollerleaf
198 The Social Context of Politics

D. Borda count
Rank order your preferences. Give 4 to your 1st preference, 3 to your 2nd
preference, 2 to your 3rd, 1 to your 4th, and 0 to your 5th. (Note that this
is the opposite procedure to that used for the Alternative vote - you give
the highest, not the lowest, figure to your first preference, and then work
down.)
The numbers assigned to each option are summed. The winning
option is that which achieves the highest score.

E. Point voting
You have 50 points which you may distribute in any way you like
between the options. The way that you distribute your points is intended
to indicate the relative strength of your preferences as between the
options. (Make sure that the points that you award add up to 50.)
The winning option will be that which receives the most points.

Now work out the results. For comparison, among first-year

undergraduates at Newcastle University, England, in 1991, three
different options 'won', depending on the electoral system used. To
prevent biasing your own exercise, we won't say which options came
out ahead!

Table 8.3 shows the main cleavages on which Western parties are
based. Three main waves of change have swept through Western
societies over the centuries. Even after they recede, they leave their
tidemark on the party system. These waves are:

1. The national revolution

2. The industrial revolution
3. The post-industrial revolution.

o The national revolution

Lipset and Rokkan (1967) called the first wave 'the national revolution'.
This refers to the original construction of the state as a territory
governed by a single central authority. Though fought many centuries
ago, the scars of these battles can still be seen in modern party systems.
One reason for this is that state-building was often a' violent process.
Centralising elites generally showed little mercy in imposing their
 ELections and Voters 199

Table 8.3 Some social bases of parties

Wave 1 Wave 2 Wave 3
The national The industrial The post-industrial
revolution revolution revolution
Centre vs. periphery Class Education
National and Trade unions Affluence
linguistic divisions
Religion Social mobility Postmaterialism

Source: M. Harrop and W. Miller Elections and Voters: A Comparative Introduction

(London: Macmillan, 1987).

authority on groups accustomed to greater autonomy, notably in

peripheral areas and in the Catholic Church.
Britain is a good example of a country with a long-standing division
between centre and periphery. The Conservatives have always been the
party of the core regions around London and the South-East. The
Labour Party's strength, by contrast, lies in the outlying, industrial areas
of England, as well as in Scotland and Wales.
Parties of the periphery enjoyed a temporary recovery in the 1970s.
Witness the Basques and Catalans in Spain, the French in Canada, and
Scottish and Welsh nationalists in Great Britain. Though some of these
groups were simply vehicles of anti-government protest, clearly the
centre-periphery conflict has not been permanently solved in Western
states.
The other aspect of the national revolution, conflict between state and
church, proved equally influential in shaping party systems. As the
modern nation-state developed, it came into conflict with the Catholic
Church, which sought to defend its traditional control over 'spiritual
life'. A basic issue here was: Who should control education - church or
state? This battle was settled several hundred years ago in Protestant
countries such as Scandinavia, the United Kingdom (except Northern
Ireland) and its former colonies. These countries have therefore been
largely exempt from religious parties.
In Catholic countries, such as France and Italy, and in religiously
mixed countries, such as the Netherlands, the conflict continued into the
twentieth century. It has had a profound effect on party systems. Anti-
clerical parties (especially the communists) emerged in several Catholic
countries, notably France and Italy. Their secular values were countered
successfully by Christian Democratic parties, formed to defend the
200 The Social Context of Politics

traditional authority of the church. Though these Catholic parties have

now broadened their appeal to wider centre-right sections of the
electorate, a count in the late 1960s showed that as many parties in
Western Europe were still based on religion as on class (Rose and Urwin
1969).

o The industrial revolution

This also affected party systems in several ways. First, it sharpened
existing divisions between urban and rural interests. Peasant hostility to
the city led to the formation of agrarian parties in Norway, Sweden and
Finland, though these parties too have now become broader parties of
the centre. In other European countries, differences between landowners
and the new industrialists fuelled the division between Conservatives
and Liberals for much of the nineteenth century.
Secondly, industrialisation led later to the emergence of socialist
parties, externally created, to represent the interests of the urban
working class. These parties tended to be moderate in countries where
working-class incorporation into the political system was easily
achieved (as in Britain and Scandinavia) and more anti-system where
the fight was harder (as in France and Italy). In the United States,
exceptionally, mass suffrage for white males was achieved before
industrialisation began, thus working against the emergence of a
class-based socialist party at all.
Intimately linked with class is the growth of trade unions. As the
industrial wing of the working-class movement, trade unions could be
expected to increase electoral support for the left. In nearly all
democracies, left-wing voting is more common among trade unionists
than the non-unionised. In much of continental Europe, however, trade
unions are themselves divided along party and/or religious lines, so their
main effect is to reinforce the party system. For example, in France and
Italy, communist and Catholic unions have fought many a battle in the
workplace, with the conflict between them mirroring party divisions.
It is where trade unions created a party that they have had most
impact on the party system. The main examples here are Australia and
Britain. The Labour Parties of both countries were originally creatures
of the unions, a link which served the parties well as they sought to
become established. Now, however, the relationship attracts consider-
able criticism, and both parties are distancing themselves from their
UnIon ongms.
 Elections and Voters 201

D The post-industrial revolution

Western societies are becoming post-industrial. Increasingly, they are

characterised by affluence rather than poverty; by service industries
rather than manufacturing industry; and by education rather than class
(Bell 1973). It remains to be seen whether the post-industrial revolution
will have such profound consequences on party systems as the national
and industrial revolutions. Higher education is still the preserve of a
minority - but it is a vocal minority and one which is growing rapidly as
countries compete with each other to produce the best-educated work-
force. The post-industrial revolution is a quiet revolution but it is no less
significant for that.
Affluence and education produce more confident, outward-looking
people, concerned about broad social issues. This is the basis of
Inglehart's theory of postmaterialism (see pp. 141-2). Postmaterialists
look for a new style of politics: more participatory and single-issue
based than the approach offered by traditional parties, whether of the
right or the left. Even if the postindustrial revolution does not produce
new parties, it challenges, and may well weaken, the existing party
system.
Younger, better-educated generations have provided a reservoir of
activists for new, and especially green, parties. These question the whole
notion of industrial society. Green parties have emerged in most
Western democracies, achieving greatest success in Europe (S. Parkin
1989). In Germany, for example, the Greens achieved representation in
the national parliament as early as 1983, winning 27 seats on 5.6 per cent
of the vote. Since then, green candidates have been elected to parlia-
ments in such countries as Austria, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal and
Sweden. In the Anglo-American democracies, the high threshold for
representation imposed by the 'first past the post' electoral system has
held back the greens. However the Australian Democrats and the New
Zealand Values Party, both based on 'new left' philosophies, have had
some impact on the flavour of politics in their countries.
The 'maturing' of green parties has been restricted by their ambiva-
lent attitude to the existing party system. Many have declined to dirty
their hands through involvement with the polluted environment of
mainstream politics. For example the German greens are deeply divided
between the realist 'light greens', who favour collaboration with other
parties, and the more fundamentalist 'dark greens', who reject conven-
tional party politics.
202 The Social Context of Politics

D Parties of reaction
The waves of social change we have reviewed produce counter-currents,
which are powerful in their own right. To be more specific, social
change produces tensions which can be reflected in the emergence of
extreme, often short-lived, parties of reaction. Lipset (1983) suggests
that to understand political extremism, it is necessary to identify the
groups which are under threat from social change. Reactionary parties
fall into three main groups:
1. Fascist parties, reacting against democracy and the decay of the old
order. These had most spectacular appeal in the inter-war years,
with the rise to power of Hitler's National Socialists in Germany
and Mussolini's Fascist Party in Italy.
2. Parties based on the self-employed and small businessmen, reacting
against large companies and powerful unions. The main example
here is the Poujadists, a flash party that achieved short-term success
in France in the 1950s.
3. Racist parties based on the poorly educated urban working class,
reacting against immigrants and guest workers. These emerged in
many West European countries in the 1960s and the 1970s, with
another revival in the early 1990s. The most important illustration is
again from France. The National Front (FN), led by Jacques Ie Pen,
calls for an end to all immigration: its slogan is 'France for the
French.' The FN won 35 seats on 10 per cent of the vote in the
parliamentary elections of 1986. Its parliamentary presence was
virtually eliminated at the next elections, due to the abolition of
proportional representation. Early in 1992, however, opinion polls
reported that the FN had more popular support than the ruling
Socialist party.

D Parties in the New World

In analysing the social base of Western parties, it is important to
distinguish Europe from the New World. Countries such as Canada,
Australia and the United States lack the long European tradition of
church-state and urban-rural conflict; consequently, they do not have
major parties based exclusively on these cleavages. Where New World
democracies do diverge is in the core values of their early settlers. These
values created distinctive political cultures which still exert a primary
influence on party systems. In the United States, puritan and individual
values, as well as the early achievement of white male suffrage, have
militated against the emergence of Catholic and socialist parties. By
 ELections and Voters 203

contrast, in Australia and New Zealand, class values came with the
settlers, thus facilitating strong Labour Parties.
In Canada, largely settled in the pre-class era, the crucial division
between French-speakers and English-speakers can be seen throughout
the country's history. In white South Africa, the even more fundamental
cleavage between the Afrikaner people and English-speakers can also be
traced back to settlement patterns. Within the New World democracies,
the main contrast today is between the United States and Canada, where
party support is only loosely linked to distinctive social bases, and
Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, where social cleavages still
structure party systems .

• Voting behaviour in liberal democracies

Given that voters have a choice, how do they decide who to vote for?
The prior question is whether voters decide. One influential theory of
electoral choice, originally developed in the United States in the 1950s,
argued that voting was an act of affirmation rather than choice
(Campbell et aI., 1960; Markus and Converse, 1979). This was known
as the 'socialisation' or 'Michigan' model (after the place where it was
constructed) .
This model developed slightly differently in Europe. In America,
voting was seen as an expression of deep-seated loyalty to a party. This
'party identification' was acquired initially through one's family, then
confirmed through membership of social groups and reinforced by
lifelong electoral habit. Electors learned to think of themselves as
Democrats, Republicans or (in a minority of cases) as Independents.
In the United States, this theory of voting is also known as the party
identification model.
In Europe, where social divisions run deeper, voting was seen as
primarily an expression of loyalty to a social group rather than a party.
The act of voting affirmed one's identification with a particular religion,
class or ethnic group. Political parties then served as an expression of
these group interests. Thus electors thought of themselves as Catholic or
Protestant, middle class or working class. Party choices then flowed
naturally from the anchor of social identity.

D Classifying elections
The socialisation model emphasised electoral stability. It assumed that
there was a 'natural' level of support for a party in the electorate, against
204 The Social Context of Politics

which actual election results can be measured. In the United States,

this idea was developed into the classification of elections shown in
Table 8.4.
In a normal election, voting directly reflects partisanship and the
party with the greatest share of party identifiers (for example the
Democrats in the United States) wins the election.
In a deviating election, by contrast, the majority party loses the
election due to short-term factors such as candidate appeal. However
voters who deviate from their normal choice retain their underlying
allegiance and return to it in later contests. For example, one
interpretation of Ronald Reagan's victory in the 1980 presidential
election in the United States was to blame the ineffectiveness of the
Democratic incumbent, Jimmy Carter. The assumption was that many
'Reagan Democrats' would return to the fold next time round.
However, further Republican victories in 1984 and 1988 dented the
underlying theory that the Democrats are still the 'natural' majority
party in the United States.
Finally a realigning election, or more often a realigning sequence of
elections, brings about a major change in the distribution of partisan-
ship in the electorate. It redefines the relationships between social
groups and party support. The forging of the New Deal coalition by
the Democrats in a series of critical elections in the United States during
the 1920s and the 1930s is an example of this process. Realigning
elections are rare but exciting events.

Table 8.4 A classification of United States elections

1. Normal election - the result expresses the balance of long-term

party loyalties in the electorate as a whole.
Example: Democratic presidential election victories from the 1930s
to the 1960s.
2. Deviating election - the natural majority party loses the election
due to short-term factors.
Example: Republican presidential election victories in the 1950s.
3. Realigning ('critical') election - these change the underlying
strength of parties and redefine the relationships between parties
and social groups.
Example: Presidential elections in the 1920s and 1930s which
forged the Democratic 'New Deal' coalition.
 Elections and Voters 205

o Dealignment
The socialisation approach assumed a stable rather than a volatile
electorate. It explained why most people did not change their votes, not
why some people did. This was a fair approach in the static and
relatively apolitical 1950s but it afterwards became less appropriate.
The major electoral trend in postwar democracies has been partisan
dealignment - the weakening bonds between voters and parties.
In the United States, around 30 per cent of the electorate have
described themselves as Independents since the mid-1960s, up from 20
per cent in 1954. There has also been a sharp fall in the intensity of party
allegiances in Britain. Whereas 46 per cent of Conservative and Labour
identifiers said their loyalty was 'very strong' in 1964, only 32 per cent
did so in 1987.
Dealignment has advanced furthest in the longest-established party
systems - Britain, the Netherlands and Scandinavia. However, even
among the new democracies of Southern Europe (such as Spain and
Portugal), voters' loyalties do not seem to be strengthening as experience
with elections grows. The electorates in these countries may be partly
aligned, rather than dealigned. They may behave in a similar way to
electorates in the older democracies, as a result of simply missing out
the stage of firm party loyalities which the older democracies went
through.
What has brought about this decline in party loyalties in the 'mature'
party systems? Why have voters begun to choose? One cause seems to be
the weakening of traditional class and religious identities. These were
fundamental to the outlook of older generations but they are less
relevant to new generations of young, well-educated people living in
urban, mobile and secular societies. Television has also made a
difference. Its neutral style, at least compared to mass circulation
newspapers, probably contributes to a less partisan outlook among
voters. Also, many younger voters are more attracted to single-issue
groups than to the established parties, which are seen as slow-moving
and ineffective at confronting new issues.
Partisan dealignment has led to electoral volatility and the emergence
of new parties (such as the greens) in several democracies. These factors
in themselves cause people to question their faith in the old parties, thus
contributing to further dealignment.
The decay of party loyalties has led political scientists to seek new
approaches to the study of voting that are better suited to the
explanation of electoral change. No longer can we locate the origins
of electoral choice solely in social divisions and early socialisation.
206 The Social Context of Politics

Instead we must place more emphasis on political events and how they
are reported on television.
Fiorina's theory (1981) of retrospective voting is particularly impor-
tant here. Retrospective voting means casting one's ballot in response to
government performance. It is a phrase which tells us much about the
character of contemporary voting behaviour. Electors do form an
overall assessment of the government's record - and, increasingly, they
vote accordingly. A vote is no longer an expression of a lifelong
commitment. Rather it is a piece of business like any other. The elector
asks of the government, 'What have you done for me (and the country)
lately?' Retrospective voting helps to explain why economic conditions,
especially unemployment and inflation, have such impact on the
popularity of governments (Paldam 1981). More voters now proceed
on the brutal assumption that governments should be punished for bad
times and perhaps also rewarded for economic advance. They judge
results, not promises.

S1I 111 111 a fY

1. Elections in liberal democracies are often seen as 'bottom up' institutions
which enable the ruled to control the rulers. But they can also be viewed as 'top-
down' affairs, enhancing the authority over the government over the governed.
Elections are probably best seen as an exchange of influence between rulers and
ruled. Voters exert some influence over government in exchange for obedience
to decisions they only partly shaped.

2. Many electors still vote according to long-term loyalties. These are

acquired from the family, sustained by social groups and reinforced by
electoral habit. This is the socialisation model of voting. However, 'partisan
dealignment' means that party loyalties are weakening in many democracies.
Electoral volatility is increasing in some countries as electors respond more to
new political developments.

3. An electoral system is a set of rules for conducting an election. These set

out: the range of offices subject to election, who can vote, and the rules for
converting votes into seats. Majority systems and proportional representation
(PR) are the two main methods used to translate votes into seats. Majority
systems are based on the idea of representing territory; they usually deliver
government by a single party. Majority systems are restricted to Britain and its
former colonies. PR is based on the idea of representing parties and is
associated with government by coalitions.

4. Elections under communist rule gave voters little, if any, choice. Their
function was to demonstrate the party's control over the people.
 Elections and Voters 207

5. Postcommunist states quickly held competitive elections to help confirm

their legitimacy. The umbrella movements which had overthrown communist
rule won many of these 'founding' elections. Most communist parties won less
than 20 per cent of the vote but they won re-election in Albania and, after
internal reforms, in Bulgaria.

6. Elections carry less weight in the third world. In the past, elections were
generally uncompetitive. Any competition was restricted to individual candi-
dates rather than parties. The transition to democracy in parts of the third
world in the 1980s did raise the significance of elections. However, competition
between parties over policies is still relatively unimportant. Poverty and
inequality mean voters still trade their votes for a degree of protection which
local patrons provide.

Discussion points
1. How much difference do elections make to public policy in your country?
What else do elections decide?
2. Do you expect competitive elections to establish themselves in all, some or
none of the countries in (a) the second world and (h) the third world?
3. Analyse the social influences on your own party preference.
4. Assess the effect of changing your country's electoral system from
proportional representation to first past the post (or vice versa). Would such
a change be desirable?

Key reading
Bogdanor, V. and Butler D. (eds) (1983) Democracy and Elections: Electoral
Systems and Their Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Readable accounts of electoral systems in various countries, placed in their
historical and social setting.
Bogdanor, V. (1990) 'Founding Elections and Regime Change', Electoral
Studies (9) 295-302. An excellent review of the first round of postcommunist
elections in East Europe.
Harrop, M. and Miller, W. (1987) Elections and Voters: A Comparative
Introduction (Basingstoke: Macmillan). A comparative review of research
on elections and voters, concentrating on the first world.
Hermet, G., Rose, R. and Rouquie, A. (eds) (1978) Elections without Choice
(London: Macmillan). A standard work on non-competitive elections in the
second and third worlds.
208 The SociaL Context of Politics

Further reading
On the interpretation of elections in the first world, see Butler, Penniman and
Ranney (1981). Ginsberg (1982) is an effective exponent of the top-down view.
PoIsby and Wildavsky (1984) is the standard text on presidential elections in the
United States.
On elections in communist party states, see Pravda (1986) and Zaslavsky and
Brym (1978) on the Soviet Union. On elections in the third world, Hermet, Rose
and Rouquie (1980) is a standard work. Diamond, Linz and Lipset (1989,
volumes 2 and 3) is a useful update.
On electoral systems, Bogdanor (1984) is a clear introduction. For more
detail on specific countries, see Bogdanor and Butler (1983). The classics by
Duverger (1954), Rokkan (1970) and Rae (1971) are still worth reading.
Lijphart (1984b) is a more recent contribution.
On voting behaviour, Campbell et al. (1960) is the classic statement of the
socialisation model. See Markus and Converse (1979) for a more recent, but
also more technical, account. Nie, Verba and Petrocik (1979) is a very
influential analysis of the alleged rise of issue voting in the United States.
Franklin (1985) covers similar ground for Britain, though Denver (1989) is the
best simple introduction to voting and elections in Britain.
Dalton, Flanagan and Beck (1984) is a wide-ranging study of electoral trends
throughout the Western world. On Europe specifically, see Crewe and Denver
(1985).
 • Chapter 9 •
Interest Groups
Classifying interest groups 210 The first world: pluralism or
Channels of access 215 corporatism? 222
What makes an interest group The second world: from
influential? 220 channelled to active
groups? 227

There is a story, possibly true, that New Zealand Premier Sid Holland
was once woken by a phone call from an irate woman who could not
find a plumber willing to come out in the middle of the night to fix a
leak. (This being New Zealand, the premier's number was in the phone
book, even if plumbers go ex-directory after hours.) A plumber soon
arrived on her doorstep thanks to Holland's direct intervention (Du
Fresne 1989). Another story - undeniably true - is that in 1989, the cities
of Eastern Europe were filled with people demonstrating their profound
dissatisfaction with communist rule, demonstrations that accelerated
the collapse of communism in Europe.
Both examples show how people try to make governments listen to,
and act upon, their interests. Politics and interests are, after all,
inseparable. Indeed some writers have seen government as nothing
more than an arena in which different groups, representing specific
interests in society, jostle for special treatment. This view is too extreme
because it ignores the independent role which the state plays in deciding
which interests are satisfied and which are not. After all, Sid Holland
could have slammed the phone down, ignored the loss of a vote, and
gone back to sleep. Communist rulers in Berlin and Prague could have
turned machine guns on the crowds, as they did in Beijing in 1989, and
scared their people into submission for at least a short while.
Nonetheless, in all countries, interests are expressed from society to
the state in some way or other. This is the process of interest
articulation. In this chapter we look at patterns, channels and determi-
nants of interest articulation; at differences between the three worlds;
and at trends within them.
What is an 'interest'? Is an aggrieved housewife or an angry crowd
'articulating an interest'? One writer usefully defines interest groups as,
'organisations which have some autonomy from government or political

209
210 The Social Context of Politics

parties and ... try to influence public policy' (Wilson 1990). Interest
groups seek to influence government, but unlike political parties, they
do not aspire to take control of it .

• Classifying interest groups

Most classifications of interest groups are based on first world politics.
To cover the three worlds, our classification needs to extend beyond
trade unions and employers' organisations - beyond, in other words, the
familiar, organised groups taken for granted in liberal democracies. At
one end of the scale are groups based on communal ties. At the other end
are groups based on associational ties (Figure 9.1).

COMMUNAL

n
CUSTOMARY
tribe, caste, ethnic groups

II
INSTITUTIONAL
military, bureaucracy, church

II
PROTECTIVE
trade unions, employers and
professional organisations

II
PROMOTIONAL
ecology groups,
anti-pornography groups

~
ASSOCIATIONAL

Source: adapted from J. Blondel, Comparing Political Systems (London: Weidenfeld)

p.77.

Figure 9.1 A classification of interest groups

 Interest Groups 211

Communal ties are based not on what people do or think but on the
communal bond itself. New members are born into the group, not
recruited. The clearest example of communal ties is the family, but the
term also covers ethnic, linguistic and caste groups.
At the other end of the scale are associational ties, formed for specific,
instrumental purposes. Here, people come together for shared but
limited aims: for instance, joining a society for wildlife conservation.
The interest-group system in any society largely reflects the relative
weight of communal versus associational ties. Communal relations are
more important in the third world, associational relations in the first
world.
As Figure 9.1 shows, the distinction can also be usefully represented as
a dimension along which different groups found in a society can be
located. Each of the four types shown in the figure - customary,
institutional, protective and promotional groups - is discussed below.

D Customary groups
These are groups such as the family which are not created for specific
purposes but which are simply regarded as part of the social fabric. They
are close to the communal end of the spectrum. Customary groups are
still important in the politics of many societies. In much of the third
world, politicians and officials are expected to use their office to benefit
their family or ethnic group. Kinship or personal ties are the main basis
of interest articulation. For instance, a government tax collector would
be expected by his relatives to arrange favourable treatment for the
family business.
Churches and sometimes social classes can have a distinctly custom-
ary character. The Roman Catholic Church, for instance, traditionally
bound its members closely together, though secularisation has weak-
ened the intensity of these links in the first world. Industrialisation in the
first world produced many one-class occupational communities around
industries such as mining and shipbuilding. But class loyalties have also
decayed along with the industries on which they were based. Customary
groups are therefore declining as a base of interest articulation in the
first world.

D Institutional groups
Midway between the communal and associational extremes are public
institutions such as bureaucracies and armies. These are formal
212 The Social Context of Politics

organisations which seek to influence government to act on their behalf.

Bureaucrats always want to extend their sphere of influence, the military
always claim a new weapon is essential. Institutional groups articulate
their interests and values within government. Because of their proximity
to the decision-making process, they can have major impact upon
policy-making. They are discussed in Chapters 14 and 15.

D Protective groups
Sometimes called sectional or functional groups, these are formally
organised groups which exist to protect the material interests of their
members, be they miners, college lecturers or managing directors. Trade
unions and employers' organisations are the prime examples of
protective groups. Such groups often have sanctions at their disposal:
workers can go on strike, for instance. For that reason, these protective
organisations are sometimes called pressure groups. This term generally
overstates the reliance of protective groups on pressure tactics, though
governments like to have cooperation from protective groups, and
sometimes depend on it.
In almost all liberal democracies, consultation between protective
groups and government is extensive. Rather than using pressure factics,
the influence of protective groups mainly depends on providing
governments with the information and technical advice needed to
anticipate the consequences of decisions. In return groups sometimes
acquire 'insider' status, and thus the potential to influence decisions.
Protective groups were less significant in communist states. The
ruling ideology never fully accepted the existence of autonomous
interest groups. In the Soviet Union, for example, trade unions had
only a very limited role in wage-bargaining. In postcommunist states,
the influence of protective groups, all seeking a better deal for their
members, is increasing.
Protective groups are often grouped into conglomerate 'peak' orga-
nisations, such as the LO (Landsorganatsionen) or Swedish Federation
of Labour. This represents the interests of the eight out of ten workers in
Sweden who belong to a union. How far such peak organisations have
the authority to make decisions for their member organisations varies
between countries, with important consequences for how countries are
run.
Table 9.1, based on an analysis by T. Matthews (1989) of interest
groups in Australia, provides an interesting classification with wider
application.
 Interest Groups 213

Table 9.1 A classification of interest groups

AIMS
Protective groups a group of - defends an interest, e.g.: trade unions
Promotional groups a group for - promotes a cause, e.g.: environmental
groups

SUPPORT
Closed groups membership is restricted, e.g.: medical associations
Open groups anybody can join, e.g.: environmental groups

STATUS
Insider Groups frequently consulted by government and actively
seek this role, e.g.: Canadian Bankers' Association,
British National Farmers' Union
Outsider groups not normally consulted by government - either does
not seek such a role, or denied it by government, e.g.:
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

BENEFICIARIES
Collective benefits go to both members and non-members, e.g.:
trade unions win pay increases for all workers;
cleaner environment benefits everyone
Selective only group members benefit, e.g.: cheap insurance
for union members only

ECONOMIC FUNCTION
Corporate promotes interests of providers of goods and services
e.g.: producers' associations
Attitude promotes attitudes and tastes etc., e.g.: consumer
associations

Source: Adapted from T. Matthews (1989) 'Interest Groups' in Politics in Australia,

ed. R. Smith and L. Watson (Sydney: Allen & Unwin).

D Promotional groups
Sometimes called attitude, cause or campaign groups, these are set up to
promote common ideas, values or activities. They do not protect
sectional interests. Uncontroversial promotional groups simply bring
together people who share similar tastes, hobbies or recreations. Such
214 The Social Context of Politics

bodies are almost entirely association ai, and only occasionally are they
drawn into political activity. More significant are groups with con-
tentious goals, formed specifically to influence government and public
opinion. Examples include pro- and anti-abortion groups, organisations
combating pornography or defending civil liberties. Contentious pro-
motional groups tend to be single-purpose organisations, but some such
as Common Cause and the Moral Majority in the United States promote
their conception of the public interest on a wide range of issues.
Such groups are not primarily concerned with their members'
personal welfare or material interests. They may, however, promote
causes that directly affect their members. Environmentalists, for
instance, believe that their policies will improve the quality of life for
everybody. They are seeking collective, rather than selective, benefits.
Compared with protective organisations which often have 'insider'
status, promotional groups have less easy access to government, and
typically employ publicity and persuasion as their main tactic. Promo-
tional groups are most significant in liberal democracies, with their
participatory cultures and secure civil liberties. In fact, they are a more
fashionable form of political engagement than joining political parties,
especially among the young.

o Geographic groups and social movements

Some groups do not really fit any of the categories so far discussed.
Geographic groups, for instance, are established to protect the interests
of people living in a distinct location. Often, though not always, they are
formed along negative lines. Thus, they are sometimes known as
NIMBY groups (standing for 'Not In My Back Yard'). The Channel
Tunnel between Britain and France produced NIMBY groups on the
British side. Homeowners in the prosperous south-east of England
opposed the construction of new transport links.
But geographic groups are not always negative. They are sometimes
concerned with attracting investment to their area. In Northern France,
the prospect of new investment and jobs generated by the Channel
Tunnel was greeted eagerly in an economically declining region. In New
Zealand in the mid-1970s, the population of Dunedin lobbied fiercely to
persuade the national government to give the city one of the two
proposed new container-port developments. The movement cut across
social and political lines (Wood 1988).
Broad social movements also sit uneasily in our classification of
groups. Social movements are broader, and less organised, than interest
groups. They seek, and emerge from, changes in attitude and awareness
 Interest Groups 215

across large segments of the public. The women's movement, for

example, representing a broad range of feminist opinion, has become
a significant political force in many first world societies. Social move-
ments are promotional in character but they are not in themselves
interest groups. Only when women's organisations are created to lobby
for political change (e.g. NOW, the National Organisation for Women,
in the United States) does the women's movement become an interest
group.
Similarly, the ecology or 'green' movement now has a significant
impact on politics throughout the first world. Many organised groups
exist to focus concerns about the environment, for example Greenpeace.
However, paid-up membership does not fully reflect the much broader
extent of public concern about environmental issues. Too strict a
concern with interest groups, narrowly defined, ignores the consider-
able impact on public policy made by social movements rather than by
organised groups .

• Channels of access
How are interests communicated to political decision-makers? What are
the channels through which this process takes place? Figure 9.2 sets out
three principal channels of influence. These are

1. Direct dealings with government;

2. Indirect influence through political parties;
3. Indirect influence through public opinion.

Policy affecting
interest group

Figure 9.2 Channels of interest group influence

216 The Social Context of Politics

The nature of the group makes a difference to the channels employed.

Protective groups normally concentrate on government institutions
generally and the bureaucracy in particular. Promotional groups, on
the other hand, are more likely to focus their attention on public
opInIOn.

D Direct dealings with government

This can itself take various forms. Here, we shall examine personal
petition, direct representation in the government itself, elite connect-
ions, contact with the assembly, the bureaucracy and the courts.
Personal petition to the ruler was perhaps the only possibility for
ordinary people with grievances in traditional political systems. In Saudi
Arabia, one of a handful of traditional monarchies which remain, the
king still dispenses personal justice to petitioners. Individual expression
of complaints to bureaucrats and elected representatives remains
important in all political systems, as the example of Sid Holland and
the missing plumber shows. For organised groups, however, other
modes of access are more important.
Representation in the political elite itself can be the most effective
form of access. Until 1991, for instance, the Soviet Politburo contained
the Minister of Defence and the Head of the KGB, conferring
institutional recognition at the highest level upon the Soviet military
and police. (This guaranteed favourable budgets but not, it transpired,
their loyalty.) During the 1950s in the United States, President Eisenho-
wer's Cabinet was full of business tycoons. His Cabinet was described as
'eight millionaires and a plumber' - and the plumber soon left (perhaps
seeking a new career in New Zealand!) The extensive links between
British MPs and organised groups of all kinds are revealed by the
Register of Interests kept by the House of Commons.
Direct representation for economic and regional groups is institutio-
nalised in the Irish Senate and in the Social and Economic Councils
found in France, Italy and the Netherlands. But direct representation is
not a cast-iron guarantee of group influence. Politicians perceived
merely as a mouthpiece for a particular group lose credibility with
their colleagues.
When direct representation is not possible, elite connections can play
an important role in facilitating access. 'It's not what you know, but
who you know' remains true in politics. Personal connections provide
informal channels of access. Japan is a good example. Retired bureau-
crats often take up positions in industry. This is called the 'descent from
heaven'. As a result, the 'old boy network' is more important in Japan
 Interest Groups 217

than in Britain. Similarly, in France, the pantouflards are civil servants

who have moved across to work as representatives for business
(Pantouflard means 'slipper-wearer' - someone who feels at home
dealing with their former colleagues.) Obviously, unofficial networks
of this kind are also highly selective. Only a few people can have
personal access to top decision-makers.
Furthermore, many former government officials make their personal
connections a saleable commodity. The increasing complexity of dealing
with government has led to the emergence of specialist firms offering
help for groups who want to deal with government. Such a practice has
long been common in the United States. Michael Deaver, Chief of Staff
to President Reagan, who put his connections in Congress and the White
House to highly lucrative use within weeks of leaving office, was only
the most notorious of many 'influence pedlars'. As politician turned
consultant, Gerry Caplan (quoted in Rusk 1991), says of the Canadian
government: 'Government has gotten so complex that a company, big or
small, or an interest group cannot wheel their way through the
intricacies without some advice.' He might have added that advice
rarely comes cheap.
Most interest-group activity is channelled through the bureaucracy in
liberal democracies. Even in Australia, where the federal system gives
groups a variety of channels of influence,
most interest groups that seek to influence public policy direct their activities
towards the executive branch. The bureaucracy's significance is reinforced
by its policy-making and policy-implementing roles. Many routine, technical
and 'less important' decisions, which are nonetheless of vital concern to
interest groups, are actually made by public servants. (Matthews 1989,
p. 217)

There is a clear convention of government discussion with organised

opinion in most countries, usually through consultative councils or
committees. Indeed, the initiative for consultation often comes from
government. Group organisation is sometimes government sponsored in
the first place. The European Community, for instance, gives financial
assistance to interest organisations provided they are European-wide.
Even in France, where the higher bureaucracy prizes its autonomy,
extensive consultation takes place between groups and civil servants. On
the national level alone, there exist no fewer than 500 councils, 1,200
committees and 3000 commissions, all bringing together group repre-
sentatives and the bureaucracy (Ehrmann 1976, p. 197).
Assemblies are another channel through which interests and demands
are voiced. How much group activity is directed at the legislature
depends on the assembly's role in the political system. A comparison
218 The Social Context of Politics

between the United States and Canada shows this point. The United
States Congress (and especially its committees) is a vital part of the
policy process. Weak party discipline and strong committees make
Congress an ideal habitat for lobby operations. Interest groups exert
substantial influence over individual members of Congress and
committee decisions. Large financial contributions by political action
committees (p ACs) to election campaigns make it hard for legislators to
spurn group demands. In the Canadian parliament, however, party
voting prevails. Lobbyists therefore concentrate much more heavily on
the executive.
If interest groups feel ignored in the policy-making process, they may
still be able to challenge decisions in the courts. This, however, tends to
be an arena of last resort. Opportunities for challenging legislation vary.
In the United States, business corporations routinely subject government
statutes and regulations to legal challenge. Class actions, that is legal
actions on behalf of a large number of people with a similar grievance,
are permitted and are fairly common. These are more difficult in
Australia, where litigants must prove that they have a personal and
individual interest at stake. The wider interests of society or the group
are not sufficient for a court to accept litigation (Matthews 1989). But in
Australia, as in all federal systems, the High Court can rule on the
constitutionality of legislation. Where parliament is sovereign, as in
Britain and New Zealand, recourse to the courts on these grounds is
impossible. In nearly all countries, legal action is expensive and time
consumIng.
International integration creates new patterns of interest-group
activity. Among them, are appeals to international courts. For exam-
ple, if an interest group in an EC country is unsuccessful at home, it can
try to challenge rulings of the national government and courts in the
European courts. As policy increasingly emanates from the European
Commission, so more interest groups are setting up shop in Brussels,
seeking to influence the administrators in the EC as well as seeking
redress in European courts.

o Indirect influence through parties

Relationships between parties and interest groups are often extremely
close. Some political parties are indeed the offshoot of interest groups.
For example, the British and Australian Labour Parties are essentially
creations of the trade union movement, though these historic ties are
now weakening. Interest groups can blur into (or sometimes turn into)
political parties. For example, the environmental groups have spawned
 Interest Groups 219

green parties. In the multi-party systems of the first world, the social
base of some parties is so narrow that they are little more than pressure
groups aiming for a share in government to pursue highly specific
objectives - for instance, the old agrarian parties in Scandinavia or the
religious parties in Israel.
La Palombara (1974, pp. 333-4) uses the term parentela (meaning
kinship) to describe relationships where parties and interest groups
display a tight family-type connection in which a sharp distinction is
made between insiders and outsiders. Clear examples of parentela
relations include trade unions and parties in France and Italy. Both
Catholic and communist trade unions have close relationships with their
own political parties.
Looser, more pragmatic links between parties and interests are found
in the United States. Business and organised labour gravitate towards
the Republican and Democratic parties respectively. But these are
partnerships of convenience, not indissoluble marriages. The tradition-
al maxim of the American trade union movement has been 'to reward its
friends and punish its enemies'. Business, despite its ideological affinity
with the Republican Party, still contributes heavily to the election
coffers of many Democratic members of Congress. Hefty donations
through political action committees ensure a sympathetic hearing when
a company takes a problem to a Democrat-dominated Congress.
Corporate donations to right-wing or centre-right parties are com-
mon throughout the first world. Furthermore, the ability of big business,
especially transnationals, to withhold investment or transfer it abroad
indirectly affects party policy, even for parties of the left.
In dominant party systems, the ruling party cannot afford to be so
tightly linked to a single interest. Nonetheless the dominant party can
become an umbrella under which different interests are expressed and to
a degree reconciled. Examples include Mexico's PRI (Institutional
Revolutionary Party) and India's Congress Party. Both parties provide
loose frameworks within which more specific interests compete for the
resources controlled by the party.

D Indirect influence through the media

Press, radio and television provide an additional resource available to
interest groups in their efforts to voice their opinions and influence
policy. By definition messages through the media are addressed to a
popular audience rather than to specific decision-makers. Thus the mass
media are a central focus for promotional groups, concerned to steer
public opinion in a particular direction (e.g. against violence on TV).
220 The Social Context of Politics

The media are less important to protective groups, with their more
specialised and sometimes secretive demands (e.g. opposing detailed
nutritional labels on foods).
Because journalists serve as gatekeepers, selecting some items and
excluding others in a way which certainly reflects and arguably shapes
the political agenda, it is important for interest groups to provide the
material that journalists want. As a general rule, employers' organisa-
tions are more adept at this than trade unions, a contrast which has led
to accusations that the mass media in liberal democracies are system-
atically biased against workers' interests (Glasgow University Media
Group, 1982, criticised in Harrison, 1985). Whatever the truth of this
thesis, it is clear that interest groups seeking serious media coverage
must convince journalists that they fall within the ambit of acceptable
opinIOn.
Finally, we should note that protest, direct action and violence can be
methods for the expression of political demands. Most commonly, this
is the resort of groups which have been denied formal access to
government. Until the last century in the first world, and far more
recently in other societies, the masses have been excluded from political
influence. Outbreaks of violence were, and may still be, the only way of
expressing grievances and frustration by people who have lost hope in
the future and have no trust in those who run society. Many first world
countries still experience large-scale public disorder: inner-city riots
remain endemic in England and the United States, for instance.
Sometimes, however, the use of coercive tactics may be carefully
planned by protective groups who find legitimate methods unavailing.
European farmers, especially in France and Belgium, resort to road-
blocks and violent demonstrations as a means of putting pressure upon
the authorities. In much of the third world, mass violence may be a
widespread method of demand articulation .

• What makes interest groups influential?

In determining the influence which interest groups can exert, individu-
ally or collectively, the key factor is the nature of the political system
itself. Within the law, the expression of interests in liberal democracies
is relatively unhindered, and is indeed encouraged by competition
between parties. At the other pole stood communist states. There, the
autonomous expression of 'unofficial' interests was tightly, if not
completely, controlled.
A second factor is the degree of legitimacy achieved by a particular
group. The aphorism 'What is good for General Motors is good for
 Interest Groups 221

America' makes an important point. Interests that enjoy high prestige

and perceived importance are most likely to prevail on particular issues.
Professional groups of lawyers or doctors, whose members symbolise
social respectability, can be as militant on occasion, or as restrictive in
their practices, as blue-collar trade unions. But lawyers and doctors
escape the public hostility that trade unions attract.
Third, the effectiveness of a group relates to the sanctions it can use,
and conversely depends on its usefulness to those in power. Protective
groups have more impact than promotional groups because they are
usually more important. With its wide-ranging responsibilities and
specialised activities, modern government needs the cooperation of
protective groups. It is, for example, difficult to run a system of medical
care without the cooperation, indeed the commitment, of physicians and
nurses. Often the government will depend on the protective group for
information on how policy is working in the field - and for suggestions
for improvement. By threatening a reduction in members' commitment,
or just by subtle reductions in the flow of advice which the group passes
on to government, pressure can be brought to bear.
A fourth determinant of influence is the resources available to an
interest group. These include finance, organisation and membership.
Money obviously helps. The National Rifle Association (NRA) in the
United States has an annual budget of $40 million. This allows it to
employ 275 full-time staff and 5 full-time lobbyists. The NRA clearly
has the resources to press its opposition to gun control at every available
opportunity. The coalition of gun control groups cannot match the
NRA's fire power when it comes to spending. The cause of gun control
depends more on winning endorsements from leading politicians,
sympathetic movie stars and other public figures.
Financial capabilities are probably more important in the United
States than in most other democracies. This is because more public-
relations activity takes place there and legislators are subject to more
(and more professional) lobbying. Even in the United States, hard-up
but skilful campaigners can generate free publicity and wide public
reaction. For example, Ralph Nader's Crusade for Car Safety in the
1960s stimulated wideranging product safety legislation. Since organised
interests so often counteract one another, financial resources alone are
unlikely to be decisive. Other political resources such as functional
importance and public respectability are likely to be more vital.
The relationship between objective resources and influence is not a
simple one. Size of membership, for instance, must be judged both in
terms of sheer numbers and, for protective groups, in terms of coverage.
What proportion of those eligible to join actually belong? Where
occupations are fragmented among several organisations, influence is
222 The Social Context of Politics

further weakened. For instance, American farmers are divided between

three major organisations with a lower total coverage than Britain's
National Farmers' Union.
Intensity of commitment is at least as important as size of member-
ship. Commitment determines how far the members of a group will be
willing to go in support of its objectives. Terrorists may be willing to kill,
indeed to be killed, in pursuit of their objectives. Less extreme groups
also try to increase membership commitment. Discussion groups,
meetings and rallies serve to increase morale and shield members from
cross-pressures, as well as propagating the group's message .

• The first world: pluralism or corporatism?

Interest-group activity is a fundamental feature of modern liberal
democracies. It creates a system of functional representation, which
operates alongside electoral representation. In fact, interest groups
cumulatively may have more influence upon decision-making than
elections and parties. Without doubt, interest groups greatly increase
the amount and quality of information available to governments.
Interest groups partly redress one of the defects of democracy, because
they reflect the quality or intensity of concern. If a group strongly wants
or believes in something, perhaps their views should carry more weight
than those of people who are not much bothered either way.
But the relationship between interest groups and democracy also
poses problems. Interest groups represent sectional, and sometimes
selfish interests. A small, well-organised minority may prevail over the
poorly organised or indifferent majority.
The two major models of the role of interest groups in liberal
democracies are pluralism and corporatism. These are best thought of
as opposing ideal types.

D Pluralism
The pluralist view, reflecting American experience, dominated early
postwar interpretations of interest-group activity. As we showed in
Chapter 1 (pp. 14-16), pluralism sees freely organised interest groups as
intermediaries in a two-way flow of communication between rulers and
ruled.
The pluralist model views government, in effect, as an arena for a
freewheeling interplay of interests. Industrialists, trade unionists,
teachers, ecology groups - all can have their say before the court of
 Interest Groups 223

Exhibit 9.1 Do interest groups strangle nations?

Students of politics have always differed in their evaluation of

interest groups. Pluralists regard them as essentia l transmission-
belts between people and government, complementing the role of
political parties. Others are more suspicious, claiming that interest
groups bend public policy towards their own narrow concerns. In the
1980s the A~erican political economist Mancur Olson (1982)
provided an influential version of this latter interpretation.
Olson argued that patterns of interest group activity are a major
determinant in the rise and fall of nations. Fast economic growth is
more likely where interests are weakly organised: contrast Hong
Kong with Britain, South Korea with Australia or the State of Florida
with New York State. Strong networks of interest groups will emerge
over time, however, unless society is shaken by major disruptions
(e.g. total defeat in war). These networks eventually cause political
sclerosis and slower economic growth. They are, according to Olson,
distributional coalitions of narrow, sectional interests: trade unions,
business organisations, professional associations. The fundamental
problem is that broader groups - consumers, say, or the unemployed
- are less well-organised. Just by virtue of their size they have fewer
incentives to offer to individual members. Hence needed change is
blocked and nations decline.
It was a controversial argument, cogently argued. It also proved to
be a a major influence on the political agenda of the 1980s. In many
liberal democracies, governments sought to reduce the power of
sectional interests to block change. The object was to ensure that
markets became genuinely competitive, thus forcing firms to put
their own house in order. Although Mrs. Thatcher's Conservative
government in Britain became the leading symbol of such policies,
similar changes were considered, and often implemented, in many
other countries. By the 1990s Olson's thesis had received widespread
acceptance, if not among all political scientists, then at least among
many politicians.

government. Because many people belong to more than one interest, the
temperature of inter-group conflict does not rise too high. Interest-
group activity provides a more precise and helpful means of transmitting
preferences to government than parties.
Pluralist interpretations of liberal democracies thus depicted a healthy
process of fragmented, dispersed decision-making in which few groups
224 The Social Context of Politics

and decision-makers were significant in more than one area. However,

pluralism lost ground to corporatism in the 1970s as a model of the
relationship between interest groups and the state in liberal demo-
cracies.

D Corporatism
Where pluralism implies competltlon between groups, corporatism
emphasises coordinated relations between groups and the state. In the
corporatist model, drawing mainly on postwar European experience,
public policy results from negotiation between the government and a
few powerful interest groups with which the government chooses to, or
has to, deal. These groups normally include 'peak' associations
representing industry and the trade unions. Though formally accoun-
table to their members, the leaders of these groups have considerable
freedom of action in their contacts with governments. The leaders' main
role is to carry their members with them after deals have been struck
with other power-brokers. This is more important than presenting their
members' views before decisions are reached. So corporatist groups are
also important in implementing policy: they can secure considerable
compliance from their members who may have little choice but to
belong (e.g. workers having to join a union closed-shop).
Negotiations between these interest groups and the government take
an administrative, technical form; policy-making is depoliticised. The
significance of electoral representation is also reduced. However,
dealings between the groups and the government are on a fairly equal
basis. They are neither state-dominated (fascism) nor group-dominated
(pluralism). The government remains an important independent force in
policy-making.
So in contrast to pluralism, which emphasises an upward flow of
preferences from group members to their leaders and then on to
government, corporatism stresses the downward flow of influence.
Also, whereas pluralism is in a sense the absence of planning,
corporatism is an attempt by the state and dominant interests to
develop a coordinated approach. The state controls its citizens and
the groups control their members.
The Scandinavian nations, Austria (see Exhibit 9.2), Netherlands (and
sometimes Belgium) have been described as corporate states. In these
countries, there is a tradition of compromise and consultation between
government and interest groups. As such, some commentators have
referred to Scandinavia as a region of consensual democracies (Elder et
al. 1982). It remains an open question whether they are corporatist states
 Interest Groups 225

Exhibit 9.2 Austria: a corporatist waltz?

Austria is undoubtedly the best example of corporatism (Fitzmaurice

1991). Many economic and social decisions in Austria are reached
through a system known as 'Economic and Social Partnership'. This
brings together all the major economic interests into an elaborate
network of organisations which is in turn connected with the
government, the parties and the bureaucracy.
At the top of this partnership stands the Party Commission. This is
an entirely informal organisation (no offices, no rules) which
nonetheless makes decisions affecting the whole working popula-
tion. It determines price increases, decides on the timing of collective
bargaining, ratifies wage increases and is an important forum for
discussion of overall economic policy. Final decision-making in the
Commission often ends up as a face-to-face talk between just two
people. One is the President of the Chamber of Commerce,
representing capital, and the other is the President of the Trade
Union Federation, representing labour.
Despite cynicism about the inevitable horsetrading and some
public disaffection, Austria's corporatist partnership has worked .
In the 1970s and 1980s economic growth was higher, and inflation,
unemployment and strikes lower, than the average for first world
countries. In many ways Austria's economic performance exceeds
Germany's. So why has partnership worked so well in Austria? Its
success is due to the following factors:

1. The existence in Austria of statutory chambers of commerce,

labour, agriculture, etc., to which all working people must
belong.
2. The extensive penetration of trade unions and business organis-
ations in Austria. For example, the League of Austrian Indus-
trialists represents over 85 per cent of private capital.
3. The centralised character of both statutory chambers and
voluntary organisations.
4. The organisation of Austrian unions on an industrial rather than
on an occupational or skill basis.
5. The desire by all sides to negotiate and compromise, having
experienced bitter conflict in the inter-war period.

In sum, corporatism is most likely to take root where centralised

interest groups can retain both a high density of membership and
extensive controls over their members.
226 The Social Context of Politics

because of a high level of social consensus, or whether corporatist

relations between groups and government has created that consensus.
As Wilson (1990) points out, corporatism is in practice a relative, and
not an absolute matter. In other words, no nation is fully corporate, and
corporatism exists to some extent in all societies. Some questions in
corporatist states may not be discussed with interest groups - such as the
Norwegian government's policy on non-membership of the EC. On the
other side of the coin, non-corporatist states also display some
corporatist tendencies. In particular, sectors of industry may have
corporatist relations with government: this has been termed meso-
corporatism (Cawson 1985).
Neither Britain nor the United States could ever have been described
as corporate states. In fact, anti-corporatism was a clear feature of
politics in Britain and the United States in the 1980s during the Thatcher
and Reagan leaderships. Corporatism was viewed as harmful to both
economy and society, because it invited excessive state intervention and
too much reliance on the state. Many of the formal structures that
brought groups into contact with government were either abolished or
marginalised. The tentative corporatism of British economic policy-
making in the 1970s was abruptly ditched, as the Thatcher government
undeviatingly pursued free-market ideology. Government contacts with
industry continued, but with individual companies or sectoral organisa-
tions, rather than with peak organisations. The trade unions were
virtually excluded from consultation.
Some large democracies show a pattern of semi-corporatism. France
perhaps, and Japan certainly, are examples of this halfway house. The
French state has always worked closely with big business, and in effect
chooses which groups to recognise and confer with. Even under socialist
governments, however, trade union influence upon public policy has
been limited. In Japan, the partnership between government and
business groups is closer still, though the trade unions have scarcely
any role at all in policy-making, except as a subordinate partner of
business.
Some political scientists argued in the 1970s that there was a long-
term trend towards corporatist policy-making in (economically success-
ful?) liberal democracies. From the perspective of the early 1990s, the
appeal and successes of corporatism are less obvious. Economic
recessions strained centralised wage-bargaining in several European
countries, as highly skilled workers in expanding industries pushed
for what they could get. A core weakness of corporatism is its lack of
legitimacy; in many democracies (though not Austria or much of
Scandinavia) corporatism runs up against deeply ingrained individual-
ism. Finally, the election of free-market governments in the United
 Interest Groups 227

Kingdom, France, Norway, Germany and New Zealand has greatly

weakened the notion that corporatist trends were irresistible.

I groups?
The second world: from channelled to active

In theory, the concept of interest groups and interest articulation was

alien to ruling communist parties. The only interests to be taken into
consideration in decision-making were those of the proletariat. As the
party itself embodied the interests of the proletariat, other interests
should be subordinated to those of the majority, as determined by the
party. But as we will see, things were more complex, especially in the
later periods of communist rule.

D Groups under communist rule

The interpretation of interest articulation in communist party states
underwent considerable change as these regimes evolved. Communist
party states were initially viewed as totalitarian regimes. This means
they were seen as extreme forms of ideological dictatorship, in which the
regime sought to control all aspects of life. Interest articulation by freely
organised groups was inconceivable under totalitarianism. The com-
munists reconstructed all group life, destroying opposition and harnes-
sing all organisations as 'transmission belts' for party policy. Trade
unions, the media, youth groups, professional associations - all served
the party in the great cause of communist construction. Thus totalitar-
ianism and pluralism were regarded as opposed concepts.
This totalitarian interpretation gradually became less relevant. On the
one hand, the use of coercion and terror declined. Conflict over policy,
on the other hand, did not. Observers increasingly accepted that the
struggle over power and policy was as endless in communist systems as
in any other. They also recognised that this struggle involved inputs
from below and was not always resolved by ruthless imposition from
above.
Both Western observers and some communist theoreticians then
applied some aspects of pluralism to communist societies (Skilling
1986, Hough 1983). Particularly in Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia,
and in a more limited way in the Soviet Union, writers acknowledged
that distinct interests could be expressed under communist rule. Indeed
they accepted that conflicts between interests could occur. However,
228 The Social Context of Politics

they denied that such interests were in conflict with the party. The
party's role was to arbitrate such conflicts.
But a fundamental point of contrast with liberal democracies
remained. Ruling communist parties tried to restrict interest articula-
tion to specialised, usually technical matters. Raising and resolving such
issues contributed to the smooth running of the system. But communist
parties continued to crack down vigorously on dissent which went
beyond these confines. Thus 'socialist' pluralism was more limited than
Western pluralism.
For decades, communist regimes sought to prevent interest groups
from operating beyond these limits. Their efforts involved both coercion
and co-option. The secret police infiltrated organisations, watching for
signs of deviance. Activists were persecuted and imprisoned, and their
families victimised. A more subtle approach was to divide and rule.
During the 1978-79 Democracy Wall Movement in China, students and
young intellectuals were not supported by older people. Those with
secure jobs within the system did not want to run risks by getting caught
up in calls for more intellectual freedom.
Communist parties also tried to channel interest articulation into safe
areas. They set up organisations representing various social groups.
These included a women's federation, trade unions, and federations of
writers and artists. These bodies never enjoyed true independence from
the party, and served as channels for relaying information downwards
rather than for expressing group demands upwards.

D The emergence of active groups

Despite the regimes' best efforts, independent groups did eventually
emerge. In fact, they played an important role in challenging communist
authority in Eastern Europe. Charter '77, an organisation calling for
human rights in Czechoslovakia, was the forerunner of Civic Forum,
which eventually replaced the communists in power. The role of New
Forum in East Germany was fundamental in mobilising the popular
mood against communist leadership. Similarly, the Hungarian Demo-
cratic Forum actively challenged the legitimacy of the communist hold
on power. Above all, in Poland, the independent trade union organisa-
tion Solidarity (supported by the Roman Catholic Church) emerged in
1980 to assert the interests of Polish workers. Nine years later, Solidarity
took over the reins of government from the communists.
Environmental groups also played a significant role in the fall of East
European communism, especially in Bulgaria. Criticism by Ecoglasnost
over the wanton destruction of natural resources and the appalling
 Interest Groups 229

pollution in industrial centres became a focus for the anti-government

movement in Bulgaria.
Perhaps more important, though, is the speed with which organisa-
tions have formed around nationalist, ethnic and religious bonds. These
communal groups may yet prove to be the most potent force for
instability in Eastern Europe. Nationalist forces brought about the
disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The continued
health of the Czechoslovak Republic is also threatened by deep tensions
between Czechs and Slovaks.
With the collapse of communist power, the expression of interests
exploded, and with it the demands upon government. But political
parties formed around coherent ideologies or durable coalitions of
interests are still embryonic. Yet economic revival demands urgent
decisions on the transition to a market economy. Under such condi-
tions, small but well-positioned groups can have a big impact. The
balance of power in Hungary, for instance, is affected by the Small
Landowners Party, which opposes rapid privatisation.
This example brings into focus an important aspect of interest groups
in the postcommunist second world. These groups do not fit easily into
our initial definition of interest groups as organisations which seek to
influence, but not to become part of, the state. In fact, postcommunist
interest groups are often indistinguishable from political parties. With
the nature of postcommunist politics still clarifying, there can be no
'normal' channels for interest articulation as there are no 'normal'
channels for anything. With everything up for grabs, the best way of
influencing policy is to form a party and seek election .

• Groups in the third world

So far we have used the contrasting models of pluralism and corporat-
ism to interpret developments in the study of interest articulation in the
first and second worlds. This approach has some utility for the third
world as well, though here the main theme is developmental. In
traditional societies little interest articulation occurs. This is basically
because the mass of the population falls outside the formal political
process.
However, almost all societies in the third world are now transitional.
Traditional ways of life are giving way to rapid urbanisation, indus-
trialisation, cash-crop agriculture, monetary exchanges, formal educa-
tion and growing penetration by the mass media. As these changes
proceed, so the pattern of interest organisation alters. For instance,
peasant leagues and trade unions appear, reflecting emerging political
230 The Social Context of Politics

cleavages. The conditions for the organised articulation of interests are

laid down.
But pluralist representation is hampered by weaknesses of organisa-
tion, finance and limited membership. Strong ethnic and tribal loyalties
also inhibit the growth of formal groups. Furthermore, landowners and
business operators rarely rejoice when peasants and workers begin to
organise. They are far more likely to plan reprisals against 'trouble-
makers', and press the government to suppress 'revolutionary' activity.
Where representative traditions are weak and civil liberties insecure,
groups may not be accepted by the government as legitimate actors in
the political system. Many countries, particularly those following the
Roman Law tradition (e.g. in Latin America), require groups to have
legal recognition. This can be used to restrict their operations.
A basic fact of third world life is that there are insufficient resources
to satisfy even the most urgent priorities. Faced with woefully inade-
quate resources and the uncertain outcomes of pluralism, rulers are
likely to veer between two strategies. On the one hand, they are tempted
to repress organised group activity altogether. On the other hand, they
may adopt a corporate strategy. That is, they may allow interest
organisation but try to control it. By enlisting the population, particu-
larly its more modern sectors, into officially sponsored associations,
rulers hope to accelerate the push towards modernisation. Both
strategies, repression and controlled representation, involve risks.
Mexico is a case in point. The ruling party (the PRI) is itself a
coalition made up of the labour, agrarian and 'popular' sectors. Trade
unions and peasant associations have access to the leadership of the PRI
through these sectors, but in return they are expected to exercise control
over their membership. With hardship and discontent endemic, workers
and peasants regularly break away from their associations. These break-
away movements then face continual harassment from the combined
forces of the state, employers and officially favoured unions. Business is
not part of the 'revolutionary family' of the PRI, but almost all large
firms are organised into the chambers of commerce and industry, which
have a close relationship with the government. Mexico thus exhibits
both corporate techniques of policy-making and the pluralistic tensions
these techniques fail to resolve.
Corporatist efforts by authoritarian modernisers can seriously back-
fire. Drawing students, industrial workers, market traders and the like
into front organisations can just aggravate discontent as it becomes clear
that consultation with government has little impact upon the price of
food or the availability of goods and jobs. Bianchi (1986) thus argues
that the aversion of third world rulers to freewheeling pluralism leads
them into the greater folly of 'unruly corporatism'. In a number of cases
 Interest Groups 231

this has destabilised the regime concerned. For example, such problems
fomented the discontent which led to the assassinations of Presidents
Sadat in Egypt and Park in South Korea. Similar difficulties contributed
to the overthrow of the Shah in Iran. The strains of modernisation in the
third world mean t~t the underlying impetus towards interest organi-
sation grows stronger. However, modernisation presents insecure rulers
with no easy choices about how to incorporate these groups into the
political process.

Summary
1. Interest groups are organised bodies seeking to influence public policy,
without trying to take over government itself. In liberal democracies, interest-
group activity amounts to a system of functional, alongside electoral,
representation.

2. Interest groups of different kinds can be located along a communal-

associational spectrum. A basic distinction is between protective groups and
promotional groups. Protective groups defend members' interests while
promotional groups express members' values.

3. The channels of access used by interest groups include direct dealings with
government, particularly through the bureaucracy. Indirect pressure can also
be applied through political parties and the media.

4. The influence of a group depends on several factors including its size and
share of membership; the sanctions it can bring to bear; its prestige; and its
financial resources.

5. Analysis of interest groups in the first world has been dominated by the
ideas of pluralism and corporatism. Pluralism sees a freewheeling display of
groups competing for the ear of government. Corporatism stresses joint
agreement between governments and a few privileged groups. These groups
then sell the deal to their members.

6. The pluralist model, deriving chiefly from American experience, lost out in
the 1970s to corporatist interpretations, based on the more economically
successful European nations. In the 1980s opinion shifted again towards free-
market thinking in economic policy. This favoured reducing the scale of
government intervention in order to 'free up' the market.

7. In the second world under communism, all group organisation was tightly
controlled by the ruling communist party. With the collapse of communism, the
potential for interest articulation has exploded, but many organisations remain
232 The Social Context of Politics

embryonic. They still straddle the boundary between interest groups and
political parties.

8. Interest articulation in the third world remains dominated by communal

groups. Governments often try to create corporatist arrangements, but because
of scarcity and mismanagement, these can be as unstable as a pluralist pattern.

DisclIssion points
1. Do interest groups have too much leverage on politics in your country?
2. Are protective interest groups in decline, and promotional groups on the
rise, in the first world? If so, why?
3. Why should corporatist arrangements work better in some countries than
in others?
4. Should interest groups be allowed to finance political parties and election
candidates?
5. Is the power of organised groups over the economy increasing or declining
in most liberal democracies? If so, why?
6. Will ethnic and national groups be more important than economic groups
in postcommunist systems?
7. Why are formally organised interest groups unimportant in much of the
third world?

Key reading
Wilson, G. (1990) Interest Groups (Oxford: Blackwell). A good recent
treatment, dealing with liberal democracies.
Ball, A. and Millward, F. (1986) Pressure Politics in Industrial Societies
(London: Macmillan). Covers both first and second worlds.
Cigler, C. and Loomis, B. (eds) (1985) Interest Group Politics (Washington,
D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press). Examines the interest group anthill in
the United States.
Olson, M. (1982) The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale
University Press). The most trenchant and controversial interpretation of
interest-group activity in recent years.
 Interest Groups 233

Further reading
The classic statement of the group approach to politics is Truman (1951). For a
useful survey of group theory, see Garson (1978). Wilson (1990) is a clear,
concise text by a specialist on interest groups. He has also written a
comparative study (1985) of business and politics.
Among the surveys of interest organisations in different countries, S. Finer
(1966) remains outstanding for Britain. Richardson and Jordan (1979) reflects
the shift of concern away from organisation towards the impact of groups on
policy, while Rush (1990) concentrates on their parliamentary activities.
Complementing Cigler and Loomis (1985), Berry (1985) is a very readable
treatment of interest-group activity in American politics.
For interest articulation in the Soviet Union see Skilling and Griffiths (1973)
and Skilling (1986). On concepts of corporatism, Williamson (1985) is a helpful
guide; see also Schmitter and Lehmbruch (1979). For the application of
corporatist ideas to particular countries and industries, see Cawson (1986)
and Grant (1985).
 • Chapter 10 •
Political Parties
The functions of parties 23S Parties in the third world 249
Parties in the first world 236 Are parties in decline? 253
Parties in the second world 241

The crucial difference between the political party and other kinds of
organised group lies in its relationship to the political system as a whole.
Whereas the aim of interest groups is to influence the state, the political
party seeks to occupy the decisive positions of authority within it. Thus
the defining characteristics of a political party are:

1. A conscious aim (realistic or not) to capture decision-making power,

alone or in coalition
2. The pursuit of popular support through elections
3. A permanent organisation.

Parties are creations of the modern age. They are a response to the
extension of the suffrage and the need imposed on parliamentary cliques
to develop extra-parliamentary organisation. 'Party', as Katz (1986) put
it, 'is a strategy for cultivating public support.'
The first generation of parties were 'internally created'. This means
they were formed by cliques within an assembly joining together to
defend common objectives. The Conservative parties of Scandinavia
and Britain are examples. These parties represented traditional elites
such as the court and the aristocracy. Originally organised on a loose
and informal basis, they had to reach out to a larger electorate if they
were to survive the transition to universal suffrage. They succeeded -
and none more triumphantly than Britain's Conservative Party, which
governed Britain (alone or in coalition) for sixty years between 1900 and
1990.
Most subsequent parties were 'externally created'. They were based
on demands for legislative representation by excluded, or at least
unrepresented, groups. The working-class socialist parties which
spread across Europe at the turn of the twentieth century are the main
examples here. But these are not the only illustrations. Later in the

234
 Political Parties 235

century, communist parties and nationalist parties emerged in the

second and third worlds. They demanded not merely reform but also
a complete transformation of society. More recently, green parties have
emerged in the first world from a growing concern with the environ-
ment, particularly among the young and well-educated .

• The functions of parties

What is it that parties do, as opposed to what they are? What roles do
parties play in the political systems of which they form part?
1. Perhaps most important, the political party provides a link
between rulers and ruled. The party is a channel of expression, both
upward and downward, which is crucial to the political management of
complex societies. In competitive party systems the upward flow of
communication from the ruled to the rulers is relatively strong. Even in
such systems, however, the party also functions as a vehicle for
informing, educating and influencing public opinion. Where there is a
single ruling party, the flow of political communication is mainly
downwards. In an extreme instance, such as Stalin's Russia in the
1930s, the 'democratic' expression of opinion from the grass roots of
the Communist Party was negligible compared with the 'centralist' flow
of directives from the top.
2. Parties also serve as important agents of interest aggregation.
This means they transform a multitude of specific demands into more
manageable packages of proposals. Where interest groups articulate
interests, political parties select, reduce and combine them. They are
political department stores, deciding which interests should be dis-
played, which should be left in the storeroom - and which should not
be purchased at all. Indeed, in communist party states, many 'demands'
were repressed altogether.
3. When in government, party leaders are centrally involved in
implementing collective goals for society. Parties have been the prime
movers in the revolutionary upheavals of the modern age. In the second
world, the enormous transformations of Russian and Chinese society in
the twentieth century were led by 'vanguard' communist parties
committed to radical social change. In the third world, nationalist
parties played a critical role in winning independence and in the
subsequent attempt to weld new nations out of traditional societies.
In the first world, parties contributed to the creation of welfare states in
the third quarter of the century - and to the shift towards more
competitive economies in the final quarter. In short, parties give
236 The Social Context of Politics

direction to government. A government without a party to energise it

runs the risk of becoming totally becalmed.
4. Parties also function as agents of elite recruitment and
socialisation. They serve as a major mechanism through which candi-
dates for public office are prepared and selected at all levels, and in
particular by which national political leadership is chosen. The party is
an essential stepping stone on the long journey to high office. If you
want to lead your country, you must first persuade a party to adopt you
as its candidate. In an era of party voting, this is often much more
difficult than persuading the electorate to vote for you. Thus political
parties, in all three worlds, act as gatekeepers, controlling the flow of
personnel into government just as they control the flow of ideas.
5. Political parties are often the objects of powerful emotional
attachment or antagonism, exerting an important influence upon the
opinions and behaviour of their supporters. In a complicated world,
they act as points of reference for their followers. This was most
obviously true of ruling communist parties, which made considerable
demands of their members. But many electors in liberal democracies
habitually vote for 'their' party, regardless of the issues or the
candidates; psychologically speaking, they can do no other. As Wallas
(1948, 1st pub. 1908) shrewdly observed long ago, party becomes 'an
entity with an existence in the memory or the emotions of the electorate,
independent of their opinion and actions' .

• Parties in the first world

Party competition is the hallmark of liberal democracy. It is the device
which makes governments responsive to electorates, providing voters
with some choice while also restricting that choice to <1 few broad
alternatives. This section examines the internal organisation of parties
and patterns of competition between them.

o Party organisation
Although parties are sometimes treated as unitary actors in political
theories (Downs 1957), this is a massive simplification. The internal life
of parties is a vital subject, acquiring special importance in those
democracies such as Italy where one party has proved to be a constant
element in government. Important features of party organisation are:
 Political Parties 237

1. The relationship between the parliamentary party and the party

organisation
2. Candidate recruitment
3. Factions.

1. The relationship between the parliamentary party and the party

outside parliament depends on the party's origin. Parties with parlia-
mentary origins give more weight to their legislative representatives
than externally created parties, particularly those on the left. However
McKenzie (1955) concluded from a study of British parties that
parliamentary government forces a concentration of party power in
the hands of parliamentarians, whatever the formal party rules. Daalder
(1987 p. 236) makes a similar point about Dutch parties: 'the parlia-
mentary groups are in all parties autonomous organisations, on which
the extra-parliamentary party can exercise no direct control. Parliamen-
tary parties choose their own leaders and determine their own political
stand'.
A contrasting account is offered by von Beyme (1985, ch.6). He
suggests that party organisations are still gaining ground relative to
the parliamentary party in virtually all Western democracies. Von
Beyme bases his case on the provision of state financial aid to the
party bureaucracy, on the inability of the parliamentary party to cope
with organisational tasks such as recruiting members and fighting
elections, on the strengthening of democratic norms within parties
and on the emergence of professional politicians dependent on their
political career (and hence their party) for their salaries.
Duverger (1964, 1st pub. 1951) was the first author to formulate a
theory of party organisation. He regarded the 'basic unit' of organisa-
tion as the key to a party's character. This yielded the classification
shown in Table 10.1.
The value of this classification has declined as parties have become
organisationally less distinctive. It never really fitted the United States,
with its originally spoils-based party organisations. Caucus parties have
developed extra-parliamentary structures; branch parties have at least
until very recently lost membership; and neither the French nor the
Italian Communist Parties now fits the tight structure of the cell model.
We would argue that other characteristics, especially the source of a
party's finance and its procedures for nominating election candidates
are more significant features of party organisation. Candidate selection
in particular merits closer scrutiny.
2. Given the central role of parties in political recruitment, candid-
ate selection is a crucial aspect of party organisation. As Schattschneider
238 The Social Context of Politics

Table 10.1 Duverger's classification of political parties

Basic unit Characteristics Examples

Caucus party Loose association of notables Conservative and Liberal

able to call upon localised parties created within the
personal followings. Weak legisla tures of
organisation; membership by nineteenth-century
tacit co-option. Largely sustained Europe; France's Radical
by the desire for office. Party in the Third and
Fourth Republics.

Branch party Large-scale recruitment and The externally created

socialisation of individual socialist parties of pre-
members a key objective. 1914 Europe.
Extensive territorial network of
branches. Relatively centralised,
with professional leadership and
strong party discipline in the
legislature.

Cell party Members organised into small Communist parties.

cells, based on the workplace,
with an emphasis on vertical
communication from leaders to
members. Little horizontal
communication between cells;
internal factions banned.
Members expected to be active.
Highly centralised; legislative
representatives closely
supervised.

Militia party A development from the cell Nazi Party's Storm

structure to the use of the party Troopers (though the
as, in effect, a privately Nazi party was also a
controlled fighting force, branch party); some
reproducing the disciplined paramilitary
character and structure of a organisations in
professional army. Northern Ireland.

SouTce: M. Duverger, Political Parties (London: Methuen, 1964), pp. 17-40.

 Political Parties 239

(1942) put it, 'The nominating process has become the crucial process of
the party. He who can make the nominations is the owner of the party.'
One dimension here is the degree of control exercised by the central
party. The most common pattern is for selection by constituency parties
under supervision of the national party (e.g. the major parties in Britain,
Denmark and New Zealand). The next most frequent format is national
selection after consideration of suggestions from lower levels (e.g. the
major parties in japan and the Netherlands). Nomination, then, is
certainly not the preserve of the party elite at the centre. Indeed in the
Netherlands, as in many countries using proportional representation,
candidate selection is a complex affair, based on a tug of war between
national, regional and sometimes local considerations.
A second dimension of candidate recruitment is the degree to which
ordinary party members can participate in the selection process. The
predominant pattern here is for candidates to be selected by committees
elected from the membership, rather than by members directly.
However Britain's short-lived SDP (Social Democratic Party) did have
a direct vote of party members (Ranney 1981) and the leading Belgian
parties still do.
The United States operates the unique institution of the primary
election, which in most states is open to any electors willing to declare
themselves supporters of a particular party. In a primary system
candidates impose themselves on parties more than they are selected
by parties. This takes candidate selection away from a small group of
activists, a common problem elsewhere, but distributes that control in a
haphazard way to the minority of electors who bother to vote in primary
contests. Primaries were introduced to eliminate corrupt party bosses.
But they have had the effect of weakening parties altogether. As primary
elections have become more prevalent, so political campaigning has
focused ever more on candidates and ever less on parties.
3. One important factor in the internal life of parties which does not
appear in the organisation charts is factionalism. Although factions are
often perceived as less legitimate than parties, they are an important
means for restraining the oligarchic tendencies of party leaders. A
faction is an organised, self-aware group which enjoys reasonable
stability of membership (Hine 1982). Factional conflict can be based
principally on ideology (as in Britain's Labour Party) or on spoils (as
with the Christian Democrats in Italy and the Liberal Democrats in
japan). In the 1970s and 1980s, policy-based factional conflict increased
in the Social Democratic and Labour parties of Northern Europe,
producing difficult management problems for party leaders (Hine 1986).
Spoils-based factions, as in Italy and japan are encouraged by an
electoral system which forces candidates from the same party into
240 The Social Context of Politics

competition with each other and by the long occupancy of government

by dominant parties.

D Party competition
Political scientists have given considerable attention to patterns of party
competition in the liberal democratic world. Traditionally a distinction
was drawn between two-party and multi-party systems. Two-party
systems, it was argued, showed regular alternation in office between
two major parties, had an adversarial political style which yielded sharp
oscillations in public policy, produced clear accountability of govern-
ments to the electorate and were found in 'first past the post' electoral
systems. Britain was always regarded as the major example though New
Zealand, which lacks third parties of the weight of Britain's Liberal
Democrats, is a purer case.
In continental Europe, by contrast, the multi-party pattern predomi-
nates. This is characterised by proportional representation, coalition
government and weak lines of accountability from rulers to the ruled.
Belgium and Holland are regarded as typical examples. Many discus-
sions of this distinction implicitly equated two-party systems with
political stability and multi-party systems with instability.
But it is now clear that the distinction between two-party and multi-
party systems is an inadequate guide to patterns of party competition in
the first world. The number of parties indicates the fragmentation of a
party system, but polarisation is at least as important. This indicates the
number of, and distance between, different 'poles' such as left and right,
religious and secular, pro-system and anti-system. Polarisation indicates
the intensity of ideological differences between parties and influences
the choice of coalition partners (Sartori 1976).
Following von Beyme (1985), we can distinguish four main patterns of
party competition in the first world. The first of these is where one party
is a constant element in government, either alone or in coalition with
some other parties, and can only be displaced (if at all) by an unlikely
coalition of virtually all the other parties in parliament. Japan is often
referred to as being a one-and-a-half party state. Not since the late 1940s
has the Japanese Socialist Party been able to seriously threaten the
Liberal Democratic Party's hold on power. This has led to the inter-
meshing of state and party which characterises such systems. Such
parties use state patronage to reinforce their strength, a phenomenon
which can also be observed with the Christian Democrats in Italy. Until
its defeat in 1977 the Israeli Mapai (now Labour Party) also occupied a
dominant position in its party system. Factionalism is common in such
 PoliticaL Parties 241

electorally strong parties. Factions contribute to a broad ideological

range and provide a mechanism for distributing spoils.
The second category is the two-party system. Now more of an ideal-
type than a concrete reality, the nearest instances to two-party systems
are to be found in countries with 'first past the post' electoral systems
such as Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. In terms of
votes, if not seats, the first three of these countries are really 'two and a
half' party systems. Britain's Liberal-SDP Alliance, Canada's left-wing
New Democratic Party (NDP) and to a lesser extent New Zealand's
Social Credit all approached or surpassed 20 per cent of the vote in
elections during the 1980s. In the United States, too, independent
candidates have had an impact on several presidential contests this
century. However, coalitions are unusual in two-party systems.
In multi-party systems a distinction can be drawn between moderate
and polarised systems, which gives us our third and fourth patterns of
party competition. Moderate multi-party systems are governed by
coalitions made up of parties of similar ideological persuasion. Hence
they are said to be centripetal - strengthening the centre. Coalitions
come and go but continuity of policy is maintained. Anti-system parties
receive little support. Parties may represent distinct religious or
linguistic groups but the ground rules of politics are well accepted by
party leaders. Moderate multi-party systems are found throughout
Scandinavia.
In polarised multi-party systems, by contrast, ideological differences
between the parties are so wide and deep that they severely limit the
number of feasible coalitions. Some parties, typically the communists,
are excluded from government altogether, a factor which reflects the
existence of, and strengthens, anti-system parties. Thus polarised
systems are said to be centrifugal, tending to denude the centre.
Italy was long regarded as the major instance of 'polarised pluralism',
with the communists gaining in electoral strength despite their exclusion
from office. But the communists are now more integrated into the
Italian system (and have briefly joined coalitions in Finland and
Iceland), leading some authors to question whether the concept of a
polarised party system is still useful.

• Parties in the second world

The collapse of communist control in Eastern Europe took almost
everybody by surprise. Not only foreign journalists and governments,
but also the people of Eastern Europe were amazed by the speed with
242 The Social Context of Politics

which ruling communist parties lost their grip on power. Political

scientists, too, were caught out. In the second edition of this book
published in 1987, we confidently asserted that 'In communist states, we
see no convincing evidence of the party's decline' - how wrong Hague
and Harrop were!
This section analyses the methods employed by ruling communist
parties to extend control over all areas of society. It also offers
explanations for the decline of communist party rule, and discusses
the problems facing political parties in Eastern Europe today.

o Ruling communist parties

In communist party states, it goes without saying that the key political
institution was the communist party itself. The strength and impact of
the party provided the basic point of contrast between communist states
and liberal democracies. Through its control of the state sector and mass
organisations, and also due to the wider definition of what is political in
communist party states, the party extended its influence and outreach to
an extent unknown in the first world. Virtually no sector or area of
society was free from the influence of the communist party. From party
domination of national-level politics down to classroom committees
and young communist cells in schools, the hand of the party was
everywhere to be seen.
In most communist party states (though not in the Soviet Union),
other parties did and do exist. However, only parties that supported the
leading role of the communist parties were allowed to continue
functioning - and even then they were usually prevented from organis-
ing at grass-roots levels. They were little more than a sop to intellectual
and other significant groups that the communists wanted to co-opt into
the system. They never held anything other than a symbolic role in
government.
The party justified its monopoly on political power by referring to its
vanguard role. Only the party and party members had the 'correct'
insight into the needs of the people. Only the party had the necessary
foundation in socialist theory to ensure that society was being moved
forwards towards socialism. In reality, the communist party began to
develop a dynamic of its own - maintaining the dominant role of the
party became an end in itself, rather than a means to the end of
achieving communism. As such, party members became a conservative
force in society, working in defence of their own interests. This is one
reason why the ruling parties in Eastern Europe proved fatally resistant
to change and reform during the challenges to their rule in 1989.
 Political Parties 243

The Chinese Communist Party is one model of how ruling communist

parties are organised. In China, inner party democracy is characterised
by a system of indirect elections. Under this system, committees elect
higher committees. For example, the highest level of the Communist
Party is the Political Bureau. The 15 or so members of this committee,
which represents China's 40 million party members, are elected by the
280 or so members of the Central Committee. Members of the
Central Committee are elected by the 1500 delegates to the National
Party Congress. These delegates are in turn elected by party committees
in China's provinces and large cities. However, nominations for
elections come from above - typically the higher organ presents the
lower one with a list of names which it is asked to approve.
In the 1980s some real democracy appeared in this electoral process.
More candidates stood for election than there were seats available.
However, the process of indirect elections within the party has served to
ensure that the voice of the individual party member is diluted as it
moves up the system. Furthermore, the decisions of all higher bodies are
binding on lower bodies. In other words, once the top committees
decide on a policy, everybody else is expected to fall into line and dissent
is not countenanced. In short, democratic centralism as practised in
China enforces centralism to a much greater extent than it encourages
democracy.
Communist parties invariably placed great emphasis on discipline and
ideological unity. One way of ensuring this unity was through strict
control of recruitment to the party. Unlike Western parties, joining the
communist party was a difficult task. Prospective members did not
simply sign up and send off their annual subscription, but had to prove
themselves worthy of membership. The usual recruitment ground was
the party's youth organisations, although the armed forces also proved
to be a way into the party at times. If a prospective member proved that
he or she had accepted the party's ideals, and was recognised as a loyal
follower, then he or she would be allowed to join the party. This was,
however, subject to a period of probation.
Even after the exalted position of party member had been achieved,
nobody was allowed to rest on their laurels. Party members remained
under close scrutiny to ensure that they did not step out of line.
Furthermore, party members were periodically requested to renew
their membership - typically after a power struggle within the party.
Those who came out too strongly in support of the losing line (and had
not confessed to their sins through ritual self-criticism) faced the
prospect of rejection by the party.
However, it was well worth going through all the trauma of being
accepted into the 'gang'. Party membership brought both psychic and
244 The Social Context of Politics

General Politburo
Secretary Standing
Committee

Secretariat

Central Party Offices

(propaganda
organisation etc.)
Military Affairs Central
Commission Committee

Central Discipline
Inspection
Commission

Central National Party

Advisory Congress
Commission

Provincial Provincial Discipline

Party Inspection
Committee Commission

County Party County Discipline

Committee Inspection
Commission

Primary Party
Organisation
(township, army
unit, etc.)
--+ elects
appoints

Figure 10.1 Organisation of the Chinese Communist Party

material benefits. As well as the feeling that you were part of the in-
group - part of the vanguard - party membership brought other more
tangible gains. Access to scarce goods and services, including foreign
travel, were all enhanced by party membership. Furthermore, under the
nomenklatura system, the party vetted appointments to many top jobs
in society and kept a list of suitable candidates. Having 'a good class
 Political Parties 245

background' (being the son or daughter of a loyal party member) eased

the process of joining the party. Access to higher education was also
easier for those whose parents were 'politically reliable'. As a result, the
benefits associated with party membership could be 'inherited', thus
creating something of a self-perpetuating ruling class in communist
party states.
The level of party membership in communist party states varied
greatly over time and also between individual nations. For example in
China, roughly 4% of the population are members of the Chinese
Communist Party, while in North Korea the figure is around 10%.
Although this accounts for a relatively high proportion of the total
population, even these figures do not reflect the extent of party control
over society.

D Means of control
Ruling communist parties maintained their influence over society in
several ways (see Figure 10.2).
First, and most obviously, the party held a monopoly of key decision-
making elites in the government. One of the functions of parties in all
political systems is to give direction and leadership to government. In
communist party states, the party's grip over policy decisions was
maintained by the penetration of the government and bureaucracy by
party members; this occurred to an extent unknown in the first world.

STATE
(Executive and
MILITARY bureaucracy)

Figure 10.2 Communist party control over society

246 The Social Context of Politics

Secondly, the party was staffed by a secretariat of full-time officials

with specialised responsibilities in all areas of society such as agricul-
ture, heavy industry, foreign affairs, transport, and propaganda. These
apparatchiki acted as watchdogs to ensure that party policy was
followed, and if necessary as troubleshooters who stepped in to sort
out problems with policy implementation.
Thirdly, the party vetted appointments to all positions of managerial
and administrative responsibility in society.
Fourthly, rank and file membership was organised along functional as
well as geographical lines. Thus factories, offices and farms all
contained party cells. Members of these cells were required to check
that party policy was indeed being executed. They also monitored the
political attitudes and behaviour of their workmates, and carried out
agitprop (agitation and propaganda) activities.
Finally, communist rule employed terror and coercion. The main
instrument of repression was the secret police, such as the fearsome
NKVD (later KGB) in the Soviet Union, which eliminated 'class enemies'
and 'poisonous weeds' from society. A vast network of informers was
recruited, some of them volunteers but many acting under duress. They
reported on their families, friends, neighbours and workmates.
By all these means the ruling party effectively penetrated society at all
levels, and acted to defend the interests of the ruling party elites.
Although the system was designed to ensure party dominance over
society, this never implied total unity within the party. Factional
conflicts were a key feature of communist party rule - most notably in
China. Since the Communists took power in 1949, policy has swung
radically as one or other group gained the upper hand within the party.
Purges and leadership struggles have been a fact of political life in China.
In Eastern Europe, divisions within the party also arose. Challenges to
the party leadership were made by communist leaders in Hungary in
1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. In the latter case, the reformist
Alexander Dubcek used the Slovak party organisation as a power base
from which to oust a Stalinist national leadership (he was soon
overthrown by a Soviet-led invasion). Similarly in multinational
Yugoslavia, the federal structure of the state precluded domination by
a central party elite.

o Decline and fall

For all their multiple layers of control, communist parties failed to build
genuine bases of popular support. Once they abandoned the harshest
forms of Stalinist terror and repression (hoping thereby to gain good-
 Political Parties 247

will), and relied mainly upon rising living standards for legitimation,
they became more vulnerable. Political opposition developed slowly but
steadily in several countries long before the final collapse. Solidarity
sniped away at communist rule in Poland throughout the 1980s. In
Czechoslovakia, Charter '77, the forerunner to Civic Forum, was active
from 1977 onwards. At the end, the communist regimes imploded. They
had become hollow, enfeebled, bereft of ideas and confidence, unable to
fight for their own survival.
Where communist parties did remain in power after 1989, their
positions were far weaker. In the Soviet Union, the party's condition
proved fatal. Gorbachev conspicuously downgraded the Soviet Com-
munist Party (CPSU). Millions of demoralised rank and file members
quit the party. Some prominent figures, such as Boris Yeltsin, resigned
and openly challenged communist rule. Yeltsin's election in May 1991 to
the Presidency of the Russian Federation proved to be a turning-point.
He wrested control of the Soviet Union's biggest republic from the party
which had ruled it for seventy years. With the failure of the coup by
communist hardliners in August 1991, the Soviet Communist Party had
dug its own grave. Gorbachev and Yeltsin buried the corpse. The CPSU
was dissolved, its assets and property were confiscated, its thousands of
functionaries were left unemployed, and its millions of members were
left to wonder what had hit them as the world they had built collapsed
around them. The most powerful party on the face of the earth was
blown off the face of the earth, a truly astonishing transformation.
'They say that I have come back to a different country'; said Gorbachev,
as he returned to Moscow after the failure of the coup, 'I agree with
this'. He soon found that there was no place for him in the new world he
had created.

o Postcommunist parties
The collapse of communist party rule in Eastern Europe and the Soviet
Union was bound to leave a political vacuum. In a desperate attempt to
hold on to power, some ruling communist parties tried to transform
themselves into democratic socialist parties. Thus, the Hungarian
Socialist Workers Party became the Socialist Party; the Bulgarian
Communist Party did likewise. Some of these 'new' parties were the
same old wine in relabelled bottles. The National Salvation Front (NSF),
under President Iliescu in Romania, quickly concentrated power in the
hands of ex-communists, including prominent former members of the
Ceaucescu regime. As a result, many noncommunist members of the
NSF resigned and joined new parties.
248 The Social Context of Politics

But the communist parties were not alone in making rapid and often
uneasy transitions into new political parties. In Hungary, Czechoslova-
kia and Poland, broad anti-communist coalitions filled the political
vacuum, but not without problems.
When the communists were in power, the opposition movement had a
common enemy. Once the communists were removed, the opposition
movements lost their major source of cohesion. Witness the comment of
Elmer Hankiss (1990), head of Hungarian TV and Professor of Political
Science at the University of Budapest:
We have lost the devil against which we have been battling and fighting for
forty years ... this enemy has played a dirty trick on us. The enemy
destroyed itself last September [1989]. We were left without an enemy, so we
turned against one another.

These divisions became evident in two ways. First, umbrella organi-

zations like Solidarity began to split into smaller components, such as
the socialist left, the trade unionists and the more conservative church
groupings. Secondly, small parties proliferated. By the summer of 1990,
there were over 100 parties in Poland, more than 80 in Romania
(including both the Romanian Social Democratic Party and the
Romanian Socialist Democratic Party), and 52 in Hungary. As Hankiss
has noted, this is a characteristic feature of democratic transitions. A
similar explosion of small parties occurred in Spain after the long
decades of authoritarian rule under General Franco. But after an initial
boom, the number of parties then rapidly reduced through mergers and
dissolutions as Spanish democracy found its feet.
Many of the former peasant parties from between the wars in Eastern
Europe have reappeared. Moreover, the rebirth of nationalism appears
to be a factor in virtually all postcommunist party systems. One result is
fragmentation. Even where there is a wide umbrella movement, such as
Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia, it is very difficult for anyone party to
gain sufficient power to push ahead with unpalatable but necessary
reforms.
Communist rule suppressed both new political parties and the
expression of social conflicts. With the shackles removed, the post-
communist nations of Eastern Europe are, to an extent, simultaneously
experiencing the first three waves of change outlined in Table 8.3
(p. 199): the national revolution, the industrial revolution and even, to
an extent, the post-industrial revolution.
Of these new divisions, the most significant are nationality conflicts
and the private/public sector division. But it is often difficult to separate
national tensions from centre-periphery conflict. For example, the
Slovenes seceded from Yugoslavia to satisfy national aspirations (they
 Political Parties 249

are a 'people' demanding self-rule). Croatia followed suit. Both Croats

and Slovenes feel that they have been exploited by Serbia and the more
economically backward Yugoslav republics. The disintegration of
Yugoslavia, long predicted, produced in 1991 the most serious civil
war in Europe since the 1940s.
Economic changes also have a profound impact on party support in
the second world. Several parties in Romania favoured a rapid
transition from a planned to a market economy. Without question,
this would have resulted in large increases in unemployment. The NSF
was returned to power, however, because the working class felt that its
interests lay in a reformed version of communist policies (a slow
transition, guaranteed employment, fixed prices). The cost is that the
economy grinds along in bottom gear and close to breakdown.
Similar trends can be seen throughout Eastern Europe. The Small-
Landholders Party in Hungary opposes the move towards privatisation,
because it fears an influx of competition. Communist-led unions in
Poland marched to protest against Solidarity policies, which they
claimed were harming the working class (reversing the roles of the
previous ten years). Throughout the second world, long-term economic
progress means bitter medicine has to be swallowed. As first world
politicians know in their bones and as second world politicians are fast
learning, the requirements of long-term economic development often
conflict with the short-term imperatives for electoral success .

• Parties in the third world

Until the dramatic transition to democratisation and multi-partyism in
the late 1980s and early 1990s, political parties carried least weight in the
developing world. Unlike ruling communist parties, ruling parties in
third world one party states were often weak and unimportant political
institutions. If politics in the second world was dominated by the party,
politics in much of the third world has been dominated by the state.

DNa-party systems
A minority of states get by with no parties at all. These are either pre-
party or anti-party states. Pre-party states are most commonly found in
the Middle East: for example, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Bhutan,
Bahrain and Kuwait. In these nations, politics is dominated by a ruling
family, and parties have yet to emerge or be permitted. Restored to
power in Kuwait by US and Allied forces from Iraqi occupation, the
250 The Social Context of Politics

AI-Sabah family (the ruling royal house) promised to introduce

democratic reforms. As they had previously scotched a nascent but
inconvenient parliamentary system, the proof of the democratic pudding
will again be in the eating.
In anti-party states, parties are simply outlawed, as happens in many
military regimes. Anti-party systems are not a stable form in the modern
world. Parties quickly re-emerge in military regimes as the transition to
civilian rule gathers pace.

One-party systems
One-party rule has been a feature of politics in the third world - and it
was the weakness of these ruling parties which accounted for the relative
unimportance of parties. Often the party was little more than a vehicle
for the nation's leader or a device for distributing patronage.
In Liberia, the ruling National Democratic Party was virtually created
by President Doe to shore up his position. (It didn't. He was captured
and killed by insurgents.) Similarly, in Bangladesh, General Ershad set
up the People's Party to facilitate his transition from military to civilian
leader. In Zaire, President Mobutu made every citizen a member of the
sole political party, an organisation built around the leader himself -
The Helmsman, The Redeemer, The Messiah, The Guide and the Father
of the Revolution. As such, these parties are internally created parties,
although they are very different from the internally created parties of the
first world.
Why should this be? What accounts for the weakness of parties in the
third world? After all in the ex-colonies, the British ones in particular,
departing rulers had erected a parliamentary system in which parties
had a rightful place. Furthermore, the fight against colonialism had
produced nationalist movements which in some cases, as with the
Convention People's Party (CPP) in Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast),
were capable of mobilising the population. But the situation changed
rapidly after independence. The fragile unity of the independence
movement disintegrated. Ethnic and regional identities took precedence
over party loyalties. When Kwame Nkrumah, leader of the CPP, was
overthrown by a coup, the CPP simply disappeared with him.
A further problem was a lack of talented replacements in the party, as
the leaders of the independence movement moved into government.
Once the state had been captured, it could be used to perform those
functions that parties fulfil in the first world. It also had far more
resources to dispense. Thus the party largely lost its purpose.
Finally, economic development called for nation-building and the
concentration of political resources. A single party might help with these
 Political Parties 251

tasks whereas a competitive party system would fragment modernisa-

tion efforts. As President Nyerere of Tanzania once put it, rival parties
were like football teams engaged in a futile game while avoiding real and
serious difficulties. Economic development required technical expertise.
If this existed anywhere, it was in the bureaucracy rather than the party.
However, Nyerere has since had to accept more than one football team
in Tanzanian politics.
Many 'one party' states in the third world became, in reality, no-party
systems. They stood in sharp contrast to the disciplined party rule found
in communist states. Kenya was an example of several African states
(others include Tanzania and Zambia) which were one-party states only
in a notional sense. The Kenyan African National Union (KANU)
became the country's sole party in 1969. Yet it barely functioned
outside election campaigns and lacked any meaningful central organisa-
tion. During election campaigns, competition was intra-party as rival
candidates proclaim their skill at extracting resources from the central
government for their constituency - a power generator, a road, a new
school. This local competition suited national leaders who were left free
to deal with national policy-making. It is notable that KANU was the
most resistant of all African ruling parties to the wind of change
sweeping the continent in the late 1980s.
In an analysis of parties in contemporary African politics, T ordoff
(1984) noted a sharp decline in functional importance since indepen-
dence. In some states, parties were little more than a public relations
device used by the state in its quest for legitimacy. In many other
countries parties became merely a channel for distributing resources to
favoured local politicians. Parties may also have a weak role to play in
encouraging national integration but very rarely played a central role in
the policy-making process.

o Multi-party systems
Of course there are exceptions. One former colony which has retained a
dominant party, operating in a competitive political market, is India -
the world's largest democracy. There is no shortage of parties in India:
over thirty parties are represented in the Indian assembly, and there are
more than sixty regional parties. These range from religious-based
parties, to those based on ethnic or regional groups, to ideologically
based parties. However, the dominant party since independence in 1947
has been the Congress Party: a broad-based left of centre party which
has emphasised secularism in a nation increasingly riven with religious
tensions.
252 The Social Context of Politics

The Congress Party has been dominated by the Nehru family since
1947 - three generations of the family have led the party and
consequently the nation (Jawarharlal Nehru, India's first prime minis-
ter; his daughter, Indira Gandhi; and her son, Rajiv). Though Congress
has held power nationally most of the time since independence, it is now
less able to dominate Indian politics. In the 1991 election (marred by
great violence, including Rajiv's assassination) it emerged as the largest
single party but failed to secure an overall majority.
Some other countries in the third world have seen strong parties,
combined on occasion with a competitive party system. In several Latin
American countries, for example, the party system around the turn of
the twentieth century involved competition between liberal and con-
servative factions in the ruling elites. However, in contrast to Europe,
these elite-level factions did not develop into mass parties seeking
electoral support. Elite resistance to incorporating the masses into
politics was far stronger. This produced a situation in Latin America
where party competition oscillated with periods of military rule.
Sustained by oil revenues Venezuela is one of the few South American
countries to have had continuous party competition since the 1950s.
Mexico also has a strong party in the Institutional Revolutionary
Party - so strong, indeed, that other parties are tolerated only as long as
they show no signs of winning any elections that matter. Mexico is as
exceptional in Latin America as India is in the newly independent
countries. But systems with dominant parties can be found elsewhere
in the third world. For example, Lee Kwan Yew's People's Action Party
has similarly dominated the politics of Singapore.
Such parties rarely rely just upon the voters' gratitude. They restrict
press and media freedom in order to manipulate public opinion. They
run smear campaigns against opposition figures. They hint (or plainly
threaten) retribution against those who vote against the party. Failing all
else, and certainly in Mexico's case, the dominant party falls back on
straightforward ballot-rigging.
The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe was a dramatic and
rapid affair. The move away from authoritarianism and towards
democracy in the third world may have been less of a media event,
but has nevertheless been striking. With the resurgence of democracy,
the importance of parties in the third world has also increased.
Emergent democracies in the third world share many of the features
of the postcommunist second world: the proliferation of small parties,
soaring popular expectations followed by plummeting disappointment,
inexperienced leadership and so on. They are also less sure of their
future than the new democracies in Eastern Europe, which can look to
the West for aid and protection. But the West will certainly not provide
 PoLiticaL Parties 253

aid and protection throughout the world. If things do not go well in the
fledgling democracies of the third world, the men in uniform may again
take a hand .

• Are parties in decline?

What is the future of party government? Will the political party remain a
key link between society and state or is the era of the mass party already
coming to an end? This is a suitable question to consider in this
concluding section of the chapter, allowing us to extend some of the
points we have already made.
The thesis of party decay is plausible, especially if one subscribes to
the 'crisis' theory of parties. This theory suggests that parties will
eventually outlive their usefulness. They arise in response to important
problems - integrating the mass electorate into politics, say, or
hastening the departure of colonial rulers. Once successful in over-
coming the problem, the party loses its purpose.
The fate of communist parties in the second world clearly fits this bill.
They succeeded in industrialising and modernising many of the
countries they ruled. But with this mission largely accomplished, ruling
communist parties lost heart and drive. Instead of leading society, they
became a brake on its further development. Once the prop of support
from the Soviet military was removed, they fell down dead.
A similar, if less dramatic, fate may befall some of the parties that
took power from the communists in Eastern Europe. Their mission was
to provide a transition from a one-party to multi-party political system.
It is difficult to see a long term future for Solidarity, Civic Forum and the
Hungarian Democratic Forum in their present form. Of course, this
does not mean that parties have no role to play in the new Eastern
Europe. The 'umbrella' organisations may break up, but they will
fragment into - or be replaced by - more coherent parties reflecting
cleavages now surfacing after decades of enforced conformity under
communist party rule.
The thesis of party decline can also be applied to the first world. The
conflicts of class and religion which fuelled party systems have softened,
diluting the social base of parties. Voters' party loyalties have weakened,
producing more pragmatic and instrumental electorates. This has
encouraged what Kircheimer (1966) termed 'catch-all' parties which
trawl the electoral market in search of whatever support they can find.
Party decay has gone furthest in the United States. Election campaigning
at every level has become candidate-centred rather than party-centred.
Reasons for this include the increased use of primary elections to select
254 The Social Context of Politics

candidates and changes in campaign finance laws, but fundamentally

the American electorate is 'tuning out' parties, regarding them as less
and less relevant to their voting decisions.
In the USA and throughout the first world, the growth of the mass
media has had a profound impact on politics. Politicians have to
'perform' for the millions sitting at home watching them, and voters
are increasingly mobilised by party leaders via television, not by
canvassers. As a result, local party organisation has declined and
parties in several democracies have had to turn to the state for financial
support, starting with West Germany in 1959 and Sweden in 1965.
New generations of voters enter politics through single-issue groups
rather than the broader coalitions of a political party. It is very rare for
an individual to agree with all the policies promoted by 'catch-all'
parties. As a result, it is much easier to identify with and strongly
support the single issue being promoted by a movement as opposed to
the plethora of issues being promoted by a party. The whole idea of
party government, in which a single party is given a free rein until
the next election, has come under attack, most of all in its British
homeland.
Although the thesis of party decline has some strengths, we believe
that the role of parties is changing rather than decaying. In the first
world, British-style government by a single party is under attack, but the
alternative is government by many parties rather than by none. It is also
important to note that the declining effectiveness of party government
does not imply any reduction in its extent (G. Smith 1989).
Parties in the West have borne the double burden of increasing
demands from the voters at a time of budgetary pressures and growing
social complexity. But the fact that governing parties have taken much
of the popular blame indicates their continued centrality to the political
process. Indeed, in the new democracies of Portugal and Spain, parties
are still gaining ground. Parties will continue to play major roles in
recruiting political leaders who direct and, increasingly in conjunction
with interest groups, control society.
The de-radicalisation of left-wing parties provides another example
of parties adapting to avoid decay. The historic mission of socialist
parties, based on protecting workers' interests against those of employ-
ers, arguably has less relevance in a world where economic competition
is international rather than inter-class. Certainly, the traditional
socialist remedies of public ownership and entrenched rights of trade
unions have less relevance in an economic system in which the market
has triumphed.
The death of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), after a protracted
struggle within the party, is a case in point. The collapse of communist
 PoLiticaL Parties 255

party rule in Eastern Europe clearly had an impact on the way Western
communist parties perceived their future. However, Bull (1991) argues
that great changes would have taken place in the PCI even if the
revolutions of 1989 had not occurred. Moves to adopt a policy platform
based on electoral reform, industrial democracy and support for
progressive social movements were first proposed late in 1988. The
belated shift to the centre ground by Britain's Labour Party in the second
half of the 1980s is another example of de-radicalisation on the left. The
decision by New Zealand's Labour Party to embrace right-wing
'Rogernomics' was perhaps the most surprising switch ofal!.
In the third world, the future of parties is as yet uncertain. The
transition to democracy is still in its early stage, and the threat of a
reversion to military and/or authoritarian rule cannot be disregarded,
particularly in Africa. However, in general, the remarkable wave of
democratisation that has swept the third world indicates an increasingly
important role in politics for parties. Rather than being in decline,
parties in the third world are only just beginning to take their place in
many political systems.

Sllllllll a ry
1 Political parties are permanent organisations that seek to capture decision-
making power within the political system. They provide a channel of
expression between the rulers and the ruled.

2. Parties select, reduce and combine interests into a manageable package of

proposals. They give direction to government and organise the administration.
They act as agents of elite recruitment and socialisation. They act as emotional
'reference groups' for their followers.

3. Party competition is the hallmark of liberal democracy. Communist party

states, by contrast, were characterised by the dominance of government and
society by_ the ruling party.

4. The three main waves of charge that transformed the social bases of parties
in the first world were the national revolution, the industrial revolution, and
post-industrial influences.

5. Party organisation in the first world depends on: the relationship between
the parliamentary party and the party organisation; control over candidate
recruitment; and the strength of factional alliances within parties.

6. Membership of ruling communist parties was restricted to 'politically

correct' applicants, and members were carefully scrutinised. Eventually ruling
256 The SociaL Context of PoLitics

communist parties became a moribund 'ruling class'. Parties in the postcom-

munist second world are more volatile, displaying a state of flux and transition.

7. Parties generally played a minor role in the third world, once independence
was achieved. No-party and one-party systems were the dominant form, with
parties acting as a personal vehicle of the leader and as a device for distributing
patronage.

8. The crisis theory of party development suggests that parties decline after
they outlive their usefulness. But democratisation in the second and third world
has led to renewed importance for parties.

DisclIssion points
1. Given that ruling communist parties controlled all significant levels of
power, why did they collapse?
2. Will single-issue parties like the greens ever become catch-all parties?
3. Do members of parliament have more in common with the representatives
of other parties than with their own rank and file?
4. Compare how ruling parties in the second and third worlds attempted to
control and modernise society.

Key reading
Duverger, M. (1964) Political Parties (London: Methuen). Despite outdated
empirical data, a good introduction to the classification of parties.
Lipset, S. and Rokkan, S. (1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments, (New
York: Free Press). The seminal work on the development of European party
systems.
Mair, P. (1990) The West European Party System (Oxford: Oxford University
Press). A wide-ranging analysis of parties and party systems in Western
Europe.
Randall, V. (ed.) (1988) Political Parties in the Third World (London: Sage).
Case studies of party systems from all areas of the third world.
White, S., Gardner, j., Schopflin, G, and Saich, T. (1990) Communist and
Postcommunist Political Systems: An Introduction, 3rd edn, (London:
Macmillan). Chapter 4 provides an excellent introduction both to the
structure of ruling communist parties, and to the origins of parties in the
postcommunist second world.
 Political Parties 257

Further reading
A good place to start is Kircheimer's important article (1966) on the transform-
ation of party systems in Western Europe which appears in the influential
volume edited by LaPolombara and Weiner (1966). Wolinetz (1979) is an
update of Kircheimer. The seminal work on the development of European
party systems is by Lipset and Rokkan (1967); more recent discussions can be
found in Daalder and Mair (1983) or, as a second choice, Merkl (1980). An
authoritative work on parties is Sartori's (1976) important but difficult general
book while von Beyme (1986) contains much information on Western parties.
Castles and Wildemann (1986) is a careful study of the problems of party
government; see also Rose (1976). On social democratic parties in particular,
see Thomas and Paterson (1986). For a good general account of American
parties, see Sorauf (1985), while Epstein (1980) is still an outstanding treatment
of the development of parties in Western democracies.
On the Soviet Communist Party, see Hill and Frank (1983). On communist
parties in general see S. White, Gardner, Schopflin and Saich (1990) or Bertsch
et at. (1992). On third world parties, Zolberg (1966) was an influential early
work; a recent treatment is Randall (1988). Tordoff (1984, ch. 5) is a clear
discussion of parties in Africa. Clapham (1985, especially ch. 4) includes
perceptive comments on third world parties.
 • PART 4 •
THE STRUCTURES OF
GOVERNMENT
We examine here the key institutions of national government:
executives, assemblies, bureaucracies. We also look at 'the state in
uniform': the military and the police. In most societies these are the
central structures through which power is exercised, and policy is
shaped and implemented. However, it is the relationships between
these institutions, rather than their internal workings, which are
crucial. We therefore begin this part with a chapter on constitutions,
federalism and the judiciary. In a growing number of countries,
though by no means all, these provide a framework within which the
institutions of national government operate.
 • Chapter 11 •
The Constitutional
Framework
Constitutions 262 Unitary government 276
Federalism 268 The judiciary 279

Most nation-states have a formal constitution. Until recently, however,

the study of constitutions was only a major theme of political analysis
within liberal democracies. This was because liberal democracy is partly
defined as constitutional government: that is, as government in
accordance with, and limited by, formal rules. In addition, several
liberal democracies - including Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain and Sweden - have adopted new constitutions since
1970. This has given new impetus to constitutional studies.
Elsewhere, constitutions received less attention from students of
politics - and with good reason. Constitutions were often ignored by
politicians, or were nothing more than window-dressing, or were just
bland statements of national goals. For example, India's constitution
contains articles about freedom; equality; exploitation; religion; proper-
ty; standards of living; equal pay; the right to work; and free and
compulsory education. These are important aspirations but many are
not yet feasible in the Indian context. However, the dramatic spread of
democracy through the second and third worlds in the 1980s and 1990s
has greatly broadened the scope and importance of constitutional
studies.
Constitutions are especially important in determining the territorial
distribution of powers within the nation-state. Federal states invariably
have a written constitution specifying the formal distribution of powers
between the central and subnational governments. This contrasts with
unitary states, where sovereignty is reserved to the central government.
The territorial distribution of power, particularly in its federal form, is
discussed on pp. 268-76.
Constitutional government requires a means of arbitrating disputes
about the constitution. This task falls to the judiciary, usually in the
form of a supreme constitutional court. Again, such courts are
particularly important in federations. Although judges must attempt
to remain aloof from the party battle, it is clear that they are important

261
262 The Structures of Government

political actors in any constitutional government. The judiciary IS

discussed on pp. 279-84 .

• Constitutions
Described by Duchacek (1970) as 'power maps', constitutions indicate
the formal distribution of authority within the state. More explicitly, a
constitution is a set of rights, powers and procedures regulating the
structure of, and relationships among, the public authorities, and
between the public authorities and the citizens (Robertson 1985). In
other words, a constitution defines the rules of the political game: it lays
down the laws that govern the governors (Watson 1989). Even
authoritarian and repressive regimes rarely dispense with constitutional
appearances completely; constitutions are part of the tribute that vice
plays to virtue. However, unless the constitution reflects dominant
values within society, its prospects for stable and successful operation
are poor.

D Classifying constitutions
There are several types of constitution (Elazar 1985):

1. The constitution as a loose frame of government, in which details

evolve through custom and subsequent adaptation. The US con-
stitution is the best example: it was originally silent on many points
which have had to be clarified by judicial interpretation.
2. The constitution as a state code in which the powers of, and
relationships between, political institutions are specified in con-
siderable detail. This is characteristic of the constitutions of West
European nations such as France and Germany.
3. Some constitutions are revolutionary manifestos, setting forth a far-
reaching programme of social transformation. The constitutions of
communist party states were examples.
4. The constitutions of many third world countries set out political
ideals, an image of the world as the regime would like it to be rather
than as it is.
5. Finally, in a few cases the constitution embodies an ancient source of
authority. Britain's 'unwritten' constitution centres upon the
sovereignty of Parliament. Israel's constitution is also unforma-
lised, though the sovereignty of the Knesset (parliament) derives
from the Torah (Jewish holy book).
 The Constitutional Framework 263

D The origins of constitutions

How do constitutions come into being? Most often, they are enacted in
circumstances of a 'fresh start' after profound disruption of some kind.
These disruptions include: regime change (as in France, a dozen times
since the 1789 revolution); reconstruction after defeat in war (as in
Germany, Italy and Japan after 1945); revolution (as in communist party
states); and achieving independence (as in most of Africa in the 1950s
and 1960s).
The Spanish constitution is a more recent example of a 'fresh start'. It
was introduced in 1978, after nearly forty years of authoritarian rule
under General Franco. Political change in Spain had lagged behind
economic and social development. Support for a 'modern' political
system was widespread but the transition to a new regime is never easy.
Supporters of the old system had to be coaxed into accepting the new
regime. Issues such as the role of the Catholic Church in society and
demands for regional autonomy were deeply divisive. But with the
steadfast commitment of King Juan Carlos and skilful government
leadership, the constitution successfully weathered a variety of political
crises. Membership of the European Community consolidated Spain's
transition to liberal democracy. Given the long history of instability,
political violence and authoritarianism in Spain since Napoleonic times,
the construction of a stable constitutional democracy was a major
political achievement.
Spain illustrates two points which are typical of constitution-making
during the transition to a democratic regime (Bogdanor 1988, p. 9).
First, the constitution was drawn up by people who had become
influential under the old non-constitutional regime. A new constitution
does not mean a new ruling elite. Secondly, to secure acceptance of the
new democratic constitution, it had to be introduced in a 'top-down'
fashion, using methods which were far from democratic.
Constitutions are not 'once and for all' documents. They are
amended or interpreted in response to changing circumstances. The
US Constitution, for instance, has been formally amended 26 times in
two centuries of operation. Less formal, but probably more significant,
constitutional adaptation has taken place through judicial interpret-
ation (see pp. 282-3).

D Revising and replacing constitutions

Communist party states adopted a different approach to constitutional
change. They regarded different constitutions as appropriate to specific
264 The Structures of Government

stages of social development. Thus the Soviet Union's official attain-

ment of socialism in 1936 was marked by the promulgation of the
'Stalin' constitution. Some forty years later, the 'Brezhnev' constitution
consolidated intervening developments which had brought the country
to what its rulers regarded as 'advanced socialism'.
Because a constitution sets out the ground rules of politics, it can
become the focus of intense political conflict. As President Gorbachev's
drive for perestroika in the Soviet Union stalled at the end of the 1980s, a
'War of the Laws' unfolded. The 15 republics sought to redefine their
relationship with the All-Union government at the centre - and in some
cases to secede from it. Failure of the conservative coup in August 1991
opened the way for Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Republic, and
his reformist allies, to drive through a constitutional revolution. The
Soviet Union, which had been in the grip of the Communist Party for
seven decades, was dissolved in favour of a loose confederation. With
the proclamation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in
November 1991, the formerly all-powerful central government was
abolished.
Several liberal democracies, especially Belgium and Canada, have also
experienced a resurgence of constitutional politics in response to
separatist and linguistic conflicts. In 1971 Belgium adopted the
principle of a near-federal constitution, with extensive autonomy for
both Flemish- and French-speaking areas. But successive governments
have stumbled over implementing the changes in detail (G. Smith 1989,
p.318).
Canada, a federal system with a relatively weak centre, has been
under pressure since the 1960s from rising French-Canadian nationalism
in Quebec. At the same time, English-speaking provinces in the West
and maritime East, resentful of further concessions to Quebec, have
wanted more political say. Successive attempts have been made to
engineer a constitutional solution: first, official bilingualism and
biculturalism; then in 1981 'patriation' of the constitution. This meant
making it henceforth the sole concern of Canadians, and no longer
involving the Westminster Parliament, a legacy of colonialism. More
recently, the Meech Lake Accord of 1987 conceded Quebec's desire to be
recognised as a separate nation, but antagonised many outside Quebec.
Some provinces refused to accept the Accord and it therefore lapsed in
1990, leaving Canada with an uncertain future (see Exhibit 11.1).
Constant constitutionalising in Canada reflects the strains on its
political system. The country's identity is still uncertain; is it a partner-
ship of two peoples or a federation of ten provinces?
As Canada's first prime minister put it, 'too much geography, not
enough history'. Canada lacks a consensus about provincial-federal
 The Constitutional Framework 265

Exhibit 11.1 The European Community: a chronology

The European Community (EC) is the major example in the world

today of countries choosing to pool sovereignty. Its members have
different motives in coming together. Some are concerned to prevent
a reversion to the wars which twice ravaged the continent in the
twentieth century. Others, like Britain, see the EC in economic terms
- as a large, affluent market which provides opportunities to those
inside it - and, more to the point, a threat to those left outside. Here
is a brief chronology of the major events in the continuing evolution
of this major supra-nationa l institution.

1951
European Coal and Steel Community Treaty (ECSC) signed by
Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands
('The Six'). This established supranational institutions to enforce a
free trade area in some basic industrial goods.
1957
The Six sign the Treaty of Rome, establishing the European
Economic Community (EEC).
1961
Ireland, Denmark and the UK request negotiations about joining the
EEe.
1963
France's President de Gaulle vetoes UK entry.
1967
European Community (EC) created through merger of EEC, ECSC
and Euratom.
1972
Majority vote against entry to the EC in referendum in Norway .
1973
Denmark, Ireland and the UK join the Ee.
1975
A majority vote for continued membership of the EC In UK
referendum .
1979
European Monetary System (EMS) comes into operation. First direct
elections to the European parliament.
cont.
266 The Structures of Government

1981
Greece joins the EC.
1986
Spain and Portugal join the EC. Single European Act concluded, to
speed up economic integration.
1990
German reunification brings the former East Germany into the EC.
1993
The internal market is supposed to be complete.

Source: N. Nugent, The Government and Politics of the European

Community (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991) 2nd edn.

relationships and, above all, it suffers from intractable linguistic and

ethno-cultural conflicts.
A traditional distinction in constitutional analysis contrasts written
with unwritten constitutions. As no constitution is wholly unwritten
(even the 'unwritten' British constitution contains much statute and
common law), a distinction between codified and uncodified systems is
more useful. Most constitutions are codified - that is, they are set out in
detail within a single document or body of laws. The constitution of
Germany, for instance, is laid down in the Basic Law ratified in 1949.
The constitutions of Britain, New Zealand and Israel are unusual in that
they are not formalised in this way.
Procedures for amendment are important. Can the constitution be
altered by a simple majority in the national legislature alone (i.e. a
flexible constitution)? Or are special procedures required, other than
those laid down for the making of ordinary laws (a rigid constitution)?
The flexible British constitution contrasts with the apparent rigidity of
the US constitution. The British constitution is subordinate to Parlia-
ment and can be altered by the ordinary process of legislation - or
indeed simply by convention.
By contrast, the American constitution can be amended only by two-
thirds majorities in Congress, plus ratification by three-quarters of the
states. In practice, the task of adapting the constitution falls mainly to
the US Supreme Court. Judicial interpretation is inherently more
flexible than formal amendment. Though superior to the elected
legislature, the US constitution is thus subordinate to non-elected
judges.
 The Constitutional Framework 267

D When do constitutions succeed?

A key question about constitutions is: When do they succeed in
providing a stable framework for political activity? Essentially, it
seems, when they do not attempt too much. The spirit as well as the
letter of the constitution is most likely to be maintained when the
provisions of the constitution accord reasonably well with dominant
social interests and values. The US constitution established a limited
central government, 'created' as President John Adams put it, 'out of the
grinding necessity of a reluctant nation.' Had it attempted more, as
some of the founders wanted, the constitution might well have sunk
beneath opposition from independent-minded states and settlers.
Conversely, the liberal-democratic constitutions which departing
colonialists bequeathed to the third world often failed because they
did not take account of social inequalities and non-democratic cultures.
'Fresh starts' became false starts. Some constitutions were adapted to
suit the political environment in which they operated, most often by
strengthening executive authority. But many were suppressed by
authoritarian rulers or destroyed by military takeovers. However, the
widespread shift back to formal democracy and multi-party elections in
both Africa and Latin America in the 1980s indicates at least a partial re-
emergence of constitutions in political life.
If generals are always re-fighting the last war, constitutions are often
designed to overcome the defects of the previous regime. In so doing
they create new problems of their own. The hallmark of the Italian
constitution, for example, is garantismo, meaning that all political
forces are guaranteed a stake in the political system. Thus the
constitution features a strong bicameral assembly, entrenched demo-
cratic rights, a constitutional court and wide regional autonomy. These
multiple checks upon power were to prevent a recurrence of prewar
dictatorship. Garantismo, however, has in practice contributed to
ineffective government and so to some loss of popular legitimacy.
By contrast, the constitution of the Fifth French Republic (1958)
sought not to check but to concentrate power. This was in reaction to
the executive instability that beset the Fourth Republic. A curbed
assembly and a strengthened executive were certainly achieved. But
the hybrid nature of the constitution, straddling presidential and
parliamentary forms of executive, can cause difficulites. President
Mitterrand, a politician of the left, found himself saddled with Jacques
Chirac, a prime minister of the right, after the parliamentary elections of
May 1986. For two years, president and prime minister 'cohabited' in an
uneasy situation of divided leadership.
268 The Structures of Government

But some 'fresh starts' have succeeded. The postwar constitutions in

Japan and Germany provided frameworks within which stable and
effective government proved possible, aided in both cases by a buoyant
economy. Over time, these constitutions have acquired normative
weight of their own, so helping to achieve that most delicate goal of
regulating the exercise of political power. In Germany, the Basic Law
even contained a far-sighted procedure whereby further territories could
be added to the republic. This enabled postcommunist East Germany to
be readmitted to the German Republic in 1990. The pre-communist
Uinder (regions) were reconstituted and then acceded to the Federal
German constitution. It was no fault of the constitution that the social
and economic price of re-unification turned out to be much higher than
anticipated .

• Federalism
Virtually all nation-states have more than one tier of government.
Regional, state or local authorities coexist under or alongside the
central power. This means that all countries must resolve the issue of
the relationship between differing levels of government. The answers
vary. First, there are highly centralised unitary systems (see pp. 276-9),
in which authority is concentrated in the central government. Secondly,
there are relatively decentralised federal systems, in which authority is
shared be teen the centre and lower levels. Thirdly, there are highly
decentralised confederal systems, in which the central government has
little authority. This classification is shown in Figure 11.1.

o Federations and confederations

A confederation is a relatively weak form of political union between
sovereign states. In 1991 the Soviet Union moved rapidly from a
nominally federal (in practice for seventy years tightly centralised)
structure towards a loose confederation. Each of the 15 Soviet republics
asserted its sovereign independence. Each was free to join in all, some or
none of the few common functions proposed for the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS) proclaimed in November of that year .. The
centre would do little more than coordinate and arbitrate. However, so
strong were the centrifugal forces unleashed by the collapse of
communism that complete political disintegration seemed as likely as
a workable confederation.
Action in a confederation generally requires unanimity among
member states. A confederal government generally lacks its own means
 Confederal Federal Unitary
Government Government Government

~ A A
Highly
r- ("\ ("\ --------, Highly
Decentralised Centralised
System System
I I I I I
European Canada India USSR China Britain
Community (pre 1991)

CIS USA Germany Sweden France

(from 1991)?

Note: Location of countries is purely illustrative.

N
Figure 11.1 The territorial distribution of power 0\
\0
270 The Structures of Government

of taxation, law-making and enforcement. This is hardly a recipe for

effective decision-making. It was, in fact, the economic instability
resulting from these limitations under the Articles of Confederation of
1781 that led to the drafting of the second (and current) American
Constitution in 1787. This was a federal, rather than confederal,
constitution. It created a closer union, with legal sovereignty shared
between the federal government and the states. Each layer of govern-
ment, federal (or central) and state (or provincial), has constitutional
authority to make some decisions independently of the other. Citizens
of a federal system remain subject to the authority of both the central
and the provincial governments, each of which acts directly on the
citizen.
Distinguishing federal from non-federal groupings of states is not
easy. The Scandinavian states, for instance, cooperate extensively
through the Nordic Council and other bodies. But they do not form a
federation because no common government exists, nor seems likely to
emerge. Within the European Community, on the other hand, there are
some federal elements, in the form of the European Parliament, the
Commission and the Court of Justice. The importance of these elements
is likely to grow sharply in the 1990s, as more policy-making shifts to
Brussels from the capitals of the member states. Though a tide is
running towards integration, the European Community is still probably
best regarded as a confederation of states, because its institutions act on
and through the member governments, rather than directly on the
peoples of Europe. Proposals to aim for a clearly federal Europe caused
an outcry in Britain (but not in other EC states) in 1991.

D The origins of federations

Why should autonomous governments ever agree to cede some sover-
eignty to a federal authority? One answer is that it is a way of bridging
differences so that a wider political community can be constructed.
People who differ by descent, language and culture can nevertheless seek
the advantages of common membership in a federation (Forsyth 1989,
p. 4). A federal structure was adopted on these grounds in several
ethnically diverse societies, among them Canada, India, Yugoslavia and
Nigeria.
Federalism involves a bargain: some autonomy is given up in the
expectation of greater benefits to come. Riker (1975) argues that
federations emerge when there is an external threat or an expectation
that the federation will itself be able to behave aggressively in the
international arena. As the imperial anthem puts it, 'Wider still and
wider shall they bounds be set. God who made thee mighty, make thee
 The Constitutional Framework 271

mightier yet'. In Canada, for example, the constitution's framers wanted

to expand their political and economic influence north-westward in the
face of American competition (Hodgkins et al. 1978, p. 303). By the
1980s, however, the bounds of Canada's federation were becoming
weaker still and weaker.
In other cases, motives for federal solutions have been as much
economic as political. Australian federalists felt that a common market
would promote economic expansion. Britain's reluctant entry into the
EC was for similar reasons. The EC provided a large market of affluent
consumers from which a middle-ranking power like Britain could not
afford to be left out. But whether the motives of the framers are military
or economic, federalism remains a clear example of how domestic
government can be organised so as to allow rulers to compete more
effectively in the international arena.
Federalism is a complex, legalistic and always conscious creation.
Sometimes it emerges from a voluntary compact between previously
autonomous states. This was indeed the case in the United States when
the representatives of thirteen states met in Philadelphia in 1787. Similar
conventions, greatly influenced by the American experience, took place
in Canada in 1867 and Australia in 1901. But elsewhere, in Latin
America and some British colonies, federalism was imposed from
without rather than created from within. 'Imposed federalism' has
little prospect of creating a stable devolution of power from the
centre. Witness, for instance, the short-lived East African Federation,
involving the former British colonies of Kenya, Tanganyika (now
Tanzania) and Uganda. A similar fate befell other federations cobbled
together by Britain as it shed colonial responsibilities.

o Classifying federations
Federal states have always been in the minority. There are fewer than
twenty such states in the contemporary world. However these cover
most of the world's land surface. Five of the six largest states by area are
federal: Australia, Brazil, Canada, the United States and until 1991 the
Soviet Union. (The exception, China, gives limited autonomy to its
minorities.)
Federal states fall into several categories:

1. In a category by itself comes the United States, the inventor of

modern federalism.
2. Federalism is found in some former British colonies (Australia,
Canada, India, Nigeria) and has been abandoned in several others in
the Caribbean and Africa.
272 The Structures of Government

3. Several Latin American states were influenced by the American

model into adopting federalism when they achieved independence in
the nineteenth century. Federal constitutions are found in the
Argentine Republic, Brazil, Venezuela and Mexico, albeit in virtual
abeyance during periods of authoritarian rule.
4. European federalism is found in Austria, Germany and Switzerland,
deriving from a long tradition of associated (that is, several
governments working together) rather than unitary governments
in these countries.
5. Communist federalism was seen in Czechoslovakia, the Soviet
Union and Yugoslavia.

Communist federalism was best understood as a device by which

communist regimes allowed cultural, but not political, autonomy to
national minorities. Ironically, this approach kept national awareness
alive, while restricting its political expression. As communist power
disintegrated, so long-simmering nationality problems quickly came to
the boil. Communist federations have splintered under these forces.
Yugoslavia descended into disorder and civil war in 1991, as Croatia
and Slovenia seceded from the federation. In Czechoslovakia, Slovakia
has demanded almost complete autonomy from the federal government
in Prague. The break-up of the Soviet Union has been the most
momentous casualty of all, with the Baltic and Caucasus republics
driving for full independence and the other republics willing at most to
accept only loose confederal links.

o The consequences of federalism

Several institutional consequences follow from the adoption of a federal
formula. First, a written constitution is needed to allocate functions to
the central and provincial governments. The central government is
usually responsible for external relations - defence, foreign affairs and
immigration - and for some common domestic functions such as the
currency. Provincial governments have responsibility for some domestic
policies such as education or housing, but may share power with the
central government in other policy areas.
Secondly, a constitutional court is needed to arbitrate disputes
between governments by reference to the constitution. The Supreme
Court in the United States is the prime example.
Thirdly, a bicameral assembly ensures representation in the national
legislature for the states, provinces or republics which make up the
federal union. In most federations, each state receives equal representa-
 The Constitutional Framework 273

tion in the upper house, irrespective of population. Occasionally this

principle of 'equal representation for unequal states' has been modified.
In India, for instance, the less populous states are favoured but not to the
point of equality with the heavily populated states.
Other political institutions, notably parties, must adapt to the federal
framework. Crudely put, either parties control federalism, or federalism
controls the parties. In communist states, a single centralised party stood
at the apex of the political system, operating the federal framework and
using it for its own purposes. A similar, though less extreme, form of
party dominance is found in India where the Congress Party's pre-
dominance has been maintained by a federal system which makes it
difficult for opposition parties to form a coherent national organisation.
The United States stands at the other extreme. There, parties are so
decentralised that they are little more than weak collections of state and
local interests. Decentralised parties underpin federal decentralisation.
The relationship between parties and federalism is crucial to under-
standing how federalism works in practice.

o Central provincial relationships

The balance of power and initiative between centre and province
depends heavily on revenue-raising powers. Political scientists have
recently focused more on the fiscal dimension of federalism. They
concluded that the financial balance in federal systems has become
more favourable to the centre over the twentieth century.
In the United States, for example, the national government gets four-
fifths of its revenue from personal income tax, a source which has been
relatively buoyant as more people join the labour force and real incomes
rise. The states, by contrast, depend primarily on sales taxes, a more
regressive and obtrusive tax. Until sharp cuts were introduced by
President Reagan in the early 1980s, the states came to rely on revenue
transfers from the federal government for a growing proportion of their
resources. This was paralleled elsewhere: in Australia, about 60 per cent
of the states' total revenue comes from the federal government.
Revenue sharing (Table 11.1) was introduced in the United States to
reverse centralising trends which had been evident since the New Deal of
the 1930s. But this did not work completely. Financial aid from the
centre has been reduced and states have been forced to raise more money
from local sources. But this is partly in response to new legal
responsibilities which the centre has imposed on state governments.
Thus centralising trends have been reversed in some ways but not
others.
274 The Structures of Government

Table 11.1 Financial transfers from central governments to

subnational governments.
1. Categorical grants for specific projects
Example: for a new hospital.
2. Block grants for particular programmes
Example: for medical care.
3. Revenue-sharing.
This is general funding which places few limits on the recipient's use of
the funds.
4. Equalisation grants are used in an effort to equalise financial conditions
in some federations, e.g. Australia.

The growing authority of the centre in federal systems has been much
more than a financial matter. More than anything, it reflects the
emergence of a national economy which requires overall planning and
regulation. To take one example, a modern economy requires an
effective transport system. But individual provinces have little incentive
to pay for road networks which will benefit other provinces as much as
their own. So the central government must plan and fund, if not build,
the national road network. Wars and economic crises have also
strengthened the central authority.
Similar pressures arise in other policy areas. In Germany, for example,
the federal government now coordinates higher education. It also set up
an Environment Ministry after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear
power station in the Soviet Union. The threat of radiation knows no
respect for provincial boundaries.
Constitutional courts have generally acceded to central initiatives,
particularly when justified on grounds of national emergency. Through-
out most of this century, federal law has consistently prevailed over state
law in the rulings of the US Supreme Court. In Australia, decisions of the
High Court have favoured the centre to the point where some
commentators regard federalism as sustained more by politics than
the constitution. Of the major Western federal systems, only Canada has
seen a drift away from, rather than towards, the centre.
Thus the crucial feature of most contemporary federations is the
interdependence rather than the independence of the various levels of
government. On domestic policies, at least, a complicated patchwork of
government agencies - central, provincial and local - is involved. The
centre has money and broad goals but, in contrast to unitary states, it is
unable to dictate to subnational governments.
 The Constitutional Framework 275

Indeed provincial governments can sometimes organise themselves

into an effective pressure-group. They can then press for more resources
from the centre, as with the Governors' Conference in the United States.
Thus the style of intergovernmental relations is often collaborative, with
distinct 'policy communities' emerging in areas such as health, educa-
tion and transport. Americans use the term 'picket fence federalism' to
describe the division of policy-makers at various levels of government
into these policy communities. It is all a long way from the ideals of the
founding fathers for separate layers of government, each of which was
intended to be supreme and independent within its own spheres.
European federalism, at least in Germany and Austria (though not
Switzerland), has always given a large policy-making role to the centre.
German 'administrative federalism' is a constitutional style towards
which many other federations have been moving in practice. In
Germany, both federal government and the Uinder (provinces) can
legislate in several areas of concurrent power (for example, transport
and public ownership). There is also a category of 'framework laws'.
These are outline laws which are passed at the centre and then fleshed
out in Land legislation. In addition the Uinder are given responsibility
by the constitution for executing federal law. This reduces the
duplication which is characteristic of the United States and other
federal systems.
Unusually, Land governments are directly represented in the Bundes-
rat, the upper chamber of parliament. The Bundesrat undoubtedly has a
powerful place in the German system, but it is perhaps less a legislative
organ than a meeting place of Germany's governments, with which the
federal government must come to terms (G. Smith 1989, p. 35). The
institutions of German federalism both necessitate and encourage inter-
governmental collaboration, in which the centre's policy-making
initiatives are conditioned by, the reaction of the provinces which have
to implement the plans.

o Assessment
What overall assessment can we give of the federal experiment? What
are its advantages and disadvantages? Federalism recognises the need for
central authority but attempts to contain its scope. It fosters social
diversity and the autonomy of minority groups. But it has also been an
obstacle to the egalitarian drive of the welfare state. As Riker (1975)
points out, the beneficiaries of American federalism have historically
been those minorities that could use state-level government to enforce
their preferred policies. What price federalism, say its critics, if it has
276 The Structures of Government

worked for the benefit of white racists in the Southern states? Certainly
federalism works to the advantage of geographically concentrated
minorities.
But the general problem with federalism is that it distributes power on
a territorial basis when the key conflicts in society are now social rather
than geographical. Australia is typical in this respect: 'Australia is
culturally and regionally heterogeneous, but these social divisions are
not essentially represented by current state boundaries. Differences
between the states do not equate with the fundamental cleavages in
Australian society.' (Wilcox 1989, p. 152).
Where social and territorial divisions largely coincide - as in the
Canadian conflicts between French and English speakers, and between
the Eastern and Western provinces - adjusting federal relationships can
help to manage these problems but rarely resolves them. Violence in
Yugoslavia is a forcible reminder that federalism has no formula which
can conjure harmony out of ethnic differences (Forsyth 1989, p. 5). It is
indeed a nice question whether federalism has contributed to divisions
within nation-states more than it has contained them .
. Furthermore the evolution of federal states has led to complex
patterns of policy-making in which the lines of accountability to the
electorate are confused. Critics allege that federalism has become
geographical corporatism, in which central authority is held hostage
by territorially based interests. Defenders of federalism reply that this is
better than the sharp oscillations of policy made possible by the unitary
governments of such countries as Britain and New Zealand. As with
many other political institutions, evaluations of federalism are likely to
be more favourable if priority is given to diffusing, rather than
concentrating, political power.

• Unitary government
The vast majority of contemporary nation-states are unitary in char-
acter. This means that sovereignty is focused exclusively on the central
government. Subnational governments, whether regional or local, may
make policy as well as administer it but they do so at the pleasure of the
national authority. In practice, of course, there is a balance of political
resources between central and local governments in unitary systems
which limits the power of the centre (Table 11.2).

o Dual and fused systems

The balance between centre and locality depends on the nature of
intergovernmental relations in a particular state. Central and local
 The Constitutional Framework 277

Table 11.2 The balance of power between central and local

government in unitary systems
The resources of local government typically include:
1. Control over policy implementation;
2. Responsibility for the direct provision of public services such as health,
education and welfare;
3. Some revenue-raising power;
4. A local electoral mandate.

Against this must be set the resources of the centre:

1. Control over legislation, including the right to abolish or modify local
government;
2. Provision of most local authority finance;
3. Setting administrative standards for service provision;
4. Popular expectations that the national government should solve
problems.

governments are now closely connected in all industrial states, but

historical traditions still leave their mark. In liberal democracies, the
basic contrast in local government is between dual and fused systems (G.
Smith, 1989).
Under a dual system, local government operates separately from the
centre or its field executives. The English idea of the local council,
responsible for all the services provided in its area, is an example of this
tradition. Until the First World War, this pattern gave considerable
freedom to local government, comparable in practice to many federal
systems.
Under a fused system, by contrast, the central and local government
are joined in an office such as the prefect, a central appointee who is
charged with overseeing the administration of a particular community.
In a fused system there is usually a Ministry of the Interior at the centre
to whom the prefect reports.
France is the most influential example of a fused, centralised system of
prefects. The prefect (now called Commissioner of the Republic) in each
of the hundred or so departments in France is a highly influential figure.
However, to be effective the Commissoner must work in conjunction
with local councils rather than simply oversee them. And the councils
are often headed by influential national politicians, who cherish their
local power base. This offsets prefectoral power to some extent.
Moreover, some traditional functions of the prefects were transferred
to these councils in 1982. There is therefore a two-way flow of influence
278 The Structures of Government

in the French prefectoral system: up from the department as well as

down from Paris. Central-local relations are less top-down than earlier
views suggested. The traditional French model has been influential,
however. It has been adopted in many other countries, including all
France's ex-colonies.
Whether dual or fused, local government systems have had to adapt to
modern tasks. These are principally the delivery of welfare services and
the planning of large urban areas. The delivery of welfare services tends
to make local governments agents of the centre, providing services
which they neither design nor fund. This trend went furthest in
Scandinavia, where the principle of equal treatment for all citizens has
been most fully implemented. But as the basic needs of the population
for health and education were satisfied, pressures for decentralisation
increased. Communes which had been amalgamated to make uniform
treatment possible were taken apart again to encourage citizen partici-
pation in local government.
This dynamic - initial centralisation in the name of equality followed
by attempted decentralisation in the names of participation and
diversity - can also be seen in less marked form in other European
countries, among them France, Spain and Italy. Britain was an
exception. Central control over local government intensified through-
out the 1980s. The Conservative government was more concerned with
cost-control and increased efficiency than with greater citizen involve-
ment.

o The two-way stretch

The need for planning of large cities and regions has led to special
systems of government in most unitary states. Attempts to create
regional levels of government have also been made. France and Italy
have both developed systems of regional authorities, though these
bodies function primarily as planning units. Nonetheless they do reveal
the 'two-way stretch' which applies to traditional local government in
unitary states. On the one hand, contemporary socio-economic patterns
call for planning units which cover larger areas than traditional local
governments. It makes little sense to draw up plans for villages or small
towns if major influences on those areas come from outside.
On the other hand, there is an equal, if less recognised, need to revive
the very small and ancient communes and parishes so as to encourage
greater citizen participation in local affairs. Outside Scandinavia, there
are few signs of the radical reforms which are needed to achieve these
distinct, but not incompatible, objectives.
 The Constitutional Framework 279

The specialisation of local government in providing services for the

general public has led some authors (e.g. Saunders 1979, 1986) to
propound the dual state thesis. According to this, the basic function
of the state in a liberal democracy is to provide the conditions under
which capitalist production can continue profitably. This is the
'accumulation function'. But a second, often contradictory function of
the state is to maintain its own legitimacy through the provision of
services such as health and education. This is the 'legitimation function'.
In unitary democracies, the argument continues, the central government
gives priority to the accumulation function. Its main concern is the
efficient operation of the market economy. Much of the task of
legitimation - of providing services demanded by the population -
falls to local government. The national government responds to the
needs of capital all the more effectively because it has distanced itself
from the provision of services. Democracy at local level hides capitalist
power at national level. Local politicians compete for resources like hens
scrabbling for the corn distributed by the farmer, and unaware of the
grain supply which is hidden in the barn.
The dual state thesis has some validity. It certainly improves on the
local state thesis which views local governments in the first world solely
as agents of central government. In Britain, the idea of the dual state
helps to explain the conflicts between Margaret Thatcher's Conserva-
tive government and left-wing local councils in industrial and inner-city
areas with severe social problems. Neither the local state nor the dual
state theories are fully adequate, however. Equating the centre with
accumulation and local government with legitimation is too simple. All
else aside, electoral considerations alone drive central governments into
an intimate concern with the level, extent and quality of services
delivered to voters .

• The judiciary
Constitutional government must in part be judicial government. The
high value placed on the independence of the courts in the first world
testifies not to the irrelevance of the legal to the political realm but to
their sensitive interconnection. To apply the law, judges must also
interpret and create it. Indeed, the English common law was largely
judge-made. Even where the law is extensively codified, as in France and
Germany, unforeseen situations require the courts to fill gaps in the legal
code or to decide cases by analogy. As the American jurist Oliver
Wendell Homes declared, 'General propositions do not decide concrete
cases.'
280 The Structures of Government

o Administrative justice
The boundary between the creation and the application of law has been
further obscured by the enormous expansion of administrative activity.
This has led in turn to a growth of quasi-judicial administrative
tribunals, despite lingering opposition to their use in both Britain and
the United States. Such tribunals, dealing for instance with appeals
involving employment law or social security regulations, are relatively
informal. They are quicker, cheaper and more flexible (though often
more secretive) than the courts.
France has a particularly elaborate system of administrative courts.
The Conseil d'Etat (Council of State) stands at its apex. All adminis-
trative decisions taken by ministers and officials are subject to it. The
Council is also consulted on all proposed legislation. Primarily moti-
vated to protect individual liberties, the prestige of the Council and the
publicity given to its rulings enable it to check executive power (Dreyfus
1990, pp. 142-3.) The Conseil Constitutionnel (Constitutional Court)
has also become a significant force in French politics. Originally
intended to help the executive control the legislature, it has now
assumed the power to restrain the executive. It has asserted its right
to invalidate unconstitutional legislation - and did so in about half of
the 70 bills on which it was asked to rule between 1981 and 1986
(Kesselman et al. 1987, p. 184).

o Judicial independence and recruitment

Liberal democracies accept judicial independence as fundamental to the
rule of law. In Britain and in the American federal judiciary, judges hold
office for life during 'good behaviour'. The judiciary is more closely
controlled by the state in most of Western Europe than in Britain or the
United States but security of judicial tenure is still well established. In
fact, judges appointed during the fascist era in Italy and Germany were
embarrassingly hard to remove afterwards. Similar problems are likely
to be encountered in Germany with judges from the former German
Democratic Republic.
The issue of judicial independence raises the problem of how judges
are selected. The four main methods are shown in Table 11.3. Which
method is preferred depends on the weight given to judicial indepen-
dence, on the one hand, and responsiveness to social change or party
balance, on the other.
 The Constitutional Framework 281

An independent judiciary is not necessarily a neutral judiciary. Judges

generally see it as their task to uphold the dominant values of society in
order to stabilise the social order. Many observers see this as the
fundamental function of law. In Britain, some writers see a conservative
bias in the higher judiciary, shown by unfavourable attitudes to the
trade union movement (Griffith 1977). More disturbing, perhaps, has
been the record of judicial conduct in trials involving alleged Irish
Republican Army (IRA) terrorists. Senior judges, supposedly guardians
of the criminal justice system, seemed unable to prevent or even rectify
palpably unsafe verdicts. In consequence, British justice was seriously
discredited. The problem, in our view, stems more from professional
arrogance than from ideological bias or the upper-class social back-
grounds of judges. Basically, senior judges were loath to admit that the
criminal justice system could make very serious mistakes.
Behavioural research into judicial behaviour in the United States has
shown that judges' decision in court are strongly related to their political
views but the effect of social background on judges' views appears to be
fairly weak (Schubert 1972). Widening the recruitment base of the
judiciary is intrinsically desirable but will do little to alter its fundamen-
tally conservative role.

Table 11.3 Methods of selecting judges

Method Example Comment
Popular election Some states in the Produces responsiveness to
USA public opinion - but at what
price in impartiality and
competence? May be
accompanied by recall
procedures
Election by the Some states in the This method also formally used
assembly USA; some Latin for senior judges in communist
American countries states but in practice the party
picked suitable candidates
Appointment by Britain, Supreme 'Danger' (?) of political
the executive Court judges in the appointments, though most
USA (subject to judges will be appointed by an
Senate approval) earlier administration
Co-option by the Italy, Turkey Produces an independent but
judiciary sometimes unresponsive
judiciary
282 The Structures of Government

D Interpreting the constitution

Especially in federal democracies, the judiciary has significant constitu-
tional jurisdiction. This, as G. Smith (1989) describes it, involves 'the
power of ordinary or special courts to give authoritative interpretation
of the constitution which is binding on all the parties concerned'.
Constitutional jurisdiction covers three main areas:

1. Resolving conflict between the state and citizens over basic liberties;
2. Ruling on whether specific laws are constitutional;
3. Resolving conflicts between different institutions or levels of
government.

These powers of constitutional review are enjoyed more fully by the

Supreme Court in the United States than by any judicial tribunal
elsewhere. As Chief Justice Hughes once remarked, 'We live under a
constitution. But the constitution is what the judges say it is.' The
Supreme Court is so important that appointments to it (nominated by
the president, but subject to approval by the Senate) are key decisions.
They now normally involve a set-piece battle between presidential
friends and foes. The judicial experience, and the legal ability of the
nominee, may matter less than ideological and partisan considerations.
Though its activities are legal in form, the Supreme Court's function is
basically political. In a real sense it presides over America's constitu-
tional system. It is responsible for protecting the rights of individuals
guaranteed under the constitution. It also reviews the constitutionality
of congressional statutes and the actions of the executive branch. Its
judgments may be far-reaching. For example, a single ruling in 1982
(Immigration and Naturalization Service versus Chadha) invalidated
portions of no fewer than 49 statutes. Significant checks have also been
imposed on the presidency. In 1974, for example, the Court ruled that
President Nixon should surrender tape-recordings of confidential
discussions with his aides about the Watergate affair, a decision which
effectively sealed his fate.
The Supreme Court sometimes boldly overturns its own legal
precedents. This inconsistency has been a source of strength in the
long run, enabling the Court to adapt the constitution to changes in
national mood. For example, after its rearguard struggle against the
New Deal, the Court basically conceded the right of the elected national
government to regulate the social and economic life of the nation. This
is just as well, for the Supreme Court, like all judiciaries, depends on
other agencies for the enforcement of its decisions.
 The Constitutional Framework 283

The Supreme Court has taken some striking initiatives. The most
important of these, taken under the leadership of Chief Justice Warren
in the 1950s and 1960s, was on the issue of black civil rights. The
Supreme Court of the 1980s and 1990s is much more conservative than
its predecessor but no less activist (Shapiro 1990). It seems bent on
reversing much of the Warren court's liberal legacy, as it confronts cases
on bitterly contentious issues such as abortion, capital punishment and
affirmative action (reserved places in employment and education for
minority groups). Sometimes called an unelected legislature, the
Supreme Court deliberates in a calm atmosphere. In truth, judicial
calm exists in the eye of the political storm.
Judicial review is an established feature of several other federal
political systems. Decisions of the Canadian Supreme Court played a
significant role in the constitutional crisis of 1981 and the resolution of
the crisis gave the Court new responsibility for a Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. The impact of the Federal Supreme Court on German politics
is considerable. German policy-makers, it is said, engage in Karlsruhe
astrology (Karlsruhe is where the Court sits) in order to anticipate the
likely reaction of the Court to proposed legislation. In Australia and
Switzerland there have been judicial efforts to resist centralising
tendencies. Where parliamentary sovereignty is enshrined, there are
obviously fewer opportunities for judicial review. The Dutch constitu-
tion explicitly states that 'the constitutionality of Acts of Parliament and
treaties shall not be reviewed by the courts'.

o The judiciary in the second world

The law is not always a stabilising force. In communist states, it became
a major instrument for forcing through a totalitarian reconstruction of
society. Under Stalin, Soviet justice showed no procedural impartiality.
Vague catch-all offences - 'socially dangerous tendencies' and 'enemies
of the people' - were used to ensnare those suspected of opposition to
the regime. During the 1950s and 1960s in China, the police dominated
the legal system, using the courts as educational devices to warn citizens
against bad behaviour. There was a measure of predictability in the
enforcement of party objectives but the system was certainly not
legalistic.
Although judges in communist states were selected for their 'party-
mindedness' and expected to put this to good effect in the courts, the
situation was already altering before the sea-change of 1989. Even
authoritarian regimes benefit from a consistent application of rules. A
measure of 'socialist legality' was observed in the courts. Again, after the
284 The Structures of Government

hiatus of the Cultural Revolution in China, and especially since Mao's

death, laws became more precise and rules were drawn up for the
investigation of crimes and prosecution of suspects.
In Eastern Europe especially, old legal traditions were revived as
communist rule slackened. Following the collapse of the old order,
complete reconstruction of the judiciary, police and criminal justice
system is needed but will take years to accomplish.

D The judiciary in the third world

The judiciary has rarely been important in the arbitration of political life
in most of the third world. A general pattern of subordination to
executive power becomes even more marked under military rule. The
Argentine Supreme Court, for instance, routinely accepted rulings made
by technically illegal military governments (Waisman 1989, p. 96). The
generals, not the judges, had the means of coercion at their disposal.
But judicial weakness also reflects the greater concentration of power
within the political systems of the third world. Such power as there is
tends to be centred in the executive, not diffused American-style
between the president, the legislature and a supreme court. Mexico
has a solid record of civilian government under a US-style constitution.
However, although Mexico's courts handle disputes among citizens,
they have rarely sought to limit executive authority by constitutional
review (Levy 1989, p. 470).
A strong and independent judiciary has developed in a few third
world countries. The colonial era in India established a tradition of
judicial independence which has largely held its ground since indepen-
dence. In Turkey, the constitutions of 1961 and 1982 provided
entrenched security of tenure for judges and prosecutors (Ozbudun
1989, p. 218).
But traditional methods for the adjudication of disputes still prevail in
much of the third world, especially in rural areas. Justice continues to be
dispensed by tribal elders, village courts, local chiefs or religious leaders.
Indeed with the revival of Islam, priests have become more influential in
the administration of justice in many Middle Eastern and African
societies, enforcing the harsh penalties of the Islamic Shari'a code.
 The Constitutional Framework 285

Summary
1. Constitutions are the laws that govern the governors. Most nation-states
have them and a growing number of governments abide by them. They provide
the ground rules for politics and organise the formal distribution of power
within the state. They often also set out the rights of individuals. Constitutions
work best when they do not attempt too much. A few constitutions are
unwritten, but most are codified and need special procedures for amendment.

2. New constitutions are generally associated with fresh starts in the political
life of a nation (e.g. Spain 1978). But constitutional adaptation takes place more
or less continuously (e.g. the evolving interpretations of the American
constitution offered by the Supreme Court).

3. Federalism involves a constitutionally guaranteed sharing of power between

levels of government. In a confederal system, the central power is weak; in a
federal system, it is stronger. Fewer than twenty states are federal but these cover
most of the world's land surface. Federalism is a legalistic arrangement, which
almost always needs judicial arbitration.

4. In the twentieth century, the central level of government has gained ground
against the provincial level. Financial, political and policy-making relations
between levels of government make for increasing interdependence. The federal
theory of separate spheres of activity for each level no longer matches political
and economic reality.

5. In unitary systems, local government is subject to the legal authority of

central government, which can change its functions and organisation. Local
government takes two forms. In dual systems, local government is organisa-
tionally separate from the centre. In fused systems, the central and local
government are joined in an office such as a prefect.

6. Judicial independence from the executive is an established feature of liberal

democracies. In many liberal democracies, especially federal ones, the judiciary
plays an important role in interpreting the constitution.

Discussion points
1. 'Since judges are inevitably political, democracy requires that they should
be elected.' Do you agree?
2. 'Like politics textbooks, written constitutions are out-of-date the day they
are written.' Do you agree? If so, is the solution to have unwritten constitu-
tions?
286 The Structures of Government

3. Will the twenty-first century be the century of federations between nation-

states? Will your country become part of a federal group and will you welcome
or regret such a development?
4. What can be done to revive local government?

Key reading
Bogdanor, V. (ed.) (1988) Constitutions in Democratic Politics (Aldershot:
Gower). A useful volume, reviewing constitutional issues and experience in
sixteen liberal democracies.
O'Brien, D. (1986) Storm Center: The Supreme Court in American Politics
(New York: Norton). A lively account of a fascinating institution.
Forsyth, M. (ed.) (1989) Federalism and Nationalism (Leicester University
Press). Assesses the experience of federalism around the world.
Wright, D. (1988) Understanding Intergovernmental Relations (Pacific Grove,
Calif: Brooks Cole). An informed assessment of contemporary American
federalism.

Further readin<1b
Once neglected by modern political science, there is growing recognition of the
importance of constitutions. Duchacek (1973) remains a useful introduction.
Banting and Simeon (1985) is a good edited collections of essays on constit-
utional changes in the first world.
On federalism a comprehensive survey can be found in Duchacek (1970),
though Riker (1975) is more penetrating: see also Dahl (1983). The legal
approach is classically presented by Wheare (1963), but Reagan and Sanzone
(1982) or D. Wright (1988) are much more realistic accounts of how
contemporary federalism operates in the United States. On European feder-
alism, G. Smith (1989) gives a useful overview while Burgess (1985) is a current
but uneven collection about individual states.
For unitary states, see G. Smith (1989) on Western Europe, Nelson (1982) on
communist states and B.9wman and Hampton (1983) on local government in
Anglo-American states.
On the judiciary, Griffith (1977) gives a challenging interpretation for Britain
while Shapiro (1990) is equally astringent on the Supreme Court in the United
States.
 • Chapter 12 •
Assemblies
Structure of assemblies 288 Second world: the assembly
Functions of assemblies 292 as theatre 302
Assemblies in three worlds: Third world assemblies:
a policy classification 298 minimal and vulnerable 305
First world assemblies: The faIl and rise of
policy-making and assemblies? 308
influencing 299

Elected assemblies are the very symbol of representative government.

This is seen most dramatically in times of political crisis. For example, in
August 1991 an eight-man junta of hard-line communist ministers and
officials attempted a coup in the Soviet Union. With President
Gorbachev under house arrest in his holiday home on the Black Sea,
the 'White House' (the parliament building of the Russian Federation in
Moscow) became the leading focus of resistance. Boris Yeltsin and his
band of Russian deputies remained in the parliament building for
several days, protected by a sizeable crowd and a few elderly tanks.
Serious coup-makers would have flattened the place. Fortunately, these
were not forceful conspirators. Their bluff was called and the coup
collapsed. The 'White House' had become a powerful symbol of
popular sovereignty and democracy.
An assembly is a multi-membered body which considers questions of
public policy and has constitutional powers to make law. Assemblies
have one core, defining function: 'They give assent, on behalf of a
political community that extends beyond the executive authority, to
binding measures of public policy' (Norton 1990a, p. 1).
Western political thought has traditionally stressed the law-making
function of assemblies. Today, however, even in liberal democracies,
most 'legislatures' have only modest law-making capabilities. As the
scope of government has grown, effective control of law-making has
moved to the executive and the bureaucracy. Assemblies pass laws
without really making them.
The legislative role of assemblies may have declined, but in other
ways their importance is undiminished, perhaps even increasing.
Assemblies are versatile institutions. As in the Soviet Union in 1991,

287
288 The Structures of Government

they adapt to their political environment and have great symbolic

importance. Even when its impact upon policy is modest, the assembly
has a capacity to legitimise those who govern. This makes it resilient. In
short, assemblies help to 'mobilise consent' (Beer 1967).
This is very important in building democratic regimes. In the 1970s
and 1980s, assemblies played a key role in revitalising democracy across
Southern Europe in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey (Liebert and
Cotta 1990). A similar task of democratic consolidation is falling to
assemblies in Eastern Europe in the 1990s.
Even authoritarian rulers value the appearance of public consent.
Only 14 out of 164 independent states had no assembly in 1990. Of those
14, only 5 (traditional dynastic states in the Arabian Gulf) had no past
experience of assemblies at all. A representative assembly of some kind
throws the shadow, if not the substance, of legitimacy across author-
itarian rulers.
In this chapter, we first consider questions of assembly structure and
function. Then we look at how assemblies can be classified by their
impact on policy. Finally we turn to a discussion of the roles played by
assemblies in each of the three worlds .

• Structure of assemblies
The two most important structural differences between assemblies lie in
the number of chambers, and in the nature of the committee system.
Both have a profound impact on how assemblies operate.

D Number of chambers
Only two things can be said with certainty about every assembly in the
world: how large it is and how many chambers it has (Blondel1973). In
terms of size, the smallest in the world is the assembly of 12 which meets
from time to time in Funafuti, the capital city of the South Pacific island
of Tuvalu. (As Tuvalu's population is only 8624, it has far more
representatives per head than most other assemblies). The biggest in
the world is the 2000 of the National Peoples' Congress in China. With
some exceptions, more populous countries tend to have larger assem-
blies.
Chamber structure is more important than the size of an assembly's
membership. Nearly all assemblies are either unicameral (single
chamber) or bicameral (two chambers). Unicameral assemblies have
been adopted in some liberal democracies, notably New Zealand and
 Assemblies 289

the Nordic countries, but are most common among newer and smaller
states, particularly in Africa. Some communist and postcommunist
states also have single chamber assemblies.
Despite the trend to single chambers, about half of all assemblies are
still bicameral. First chambers are normally chosen by direct election.
Second chambers often use some form (or combination) of indirect
election, nomination or hereditary membership. In the Netherlands, for
instance, members are elected by the Provincial Councils. Differences in
selection procedure between the two chambers ensure that their
compositions vary.
Bicameralism has two main justifications. First, it provides checks
and balances within the legislature. Secondly, it enables distinct
territories or interests to be represented. Modern bicameralism varies
between weaker and stronger versions. In the weaker version, the
second chamber is clearly subordinate to the first chamber, but retains
some powers to delay legislation or force its reconsideration. The British
House of Lords, which can delay non-financial legislation for a year, is
an example. A bicameral assembly of the weaker variety thus provides
for a revising or restraining function. However, in so doing it dilutes the
principle of popular sovereignty.
Under the stronger version of bicameralism, the two chambers have
broadly equal powers but embody distinct constitutional principles.
The first chamber is based on popular sovereignty, the second chamber
on the territories making up the political system. The Senate of the
United States Congress, composed of two senators from each state, is
the classic example of a strong second chamber. Its design has been
copied by the Australian Senate, and by assemblies in some other federal
systems. Under the stronger version of bicameralism, the dispersal of
authority is substantial. Conflict, and even deadlock, between the two
chambers is a real possibility. In practice, this often means that the
executive lacks an assured majority in one (or, in the United States,
often both) chambers. Thus a government's policy programme may face
very real restraints.

D Committees
A powerful assembly needs a well-developed committee structure. As
Kashyap (1979, p. 321) observes, 'a legislature is known by the
committees it keeps'. Committees are small workgroups of members,
set up in almost all assemblies to cope with the volume of business.
Their functions include the detailed consideration of legislative mea-
sures and examination of financial proposals. They also scrutinise
290 The Structures of Government

government administration and past expenditure, and investigate

matters of public concern. A strong committee system can make the
key difference between a 'working' and a 'talking' assembly.
Many hopes for improving parliamentary performance have been
pinned on reform of assembly committees. Such hopes have not always
been fulfilled. To be effective, committees need members who are not
afraid of executive wrath. But governments prefer docile committees,
and have jobs to offer those members of the assembly who prove to be
'reliable'. Moreover, sharing out tasks among the membership can have
drawbacks for the assembly itself. Committees sometimes come to
dominate the assembly they are meant to serve. They may in effect
become legislatures in miniature, and substitute their own decisions for
those of the full assembly.
The United States Congress is probably unique in the impact of its
committees upon virtually all aspects of legislative activity. 'Congress in
its committee rooms is Congress at work', wrote Woodrow Wilson a
century ago. This is still true today. The expertise of congressional
committees comes from specialisation. This is carried to extreme lengths
in numerous subcommittees (now almost 250) with a fairly stable
membership. Committees are well funded, and they have highly
professional advisory staffs. Congressional committees show great
autonomy, and they settle the fate and shape of most legislation.
Committees have less influence on legislation in other assemblies. In
the British House of Commons, government bills are examined by
standing committees. But these largely replicate party combat on the
floor of the chamber. The standing committees of the House of
Commons, unlike those of Congress, do not strongly challenge execu-
tive dominance in framing and shaping legislation. They are unspecia-
lised and have slender resources. Because committee service is
unpopular, they have grown smaller. However, the system of select
committees of scrutiny, parallel with all the main government depart-
ments, has expanded. These assist the House of Commons in probing
government policy and overseeing how it is carried out (Norton 1990b).
The Australian Parliament reveals a significant contrast between its
two chambers. In the House of Representatives, interest in committee
service has been weak, and efforts to strengthen the committee system
have been unimpressive. By the late 1970s almost half the backbenchers
in the House of Representatives had no committee assignments at all
(Turner 1989, p. 78). In the Senate, by contrast, committees have grown
and virtually all backbenchers served on them, averaging over two
committees each. What explains this difference? The answer is that the
House of Representatives is more executive-dominated: party commit-
tees are more important for ambitious backbenchers than parliamentary
 Assemblies 291

committees. The Senate ('The States' House') is a much stronger check

on the executive than the House of Representatives. Its committees
provide very good footholds for resistance. Thus the Australian example
shows that effective committees are most likely when party discipline is
weaker.
The case of the German Bundestag, however, shows that influential
committees can sometimes coexist with strong parties. Party discipline is
firm but the committee members have more regard for objectivity than
point-scoring (N. Johnson 1979, p. 124). The government gives the
expertise of the committees due weight, and the impact of committee
scrutiny on legislation can be considerable. In Germany, as in many
countries of continental Europe, the overall political style is less
adversarial than in Australia, Britain or New Zealand. This makes it
easier for influential committees to coexist with strong parties.
In Canada, committees traditionally played little role in a party-
dominated and generally inactive House of Commons. Franks (1971,
pp. 279-80) commented that 'there are roving squads of government
members whose chief ability is to sit on committees, read newspapers,
sign letters and at the same time raise their right hands in approval of
matters on which they had no previous experience.' But the famous bells
incident in 1982 encouraged reform of parliament, including its
committees. As a way of putting pressure on the government, the
Conservative opposition had refused to take part in a vote. Parliament
was paralysed for fifteen days as the division bells rang (W. White et al.
1991, p. 413). Subsequently, the membership of committees was reduced
and made more stable, committees were given power to investigate
matters of their own choosing, provided with more specialist support
and the ability to scrutinise some government appointments.
The evidence suggests that strong committees make for a strong
assembly. But what makes committees strong? The timing of committee
scrutiny of bills within the legislative process makes a difference.
Committees that consider bills before a general debate and vote in the
assembly have more impact than those which only deal with a bill after
it has received broad approval (Shaw 1979). Beyond this, the key to
committee influence mainly lies in expertise, which is itself a product of
four main factors: specialisation, permanence, intimacy and support
facilities.
Committees with specialised responsibilities and a clear field of
operation are most likely to develop expert knowledge. Likewise,
permanent committees will gather knowledge in a manner which is
not possible for committees created anew each session. Continuity of
individual membership is no less important. Intimacy is a product of
size. Within small committees proceedings are face to face. When
292 The Structures of Government

meetings are held in private, a small-group setting can encourage norms

of cooperation, and a search for consensus. In these conditions,
committees can develop their own sense of identity. Support, finally,
refers to the use of qualified staff to advise committees. While this may
bring new problems of dependency, it does reduce reliance on the
executive. It also redresses the balance somewhat against the great
weight of expertise available on the government side .

• Functions of assemblies
By 'functions', we mean the significance of assembly activities for the
wider political system. Assemblies can perform a wide range of
functions. Whether, and how well, an assembly performs them depends
on its standing in relation to the other branches of government. Perhaps
the key function of the modern assembly is representation. The other
functions we examine here are making and dismissing governments;
passing laws and scrutinising the executive; and recruitment and
socialisation of political leaders.

o Representation
Representation is at the very root of what assemblies are about. The
assembly 'stands for' the people and acts for them. But assembly
members can 'represent' the electorate in various ways, with differing
consequences for the way the assembly works.
Styles of representation vary, most sharply between 'delegate' and
'trustee' approaches. The delegate is closely bound to reflect the wishes
of those who elected him or her. Delegates are typically 'mandated', that
is given instructions to carry out. The trustee, by contrast, uses
independent judgement on behalf of the voters. The trustee is free to
ignore the voter's views, but does so at his or her peril. Edmund Burke,
the eighteenth-century statesman who classically expressed the trustee
approach in an address to the electors of Bristol, England, was later
rejected by them.
Today, legislators are rarely delegated to vote in a particular way by
those who select or elect them, although they do work on behalf of their
constituents' interests. Yet at the same time the modern assembly
member is not a pure trustee. He or she can rarely use mature
judgement alone in deciding how to vote on proposed legislation.
Representatives are constrained by party discipline. Party loyalties cut
across the traditional distinction between the delegate and the trustee.
 Assemblies 293

The focus of legislators' activities varies between constituency, party,

interest and policy. A constituency focus implies that the main aim of
assembly members is to secure benefits, or provide services for the area
that elected them. The 'porkbarrel' tradition in American politics
epitomises this approach: see exhibit 12.1. However, it is far from
unique to the United States. As voters' party loyalties weaken, so
members must take more time to build a clear image in the minds of
their constituents. The 'personal vote' was always significant in the
United States. It can now be seen in other countries as well, including
Britain (Cain, Ferejohn and Fiorina 1987).
A party focus implies that the legislator's main allegiance is to the
party to which he or she belongs. Parties with many such members will
be disciplined and cohesive, and the assembly will be party-dominated.
There is a clear contrast here between Westminster-style parliaments
and the US Congress. The former, found in Australia, Canada and New
Zealand as well as Britain, have strong parties whose members mainly
vote on party lines. The American Congress, by contrast, has weaker
parties and fluid voting patterns.
Interest representation views the assembly member as a spokesperson
for a particular group in society. At one extreme this may be a pragmatic
relationship based on money. Many members are paid by interest
groups to present their case in the assembly. This is done by asking
questions of ministers, opposing 'unhelpful' legislation, and by checking
on government activity that might affect the interests concerned. Such
activities are common in most assemblies. The role of Political Action
Committees (PACs) in the United States puts the issue of assembly
members' independence in sharp focus. The PACs contribute one dollar
in every four spent in Congressional elections. The money goes mostly
to incumbents. At the other extreme, assembly members may identify
with a particular social group, so that they feel their first duty is to
support its interests. This tradition of 'social representation' is strong in
many societies, particularly in Western Europe, where parties represent
social, religious or regional groups.
A policy focus implies that the main concern of the representative is to
achieve policy goals. Surprising as it may seem, many assembly members
are not very active in this way. They are often more concerned with
individual casework or with becoming part of the club. But for some
members, policies are politics. Policy-oriented members may be driven
by ideological commitments, or by a technocratic approach to improv-
ing public policy. Either way, they work hard and enjoy their task. They
wish to influence government, and do not want to be deferential lobby-
fodder. Barber (1977) calls these representatives the 'active-positive'
type. The American Congress, with its strong committees and weak
294 The Structures of Government

Exhibit 12.1: The Legislative Porkbarrel

As the title of a classic book puts it (Lasswell 1936), politics is about

who gets what, when and how. In liberal democracies, distributive
issues are never far from politicians' minds - because they never are
far from voters' minds. In a political system with weak parties yet so
dedicated to electoral representation as the United States, the
legislative porkbarrel is only to be expected . Members of Congress
feel compelled to 'bring home the bacon': to demonstrate that they
are serving the district in the tangible form (e.g. federally funded
construction projects or subsidies for locally grown crops) . The
electoral imperative drives porkbarrel politics.
Congressman Robert Leggett was a prince among pork-eaters.
'We have the Mare Island Navy shipyard in my district and the only
nuclear naval shipyard. I like to build lots of those nuclear subs. I've
done some personal emissary work to get some of the contracts. In
my district is the Travis Air Force Base (AFB), the Beale AFB, the
Mather AFB, the McLelland AFB, the Sacramento Army Depot and
the Aerojet General Corporation' (Sherrill 1974, p. 133).
To pass porkbarrellegislation, members of Congress exploit their
committee assignments (Leggett, for example, served on the House
Armed Services Committee). They employ 'logrolling' tactics, build-
ing coalitions by mutual trading of favours, regardless of party. A
particular favourite is the 'Christmas-tree bill', so called because it is
hung with goodies for many members' constituents. In a kind of
blackmail, pork items are sometimes tacked to the end of important
financial bills, which the president is virtually unable to veto.
Critics say that porkbarrel tactics lead to waste, distorted patterns
of expenditure and fiscal irresponsibility. Ronald Reagan favoured a
line-item veto for the president, so that he could strike out flagrant
pork-barrel expenditures. This would need a constitutional amend-
ment - which is unlikely to be passed by a Congress so addicted to
pork. Similar tendencies are visible in other legislatures, but rarely so
brazenly as in the United States with individualistic and highly
entrepreneurial legislators.

party cohesion, favours policy-focused representation. As the educa-

tional level and professionalism of members increases throughout the
world, policy-oriented representation is probably becoming more
common. This may lie behind the modest re-emergence of assemblies
in liberal democracies in the 1970s and 1980s (Norton 1990b).
 Assemblies 295

We can look at the Netherlands as an example of how these roles

work out in practice. Members of the lower house are certainly not
delegated by their voters. Elected by proportional representation, they
have little contact with their constituents. Neither are they representa-
tives of particular interests. There is a cultural tradition against working
for specific groups. Many members see their main role as offering
serious contributions to debates on national issues. Member's views are
influenced by the party group to which they belong - but even these
parliamentary groupings have substantial independence from the parties
outside parliament. In short, Dutch parliamentarians come closer than
many to Burke's trustee model.

o Making governments
The assembly in parliamentary systems plays an important role in
making, and breaking, governments. In a parliamentary system, the
executive governs only so long as it retains the confidence of the
assembly. Parliament remains the sovereign body. This is in contrast
to presidential systems, where the chief executive is directly elected by
the people and cannot normally be removed from office by the assembly.
The sovereignty of the assembly in a parliamentary system does not
mean that it dominates the business of forming governments. Parliament
is kept firmly under control in countries with single-party government,
such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In
these countries, the 'first past the post' electoral system usually delivers a
parliamentary majority for a single party. This party then forms the
government, and needs only the support of its own backbenchers to
remain in office. The government is chosen through, but not by, the
assembly.
Where countries employ proportional representation, the process of
government formation tends to be very different. (These include nearly
all European countries, West or East, except Britain.) Elections under
PR rarely produce a parliamentary majority for a single party. Hence
coalitions must be formed. In this situation the assembly becomes an
important political arena. It sets the context for bargaining between the
parties. The more seats a party has in the assembly, the bigger the punch
it can throw in negotiations. Once a coalition government has been
formed, the governing parties must treat backbenchers with respect lest
they lose the support of some members on which their majority (now or
in the future) depends.
In the Netherlands, for example, the process of legislation is
executive-directed but the legislature is not executive-dominated
296 The Structures of Government

(Gladdish 1991). Ministers engage in extensive behind-the-scenes

consultations and accept amendments on up to a half of all measures,
in order to maintain the support of their party fractie (parliamentary
group).
When a coalition government falls, the focus moves back to the
assembly. A new coalition, composed of a fresh combination of parties,
may emerge without any need for a general election. This explains why
some European countries have had more governments than elections
since the war: these include Belgium, Denmark and Italy. Finland, an
extreme case, got though 33 governments in the 32 years after 1945.
Even in these cases, the assembly does not itself govern; but it plays an
important and recurring role in deciding who does.

o Law-making and scrutiny

Assemblies have authority to make law, but in practice, prime
responsibility for policy-making rests with the executive. Assembly
influence comes from other activities. These include formal debate on
government bills and proposals; committee scrutiny of legislation;
investigatory committees; questioning of ministers; and motions of
censure and no confidence.
Assemblies mainly decide matters by voting. In authoritarian one-
party regimes, voting is nearly always unanimous. The vote confirms the
policy but does not shape it. But the contrast with liberal democracies is
not clear-cut. In liberal democracies the assembly is also often under one
party's control and the outcome of votes is predictable. The majority
governing party is usually pitted against the minority opposition.
Broadly speaking, this pattern describes legislative voting in France
and Germany as well as in Westminster-style parliaments. When the
government's majority is in doubt, as in periods of minority government
in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, and in Britain in the late 1970s,
backbenchers have a stronger bargaining position. But these periods are
still rare.
However, some cooperation between parties is vital to avoid
stalemate. Much legislation, in fact, passes without division. The US
Senate, for instance, processes most of its business by consent. In the
British Parliament, party managers cooperate behind the scenes. In Italy
tacit collaboration between the parties allows much legislation to be
dealt with entirely by committees.
Oral and written questioning of ministers is a more important form of
parliamentary scrutiny in many countries than votes and debates on the
floor. In 1987 members of Britain's House of Commons asked 73000
oral and written questions. The number of questions in the Dutch lower
 Assemblies 297

house increased sevenfold between 1960 and 1980. Questioning of

administration spokespersons by Congressional committees fulfils a
similar purpose in American government. In Germany, Finland, and
formerly in France, 'interpellation' is used. This means that the oral
questioning of a minister is followed by a snap vote of the assembly as to
its satisfaction with the answers given - an instant vote of confidence.
This technique brought down several governments in the French Third
and Fourth Republics.
Professionalism helps the assembly to influence policy and scrutinise
its implementation. When sessions of the assembly are short and its
members are amateur, effective policy-making and supervision of
government is unlikely. Yet this is precisely the situation in many
assemblies, even in some liberal democracies. The Australian House of
Representatives is, in effect, a part-time assembly. It sat for an average
of 65 days a year in the 1980s. The British House of Commons, by
contrast, is in session for almost nine months of the year. Yet Britain's
hard-working MPs are poorly paid and many pursue outside occupa-
tions. In the past, effective performance by MPs has also been hampered
by limited research and secretarial services. However, the new system of
select committees in Britain does appear to have improved supervision of
government.
Members of the US Congress, by contrast, are lavishly funded. They
employ large personal staffs and are supported by expert research
services. For the 1980 session Congress cost over $1150 million, mainly
to pay its 25000 staff. By comparison, the cost of the House of
Commons in 1980-81 was a mere £12.6 million (Shaw 1983, p. 143).

D Recruitment and socialisation

Assemblies play a role in recruiting and socialising political leaders.
Members of the legislature form a pool of talent, experience and
ambition from which leading decision-makers emerge. This is the case
in most liberal democracies, and even in many authoritarian regimes. It
is most true in Britain and other strong parliamentary systems, where
nearly all government ministers are drawn from (and still sit) in the
House of Commons. Parliament is thus the key channel of recruitment
to top political office. This is less true in the United States, where recent
presidents have been drawn from state governments rather than from
the Congress. Constitutional rules make a differnce. In France and the
Netherlands, ministers cannot be members of parliament. This may
explain why so many Dutch MPs do not seek re-election. Their average
tenure of office is very low at five years.
298 The Structures of Government

In liberal democracies, the traditions and procedures of the assembly

influence national politics and shape the behaviour of politicians. Many
observers have pointed to the speed with which the House of Commons
absorbed and ore-educated' many of the fire-breathing socialists who
entered Parliament after 1918. More recently, assemblies in Spain and
Portugal served to bring together people of different ideologies and
background, and reduce hostility between them. Where the commitment
to parliamentary norms is strong, tensions can be managed through the
assembly. They are then less likely to be ventilated on the streets - or
through military coups. By integrating major political actors and power
groups within society, parliamentary institutions can regulate - if not
resolve - conflicts between them (Liebert and Cotta 1990 pp. 13-17).
This integrative capacity of legislatives will be fully tested in Eastern
Europe during the 1990s.

I Assemblies in three worlds: a policy

classification
In some countries the assembly contributes strongly to policy-making.
In others it acts merely as a rubber stamp. The debating chamber of the
assembly may be the focal point of national political life or nothing
more than an intermittent sideshow. This variation is captured in
Mezey's classification (1979) of the policy impact of legislatures (Table
12.1).

Table 12.1 A policy classification of assemblies

Type Nature Example

Active Assembly makes policy actively and US Congress
autonomously
Reactive Assembly reacts to and influences Westminster-style
government policy parliaments
Marginal Assembly is a minor partner in Polish Sejm
executive policy-making (pre-1989)
Minimal Assembly is a rubber stamp under Malawi
executive domination

Source: Adapted from: M. Mezey, Comparative Legislatures (Durham, N. Carolina:

Duke University Press, 1979).
 Assemblies 299

Mezey distinguishes between active, reactive, marginal and minimal

assemblies. Active assemblies, such as the United States Congress, make
policy actively and autonomously. Reactive assemblies, such as Britain's
House of Commons, mainly respond to executive initiatives. The
reactive assembly influences policy more than it makes it. Marginal
assemblies are executive-controlled to the extent that they influence
executive behaviour and contribute to policy-making only slightly. In
the communist states of Eastern Europe, assemblies were at most
marginal participants in the policy process. Finally, minimal assem-
blies, common in the third world, are largely irrelevant to policy-
making. They are retained to provide some legitimacy for the regime.
These variations in the policy-making role of assemblies are the
product of several factors. First, history makes a big difference. A few
countries such as Britain have a long history of parliamentary develop-
ment. Parliament is a stable, entrenched institution. For many other
countries, representative institutions are a recent creation. Therefore
they are more vulnerable to executive domination or outright suppres-
SIon.
Secondly, the party system also influences the assembly's role.
Assemblies generally have more impact in multi-party systems than in
two-party systems. They are also more significant in competitive party
systems than in one-party states.
Thirdly, constitutional rules on executive-legislative relations are a
major factor, at least in liberal democracies. Here, the main contrast is
between presidential and parliamentary systems, though some countries
have hybrid arrangements.
Fourthly, the capabilities of assemblies are related to their internal
structures and procedures. Committee systems and support facilities
enhance the impact of assemblies on policy.
But the major contrast in the role of assemblies is between the
three worlds. We will consider assemblies in each of the three worlds in
turn.

I First world assemblies: policy-making and

influencing
The United States Congress is the best example of an active policy-
making assembly. In law-making, it displays strong autonomy from the
executive. Presidents may seek to influence what Congress decides, but
they cannot dictate to it: 'The President proposes but Congress
disposes.' The president must mostly accept what Congress offers or,
300 The Structures of Government

if he employs his power of veto, do without. Legislature and executive

share power in relative balance. Cooperation is possible, but so too are
conflict and stalemate. The autonomy of Congress from presidential
control is underpinned by the separation of powers, by limited party
cohesion, and by the authority of its committees.
However, Congressional power is often used in negative and
obstructive ways, to benefit narrow but well-connected interests in
American society. From the New Deal onwards, the American public
looked to the White House rather than Congress for political leadership.
This was reflected by the way in which presidents took legislative
initiatives. But the 1970s saw a resurgence of Congressional power in
reaction to the so-called 'imperial' presidency. Within Congress major
changes took place in the committee and seniority systems. These made
the legislature more egalitarian where power had previously been the
preserve of a few senior Congressmen.
As a result, the 1980s saw deadlock within the Congress. Struggles
took place between president and Congress over nominations and the
budget. Thus, managing relations with Congress has become even
harder and more complex for the president. In effect, he has to deal
with numerous independent assembly members, each with good
resources, rather than with the legislature as a whole (Bailey 1989,
p. 164).
The American Congress is an exceptional, perhaps even unique,
institution. Most assemblies in liberal democracies are policy-influen-
cing rather than policy-making bodies. Their role is reactive, responding
to policy-making initiatives from the executive. The reactive assembly
ratifies more than it makes legislation, but may often modify it. This
pattern is best seen in Westminster-style parliaments, found in countries
with close historical ties with Britain.
Reactive assemblies often function along adversary lines. In New
Zealand, for example, 'opposition MPs see their task as discrediting the
government. They seek to extend the range of perceived problems. They
search out and exploit all grievances which they can appropriate, within
limits set by their own biases and commitments' (Wood 1988, p. 52).
The British House of Commons, similarly, is an arena in which a
ritualised confrontation takes place between government and opposi-
tion. Behind its often arcane proceedings, a continuous election
campaign goes on. It is a form of theatre, now aimed at the television
audience. Sustained by a disciplined party majority, the cabinet
commands the Commons and can expect to see almost all its proposed
legislation enacted. As in New Zealand, the task of the opposition is to
oppose: to force the government to account and to question, debate and
criticise its policy. Parliamentary debate and committee scrutiny may
 Assemblies 301

not have much direct impact upon legislation, but it affects the
government's morale - and its prospects of re-election.
In a reactive assembly, the key relationship for the government lies
with its own backbenchers. As Margaret Thatcher found to her cost in
November 1990, even a dominant leader must address the concerns of
backbenchers. If she is deaf to growing criticism, in the end she forfeits
their loyalty and her own position. Commanders who lose the
confidence of their troops do not last long. Such exceptional episodes
aside, the direct impact of reactive assemblies upon legislation is
modest. Their real importance is that the government is forced to
account for itself. In theory, this process helps voters to decide whether
the government should continue, or be thrown from office, at the next
election.
The parliament of the Fifth French Republic is another example of a
reactive assembly. It is policy-influencing, but only to a mild extent. The
French parliament has been described as a loyal workhorse but a poor
watchdog (Frears 1990, p. 32). It does not initiate legislation, is not the
main channel for ministerial recruitment, and does not function well as
an arena of national debate. However, it does examine, improve and
legitimise legislation.
Where assemblies do gain greater significance, this is often a reflection
of deeper political instability. For instance, the National Assembly of
the Third (1870-1940) and Fourth (1945-58) French Republics over-
shadowed political life generally and the executive in particular. The
assembly often used its constitutional power to overthrow the executive.
In the twelve years of the Fourth Republic, 25 governments came and
went. The life of many cabinets was measured in weeks rather than
months. The influence of the assembly was strong but negative.
Governments could not muster stable support for a variety of reasons.
Deputies engineered their downfall in the hope of gaining office for
themselves. The many parties in the Assembly were sorely at odds with
one another. The Communists on the left and the Gaullists on the right
rejected the regime itself.
Italy provides the nearest modern case of 'assembly government'. It
experienced 48 governments between 1945 and 1990.'Government crises
are such a recurring feature of Italian politics that the word 'crisis'
inaccurately describes what is usually a routine reshuffle of ministerial
faces. Again, these 'crises' are more rooted in the party system than in
the procedures of parliament itself. However, the policy impact of the
Italian parliament remains considerable. Government legislation is often
amended and many private bills are passed (Furlong 1990, p. 52).
The Swedish Riksdag is a more stable case of an assembly which
exerts strong policy influence (Arter 1990, p. 139). The impact of the
302 The Structures of Government

Riksdag was enhanced by organisational changes linked with the

transition to a unicameral assembly in 1971, in particular the strength-
ening of the committee system. The Riksdag's impact also reflects the
exceptionally strong norms of consultation in Swedish politics. Policy is
arrived at through discussion and compromise between representatives
of interested groups. Backbench initiatives and legislative committees
are both significant features of the policy-making process .

• Second world: the assembly as theatre

In the second world, assemblies have always been a form of theatre
rather than a decision-making arena. However, the nature of their
performance changed greatly as communist rule fell apart. Under
communism, the legislative actors performed without gusto, merely
reading out a dull script outlined for them by the ruling party. In the
move to postcommunism, the drama came alive. The script became
more impromptu, the outcome less certain and the acting more
passionate. As postcommunist rule matures, the quality of the legisla-
tive performance may fall back - but not, surely, to the banal level of the
communist era.

D Assemblies under communist rule

Under communism, the ruling party dominated the assembly. In theory,
the assembly was sovereign but in practice its main functions were ritual
and propaganda. Assemblies symbolised both the unity within the ruling
party and the links between the leaders and the led. Government
officials used assemblies to outline past successes and future targets.
There was little real debate and even less dissent. The assembly formally
elected the prime minister and other ministers but invariably rubber-
stamped the party's choices. Standing ovations for the leaders were a
major feature of the script; free debate was not. The lack of time devoted
to sessions further limited the impact of assemblies. Plenary sessions
were brief and infrequent - about ten days per year. Thus the policy-
making role of assemblies in communist party states was, for most of
their history, minimal.
This remains the situation in the People's Republic of China (PRC).
Some reforms have taken place, but criticism of the party is still confined
to local and minor matters. After the death of Mao, real efforts were
made to strengthen the role of the National People's Congress (NPC)
which did not meet during the last twelve years of Mao's life. However,
 Assemblies 303

the NPC still meets in very short plenary sessions, so the real debate
takes place in the assembly's preparatory groups and committees. Here
specific policies can meet opposition and local and national minority
interests can be aired. For example, after the Chinese leadership
announced an economic retrenchment policy in 1988, representatives
of the poorer areas complained that their districts would be hit hardest
by the new policy.
There is also another assembly in China, the Chinese People's
Political Consultative Conference. However, this is nothing more than
a talking shop, which brings non-party members into the political
process. A safe and sanitised forum for debate, it rewards those who
have toed the line over the years - a Chinese counterpart to Britain's
House "of Lords. Although assemblies have recovered some power and
influence in the PRC since the death of Mao, they remain clearly
subordinate to the ruling communist party.

D Assemblies in postcommunist states

Far-reaching changes took place in the role of assemblies in the second
world during the late 1980s, not least in the Soviet Union. In the
Supreme Soviet (the USSR's assembly), real and often heated debates
over key issues replaced the contrived proceedings of the past. For the
first time in Soviet history, the great questions of the time were played
out in public rather than behind closed doors. The problems posed by
disintegration of the Soviet Union itself made the situation even more
tense. Many old-style deputies remained, behaving compliantly towards
the leadership on the platform, and aggressively towards the reformers.
But the radical minority seized the new opportunities now open to it.
The television cameras were their main weapon. The leaders could no
longer impose an artificial consensus; instead, they had to seek genuine
agreement. Party leaders could no longer be certain that their proposals
would be accepted without demur by the assembly.
These developments were radical and rapid, but they speeded up
changes already under way in the role of communist assemblies. Even
under Brezhnev's rule, S. White (1982) argued that the Supreme Soviet
was playing a real, if still marginal, role in influencing policy. As in
China after the death of Mao, criticism of specific policies had
increased, as had special pleading for local interests. Permanent
standing commissions of the assembly had become more significant in
making policy and in influencing the budget.
Before the late 1980s, however, legislative criticism posed no real
threat to party leaders. With the introduction of semi-free elections in
304 The Structures of Government

1989, President Gorbachev sought mass support for perestroika to

overcome bureaucratic resistance. But the legislative outcome was
paradoxical. The Supreme Soviet rapidly became a significant arena
of conflict and decision-making, in which Gorbachev's policies and
specific decisions came under fire from both radicals and conservatives.
Approval by docile, hand-picked deputies was no longer guaranteed.
Turbulent and unpredictable sessions became compulsive viewing on
television for the Soviet public. But the revitalised Supreme Soviet also
contributed to the decline of Gorbachev's authority. It revealed a
political leader who was no longer in control of his own programme
of reform. The assembly ended up biting its reformer's hand.
In Eastern Europe, assemblies also became important arenas in the
fall from power of ruling communist parties. Poland is the best example.
Minor parties have always been represented in Poland's parliament, the
Sejm. Committees frequently amended government policy and commit-
tee members often introduced major legislation. However, the real
drama came in April 1989, when the government made a desperate
move to improve its legitimacy. It decided to put up a third of the seats
in the Sejm for free election, plus all 100 seats in a new upper house
(Senate). Amazingly, Solidarity won all but one of the seats open to it.
Although the communists kept their majority in the Sejm (because they
had 'won' the seats where Solidarity was not permitted to stand), the
Communist Party could no longer even pretend to have a popular
mandate. Its days in power were numbered. President Jaruszelski
opened negotiations with Solidarity, and Poland's first non-communist
government since 1945 took office three months later.
Assemblies are now undoubtedly stronger in relation to governments
in postcommunist Eastern Europe, but their role is still evolving. The
strength of parliamentary norms and democratic traditions varies
greatly from one country to another. These are stronger, for example,
in Czechoslovakia and Poland than in Romania and Bulgaria. The
future of the assembly is likely to hinge upon developments in the wider
political system. Assemblies will be critical agencies for democratic
consolidation, as in southern Europe two decades earlier. There is a
clear danger in several countries, however, that assemblies may
degenerate into sounding-boards for intensely felt but intractable
questions of national minorities and ethnic relations. These issues were
suppressed (but not resolved) during decades of communist control. The
politics of authoritarian collectivism may be replaced by the politics of
authoritarian nationalism.
One difficulty facing the new rulers of several postcommunist states is
that they lack the special legislative majorities needed to push through
radical economic and constitutional reforms. The Polish Sejm, for
 Assemblies 305

instance, continued to be dominated by communists chosen under the

semi-free elections in 1989. This meant it quickly became a site of
resistance to postcommunist reforms. By mid-1991 a crisis unfolded as
the Sejm blocked emergency measures which the government said were
needed to revive the economy. When the Prime Minister offered the
government's resignation, the Sejm refused it. Assembly-executive
relations had become locked in an unproductive stalemate, which
continued after the elections of October 1991 produced extremely
fragmented party representation in the Sejm.
Several of the new regimes have executive presidents, and real power
is likely to be tilted toward presidents rather than assemblies. In both
Poland and Czechoslovakia, the president has the right to dissolve the
national assembly, name a new government and rule by decree. As
postcommunist regimes stabilise, so assemblies will probably settle
into a policy-influencing but mainly reactive role. The drama of
communist collapse is over; but so too is the era when second world
assemblies were nothing but a rubber stamp for the policy of the ruling
communist party.

I vulnerable
Third world assemblies: minimal and

Assemblies in the third world differ from the policy-making and policy-
influencing assemblies of the first world. The decline of the assembly as
a decision-making body in liberal democracies is usually discussed in
terms of the legislature losing ground to the executive and the bureau-
cracy. However, assemblies in most third world countries never
exercised this authority in the first place. Executive leaders intent on
monopolising power did not look kindly on autonomous assemblies.
Assemblies lacked elite support. When the temperature of conflict rose,
executive rulers were tempted to dispense with the assembly altogether.
At one time or another, many assemblies have been suspended or
abolished. Examples from the 1970s include Chile, Pakistan and the
Philippines; in the 1980s assemblies were suspended in Nigeria and
Turkey, after military intervention.
As democratic governments became more widespread in the third
world in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were grounds for believing
that assemblies would gain political weight. When elections are taken
seriously, then so too are the institutions they produce. In many third
world democracies, and especially in Latin America, presidential
elections are a stronger focus of public attention than elections to the
306 The Structures of Government

assembly. However, assemblies still have a symbolic role to perform in

any democracy. As the epitome of representative institutions, they will
surely benefit from the current wave of democratisation in the third
world.

o Problems of third world assemblies

In the past (and still today in many countries), the underlying problem
has been that representative political institutions were not strong
enough to handle the sharp cleavages experienced in developing
societies. Conflicts of class, religion, ethnicity, region or language are
reflected, but rarely transcended, by organisations such as assemblies.
Under fairly free elections, deep social cleavages are likely to be reflected
only too clearly in the legislature. Norms of parliamentary behaviour
are not well enough established to contain such conflicts. A lack of
professionalism worsens this condition: assembly sessions are short,
support facilities are scarce, the turnover of members is high and many
deputies are inexperienced. Rather than 'councils of consent', assem-
blies in third world countries easily degenerate into disorderly 'councils
of conflict' (Opello 1986).
From the point of view of the executive, therefore, the priority is to
keep the assembly on a short leash. For instance, the members of the
National Assembly of South Korea have been under constant govern-
ment scrutiny. Opposition parties are tolerated but only just. The
permissible limits of political argument have extended but remain very
narrow (Kim et al. 1984, p. 8).
In Latin America, assemblies modelled on the US Congress have
sometimes had a strong (though often obstructive) impact. In the
context of social tensions, economic instability, and multi-party
systems, the presidential system, which is common in Latin America,
can result in ungovernability. Directly elected presidents confront
assemblies which may not support them. In fact, an assertive assembly
may become deadlocked with the executive. This, in turn, has led to
several breakdowns of democratic governments (Diamond and Linz
1989, p. 26). For example in Chile between 1970 and 1973, conflicts over
policy between executive and assembly helped bring about a military
coup. The assembly was then itself suppressed. The wave of democra-
tisation which swept over Latin America in the 1980s will take time to
revitalise assemblies, given the popular appeal which the political or
military 'strong man' has had in the past.
Neither did the leaders of many emergent nations in Africa and Asia
see a policy-making role for the assembly in the decades after
 Assemblies 307

independence. The assembly's main role was integrative - to assist in

nation-building. It was one of the few institutions which drew together
representatives from different groups and areas within the country.
Though largely symbolic, this integrative role was seen as a reason or
excuse to rule out party competition and punish criticism. Debates on
broad questions of policy were not encouraged. As in Latin America, the
1980s saw some moves back to multi-party systems in Africa. Even so,
policy-making remained an executive preserve; the impact of assemblies
on policy has remained slight. In much of the third world, therefore,
assemblies have had a broken history even when they have not been
irrelevant sideshows.

o Functions of third world assemblies

If they do not function as a check on executive power and contribute
little to broad policy debate, what do third world assemblies do? They
have their uses, both for those in power and for those aspiring to it.
First, they provide a fig-leaf of legitimacy. Authoritarian rulers are keen
to have a showcase of support, providing it is well-orchestrated.
Secondly, even in undemocratic regimes, assemblies provide useful
sources of recruitment to the political elite. As Packenham (1970,
pp. 267-8) said of the Brazilian Congress during the years of military
rule:

Some politicians gain experience in the legislature which enables them to go

on to other posts like governorships, national ministries, state ministries and
the like. They learn the norms of the elites, they acquire political skills, and
they acquire visibility and prestige resources .... [The] activities of the
Brazilian Congress constitute training ground for Brazilian politicians.

Thirdly, assembly members may well press constituency interests and

raise individual cases. They are likely to stress, however, that the
individual grievance does not imply general criticism of the govern-
ment, whereas in policy-influencing assemblies the broader political
implications are often discussed. Energetic activities on behalf of
constituencies have been documented in such varied settings as the
Philippines, Kenya and Korea (Kim et al. 1984). Before it was suspended
by President Marcos, the Philippine Congress received so many 'local'
bills that Fridays were set aside solely for their consideration (Mezey
1979, pp. 160-1). Members of the Kenyan National Assembly keenly
press constituency claims, but would be unwise to criticise the
government and especially the president.
308 The Structures of Government

Sometimes activity on behalf of constituents becomes such a habit

that assembly members find it difficult to consider broader issues even
when the chance is there. Writing about the Brazilian Congress elected
in 1982, Wynia (1990 p. 241) comments that 'the new legislature was
weak, its members still more accustomed to involving themselves in
petty disputes and playing ombudsmen for constituents who sought
favours from the national bureaucracy than with writing major pieces of
legislation. '
So assemblies in many third world countries have had a chequered
existence. The level of support for the assembly within society is low,
military and bureaucratic elites have been hostile, and on the whole the
policy significance of assemblies has been limited. But they have been
persistent institutions, for several reasons. They confer some legitimacy
upon rulers; they serve as a linking mechanism in weakly integrated
societies; and they provide a training ground for recruits to the political
leadership. For these reasons, assemblies in third world countries have
survived through hard times. If democracy in the third world continues
to recover, then so too should assemblies .

• The fall and rise of assemblies?

Legislatures rarely make laws. Bills pass through the assembly on their
way to the statute book and receive some legitimation en route. But their
origins lie elsewhere: in the executive, the bureaucracy and the interest
groups. 'You draft the bills and we work them over', said a member of
the US Congress to a member of the administration. In less professional
and active assemblies than the US Congress, this process of working
over can be rather cursory.
But to speak of the decline of assemblies in an era of big government
and growing executive power is too simple. In several ways, assemblies
are growing in importance: as arenas of debate, as intermediaries in
transitions from one political order to another, as raisers of grievances,
and as agencies of oversight. The televising of proceedings in many
countries is making assemblies more, not less, central to political life.
Moreover, where the US Congress led the way in equipping assembly
members with the staff and resources to do their jobs professionally,
other legislatures are following. In the assemblies of Western Europe,
back bench members are now more assertive: party leaders can no longer
expect well-educated and well-resourced backbenchers to be loyally
deferential (Norton 1990b).
 AssembLies 309

Law-making is but one aspect of the assembly's role. Indeed, it can be

argued that the main responsibility for policy should not rest in the
assembly, given the instability to which assembly-dominated regimes
have been prone. What could be more odd, asked the nineteenth-century
writer, Walter Bagehot, than government by public meeting? What
assemblies can do is to oversee the executive, forcing politicians and civil
servants to account for their actions before a body which still in some
sense represents the nation.
In performing this supervisory role, assemblies will need to adapt to
the emergence of international organisations. For example, as European
integration gathers pace in the 1990s, national parliaments must better
equip themselves to maintain supervision of government. If they do not
do this, then by default they will yield power and influence to the
European Community's policy-making institutions.
This shift in function from legislation to supervision is paralleled by a
shift in assemblies away from floor debate to specialised committee
work. Assemblies could probably do more to influence policy, particu-
larly by greater professionalism. Members can also involve themselves,
as in Sweden, in the first analysis of policy problems before drafting of
bills has begun. Japan is a useful model here. In Japan many members of
the Diet form part of a zoku (an informal policy 'tribe') on the basis of a
common interest in a particular area of policy. In this capacity they gain
the expertise needed to influence the policy process.
Critics argue that a stronger policy role for the assembly is a mixed
blessing. They suggest that supervision of the executive can be too
effective, creating problems which are not found in a reactive assembly.
They cite the US Congress as a negative example of a powerful,
decentralised legislature which produces a stalemate in policy-making
and gives too much weight to partial interests. At least in a reactive
assembly, it is argued, the executive is directly accountable to voters for
its success or failure. Whether these problems linked with legislative
supervision outweigh the gains from thorough scrutiny of the executive,
comes down to a question about the proper balance between diffusion
and concentration of power in government.
310 The Structures of Government

Summary
1. An assembly is a multi-membered body with powers to make law, but in
most countries the executive now initiates proposals for new laws. Assemblies
remain major symbols of representative government, however.

2. Nearly all countries have an assembly of some description. About half of

all assemblies have two chambers. These provide checks and balances within
the legislature and represent different territories or interests in society.

3. Assemblies may perform various functions, including law-making, forming

governments, executive scrutiny and political recruitment. The key function of
assemblies is to represent the nation and act on its behalf.

4. In parliamentary systems, the assembly makes (and sometimes unmakes)

governments, which remain accountable to the assembly. But where a single
party has a majority, as in Westminster-type parliaments, a government, once
formed, can usually rely on the support of its members of parliament.

5. Assemblies are training grounds for political leaders. In authoritarian

regimes, as well as in liberal democracies, assemblies provide a channel of
recruitment and socialisation into the political dite.

6. Even in liberal democracies, assemblies mainly react to government

initiatives; they influence policy rather than making it. However, scrutiny of
government activity by assemblies through questions, debate and committee
investigation is growing in importance.

7. The strength of an assembly (including its ability to scrutinise) depends

strongly on its committee system and the resources and incentives available to
individual members. The United States Congress has an exceptionally well-
developed committee structure, but many other assemblies in the first world
strengthened their committee systems in the 1970s and 1980s.

8. In communist states, assemblies were of marginal significance. However,

they became lively arenas of debate in the transition to postcommunism. Their
significance will probably decline again - but not back to past levels.

9. Assemblies have also been of little importance in most of the third world.
Rulers found them too 'divisive'. However, they will probably acquire more
political weight as democracy strengthens.
 Assemblies 311

Disclission points
1. Are assemblies important because they legitimate, rather than legislate?
2. 'If the upper chamber agrees with the lower it is superfluous. If it disagrees,
it is pernicious' (Abbe Sieyes, 1789). Do you agree with this critique of
bicameralism?
3. Are 'working' assemblies really preferable to 'talking' assemblies?
4. What could be done to increase the policy influence of the assembly in your
country? Should it be done?

KC\. rcadin nu
Mezey, M. (1979) Comparative Legislatures (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press). Remains the best comparative treatment of assemblies.
Norton, P. (ed.) (1990a) Legislatures (Oxford: Oxford University Press). A
helpful volume, drawing together the most influential writings on the
subject.
Norton, P. (ed.) (1990b) Parliaments in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass).
Well-informed specialist assessments of assemblies in Western Europe.
Bailey, C. (1989) The US Congress (Oxford: Basil Blackwell) A good accessible
account of an exceptionally powerful assembly.
312 The Structures of Government

Further reading
Until a few years ago there were few good comparative treatments of
legislatures. Pioneering efforts were Wheare (1968) and Blondel (1973) but
the best treatment is Mezey (1979), which is very wide-ranging but well
integrated. Lees and Shaw (1979) provide detailed' studies of legislative
committees.
The comparative approach is carried forward by Arter (1984) on the Nordic
parliaments. Loewenburg and Patterson (1979) cover Kenya, West Germany,
Britain and the United States, while Kim et al. (1984) also cover Kenya plus
Korea and Turkey. Olsen and Mezey (1990) focus on the legislative role in
economic policy. Liebert and Cotta (1990) address the important topic of the
assembly's role in democratic consolidation. Many misconceptions about
second world legislatures are dispelled in Nelson and White (1982).
The most intensively studied legislature is the US Congress. Good books are
legion but Mayhew (1974) remains an outstanding work of synthesis and
interpretation. Norton (1985) and Walkland (1968) are valuable for the British
House of Commons.
 • Chapter 13 •

I
The Political Executive
What does the political The second world: the
execulive do? 313 communist executive 329
The first world: presidential The second world: the
executives 315 postcommunist executive 335
The first world: The third world executive 336
parliamentary systems 320

• What does the political executive do?

The political executive is the historic core of government. Its history is
the development of government authority itself, from absolute mon-
archs to modern forms of executive. The executive predates the
emergence of separate legislatures, judiciaries and bureaucracies. These
developed as bodies to aid, advise and later constrain executive rulers. In
the modern era executives have tended to acquire powers not specifi-
cally lodged elsewhere. The executive is where the buck stops.
Our concern here is with core executives, defined as the 'commanding
heights' of the state apparatus. At the core is the top leader and his or
her ministers and key officials. In parliamentary systems, for instance,
the core executive is a complex of institutions and actors, including the
prime minister, the cabinet, cabinet committees, and the coordinating
departments, such as the finance ministry (Dunleavy 1990, p. 102).
The task of the political executive is leadership. The executive is the
seat of authoritative power in society, entrusted with managing the
country's affairs. But this involves several functions. The first of these is
to provide broad direction of national policy. 'To govern,' as the French
politician Pierre Mendes-France declared, 'is to choose.' Second,
executive leadership involves supervising the implementation of pol-
icy. Given the scale and complexity of modern government, this is in
itself a great challenge. Third, the executive must mobilise support for
its policies. Since implementation in practice needs the compliance or
even cooperation of those affected, policy goals will not be achieved
without some degree of political support. Fourth, the executive is
charged with ceremonial leadership, symbolising the unity - real or
alleged - of the nation-state.

313
314 The Structures of Government

The final function of the executive is crisis leadership - the exercise of

wide, formally unlimited powers in emergencies. When swift and
decisive action is called for, power must be concentrated to be
effective. In two world wars, legislatures granted American presidents
and British cabinets such sweeping authority that they became, in effect,
constitutional dictatorships. Necessity, however, is always the tyrant's
plea. The Stroessner regime in Paraguay, for instance, maintained a
'state of siege' for three decades, enabling it to suppress opposition
almost at will.
Identifying the executive is not always easy. In communist party states
the party rather than the government was the ultimate source of
authority and the boundary between the two was often unclear. Party
and administration were deeply intertwined, with both institutions
nominally committed to the transformative goals of the regime. Thus
the bureaucracy was highly politicised.
In liberal democracies the formal distinction between the politician,
responsible to parliament or people, and the permanent civil servant,
responsible to his or her political overlords, is more easily drawn.
However, senior civil servants in liberal democracies are in reality
centrally involved in forming as well as implementing policy. Yet the
politicians still take primary responsibility for certain aspects of
executive leadership, such as mobilising political support and providing
ceremonial leadership.
A distinction is often drawn between constitutional and authoritarian
executives. Constitutional executives have effective restraints on the
exercise of power and succession to executive offices. Both in theory and
in practice, political leaders are accountable for their conduct. Con-
stitutional executives are of two main types: presidential and parlia-
mentary, with some intermediate cases. In presidential systems, of
which the United States is the main example, the chief executive is
elected independently of the assembly. In the parliamentary type, found
in most of Western Europe as well as Australia, Canada and New
Zealand, the chief executive is chosen by the assembly. Both types are
accountable, though presidents are directly responsible to the electorate
rather than indirectly through the assembly.
With authoritarian executives, by contrast, constitutional and elec-
toral controls are either unacknowledged or ineffective. The outward
forms of elected government may be adopted but they do not constrain
the exercise of power. In practice, authoritarian executives are respon-
sible to no one. Human rights are neither recognised nor respected.
Savage violence may be inflicted on political opponents. According to
Amnesty International, torture remains commonplace in at least one
hundred states of the modern world.
 The Political Executive 315

Though inherently coercive, authoritarian rulers nonetheless lack

total power. For one thing, they rely on their henchmen and those
who control the apparatus of repression. For another, like the absolute
monarchs of old, authoritarian executives are not accountable for what
they do, but still lack the ability to achieve whatever they want. In the
modern era, communist party states formed the main institutionalised
example of authoritarian rule. Government in the third world has also
often been authoritarian, though power there has tended to be more
personal and hence unstable.
The first part of this chapter examines constitutional executives,
looking in turn at first world presidential and parliamentary forms. We
then examine the executive in the second world of communist and
postcommunist states. Finally, we consider the executive rulers of the
third world .

• First world: presidential executives

The essence of the presidential executive is that the responsibilities of
leadership are vested in a chief executive, elected for a fixed term and
independent of the legislature, but counterbalanced by other political
institutions. (See Figure 13.1 for the general structure of the presidential
executive.) In the United States, for example, the chief executive is
chosen by popular election. As President Carter found in 1980, he is also
sometimes rejected by it. Where electoral, legislative or constitutional
constraints are weaker than in the United States, as in much of the third
world, executive rule by 'Presidents' often approaches the authoritarian
model.

D The United States

The United States is the prime example of the constitutional presidential
executive. The constitution states rather tersely; 'the Executive Power
shall be vested in a President of the United States'. It also provides that
the president shall be commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Subject
to confirmation by the Senate, the president can make treaties and
nominate ambassadors, ministers and judges of the Supreme Court. The
president may not dissolve the legislature, but can propose measures to
it. He may veto legislation, but his veto can be overriden by a two-thirds
majority in Congress. Conversely, Congress can only remove the
316 The Structures of Government

Voters

elect

$
chooses

administers
!
Ministries/
departments

Figure 13.1 The Presidential Executive

president from office by using the constitutional blunderbuss of

impeachment for high crimes and treason.
To describe the relationship between the US president and Congress
as the 'separation of powers' is misleading. In reality, there is a
separation of institutions rather than of legislative and executive
powers. This means president and Congress share the powers of
government in the United States: the president seeks to influence
Congress but cannot dictate to it. Presidential power is in essence the
power to persuade.
In this, the president has three main strategies: 'going Washington';
'going public'; and 'going international' (Rose 1987). 'Going Washing-
ton' involves the president in wheeling and dealing with Congress - to
assemble majorities for the legislative measures he wants. Nowadays
this means dealing with individual members of the House and Senate.
'Going public' means the president uses his unrivalled access to the mass
media to influence public opinion and persuade Washington indirectly.
'Going international' reflects increased US involvement in world affairs.
Every president now spends more time on foreign relations and national
security issues than on anything else.
Only one person can be president. But the presidency is not a one-
person job. To meet presidential needs for information and advice, a
 The Political Executive 317

variety of supporting bodies has evolved. Together they are known as

the Executive Office of the Presidency, and they provide far more direct
support than is available to the chief executive in parliamentary systems.
These bodies include the Cabinet; the White House Office (which itself
has a staff of about 400); the Office of Management and Budget; the
National Security Council; and the Council of Economic Advisors.
Yet the apparatus of presidential advisers has been a critical source of
weakness. Despite extensive facilities for advice and support, and a
much larger number of political appointments to administrative
positions than in most parliamentary systems, the American president
has weak control over much of what is done in his name. The Watergate
scandal in the 1970s destroyed the presidency of Richard Nixon: the
Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s undermined the reputation of Ronald
Reagan. Though the president bore primary responsibility in each case
for what happened, presidential advisers were also deeply implicated in
serious wrongdoing.
One problem is that advisers are recruited because of their personal
loyalties, rather than because of their proven ability and experience in
public affairs. In addition, the cabinet does not offer a counterbalance.
This is in sharp contrast to the parliamentary executive, in which the
cabinet is the formal apex of the decision-making process.
Some presidents are more successful than others. A major factor in
success is skill in the arts of communication and personal persuasion.
Ronald Reagan was the 'Great Communicator', who restored prestige
to the presidency after almost two decades of failure. In comparison
with the hard-working but unsuccessful Jimmy Carter, Reagan con-
centrated his efforts where these were likely to be most effective: in
responding to, and amplifying, an optimistic national mood. His
successor, George Bush, benefitted from the sudden collapse of
communist power in Eastern Europe. With the Soviet Union on the
sidelines, Bush went on to assert US military power confidently against
Iraq, temporarily boosting his reputation.
However, no matter how high the president stands in the opinion
polls, we should remember that power remains widely dispersed within
the American political system. Invested with the moral authority of the
nation and entrusted with responsibility for its well-being, the president
often lacks the stable political support needed to fulfil the demands
placed upon the office. Within the federal government, power is spread
among legislative, bureaucratic, judicial and executive institutions - and
state and local governments themselves retain much independence from
Washington. 'He'll sit here,' said President Truman, discussing the
problems which his successor General Eisenhower would face in
office, 'and he'll say "Do this! Do that!" and nothing will happen.
318 The Structures of Government

Poor Ike - it won't be a bit like the Army.' Since the time of Truman and
Eisenhower, American government has become even less manageable.
Not surprisingly, the extensive dispersal of power which characterises
American politics is rarely seen as a good idea elsewhere.

D France
Constitutional dispersal of power is less apparent in France, the other
major Western example of the presidential executive. French Presidents
operate under fewer constraints than their American counterparts.
France is, in fact, a constitutional hybrid, falling between the presiden-
tial and parliamentary executives (see Figure 13.2). A dual leadership is
shared between president and prime minister. Formally speaking, the
prime minister directs the government which is itself accountable to
parliament. However, the president is the leading figure in the political
system. Since 1962 he has been chosen by direct popular election for a
seven-year term. The president chooses the prime minister, chairs the
meetings of the Council of Ministers and often deals with individual
ministers rather than through the prime minister.
There have been repeated trials of strength between president and
prime minister. Certain areas of policy (notably defence and foreign
relations) are regarded as presidential domains. But successive pre-
sidents have intervened without hesitation in whatever areas of policy
were of interest to them (Y. Wright 1989). French presidents have also
exerted some direct control over the mass media, especially television.
Although presidents of the Fifth Republic have overshadowed
parliament, their power has in part depended on an acquiescent
majority in the assembly. The parliamentary elections of May 1986
dramatically confirmed this. The left-wing President Mitterrand faced a
right-wing majority in the Assembly. He chose to 'cohabit' with a right-
wing government, headed by Jacques Chi rae, and accepted a reduction
in his own authority. However, Mitterrand skilfully took advantage of
the falling popularity of Chirac's government in 1988 in using his
constitutional prerogative to dissolve the Assembly. At the ensuing
elections, Chi rae lost his majority. Mitterrand then promptly asked the
socialist politician Michel Rocard to form a new government of the left.
Even though the French president cannot ignore the need for the
government to have parliamentary backing for its legislative pro-
gramme, he does have substantial powers of manoeuvre. Since 1958,
the French presidency has provided a strong focus for national
aspirations, with fewer constraints than in the United States on the
president's ability to achieve these aims.
 The Political Executive 319

Voters

elect

names
approves
and can
remove Premier
(or Prime presides
Minister) over

'the
executive' chooses

administers

Figure 13.2 The Semi-Presidential Executive

o Finland
The semi-presidential system of Finland resembles the French pattern.
The Finnish president has a degree of influence over the political process
which is unique in Scandinavia. Finnish presidents are constitutionally
responsible for foreign affairs, dissolving the assembly and appointing
leading civil servants. They can reject proposed legislation and veto bills
approved by the parliament, powers beyond even those of the French
president. In practice presidents play an important role in delivering
cabinets (which the constitution requires to consist of 'honest and
capable' citizens) out of the complexities of Finnish multi-party
politics. Since a new government is formed almost every year, this
gives the president considerable opportunity to influence public affairs.
320 The Structures of Government

The unusual status of Finnish presidents reflected their responsibility for

managing Finland's sensitive relationship with the Soviet Union (Arter
1990). Presidential impact upon Finnish domestic policy appears to have
been more restricted. The ending of the Cold War, moreover, means
that the presidential domain of foreign policy has lost much of its early
postwar significance.

o Assessment
How well does the presidential executive perform the vital functions of
leadership? The strength of the presidential executive lies in its potential
for prioritising political goals and mobilising the population. A single
executive provides a natural focus of popular attention, a focus which is
further sharpened by popular election. But because the president is both
head of state and chief executive, unethical or illegal presidential
conduct may dangerously undermine public confidence, more so than
if the chief executive were a 'mere' politician. The Watergate scandal in
the 1970s shocked many Americans, and produced a sharp decline in
public faith in government.
Presidents must try to be all things to all people. There is a
temptation, therefore, to emphasise bland, patriotic, non-divisive
themes, and to concentrate on presidential image rather than policy
substance. Presidential systems, however, lend themselves more easily
than parliamentary governments to crisis leadership. Authority invested
in a single figure allows a faster response to emergencies than does
shared authority. Unfortunately, presidents tend to govern by crisis:
'rally round the President' can become a routine political ploy, and
constitutional executives slide into authoritarian habits. Where policy
implementation is concerned, it is doubtful whether presidents are more
successful than parliamentary executives in controlling the bureaucracy.
Despite the array of advisers around the American president, for
instance, the federal bureaucracy is often strikingly unresponsive to
his objectives .

• The first world: parliamentary systems

Whereas the presidential executive is separate from the assembly and
independently elected, the parliamentary executive is organically linked
to it (Figure 13.3). Parliamentary executives are, in effect, a special kind
of committee, whose members come entirely, or mostly, from the
assembly and are accountable to it. The distribution of power in
 The Political Executive 321

Voters

elect

Head of State

chooses and formally

can dismiss appoints
1
Prime
Minister
(or premier)
I

$
chooses

'The Executive'

administers
!
M inistries/
departments

Note: Head of state may be an hereditary monarch, or a directly or indirectly elected

president. The post, however, is essentially ceremonial and without executive authority.

Figure 13.3 The Parliamentary Executive

parliamentary executives is affected by three main factors: the role of the

head of state; the relationship between executive and assembly; and the
relationship between prime minister and cabinet. We shall consider each
of these areas in turn.

o Heads of state in parliamentary systems

One of the hallmarks of a parliamentary system is, in Bagehot's classic
analysis, the distinction between the 'dignified' and 'efficient' aspects of
government (Bagehot 1963, p. 63). Dignified or ceremonial leadership
centres upon the head of state, either a titular president or a constitu-
tional monarch. 'Efficient' leadership rests with a team of ministers,
headed by a prime minister and accountable to parliament. This
arrangement is mainly an outcome of past struggles between crown
322 The Structures of Government

and parliament for control of government. Nonetheless a head of state

does provide continuity in government, a fixed point above the parties
and personalities who wield executive power.
In an era of popular sovereignty, royal heads of state are surprisingly
numerous. Half the countries of Western Europe, for instance, are
constitutional monarchies. So also are Japan and Malaysia. In Australia,
Canada, New Zealand and several other Commonwealth countries, the
head of state was or still is a governor-general acting in the Queen's
name and appointed by her in consultation with the host government.
Duties of the head of state are largely ceremonial; appointing the prime
minister is probably the most important of these tasks. On most
occasions, though not all, the head of state has little discretion in the
matter.
Some monarchies perform their constitutional duties without great
pomp and ceremony. Indeed, when the Swedish king applied for a
parking permit so that groceries could be delivered, the local council
refused, saying it would create a precedent. However a monarch with an
informal style may still have much political influence. Spain's successful
transition from dictatorship to liberal democracy in the 1970s depended
on skilful but discreet steering by its head of state, King Juan Carlos II.
Royal influence upon politics is real though informal in Belgium and the
Netherlands. Because both countries have fragmented party systems, the
head of state sometimes exercises personal choice in the selection of the
prime minister. Moreover, Dutch cabinets have sometimes modified
policy positions in order to take the royal view into account.
The British monarchy, on the other hand, though still conducted in
grand style, probably has very little influence on policy. Only in the
formation of a government might there be some scope for direct royal
initiative, and then only if no party had an overall majority after an
election or if the majority party had become hopelessly split. Perhaps the
most controversial intervention by a parliamentary head of state of
recent years was the dismissal in 1975 of the Whitlam Government and
the dissolution of the Australian Parliament by the Governor-General,
after the Senate had rejected the Government's budget. But this was an
exceptional episode. In general, heads of state in parliamentary systems
stay above the political battle, a position which allows more effective
intervention in the rare circumstances when it is deemed necessary.
Where parliamentary systems take a republican form, they usually
provide for an elective or appointed president to act as titular head of
state. Sometimes the president is directly elected by the population, as in
Austria, Ireland and Portugal. In other cases the chief of state is elected
by parliament or by an electoral college. This usually comprises the
national legislature plus representatives of regional or local government,
 The Political Executive 323

as in Germany, Greece, India, Italy and Israel. The duties of the

president in most of these countries are largely ceremonial. Politically
sensitive decisions such as the dissolution of the legislature would
normally be taken on the advice of the prime minister and government.
But the boundaries of the role are not always tightly drawn and the
chief of state may be more than a figurehead. Mary Robinson, Ireland's
first woman president, has not been reluctant to declare her views on
controversial issues. Italian presidents also sometimes state their
positions on contentious matters such as divorce and abortion. More-
over, the Italian president has considerable importance in the frequent
and delicate task of forming governments. By the early 1990s, the role of
the Italian president was coming under fire, with several parties of the
left demanding direct election to the office in view of its increasingly
bitter relations with parliament.

D Government and parliament

The basis of the parliamentary executive is its interdependence with the
assembly. A cabinet or council of ministers emerges from the assembly
and is ultimately responsible to it. The government holds office just as
long as it retains the confidence of the assembly. If that confidence is
withdrawn, as for example by a vote of censure, the government is
expected to resign. If no new government can be found which
commands the assembly's support, the normal course is the dissolution
of the assembly and a general election.
But the relationship between assembly and executive is two-way.
Various procedural devices are available to the government in its
dealings with the assembly. In some parliamentary systems, the
government controls the parliamentary agenda and timetable; in most,
the premier (that is, prime minister) can request the dissolution of the
assembly before it has run its full course. This, however, is a double-
edged weapon since the premier's own party might well be the chief
casualty of its use. But in practice the major influence on the stability of
parliamentary executives is the legislative party system. Two contrast-
ing versions can be identified: cabinet-dominated and assembly-domi-
nated executives.
The cabinet-dominated version is where the executive can count upon
disciplined majority support in the assembly, as in Britain, Australia and
New Zealand. The cabinet fuses control of executive and legislature. As
long as leaders retain the support of their parliamentary party, the
cabinet-dominated system enables coherent direction of government,
both in terms of legislation and implementation of policy. Cabinet
324 The Structures of Government

government based on disciplined legislative support provides a direct

chain of accountability running from the government to the assembly
and from the assembly to the electorate. In choosing their representa-
tives in the assembly, the people indirectly choose their rulers in the
executive. This form of the parliamentary executive is mainly associated
with adversarial (or Westminster-style) assemblies.
In assembly-dominated systems, by contrast, the relationship between
elections and government formation is less direct. Where the party
system is fragmented, the formation and survival of governments
depends more on inter-party bargaining in the assembly than on
election results. In the Netherlands, for example, the average length of
time taken to form a new cabinet after an election or resignation is 86
days - with a record, in 1977, of 208 days! (Gladdish 1991, p. 128.) This
would seem to be a recipe for precarious government, as indeed it is in
Italy and was in France during the Third Republic (1870-1940) and the
Fourth Republic (1946-1958). True, few cabinets in the Netherlands
since the war have seen out their four year term. But the distinction here
is not simply between stable majority-party and unstable coalition
governments. Coalition government in Germany has been as stable
and durable as majority-party rule. Even where the party system is
highly fragmented, as in the Netherlands and nowadays in the Scandi-
navian countries, Italian-style instability of the political executive is not
seen.

D Prime ministers and cabinets

The parliamentary executive involves a tension between collegiality and
hierarchy, between a ministerial college of political equals and a pre-
eminent chief executive. How strong are prime ministers in relation to
other members of the executive? One extreme is India during the 1975-
77 'Emergency'. Indira Gandhi became a virtual dictator. At the other
extreme is the French Third Republic, where the prime ministers
produced by the game of ministerial musical-chairs were once described
as 'transient and embarrassed phantoms'. Prime ministerial power
results from a complex interaction between personalities, parties and
constitutions. The powers of prime ministers vis-a.-vis their ministerial
colleagues have tended to increase, though the distinction between a
prime minister in a parliamentary system and a directly elected president
remains fundamental.
Control of appointments is a major source of power in any setting.
How free in practice are prime ministers to choose their ministerial
teams? The powers of appointment of the British prime minister are
without doubt substantial. Moreover, what prime ministers give they
 The Political Executive 325

may also remove. Subject to some constraints of party balance, British

prime ministers may form a government of their choosing from the
talent available in the parliamentary party. Only a handful of senior
figures possess such stature or experience as to be too important - or too
dangerous - to be excluded. A British prime minister has even more
scope with lesser appointments. As former Labour Minister Gerald
Kaufman (1980, p. 13) advises, 'If the Prime Minister makes you an offer
and you are not in an exceptionally powerful position, take what you
are offered or be ready to return to the back benches; dozens will be
ready to accept what you have rejected.'
In other countries which adopted the British parliamentary model,
prime ministers generally have less freedom of appointment (see Exhibit
13.1). In Canada, prime ministers have to ensure adequate representa-
tion in cabinet for the various provinces; ministers speak for their
province as well as their department. In New Zealand, the small size
of the parliament means that almost all MPs from the governing party
are likely to find themselves in an executive post (Weller 1985, p.86).
Party practice may also curtail the prime minister's choice, as in the case
of the Australian Labour Party. In government, as well as in opposition,
elections within the parliamentary party decide the composition of
Labour's front-bench team. A Labour prime minister distributes the
portfolios among the cabinet team but does not himself decide its
membership. The New Zealand Labour Party follows the same
practice, though there a Labour prime minister retains the right to
dismiss, if not appoint, ministers.
The Basic Law (Constitution) of the German Republic also leaves no
doubt that the chancellor enjoys the right to name his own ministerial
team, though in practice party and especially coalition considerations
restrict his freedom of choice (Mayntz 1980, p. 145). However,
compared with their British counterparts, ministers in the Federal
Republic tend to be appointed to posts suited to their professional
training and experience. This is also the case in other West European
countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium: party standing is of less
account in qualifying individuals for cabinet office than specialist
expertise, though the cabinet needs to be carefully balanced by party
(Gladdish 1991).
Where no party commands an overall majority in parliament, the
business of forming a cabinet is more complex and the autonomy of the
prime minister can be much reduced. In Belgium and the Netherlands,
for instance, the distribution of ministerial posts is the result of
bargaining between the coalition partners, with each party filling its
share from its own nominees. Ministers serve with the prime minister,
not under him. (See Exhibit 13.2.) The position of the Italian prime
minister is similarly constrained by the factions in the Christian
326 The Structures of Government

Exhibit 13.1 How powerful are prime ministers?

Although Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand all have

parliamentary systems, Weller's study (1985) reveals considerable
differences in prime ministerial power between the four countries:

Australia Britain Canada New

(Liberal Z ealand
governments)
Control over party low variable medium variable
Control over cabinet variable high medium medium
committees
Hiring/ firing variable high medium variable
ministers
Control over variable medium low high
parliament

Indeed, even within countries the power of prime ministers depends

on the party in government, as the frequency of the variable category
suggests. Overall Weller concludes that Conservative prime minis-
ters in Britain have fewest constraints, followed by National Party
leaders in New Zealand. In all four countries, left-wing parties
attempt firmer controls over their leader than parties of the right;
in Australia and New Zealand they partly succeed.
What explains the cross-national differences in the table? The
major factor is tradition. Each country evolves its own conventions
about what prime ministers can and cannot do. For example, cabinet
committees are permanent and regulated in Australia and New
Zealand; they are far easier to manipulate in Britain, which strength-
ens the prime minister's hand. British prime ministers can also sack
ministers with relative impunity; in Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, this is an unusual event.

Democrat Party and by the need for bargaining between parties to

maintain a governing coalition. Since there may be several ex-prime-
ministers in the cabinet, the prime minister may not even be the
undisputed leader. The premier's acceptability to the various coalition
 The Political Executive 327

Exhibit 13.2 The Dutch Prime Minister: not yet a chief

In the comparative study of Prime Minister/Cabinet relations, the

Netherlands is an interesting 'deviant case'. In a variety of ways, and
for a variety of reasons, Dutch Prime Ministers have not become
such commanding figures as they are in many other countries with
parliamentary government.
In the Netherlands, Ministers serves with Prime Ministers rather
than under them. The Prime Minister (or, to use the correct title,
Minister-President) can neither appoint Ministers, nor dismiss them.
PMs cannot give direct orders to Ministers, nor would they consider
attempting to reshuffle the composition of the Cabinet. Furthermore,
the PM is involved in only a handful of other appointments to
executive office.
One reason for the weakness of the PM lies in the variety of parties
represented in parliament, which is elected by pure proportional
representation . As a result, the allocation of Cabinet posts is
determined by lengthy inter-party negotiations which precede the
formation of a new coalition. Once a new government has formed,
no PM wants to upset the apple-cart by attempting an untactful
reshuffle. Dutch politics brings forth skilful conciliators, not dashing
heroes.
In addition, Dutch government departments guard their indepen-
dence. They are staffed by specialists, recruit their own staff and
would not take kindly to orders from the PM.
Finally, the Dutch cabinet has only 14 or so members, smaller than
elsewhere. This reinforces a collegial culture, which has its roots in
an era when the Dutch political elite had to reconcile the conflicting
interests of religious subcultures in society.
Andeweg (1991) notes that the position of the Dutch PM is slowly
increasing in importance. Media visibility grows apace, the PM's
international role is expanding, and the PM is now called on to
attempt more co-ordination of policy across departments. But these
are changes at the margin. The Dutch Prime Minister has become
more than a chairperson, bur remains far less than a chieftain.

parties or faction leaders may be more critical than their acceptability to

him (Hine and Finocchi 1991, pp. 79-81). A similar situation prevails
within the dominant but highly factionalised Liberal Democratic Party
in Japan.
328 The Structures of Government

D Collective responsibility
How cohesive is the parliamentary executive? Are its members bound to
common policies and a common fate? 'Collective responsibility' means
that ministers share responsibility for the decisions agreed by the
cabinet. Where collective responsibility is firmly entrenched, it strength-
ens the authority of the executive. Collective responsibility increases the
executive's powers of co-ordination over the bureaucracy since minis-
ters are pledged to the same set of policies. It also presents the assembly
with a clear-cut choice: either to accept or reject the government as a
whole.
Collective responsibility does not of course remove conflict among
government ministers. It merely conceals it by requiring that ministers
publicly support - or at least refrain from attacking - the settled policy
of the cabinet. As a nineteenth-century British Prime Minister, Lord
Melbourne, once remarked, 'It matters not much which we say, but
mind, we must all say the same.' British parliamentary norms strongly
emphasise this doctrine and it has been transplanted to other
Westminster-type parliamentary systems in Canada, Australia and
New Zealand. However, the norm has not always been 'internalised'
there to the same extent.
In several parliamentary systems, the sense of collective responsibility
within the executive is distinctly limited. The Italian constitution enjoins
collective responsibility of the Council of Ministers to parliament but in
practice this is notably lacking. Italy has 'government by ministry'.
Inter-departmental co-ordination of policy is notoriously weak and
conflict notoriously common. The underlying problem is that the
parties are extremely factionalised. These factions tend to 'colonise'
(i.e. take into their own possession) different ministries.
The convention of collective responsibility remains fairly weak in the
Netherlands, where there is a semi-separation of the executive from the
legislature. Ministers may not sit in parliament; indeed, many have no
parliamentary experience and are brought into government from the
universities, the professions and the civil service. Rather than achieving
collective solidarity, Dutch cabinets are multi-party coalitions which
produce accommodations between ministers with accepted areas of
expertise.
The constitution of Germany emphasises hierarchy rather than
collegiality among government ministers. Accountability to the Bundes-
tag is mainly channelled through the chancellor. He answers to
parliament; ministers answer to him. The strong position of the chief
executive derives from the Basic Law of the Federal Republic which
 The Political Executive 329

makes the chancellor removable only by a 'constructive vote of no

confidence' - to dismiss the chancellor, the Bundestag must elect his
successor. Yet the Federal cabinet has a fairly weak collective character.
Ministers tend not to question the decisions of other departments and
many matters are despatched without discussion. Ministers conduct the
affairs of their departments within the chancellor's guidelines, though in
practice chancellors have shown regard for the expertise of ministers. It
is an exaggeration to speak of 'Chancellor democracy' in Germany, but
its cabinet is certainly more hierarchical, and somewhat less cohesive,
than its British counterpart.
The doctrine of collective responsibility conceals the extent to which
decision-making in most cabinet-style executives has become fragmen-
ted into numerous decision-arenas. As government has grown, so too
has the number of ministers. In Canada, the cabinet reached the
unwieldy size of 40 in 1987, partly due to pressures for representation
from the various regions and linguistic groups of this divided nation.
Elsewhere, cabinets have been kept to a more manageable size of 20-25
members. However this has meant excluding some ministers from
cabinet and making more use of cabinet committees. Australia, for
example, has nine committees, three coordinating and six functional. In
most countries, most decisions are now made in these committees, and
are merely reported to the full cabinet for ratification. Indeed, in
Australia, decisions made by cabinet committees can only be reopened
in full cabinet with the approval of the prime minister. Cabinet
government has become government by the cabinet system of which
committees are the decisive part.
However, although the doctrine of collective cabinet responsibility
does not accurately reflect executive decision-making, regular cabinet
meetings do have an important solidifying function within government.
Cabinet can act as a final court of appeal for disputes between
departments. Legislative accountability is also a spur to cabinet
cohesion in Westminster-style assemblies. Compared with the Amer-
ican president, parliamentary systems with cabinet structures are better
able to coordinate policies (Mackie and Hogwood 1985, p. 35).

I executive
The se~ond world: the communist and

The record of leadership in communist systems is rich in both tragedy

and irony. Communist revolution was supposed to liberate the workers
from oppression and exploitation. Instead, it produced dictatorships of
330 The Structures of Government

unprecedented depth and ferocity. Communist rule was supposed

everywhere to create classless, egalitarian societies of plenty. Instead,
it produced shortage economies and alienated peoples, ruled by corrupt
and ideologically bankrupt bureaucracies.

o Personality cults
Communist rule was also supposed to be collective. Instead, one-man
rule and grotesque leadership cults were striking features. The objects of
adulation included Lenin and Stalin in the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong
and Deng Xiaoping in China, Castro in Cuba, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam,
Enver Hoxha in Albania, Tito in Yugoslavia, Ceaucescu in Romania
and Kim II Sung in North Korea. Although Marxism was supposed to be
a doctrine of impersonal forces, individual leaders can rarely have had
so great an impact as in communist party states.
It is true that Janos Kadar, the Hungarian Party leader (1958-88),
rode the tramcar to work every day, unrecognised by most people. But
from Stalin onwards, most Marxist rulers sought to bolster their
position by fostering a cult of personality. The leader's name and face
were everywhere: huge photographs on buildings, statues in public
squares and a bust in every bureaucrat's office, glorified in speech and
song, endlessly publicised in newsprint, and on radio, film and
television. The supreme leader was promoted as the revolution perso-
nified. Any criticism was equated with opposition to the party and the
revolution as a whole, and invited harsh repression.
The ideological foundations of the communist system were linked
with the supreme leader. He alone fully understood the truths of
Marxism, and how to apply them to the concrete situation in the
country. Thus Marxism was redefined in the 1920s as Marxism-
Leninism by Stalin; other isms were then proclaimed, including
Stalinism, Titoism and Maoism (personality cults and -isms are not
confined to communist states, as anyone who lived in Britain during the
era of Thatcherism will know).
In North Korea, the political thought of Kim II Sung virtually replaced
Marxism as the ideological cornerstone. The cult of personality in
North Korea runs tdeeper than elsewhere even in the communist world.
Korean history has been recast in terms of the heroic revolutionary
activities of Kim II Sung's family. The Soviet Red Army, which actually
installed Kim and his party at the end of the Second World War, goes
unmentioned. Loudspeakers throughout the land incessantly extoll the
virtues of Kim II Sung. Although the domestic electricity supply is on for
 The Political Executive 331

only a few hours a day, huge statues of the 'Great Leader' are brightly lit
for all to admire.
Such cults of personality acted as a brake on innovation and political
change. New policies were risky if they departed from those identified
with the dominant leader; politicians who crossed the supreme leader,
or threatened his position, were purged.
However, the existence of a cult of personality did not mean that the
leader was all-powerful. Supreme leaders have more often been the final
arbiter in the decision-making process than the sole source of initiative.
Sometimes events or pressures from colleagues have forced them to
change policies. In China, Mao was forced into a political back-seat in
the early 1960s by the failure of the Great Leap Forward, his radical
attempt to make a swift transition to communism. To get back in
command, he had to unleash the Cultural Revolution in 1966 over the
heads of his party colleagues.

o Succession crises
Communist party states have lacked an orderly process for succession.
As a result, they have suffered crises of succession. These obviously
occur after the death of the leader, but there have also been 'pre-mortal'
succession crises. For example, in Albania in 1981, long-time Prime
Minister Mehmet Shehu, a close associate of party leader Enver Hoxha,
supposedly committed suicide after bizarre accusations that he had
simultaneously spied for Yugoslavia, the United States, the Soviet Union
and Britain.
Men like Lenin, Mao, Hoxha, Castro and Tito were perceived as
hero-founders. They were leaders who had brought a revolutionary
party to power. However, maintaining legitimacy is difficult for the
post-revolutionary generation. The successor may claim the mantle of
the founder's authority for himself but this severely limits his ability to
embark on new policies. Consider the situation which threatens to
engulf Kim Jong II, son of Kim II Sung and heir-apparent in North
Korea. He has been promoted as the only person truly able to under-
stand his father's political philosophy. But the North Korean economy
desperately needs fundamental reform. If Kim Jong II embarks on
reforms, he loses the main source of legitimacy for his rule. Yet if he
does not reform the economy, its collapse will probably take him with it.
Alternatively, new leaders can distance themselves from their pre-
decessors, blaming current ills on past failings. The new leader promotes
himself as the person who will rectify old evils and move the nation
forward. Pushed to extremes, this strategy can undermine the ideologi-
332 The Structures of Government

cal foundations of the state. Under Gorbachev's policy of glasnost in the

Soviet Union, virtually all aspects of the Soviet past were assailed. If
nearly everything that went before was wrong, how could the party have
any mandate to continue in power? This was indeed the outcome of the
coup attempt by hardline communists in 1991. Stripped bare of any
remaining vestige of legitimacy, the communist system was simply
swept away in the reaction to the coup. Gorbachev's initial efforts to
salvage the communist party after the failed coup prompted the
memorable description (by one of his closest advisers) as 'Discussing
how to offer tea to a corpse'.

D Formal structures: state and party

The formal executive structure of communist states followed a standard
pattern, though this was hardly an accurate guide to the realities of
power. The model is shown in Figure 13.4. Before perestroika, the Soviet
Union exemplified the model. According to the 1977 constitution of the
Soviet Union, 'the Supreme Soviet [the federal assembly 1is the supreme
body of state power.' The Supreme Soviet 'elected' a Council of
Ministers, under the stage-management of the party, of course.
Constitutionally the Council of Ministers was the 'highest executive
and administrative body of the USSR'; it was the formal government. Its
real task, however, was to supervise the implementation of party policy.
The Council of Ministers, however, was a large and unwieldy body,
over one hundred strong. Much of its work was therefore delegated to
its Presidium, an inner steering body, whose chairman was in effect the
Soviet prime minister. The Soviet head of state, however, was the
president, officially styled the Chairman of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet.
Traditionally, though, the key to supreme power was the post of the
General Secretary of the CPSU. Once his hold over the party was
secured, the General Secretary took on a major state office, either prime
minister or presidency. Stalin and Khrushchev became 'prime minister';
Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev chose the presidency.
The multiple hats worn by communist leaders illustrate the central
feature of the political executive in communist states: the penetration of
the state by the party. The communist party permeated, guided and
controlled the entire apparatus of government (on party organisation,
see Chapter 8). Broadly speaking, the party determined overall policy
while the state apparatus, under the direction of the Council of
Ministers, implemented it. But of the highest levels it was more accurate
to say that the party governed through the state, rather than merely
 The Political Executive 333

Presidium of the
Council of Ministers

Presidium of the Council of Ministers

Supreme Soviet

Supreme Soviet

-
Figure 13.4
formally elected Voters

Soviet executive structure, 1936-91

controlling it through supervision. This was because of overlapping

membership between party and state institutions at the top.
This pattern of distinct yet interlocked party and state organisation
was copied in other communist regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe
(Yugoslavia excepted). In China, party and state have been intertwined
even more closely. Throughout their history, party, state and army have
been closely fused.
The high command of the communist party-state was never accoun-
table. Neither the assembly, nor the electoral process, nor the courts
provided an independent power-base from which to challenge the
record or authority of party leaders, or to secure redress for indivi-
duals. The communist party dominated society and party leaders were
dominant within the party. The non-accountable character of the
communist executive explains two of the weaknesses that contributed
to its collapse: slow turnover at the top and the lack of an agreed
succession procedure. In liberal democracies, changes of personnel and
policy result either from elections or from rules restricting length of
tenure - US presidents, for instance, can serve no more than two four-
year terms. In communist states, by contrast, 'biology [was 1the midwife
of change' (McCauley and Carter 1985, p. 2). Biology works slowly, but
also irregularly - Stalin's rule lasted for thirty years, that of Andropov
for less than two. Until the emergence of Gorbachev in 1985, slow
turnover at the top restricted policy innovation, reflecting cautious,
unimaginative leadership that was really intent only on preserving its
own privileges. The paradox of the political executive in communist
party states is that strong, authoritarian leadership was insecure in
tenure and uncertain in succession.
334 Th e Structures of Government

Exhibit 13.3 Mikhail Gorbachev: communism's undertaker

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is known to history as the man who founded

the communist system, Mikhail Sergeivich Gorbachev will be
remembered as the man who set out to reform communism, but
ended up burying it.
Little about Gorbachev's early background marked him out for
destiny. He was born to a peasant family in Privolnoe, a village in
Southern Russia, in 1931, during the worst years of collectivisation.
The teenage Gorbachev worked on the collective farm, and became a
committed communist. Unusually for a peasant lad, he gained entry
to the Law Faculty of Lomonosov State University in Moscow . On
graduating with distinction, he became a communist functionary:
soon he was a regional party boss in Stavropol, his native province.
So far, so orthodox .
Gorbachev's big break came when senior party leaders noticed his
drive and initiative, and brought him to Moscow. In 1978, he became
the youngest member (age 47) of an ageing CPSU Politburo. By 1985,
signs of political and economic stagnation were everywhere. The old
guard finally ran out of options. Gorbachev became General
Secretary of the CPSU, and later President of the USSR. He launched
the series of reforms which the world came to know as perestroika
(restructuring) .
Abroad, he aimed to end the Cold War. This was achieved - but at
the price of communist collapse throughout Eastern Europe. At
home, Gorbachev's aim was to revive and reconstruct the Soviet
system. Instead, by mid-1991 perestroika had turned into
katastroika, with the reforms stalled and the economy collapsing.
Then came the coup of August 1991: Gorbachev's closest
comrades tried to depose him and reimpose centralised authoritar-
ian rule. The coup failed. In the week following, communism was
swept away. After initial qualms, Gorbachev dissolved the commu-
nist party. Pushed on by Boris Yeltsin, who had led resistance to the
coup, Gorbachev bullied the Congress of People's Deputies into
swallowing a midnight deal in which the central government turned
over most of its former functions to the republics. Gorbachev
survived in office for a few more months. He was now an isolated
figure without a power base, and was brushed aside by Yeltsin and
the leaders of the other republics.
Why did perestroika go off track? Gorbachev was a master
tactician, manoeuvring brilliantly between reformist and conserva-
tive forces, but a bad strategist. The effect was policy confusion,
 The Political Executive 335

which undermined the central planning system and pushed the

economy downhill. Though keen for others to face the electoral
music, he did not do so himself. Thus he lacked the democratic
legitimacy which alone might have enabled him to face down the
hardliners in the bureaucracy, military and the KGB. Instead, as
living standards fell, Gorbachev's popular standing reached rock
bottom and perestroika lost credibility.
His policies of democratisation and glasnost, however, did bear
fruit. They accelerated the transition to pluralism and encouraged
people to defy the coup successfully. With this, Gorbachev's work
was essentially done, though not as he had planned. He had
accomplished the fairly peaceful dismantling of a totalitarian
empire. He had also transformed the postwar international world.
Not bad for a country boy from Privolnoe.

I executive
The se~ond world: the postcommunist

Whereas communist regimes strove to manufacture 'charismatic'

leaders through cults of personality, leaders of genuine charisma played
an important role in the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe.
Exceptional individuals like Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in
Czechoslovakia provided focal points for opposition to rally round.
They also provided resolute leadership in the anti-communist struggle,
their characters steel hardened by years of harassment and repression.
Once the revolution was won, dissidents suddenly became presidents.
Shelley declared that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the
world. In Eastern Europe, their authority is now recognised. For a
playwright who was a reluctant politician, President Vaclav Havel
wields considerable power in Czechoslovakia. He is commander of
the armed forces; he can dissolve the national assembly and nominate a
new government. Also in Czechoslovakia, Jan Czarnogursky was
installed as Deputy Prime Minister the day after he was released from
prison, hardly the best training for the job. The skills required to run a
government, and undertake an immense task of social and economic
reforms, are very different from those needed to lead a revolution. One
problem facing the new societies of Eastern Europe is similar to that
which plagued many communist party systems in their early years -
good political agitators do not necessarily make good administrators.
336 The Structures of Government

Czechoslovakia, like Poland and several other postcommunist repub-

lics, has adopted an elected presidential head of state, operating in
tandem with parliamentary government. This means that trials of
strength are inevitable in postcommunist states between the president,
government and assembly. In Poland, for example, the reforming
President Walesa faced first a communist-dominated and then a highly
fragmented assembly. Postcommunist regimes must confront divisive
questions of economic reform and harsh budgetary choices. Their 'semi-
presidential' systems provide arenas in which different views can be
expressed and in which support can be mobilised behind much-needed
change. But it is far from clear whether the executive structures now in
place provide sufficient concentration of authority for the hard decisions
of office to be both made and implemented .

• The third world executive

Until recently, the pattern of rule in the third world rarely favoured
constitutional and democratic rule. In the Gulf, some states (Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates) are still traditional
monarchies, governed by ruling families. In Latin America, most states
have oscillated between periods of unstable civilian government and
military rule. In Africa, single party-regimes and military rule have been
the dominant forms of executive authority.
Genuinely constitutional rule has been rare. Especially in Africa, the
state itself is weak and may hardly exist outside the major cities. At the
same time, the state's coercive and financial resources are used in
uncontrolled and unaccountable ways. Civilian government has been
either unstable or authoritarian. Either way, it lay beyond effective
constitutional restraints. The incentives of patronage, and the risks of
non-cooperation with the government, have ensured that assemblies are
docile, elections are uncompetitive, and the courts rarely independent.
In the least complex political systems of the third world, these
alternative sources of institutional power only exist in nominal form:
the executive is the government.

o Personal and unaccountable rule

Political leadership in the third world is frequently personal and
unaccountable. One reason for this is that political power is the
shortest route to wealth in very poor societies. The lack of account-
ability in third world governments has, not surprisingly, often led to
corruption. Presidents Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seto
 The Political Executive 337

of Zaire are not the only leaders who shipped vast sums of money
abroad. Such regimes are basically kleptocracies - governments of
thieves. The same lack of accountability often also produces appalling
repression, as in the regimes of Saddam Hussein in Iraq or General
Pinochet in Chile. Tyranny is inherently likely when executive power is
both personal and non-accountable.
Although third world leaders are rarely accountable in a constitu-
tional sense, they can be tightly constrained by other political actors.
These can include: the military (and all the factions within it), leaders of
ethnic groups, landowners, the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy, students,
multinational companies, foreign governments, ex-presidents, the fac-
tions in the leader's own court, and the mobs in the streets of the capital
city. The problem of the political executive in many third world states is
its lack of autonomy from powerful elements in society. Insufficiently
accountable in a constitutional sense, executive leaders of the third
world are highly dependent in other ways.
To survive, leaders have had to maintain a viable coalition of support.
This has been a difficult and full-time job, leaving little room for
concern over broader issues of national development. When enemies
come to outnumber friends, a change of leader is as predictable as the
transfer of power following an election defeat for a governing party in a
liberal democracy. The mechanism is often a military coup but the
underlying cause is a 'shrinking' of the governing coalition. Following
Machiavelli, who sought to advise Renaissance princes in Italy,
Clapham (1985) suggests two styles by which leaders attempt to
maintain their position: the fox and the lion.
The fox is a manipulator. He plays off one political group against the
other. He tries to keep groups dependent on him through the careful use
of state largesse, and avoids committing himself to any irreversible
course. It was the strategy, suggests Clapham, of Haile Selassie in
Ethiopia, Kenyatta in Kenya and Senghor in Senegal. Lions, by
contrast, seek to dominate rather than manipulate. They drive out
their enemies rather than form alliances with them. They are strongly
committed to policy goals - economic development, say, or national
prestige. Lions seek popular support whereas foxes rest content with
acquiescence. Examples included Banda in Malawi and Nkrumah in
Ghana. The struggle for independence in the third world brought forth
lions but in the post-independence era the foxes gained ground.
Some individuals may be both lions and foxes. For instance, Iraq's
Saddam Hussein was brutally oppressive when strong, but conciliatory
when his position weakened. The value of this distinction between lions
and foxes is that it points to what has been the key feature of the third
world executive: its personal nature.
338 The Structures of Government

o Towards accountable executives

A sea-change occurred, however, in third world executives during the
1980s and early 1990s. The pattern began to change with the retreat
from military rule in Latin America. The soldiers gradually gave ground
in Brazil after 1975, though the pivotal moment was the legislative
elections in 1982. Brazil's first civilian president for twenty-one years,
Tancredo Neves, was elected in January 1985. In Argentina, the
transition was more abrupt as the ruling junta collapsed. Military
defeat by Britain in the Falklands (Malvinas) war triggered off pent-
up social protest which swept a demoralised military regime away. The
military also returned to barracks in Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia,
and Paraguay (in the latter, after three decades of dictatorship by
General Stroessner!). Finally in 1990, the hardline and now isolated
Chilean dictatorship of General Pinochet gave way to a civilian
president (though Pinochet remained commander-in-chief of the armed
forces).
Democratic resurgence began in Africa after the spectacular collapse
of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. This showed what could
happen to illegitimate rulers. It also robbed the one-party systems of
Africa of an alternative model of development and a source of support
which could be played against the Western capitalist nations. The
economic failure of almost all African countries in the 1980s resulted
in widespread discontent. This led to demands for democratic rule.
Some rulers, for instance President Moi in Kenya, forcibly resisted
democratic pressure. But most sensed that the democratic tide was
flowing strongly and turned to swim with it. By 1991 multi-party
elections were as much in favour with African rulers as they had been
the previous year in Eastern Europe. Some governments were voted out
(Sao Tome, Cape Verde, Benin and Zambia). Others were re-elected
(Gabon, Ivory Coast, Comoros). Many other regimes have accepted the
idea of multi-partyism and competitive elections in principle, but have
not yet implemented it.
Why this democratic revival in the third world? The basic reason is
the failure of authoritarian rule, whether by military or civilian
dictators. Restrictions on freedom were normally justified in terms of
political stability and economic development. With few exceptions, they
delivered neither. Even authoritarian rulers need some support; the
circle of support shrank as hardship increased and failure became
apparent.
External pressures were also crucial. First, American foreign policy
towards the third world began to shift in the mid-1980s. From
 The Political Executive 339

supporting anti-communists of even the most extreme kind, the United

States warmed to moderate reform and free elections. Secondly, the
International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and first world govern-
ments put pressure on third world governments to adopt market-
oriented policies and to reduce the role of the state. They also
encouraged direct moves to democracy. Thirdly, by 1990, Britain and
France explicitly linked much of their aid to 'good government' and
multi-party democracy. The vulnerability of many third world countries
to international economic forces, and their need for aid or debt
rescheduling, left their rulers with few options but to endorse policies
favoured by major donor nations and international organisations.
However, the form and content of democracy may diverge. Under-
lying conditions in most third world societies are still unconducive to
stable, functioning democracy. The commitment of the governing elites
is suspect or uncertain. Voting turnout is often low, vote rigging and
intimidation often considerable. Electoral competition may be 'Mobutu
multi-partyism', so-called after President Mobutu, authoritarian ruler of
Zaire. This means that token parties are set up but with no real intention
of broadening popular influence. The depth of democratisation in the
third world is uncertain; so too is the prospect of stable constitutional
government.

Summary
1. The major function of the political executive is leadership. This involves
deciding, directing and implementing policy, and mobilising support for it.

2. Constitutional executives differ from authoritarian executives in that they

have effective restraints on how power is gained and exercised. The two main
forms of constitutional executive are the presidential and the parliamentary.

3. Presidential executives combine ceremonial with effective political leader-

ship. Presidents are popularly elected for a fixed term, independent of the
assembly. The United States is the most influential model. The American
president shares power with Congress, in a system of checks and balances.
Presidents in other countries are often stronger, relative to the assembly and
subnational governments, than American presidents.

4. Parliamentary executives separate ceremonial leadership (head of state)

from effective leadership (head of government). The head of government is the
prime minister, chosen by and accountable to the assembly. In practice, the
340 The Structures of Government

prime minister is usually the leader of the majority party, or of a coalition of

parties, in the assembly.

5. In communist party states, executive leadership involved a fusion of party

and state at the top and an extreme concentration of power. The lack of
accepted ground rules contributed to personality cults, succession crises and
severe power struggles.

6. Several postcommunist executives have a dual leadership. This combines a

prime minister accountable to parliament with a president directly elected by
the people. The president's role was strengthened by the crisis conditions
obtaining in the early years of postcommunist regimes.

7. Constitutional executives in the third world have been the exception rather
than the rule. Leaders have survived by maintaining a coalition of personal
support, which often involved bribes and pay-offs.

8. Recently, however, there has been a strong resurgence of elected leadership

across the third world. Pressure from the first world, the collapse of
communism in the second world, and the economic failure of authoritarian
rule in the third world have all contributed to this trend.

Discllssion points

1. You have been asked to report on the advantages and disadvantages of

changing the system of government in your country from parliamentary to
presidential (or vice versa). What's your conclusion - and why?
2. Why is the presidential executive becoming more common?
3. Are 'personality cults' as strong a feature of leadership in the first world as
in communist party states? Have even prime ministers become presidential in
style?
4. Should political advisers to presidents and prime ministers be accountable
in public for their advice?
5. Can democratically elected leaders cope better with major social and
economic problems than authoritarian rulers?
 The Political Executive 341

Kcy. rcadin on
Rose, R. (1987) The Postmodern Presidency: The White House Meets the
World (New York: Chatham House). An illuminating interpretation of the
contemporary American presidency.
Weller, P. (1985) First Among Equals: Prime Ministers in Westminster Systems
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin). An instructive comparative analysis of executive
leaders in Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand.
Jones, G. (ed.) (1991) West European Prime Ministers (London: Cass).
Specialists deal with individual countries, but within a comparative frame-
work.
McCauley, M. and Carter, S. (eds) (1985) Leadership and Succession in the
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China (London: Macmillan). Looks at
leadership patterns in communist systems before the deluge. A scholarly
literature on postcommunist executives has still to emerge.

Further reading
There are many works of distinction on the political executive yet few are
genuinely comparative. The literature review by King (1975) remains a good
starting-place. Rose and Suleiman (1980) is valuable, covering executive leaders
in eight major Western nations.
Neustadt (1980) remains a classic source on the American presidency and a
seminal analysis of political power. Barber (1977) offers a fascinating study and
provocative theory of presidential character. Rose (1987) provides new insights
on the presidency in an age of interdependence. Shaw (1987) offers the views of
UK scholars on the American presidency.
In Britain, much of the debate about the political executive has centred upon
the issue of prime ministerial power. The reader by King (1985) on the British
prime minister is also useful. For a biography of Margaret Thatcher, the
dominant politician of her era, see H. Young (1989).
On executives in communist systems, see Holmes (1986) as well as McCauley
and Carter (1985). G. Smith (1992) is a good account of Soviet perestroika.
On the executive in the third world generally, see Clapham (1985, ch. 4). On
Africa in particular, see Jackson and Rosberg (1982) or alternatively Cart-
wright (1983).
 • Chapter 14 •
The Bureaucracy
The functions of Bureaucracy in the first
burea ucracies 342 world 349
Sources of bureaucratic Bureaucracy in the
power 344 second world 358
How are bureaucracies Bureaucracy in the third
organised? 345 world 361

Organising and administering modern states is a massive process that

requires skill, experience and expertise. For centuries, bureaucracies
have played an important role in politics, and rulers have wrestled with
the problem of keeping effective control over their civil servants.
However, the impact of the bureaucracy on policy-making has grown
with the expansion of government. In communist party states, centra-
lised party control over society placed great power in the hands of the
bureaucrats. Civil servants also play a major role in many liberal
democracies. For example, Metternich's description of Austria in the
last century as 'not governed but administered' still fits. Similarly, C.
Johnson (1982) has argued that in Japan, although elected politicians
have formal positions of power, bureaucrats are the major influence on
decision-making .

• The functions of bureaucracies

The bureaucracy is the institution that carries out the functions and
responsibilities of the state. It is the engine-room of the state. Although
the word 'bureaucracy' conjures up images of inefficiency and red tape,
the term is used here in the more technical sense developed by the
German sociologist, Max Weber (Gerth and Mills, 1948). His analysis of
bureaucracy can be summarised in the following points:

1. Bureaucracy involves a carefully defined division of tasks.

2. Authority is impersonal, vested in the rules that govern official
business. Decisions are reached by the methodical application of the
rules to particular cases and are not based on any private motive.
3. People are recruited to serve in the bureaucracy based on proven or
at least potential competence.

342
 The Bureaucracy 343

4. Officials who perform their duties competently have secure jobs and
salaries. Competent officials can expect promotion according to
seniority or merit.
S. The bureaucracy is a disciplined hierarchy in which officials are
subject to the authority of their superior.

Weber argued that the development of bureaucracy did for social

organisation exactly what the introduction of mechanical power did for
economic production - it made the process of administration more
efficient and rapid. In his view the emergence of the reformed, merit-
based bureaucracies of nineteenth-century Europe signalled, in effect,
the arrival of administrative machinery.
There are two main problems in applying Weber's ideal-type. Firstly,
it can lead to an understatement of differences between countries in their
bureaucratic styles. For example Heady (1979, pp. 17(}-94 , 198-212)
separates classic from political bureaucracies. Classic bureaucracies
derive from the administrative instruments created by the absolute
rulers of Europe. As in France and Germany, they are often profess-
ional and efficient though they tend towards rigidity and an aloof, even
suspicious, attitude towards party politics. Political bureaucracies, as
found in Britain and the United States, are more amenable to political
control, accepting their constitutional role of carrying out the will of
elected governments.
Secondly, Weber's ideal-type draws too sharp a distinction between
politics and administration. Politicians, it implies, make policy while
civil servants administer it; politicians make choices while civil servants
present options. At senior levels in a bureaucracy this distinction breaks
down - most notably in the communist world, but also in the first
world. It would be more accurate to say that civil servants are as
involved in politics as politicians, but in different ways. Civil servants
work quietly behind the scenes; for example, negotiating with relevant
interest groups. However, elected politicians must publicly promote
both themselves and their party's image to the populace. Yet there is no
doubt that the tasks of both groups are political in that they shape
collective decisions.
In thinking about bureaucracy, it is important to distinguish between
the small number of top-level civil servants, and the vast number of
routine staff at the base of the pyramid. Senior public servants work at
the centre, have policy-advising responsibilities and day-to-day contact
with politicians. They are often recruited into a 'fast stream' which
guarantees rapid promotion to positions of influence. As they inhabit a
broadly political world, much of the discussion of the power of
bureaucrats concentrates on this elite group.
344 The Structures of Government

However, the vast majority of public officials do not work at this

rarefied level. They work on routine tasks away from the capital city.
Much discussion on the power of bureaucracy concentrates on the total
organisation, including lower-level staff.
This distinction between higher and lower levels, or between policy-
advisers and managers, is becoming more important as governments
seek to delegate the tasks of management and implementation to at least
semi-independent agencies. This has been a familiar pattern in Sweden,
where
most Swedish civil servants do not work directly for ministries, which are
mostly just small planning staffs; instead, boards and agencies handle most
of the daily work, and they have considerable autonomy. Although the
several dozen boards and agencies have standardized salary scales and
regulations, they by and large recruit their own people. (Roskin 1977, p. 31)
It is likely to become a familiar pattern in other countries, too .

• Sources of bureaucratic power

A modern government department is a large, multi-tiered organisation,
containing enormous knowledge and experience in its specialist area.
Departments, like all other organisations, develop their own ways of
proceeding, their own priorities, and their own 'house view'. They have
a network of links with other departments and interest groups, to which
they are bound by ties of tradition, agreements, and personal relation-
ships. All this complicates the task of political control. It means that
steering a department in a new direction is a slow and complicated
business which needs sustained effort from the minister. Without that
effort, the department will tend to 'bounce back' into its original shape.
Bureaucrats implement political decisions. Ministers cannot be every-
where at once; their 'span of control' is limited. In any case, civil
servants need discretion if they are to carry out policies effectively. But
this means that in applying policy, civil servants can 'bend' it, not just to
fit conditions in the field, but also to suit their own concerns and
interests. Control over implementation is a key source of bureaucratic
power.
Power gravitates to the bureaucracy if there is a vacuum elsewhere in
the political system. This is particularly important in much of the third
world. If politicians are unwilling or unable to govern, then civil
servants will and can.
Another source of bureaucratic power is found in a comparison
between the career structures of civil servants and elected politicians.
Civil servants' security of tenure is much stronger than that of the
 The Bureaucracy 345

politicians who head departments and ministries. Particularly in

parliamentary governments, ministers are moved, promoted, demoted
and removed as the balance of power within the leadership changes.
This gives bureaucrats an incentive to resist change - they just have to
hang on until the minister is moved elsewhere.
Politicians have less technical knowledge of the area under their
control than civil servants. Civil servants at the top levels of the
bureaucracy will have had decades of experience in that field, whereas
cabinet ministers will be newer to the job. Ministers therefore become
dependent on the advice and information presented to them by their civil
servants. Thus the bureaucracy possesses considerable potential power
through deciding what information should be presented to politicians,
and what should be suppressed. This power can affect decision-making
functions in two ways.
First, civil servants and advisers may choose not to pass on
information that they know the decision-makers will not like.
Secondly, bureaucrats affect decisions through the realities of bureau-
cratic poLitics. Civil servants' futures are linked with the fate of their
department. They want to see their department (and their jobs) grow in
stature. Bureaucrats will act to defend the interest of their particular
organisation when resources are being allocated or fundamental reform
is being considered. As Dunleavy (1991, p. 147) points out in his
discussion of the literature on bureaucracy, officials and public servants
are basically portrayed as wanting to maximise their budgets, within
external political constraints. Bureaucracies are often characterised as
expansionist organisations, seeking to increase their size, staff, financing
and scope of operations.
Communist party states abounded with examples of bureaucratic
politics. For example, in the late 1970s China took important decisions
about its future economic policy. One possibility was to decentralise
power from central departments to provinces, and to place more
emphasis on light industry. The bureaucracies representing heavy
industry and central planning opposed this move as it would lead to a
loss of both political power and finance allocated to their ministries.
Bureaucratic resistance to economic reform in the Soviet Union was a
major factor in the failure of Gorbachev's perestroika, contributing
heavily to the ultimate collapse of the system .

• How are bureaucracies organised?

The bases on which bureaucracies are arranged vary from country
to country. The four main principles of organisation are shown in
Table 14.1 on p. 348.
346 The Structures of Government

Exhibit 14.1 The Minister's tale

When Flora MacDonald became Secretary of State for External

Affairs in the Canadian Government in 1980, she found that
bureaucrats impaired the power of ministers. MacDonald felt
particularly vulnerable - she was a new Minister in a new govern-
ment, representing the Conservative Party that had been out of
power for sixteen years. While she lacked experience of the
'labyrinth of bureaucracy' , her civil servants were well trained in
the art of getting ministers to approve their favoured policies.
Macdonald claimed that bureaucrats used several 'entrapment
devices' in an attempt to limit her decision-making power. First, civi l
servants would demand an immediate decision, thus eliminating the
minister's ability to seek independent advice. Secondly, they wou ld
delay the delivery of reports that MacDonald had to make to Cabinet
unti l as late as possible before the meeting. Thirdly, bureaucrats
would give 'one dimensional' opinions. They presented recommend-
ations as the unanimous decision of her advisers, and did not offer
altern a ti ves.
At times, bureaucratic attempts to influence decision-making took
on more sinister forms . For example, private and confidential reports
were copied and distributed without MacDonald's knowledge.
Cynics suggest that this shows that MacDonald was not on top of
her job. A better manager would have got her staff working for her
rather than against her. But the civil servants did not have it all their
own way. MacDonald's aides would 'bootleg' copies of documents
that were grinding their way through the slow and complex process
of gaining bureaucratic approval.
For MacDona ld, life as a Cabinet Minister was almost one long
battle - not with the opposition parties, but with the senior
bureaucrats who staffed her ministry.

Source: Flora MacDonald, 'Who is on Top? The Minister or the

Mandarins?' in Politics: Canada, 7th edn, ed. P. Fox and G. White
(Toronto: McGraw-Hili Ryerson, 1991, pp. 395-400)

The most common yet also the most ambiguous form of organisation
is by purpose or function. Most ministries exist to pursue distinct
objectives, such as tax collecting, transport, education, health, defence
and so on. The ambiguity arises from defining the real objectives of a
functional bureaucracy. Are they the objectives of the ministry's
 The Bureaucracy 347

Exhibit 14.2 Bureaucratic power in Japan

Japan is a classic example of a country where bureaucrats wield great

political power. A key task for the Japanese premier is to ensure a
balance between various factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP). One result is that ministers are frequently rotated (or
replaced) in government departments. Ministers rarely serve in any
one department long enough to learn about their jobs, and so depend
on their civil servants. This has created a situation in Japan where
politicians reign, but bureaucrats rule.
The Japanese bureaucracy has close links with both party
politicians and big business. Bureaucrats must retire at the age of
55, and many then go on to start second careers - either as politicians
or on the boards of companies. Thus, the LDP, the bureaucracy and
big business are entwined through a process of interlocking connec-
tions. They form a single, cohesive ruling elite.
The professional economic bureaucracy, and in particular the
Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI), has been a
key force behind Japan's industrial success in the postwar era. As
postwar reconstruction began, MITI targeted specific growth in-
dustries in the economy, and took steps to ensure that those areas
would become successful. For example, the Japanese camera
industry was carefully nurtured in its early years and shielded from
overseas competition until it had become competitive.
MITI did not have total power to enforce compliance, and it made
some errors of judgement. It could not prevent one company from
developing transistors when MITI thought that the future still lay in
valves! MITI's guidance is now becoming lighter as Japan's economy
grows increasingly sophisticated and international. But in the earlier
postwar decades, Japan was a good example of how the bureaucracy
can guide economic development.

creator? Or of the politicians (ministers) who notionally control it? Or

of the administrators who staff the ministry? The goals of these groups
may be totally incompatible, thus rendering the idea of the purpose of
the organisation as an integrated whole distinctly elusive.
A British television series called 'Yes Minister' provided a lighthearted
insight into how bureaucracies can stress objectives other than their
supposed purpose. The series showed how politicians and civil servants
interacted in the mythical Ministry of Administrative Affairs. The
348 The Structures of Government

Table 14.1 Structures of administration

Basis of
organisation Definition Examples and comment
--------------------
Purpose Departments are Most central governments are
organised to pursue largely organised on this basis,
specific objectives in though departments may place
society. their own interests before their
ostensible goals.
Area One department The prefectoral systems of
responsible for all the France, Italy and Japan.
policies of central
government in a particular
locality.
Clientele A single department War veterans and minority
provides all public services groups are often served on this
to (and often controls) a basis. The department can outlast
specific group. the group: Italy still has an
agency for the widows and
orphans of Garibaldi's campaign!
Process All bureaucratic activities Specialist activities such as
of a particular type are computing and engineering are
concentrated in a often organised in this way.
particular department. Enables skills to be concentrated.
Serves other departments rather
than the public directly.

Source: G. Peters The Politics of Bureaucracy (London: Longman, 1984).

Minister is concerned with furthering his career prospects, while the

administrators act to preserve their influence, and to promote the
Ministry's interests against other departments. These interests frequ-
ently conflict, and only rarely coincide with those of the government as a
whole. The popularity of the series with British politicians (notably
Margaret Thatcher) is an indication of how close the fiction came to
fact.
The other three types of bureaucratic organisation shown in Table
14.1 are more specific than functional organisation.
Organisation by area was exemplified by the system of British
colonial rule under which a local commissioner was responsible for
all the activities of the colonial government within a particular district.
 The Bureaucracy 349

Organisation by area can coexist alongside organisation by purpose,

although this system of dual control often creates considerable problems
of coordination.
The decentralised system practised (at times) in China is a good
example of dual control in action. Because of China's sheer size the
whole country cannot be ruled effectively from one place. For example,
the province of Sichuan alone has a population of over 150 million
people. Each provincial government has its own system of administra-
tion, but each ministry in the capital, Beijing, also has a branch office in
the provincial capital. This branch office is therefore subordinate to two
authorities. It is vertically responsible to the central ministry in Beijing,
and at the same time horizontally responsible to the provincial
government. By adhering to the provincial authority it may upset the
central ministry, and vice versa.
Organisation by clientele is often introduced to coordinate the
provision of services to groups that make heavy use of government
programmes (for example, disabled war veterans in the United States) or
deprived minorities (such as aborigines in Australia).
The final basis of organisation is by process. This type of organisation
is typically designed to achieve economies of scale within the admin-
istrative system. It centralises functions such as data processing,
auditing and accounting .

• Bureaucracy in the first world

A key feature of bureaucracy in the first world in the modern era has
been the trend towards big government. At the beginning of the century
there was one public official for every 300 Americans; now, the figure is
closer to one in fifteen. In Britain the number of civil servants in central
government has increased tenfold over the century. By way of compar-
ison, the number of cabinet ministers in Britain barely doubled over the
same period. In Canada, including provincial and municipal govern-
ment employees, over a million people are on the public payroll -
around 12 per cent of the total workforce.
The expansion of public services provided by the state explains at
least part of this growth. In Sweden, where the state provides many
welfare services, over 16 per cent of the workforce are public employees.
By comparison in Japan, where the family is traditionally expected to
provide such functions, the figure is only 4 per cent (Row at 1988, pp.
443-5). Conservative governments in several countries in the 1980s
attempted to 'roll back the frontiers of the state'. This strategy was led
by Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United
350 The Structures of Government

States. In Britain, Thatcher's privatisation drive did succeed in returning

many public companies to the private sector. However, public services
(such as health, education and welfare) survived relatively intact.
Employment in these services will now probably resume its upward
growth.
Underlying these attempted cut-backs lay a powerful 'New Right'
critique of bureaucratic growth and public expenditure (for an assess-
ment, see Dunleavy 1991). This argued that bureaucrats working in the
public sector seek to maximise budgets. In consequence public expend-
iture tends to inexorable growth unless held back by decisive political
action.
The solution, argues the New Right, is to introduce competition and
public choice into public administration. For example, the public should
not have to attend whichever government office is nearest to their home.
Instead they could choose to visit the office that they think is best at
dealing with their problem. As the 'New Right' believe that 'money
should follow the customer', this provides an incentive to offices to
become more efficient in their competition to attract 'customers'.
As an addition or an alternative, services can be contracted out to the
private sector. For example, several prisons in the United States are run
by privately owned security firms. The public sector is not debarred
from providing these services, but must prove itself an efficient provider
by beating off competition from the private sector. As a result, it is
argued that the taxpayers will receive better value, and better services,
for their money.

o Organisation
There are also vast differences in the ways in which bureaucracies are
organised in the first world. Perhaps the biggest difference in admin-
istration between liberal democracies is the degree of centralisation - the
extent ro which authority is located at the apex of the national
administration. The concentration of power takes two forms - territor-
ial and hierarchical concentration.
Territorial concentration refers to geographic considerations - the
balance of power between central and local authorities. How much
power and independence do subnational administrative units (such as
regions, provinces and districts) have compared with the national
government? Hierarchical concentration refers to the amount of
discretion given to subordinate individuals within the administrative
system. To what extent can officials make policy or apply policy to
cases, without referring to their superiors for approval?
 The Bureaucracy 351

The United States provides the clearest example of both territorial

and hierarchical decentralisation. The federal character of the American
constitution has created a geographic dispersion of power. The fifty
state governments have a high degree of autonomy, and centralising
trends notwithstanding, government in Massachusetts is a world away
from government in Alabama. For example, whether or not murderers
can be sentenced to death depends on the state where the murder was
committed.
Secondly, the American administration is much less hierarchical at the
centre than is the case in other liberal democracies. Compared to its
European counterparts, the US higher civil service is hollow at the
centre. There is no central civil service hierarchy to impose order on the
system. The departments, agencies, bureaux and commissions cultivate
allies in Congress, try to keep on good terms with pressure groups,
battle to protect their flanks from bureaucratic rivals and strive to
maintain independence from presidential control. Federal administra-
tion in the United States is the classic example of bureaucratic politics.
In unitary liberal democracies such as Sweden and New Zealand,
administrative organisation is more centralised than in federal countries
such as Germany or Austria. Nevertheless, central-local conflicts do
take place. In Britain, the Labour Party controlled many large cities
during Margaret Thatcher's eleven years in national power. Conflict
between Whitehall (or rather, Downing Street) and townhall was
intense. However, the central government retained ultimate control
over the localities. It imposed limits on their spending, took powers
away from them, and even abolished some local authorities (such as the
Greater London Council) altogether.

D Recruitment
Given the strategic importance of senior civil servants, the manner of
their recruitment is an important topic. Liberal democracies differ in
their general pattern of recruitment. The civil service in most countries is
unified, recruiting through standardised procedures and controlled by a
single system of rules and regulations. There are exceptions: in the
Netherlands, for instance, there is no national civil service, rather an
assortment of autonomous and culturally distinctive departments, each
recruiting in its own way.
There are differences between countries in the extent of competition
for entry. Public service in the United States is held in relatively low
esteem. It therefore attracts fewer able candidates than in Britain and
France, both of which rely on open examinations and interviews to
352 The Structures of Government

select from a strong field of able candidates. Low pay and morale did
reduce the attractiveness of a civil service career to bright young
graduates in Britain in the 1980s, some of whom preferred the glamour
(and salary) of a job in what was then the booming financial sector.
Again, civil services differ in their emphasis on specialist or generalist
skills. Should the implementation of policy rest with technical experts
with specialist knowledge of the subjects they are dealing with? Or is it
better to have enlightened amateurs who compensate in breadth for
what they lack in specialist knowledge? In Britain, the dominant view
has long been strongly generalist. Administration is seen as an art of
judgement, born of intelligence and experience in administration per se.
Specialist knowledge should be sought by administrators - but they do
not need to possess that specialised technical knowledge themselves.
By contrast, the New Zealand system, like most others, is dominated
by functional specialists. Secondary school graduates are the main
source of recruitment into the New Zealand civil service, and appoint-
ments to higher levels are commonly made through the promotion of
insiders. An outsider can only be considered for a position if there is no
internal candidate of equal capability. Furthermore, many permanent
heads of department in New Zealand are appointed to departments in
which they have served for twenty years or more. Thus, many agencies
are headed by career bureaucrats who have had relevant training and
experience in their field (Thyne 1988). Whereas an administrator in the
transport department in the United Kingdom may be a classics graduate
from Oxbridge, his or her counterpart in New Zealand will be a
secondary school graduate who has worked up through the ranks.
Irrespective of differences in the recruitment of administrators, the
social background of senior civil servants is invariably unrepresentative
of the general population. The typical high-level civil servant is a male
graduate, brought up in a city, from a middle or upper class family that
was itself active in public affairs. Many of these qualities also apply to
politicians, although sometimes less strongly. The comparisons between
the social backgrounds of politicians and senior civil servants are shown
in Table 14.2. This comes from a project which investigated qualities
affecting entrance to (a) the political elite and (b) the bureaucratic elite
in seven liberal democracies.
A legal training is common among bureaucrats and politicians. The
Department of Law at Tokyo University is the dominant recruiting
ground for career civil servants at the highest levels of the Japanese civil
service. There is also a strong legal bias in recruitment to classic
European bureaucracies such as Germany and France. Although the
importance of a legal training has declined since the nineteenth century,
bureaucrats with a legal training remain a large group within European
 The Bureaucracy 353

Table 14.2 Background characteristics that increase the chances of

entry into the bureaucratic and political elites in liberal
democracies
Senior posts in public Senior posts in political
administration parties
Male JJ N
University education JJ J
Middle or upper class JJ J
family background
Family involved in J J
public affairs
From an urban area J

Note: JJ indicates a strong advantage

J indicates a weaker advantage
- indicates little effect
Source: adapted from ]. Aberbach et al., Bureaucrats and Politicians (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 80).

civil services. Similarly, many European members of parliament also

have a legal background.
It is by no means clear that this bias in recruitment to the civil service
produces the prejudice against the left which critics often allege.
Certainly the Japanese bureaucracy does produce many people who
end up as business leaders or as politicians for the conservative Liberal
Democratic Party. However, left of centre allegiances are commonplace
in France and Germany, where civil servants are allowed to pursue
political careers. A third of the graduates from the French National
School of Administration (which provides training and higher education
for the nation's civil servants) elected to the French National Assembly
in 1978 were members of the Socialist Party. Aberbach et aL. (1981)
found that the dominant ideology was centrist - bureaucrats were as
sceptical of the far right as they were of the far left.

o Political control
The various modes of controlling the bureaucracy can be divided
according to whether they are formal or informal. As Table 14.3
shows, the informal controls can either be internal or external to the
bureaucracy. The main formaL control over the bureaucracy in liberal
354 The Structures of Government

democracies is the political executive, headed by the president or

premier. The extent and effectiveness of political direction depends on
three factors:

1. The reach of political appointments;

2. Norms of ministerial responsibility;
3. The use of ministerial advisers.

The reach of political appointments

The extent to which political appointments extend into the bureaucracy
varies substantially. As a general rule, the greater the penetration, the
easier it is to ensure political control. In Britain, only the ministers who
head departments are politically appointed; the rest are permanent
professional civil servants. In Germany, the number of ministerial
appointments is even smaller. However, this lack of penetration is
offset in Germany by a system in which civil servants who are
sympathetic to the ruling party are moved into sensitive administrative
positions. The financial cost of this approach is substantial: civil
servants who lose their jobs on political grounds take early retirement
- on full pay.
This tendency to staff important ministries with loyal and sympathe-
tic civil servants is even more marked in Finland. Vartola (1988

Table 14.3 Modes of control over bureaucracies

Formal Informal
Political direction by ministers EXTERNAL
Minister's advisory staff Mass Media
Public opinion
Legislative scrutiny
Interest groups
Judicial scrutiny
INTERNAL
Ombudsmen
Professional standards
Citizen involvement (where legally
Anticipated reactions
necessary)
Peer-group pressure
Conscience

Source: adapted from F. Nadel and F. Rourke, 'Bureaucracies' in The Handbook of

Political Science, vol. 5, ed. F. Greenstein and N. Polsby (Reading, Mass.: Addison-
Wesley, 1975), Table 1.
 The Bureaucracy 355

p. 126) notes that the Finnish civil service has become more politicised
since the Second World War. He goes as far as to suggest that: 'It has for
a long time been very difficult for civil servants who are not committed
politically to advance to leading posts in administration.'

Norms of ministerial responsibility

Political control over the bureaucracy also depends on notions of
ministerial responsibility. It is easy for bureaucrats to escape both
political and public scrutiny when ministers alone are formally respons-
ible to parliament for the actions of their officials. This system is found
in its extreme form in Britain. 'The buck stops' with the minister, but in
practice ministers are rarely sacked for incompetence or wrongdoing in
their department. So civil servants can exert power without being
subject to public accountability.
The British stress on the anonymity of higher civil servants is not
matched in other liberal democracies. In the United States, bureaucrats
are much more likely to appear before Congressional committees than
are British civil servants to be questioned by a House of Commons
committee. American bureaucrats are also likely to give more open and
candid replies than their British counterparts, who make a profession
out of being 'economical with the truth'.

The use of political advisers

Political control of the bureaucracy can be aided by providing ministers
with personal advisory staff. These advisers act as alternative sources of
information and guidance to the formal bureaucracy. The Executive
Office and White House staff of the American Presidency are the fullest
expression of this approach. They almost represent a counter-bureau-
cracy within the political system - one much more likely to be
ideologically driven than the formal bureaucracy and personally loyal
to the president.
These advisers may help to control the administrators, but as political
scandals in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s revealed, they
themselves create problems of control. They are not subject to the
electoral system, nor are they restrained by bureaucratic inhibitions
about acting politically. Their outside business and personal contacts
are not subject to the same scrutiny given to politicians and civil
servants. Advisers' political views are often very close, perhaps too
close, to those of the people that they are advising. Politicians do not
appoint advisers to tell them that everything they do is wrong.
356 The Structures of Government

By contrast, British practice has traditionally favoured a close

relationship between ministers and senior civil servants, unadulterated
by personal advisers. However, in the 1980s, some ministers exper-
imented with political advisers. Indeed, in 1989 the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, resigned his ministerial post, claiming that
the Prime Minister's personal economic adviser had too great an input
into government policy-making. The idea of ministerial 'irregulars' who
can counterbalance the professionals has been inspired by the well-
established French system of ministerial cabinets (see Exhibit 14.3).
Although ministerial direction is the main formal control, other
constraints can come from the courts and through legislative scrutiny.
A more recent addition to the armoury has been the spread of the
Swedish Ombudsman system. The ombudsman is a bureaucratic
watchdog - established to investigate cases of bureaucratic mismanage-
ment in response to claims by citizens and groups who feel that they
have been mistreated.
The role of the ombudsman varies throughout the first world. They
are well established at national levels in the Scandinavian democracies
(and in the Netherlands since 1982). By contrast, in Italy the ombuds-
man is only represented in eight regions, and possesses limited power. In
Germany, the ombudsman system is organised on functional lines, with
different officials appointed in various sensitive areas (for example, data
protection and the armed forces). To be successful, an ombudsman must
have strong powers of investigation. Although the ombudsman system
has now extended beyond Scandinavia, both politicians and civil
servants in more secretive governmental systems are reluctant to grant
ombudsmen sufficient powers to do their jobs effectively.
Informal pressure can also be brought to bear on administration.
Public opinion, especially when aroused through well-organised interest
groups, can act as an informal ombudsman within the system. A
vigorous mass media can also act as a check and balance on both the
bureaucracy and the government. Investigative programmes on televi-
sion networks throughout the first world now specialise in exposing
public scandal or bureaucratic ineptitude.
However, the freedom of the media is not wholly enshrined in all
liberal democracies. The habit of official secrecy is particularly strong in
Britain, for instance. The British government pursued legal action both
in Britain and Australia to try to prevent the publication of Spycatcher,
the harmless (and dull) memoirs of an ex-sec ret-service employee -
already freely on sale in the United States.
 The Bureaucracy 357

Exhibit 14.3 Controlling the bureaucracy:

a lesson from France?

A device which has attracted international attention as a way of

helping ministers to gain control of their departments is the French
ministerial cabinet. This is a group of about fifteen to twenty people
who form the minister's personal adv isory staff and work directly
under his or her control. Although the cabinet originally developed
in the nineteenth century as a mechanism through which political
favours were distributed to outsiders, it now acts as a pivot in
minister- department relations; 90 per cent of cabinet members are
civil servants and about half work in the cabinet of their home
ministry. On average, members spend two to four years in a cabinet
before moving to other duties inside or outside the bureaucracy.
The functions of cabinets vary with the personality of the minister
but can include: acting as a brains-trust to help the minister
formulate policy; helping the minister in po litical re lationships with
both party and constituency; providing the minister with additional
eyes and ears through which he or she can supervise departmental
activities; and undertaking the vitally important tasks of liaison and
coordination, both among the internal sections of the department
and with other departments.
Both the strength and the weakness of the cabinet system lie in its
informality. In the absence of formal regulations about its role, the
cabinet can respond to political opportunities with a speed and
flexibility denied to the permanent administration. Given the
factious nature of the French civil service, these opportunities have
not been slow to arise. Indeed, there are many allegations from both
the political and administrative arenas that the cabinets have
usurped the power of politicians and civil servants, allegations
which gain in credence from the informal and occasionally semi-
secret fashion in which some cabinet members operate. Moreover,
since the great majority of cabinet members are able and ambitious
bureaucrats, it is arguable that the cabinet may instil bureaucratic
interests into ministers as much as it imposes political va lues upon
the bureaucracy. (For a full discussion of the cabinet, see Searls
1978).
358 The Structures of Government

Other informal controls are internal to the bureaucracy. Liberal

democracies place considerable reliance on the internalised profession-
al norms - the conscience - of civil servants. Yet bureaucratic cohesion
can easily become excessive. The state tradition in France and Germany
enhances the self-esteem of the bureaucracy to the point where many
perceive it as an arrogant elite. The in-group mentality of bureaucrats
can mean that defending one of their colleagues becomes more
important than defending the public good. As H. Finer (1941)
succinctly stated: 'To rely on a man's conscience is to rely on his
accomplice. '

• Bureaucracy in the second world

Two key differences separate administration in the communist world
from the first world. The first was a matter of scale: the administrative
machinery extended into society to an extent unknown in the West. The
other was that whereas the first world has seen the bureaucratisation of
politics, in the communist world the bureaucracy was politicised.

D Bureaucratic power in communist states

Ruling communist parties had to rely on the bureaucracy for the
implementation of their goals. Given the scale of the bureaucracy in
communist states, the problems that faced leaders in controlling the
administrators were magnified. One response to this problem was to
reject the notion that government officials were in some sense impartial
and even above politics. All bureaucrats, at whatever level of the
administrative machinery, were expected to contribute to the achieve-
ment of the goals laid down by the party, whether they themselves were
party members or not. At the highest levels of the bureaucracy, party
membership was the norm. All the leading posts within the administra-
tive machinery were staffed by leading party members - in essence, the
ruling party told itself what to do.
Despite this politicisation of the bureaucracy, communist party states
were not successful in ensuring total bureaucratic compliance with
decisions made at the top. Both bureaucratic and local interests have
impinged on administrators' willingness to follow policy coming down
from central leaders. In the past, an impression of unanimity was
presented to the outside world, but the struggle for influence and
resources continued behind closed doors. However, in the late 1980s,
these struggles came out into the open.
 The Bureaucracy 359

For example, in China since 1987 the press has carried many official
editorials calling for local and bureaucratic interests to be subordinated
to the national interest. Administrative agencies have blatantly flouted
central directives, and government inspection teams have been sent to
administrative and local offices to ensure that party policy is being
followed. The Chinese example shows that despite the politicisation of
the bureaucracy, individual departments struggle to gain approval for
their projects and promote their interests. At the same time, they evade
(and at times simply ignore) higher decisions that do not fit in with their
bureaucratic interest.

o Organisation in communist party states

Wide differences existed between administration in different nations.
Yugoslavia with its many different national groupings developed a
decentralised federal system to incorporate the tensions inherent within
the system. Such a system bore little resemblance to the highly
centralised Soviet system under Stalin that became the blueprint for
administration in most communist party states after the Second World
War.
Furthermore, the experience of individual states changed over time -
typically as the regime has tried to overcome the problems of the past.
After coming to power in 1949, the Chinese communists adopted the
highly centralised Stalinist model of administration. By the mid-1950s it
had become clear that the Soviet pattern was too centralised, and
concentrated too much power at the national level. Although the party
Clites agreed that the Soviet model should be replaced, there was no
consensus on what should replace it. As a result, the Chinese have
subsequently experimented with different forms of decentralised con-
trol. These varied between devolving some power to large regions, to the
provinces, and to communes.
These experiments indicate a key contradiction in communist party
states. The party needed to have skilled and expert personnel working in
the administrative machinery to get the best information and advice. It
further relied on these experts to ensure the effective implementation of
party policy. However, the commitment of the experts to the party's
goals was suspect. If control was too tight, then the experts did not have
the discretion needed to work properly. If the controls were too lax, then
the party's goals may be ignored or subverted by the experts.
This tension was particularly acute in the early years of the Soviet and
Chinese states. Lacking sufficient loyal party members to staff the
administrative machinery, the communists had little choice other than
360 The Structures of Government

to rely on experts who had worked in the old pre-revolutionary

bureaucracies. As a result, the communists had to exercise close
guidance and control over the administrative machinery to ensure that
party policy was not being blocked or altered by the bureaucrats.
These tensions were more successfully dealt with in the Soviet Union
than in the People's Republic of China. In China, Mao Zedong's
suspicion of experts and mania for 'redness' (holding 'correct' political
values) was sparked by a fear that the professional bureaucrats would
try to run the country for their own benefit. His greatest fear was that
the revolution was being hijacked and that China was heading towards
the return of capitalism. Mao could not sit idly by and watch his vision
of the Chinese revolution being overturned.
With the aid of loyal army units and radical student activists, in 1966
Mao launched the Cultural Revolution - a nationwide witch-hunt of
'capitalist roaders' and 'counter-revolutionaries'. The Cultural Revolu-
tion returned Mao to power, but at the cost of bringing the entire
political system to a standstill. With the nation in turmoil and a virtual
civil war raging between rival student groups, the military stepped in to
restore order. They quickly began to restore the administrative
machinery and, by 1973, many of those who had been purged in 1966
(and had survived the excesses of the radical student Red Guards) had
returned to their previous positions. The bureaucrats were again back
behind their desks.

D Bureaucracy in postcommunist states

The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe heightened the issue of
the political reliability of the bureaucracy. If the interests of the experts
are not firmly linked with one-party rule, then the foundations of the
party state begin to crumble. In Hungary during the 1980s, bureaucratic
power had been transformed into economic power through the semi-
privatisation of government enterprises. In the past, bureaucrats had
gained their power and privilege through the very fact that they were
bureaucrats. Once they became business people, their power and
privilege no longer depended on communist party rule. On a much
lesser scale, rural officials in China in the 1980s began a similar process
of transforming their political power and prestige into economic power.
A key problem is the allegiance of administrators. Are bureaucrats
working in Slovakia loyal to the Czechoslovak Federation, or to the
Slovak Republic? In China, local officials, particularly in the south and
south-east, appear to be working for the interest of their local area,
which at times has conflicted with the national goals of the central party
 The Bureaucracy 361

leadership. These problems are dwarfed, however, by the break-up of

the Soviet Union, and the balkanised systems of administration that will
result as ministers and bureaucrats of the various republics feud over
territory and resources, nuclear weapons included.
The new governments in the postcommunist second world are now
facing the same problem that faced communist regimes in their early
years. It is impossible to introduce a new system of administration
overnight. Just as the Chinese and Soviet communists were forced to
rely on hand-me-downs from the old bureaucracy, so postcommunist
states must rely on remnants of the old communist administration. It is
not the communist values of the bureaucrats that create the problem,
but the fact that they had grown accustomed to privilege. As such, the
bureaucracy represents a potentially powerful group within society that
has a self-interest in blocking fundamental changes .

• Bureaucracy in the third world

In simple traditional societies, administrative roles were relatively
underdeveloped. Indeed, specialised administrative staff may have been
virtually absent. Authority was typically based on kinship and exercised
by the family's oldest male. Almost all third world societies have now
witnessed the gradual emergence of administrative roles and specialised
offices. These positions were initially filled by the family of the ruler,
thus binding political power and bureaucracy together in a small and
cohesive central elite. Indeed, a feature of administration in the third
world is the high degree of concentration at the centre, which limits
penetration of peripheral areas.

o The colonial legacy

Public administration is often imitative rather than innovative in
contemporary developing societies. The stamp of colonial rule can still
be found in the third world, even in places where the colonialists have
long since departed. Bureaucratic institutions are often much more
developed and 'modern' than the political institutions and parties they
serve. This can act as a source of strength; the bureaucracy can playa
valuable role as guardian of the state in politically unstable nations.
For example, Pakistan's civil service has been the mainstay of the state
throughout its many political upheavals. When the government col-
lapsed, the bureaucracy conducted the business of government itself.
Much the same can be said of the Indian Administrative Service which is
362 The Structures of Government

nothing less than the guardian of the Indian state. In both countries, the
bureaucracy is closely modelled on the British colonial civil service. The
strength of such guardian bureaucracies may be beneficial, but by
definition, they are not amenable to political control.
However, the impact of colonialism was entirely destructive in other
cases. Between 1910 and 1945, the Japanese totally dominated the
Korean political and administrative system. Korean natives were only
allowed to play minor roles, and were firmly subservient to their
colonial masters. With defeat in the Second World War, the Japanese
empire collapsed almost overnight. As a result, Korea was left with a
political and administrative vacuum. In contrast to India, no domestic
bureaucratic class was available to step into the shoes of the colonialists
and take over the functions of government and administration.

D Patronage and privilege

The process of grafting a modern administrative system onto a
traditional political culture has produced bureaucracies in the third
world that depart sharply from Weber's ideas. For example, ties of
kinship still pervade many African societies. Civil servants, politicians
and military officials are all expected to use their positions to reward
their families.
This problem is compounded by rising expectations. Those in
positions of power feel entitled to Western-style living standards, even
though they live in very poor societies. Public office is therefore an
opportunity for personal enrichment to be vigorously exploited; the
state becomes a device by which a political and adminstrative elite
extracts resources from the rest of society.
Not surprisingly, such corruption becomes the focus of opposition.
After each coup in Nigeria, extensive clean-up campaigns were con-
ducted as the new regime tried to consolidate its rule. But corruption is
endemic. Legal-rational norms of conduct are simply unable to contain
the pressures towards corrupt behaviour. Wherever the state is the chief
mechanism for obtaining access to scarce and desirable resources,
officials use their 'gatekeeper' positions to distribute goods and
resources to their patrons, friends and family. As the rampant state of
corruption in the Chinese administration shows, such misuse of
bureaucratic power is also found in the communist world.
Corruption is not just about depositing money in Swiss bank
accounts. Certainly, some officials do abuse the system for their own
gain, but families and local areas are also recipients of 'corrupt'
practices. Families have to make great sacrifices to ensure that one of
 The Bureaucracy 363

their number receives the education that is needed to get a government

job. In return, officials are virtually obliged to reward their family and
patrons for their help.
Furthermore, conflict over resources is endemic between different
regions and ethnic groups in many third world nations. Officials from a
particular region or tribe are often seen as representatives of that group.
As such, the officials are expected to favour their own people.
Chronic unemployment has led to excess labour being absorbed into
government employment in many third world nations. As a result,
bureaucracies are overstaffed at lower levels. This aggravates the
problem of bureaucratic red tape. As anyone who has bought a long-
distance train ticket in India knows, the public often has to follow
procedures of great complexity to gain the simplest kind of official
authorisation.
Overstaffing can also exist at the higher levels of the administrative
machinery. As a result, patterns of bureaucratic behaviour emerge that
are something of a parody of Weber's model. Initiative is stifled, formal
procedure is rigidly followed and authority is not delegated. Yet at the
same time responsibility is diffused. The consequence is that the
bureaucracy cannot act as an effective instrument for achieving the
economic and social changes to which the regimes are notionally
committed. An effective bureaucracy coupled with a vigorous modernis-
ing elite is a prerequisite for economic progress. In the third world, one
of these two is usually absent; in too many cases, neither prerequisite
exists.
Okoli (1980) describes administration in Africa as premature bureau-
cratisation. Europeans established and staffed the upper echelons of the
bureaucracy in their African colonies. After independence, Africans
moved into the existing administrative jobs. The machinery of admin-
istration was there, but the new bureaucrats had little or no experience
of (or commitment to) Weberian norms. The development of modern
organs of state power preceded the development of modern attitudes
towards bureaucracy and power.
Furthermore, modern administrative machinery is based in principle
on a notion of impartiality. However, the prevailing political cultures in
African states placed a great emphasis on personal rule. Inevitably,
bureaucratic norms gave way to a particularistic outlook.
364 The Structures of Government

S1I1ll1ll a fV
1. The bureaucracy is the institution that administers the functions of the
state. Heady (1979) separates classic from political bureaucracies. Classic
bureaucracies (e.g. Germany) are often professional and efficient, though they
tend towards rigidity and aloofness. Political bureaucracies (e.g. the United
States) are more amenable to political control.
2. Top-level bureaucrats are important actors in the policy-making process.
This power derives from their links with other departments and interest
groups, from their permanence, from their involvement in carrying out policy
and above all, from their proximity to ministers.
3. The concept of bureaucratic politics suggests that civil servants act to
defend the interest of their particular organisation. They seek to maximise their
budgets and the size of their organisations, which is unlikely to be compatible
with full efficiency.
4. Power gravitates to the bureaucracy if there is a vacuum elsewhere in the
political system. If politicians are unwilling or unable to govern, then civil
servants will and can.
5. The distribution of power in a bureaucracy can be either territorial or
hierarchical. Territorial concentration refers to the distribution of authority
across areas (for example, regions), whereas hierarchical concentration refers
to the amount of discretion given to subordinate individuals within the
administration.
6. First world civil services differ in their emphasis on specialist or generalist
skills. Specialists are technical experts with experience in and knowledge of the
subjects they are dealing with. However Britain emphasises generalists - people
who have experience of working in many different areas and who are
'specialists in the art of administration'.
7. The extent and effectiveness of formal control over the bureaucracy
depends on the reach of political appointments, norms of ministerial respons-
ibility, and the extent to which ministerial advisers are used to supplement
advice from the civil service.
8. In the second world, ruling communist parties attempted to ensure
effective control over the civil service by politicising the bureaucracy.
Bureaucrats were a privileged stratum of society. The successful integration
of this bureaucratic class into fledgling democracies is an important element of
the process of state-building in the postcommunist world.

9. In much of the third world, bureaucratic institutions imitate the admin-

istrative systems of the old colonial powers. They are often more 'modern' and
developed than the political institutions and parties that they serve. They can
step in to conduct the business of government themselves during political crises.
 The Bureaucracy 365

10. Bureaucrats in the third world are often perceived as representatives of

their region, tribe or family. They are expected to favour their own kind at the
expense of others whenever goods and resources are being distributed.

Discussion points
1. You are the leading civil servant in a government department. A new
minister has been appointed who has proposed fundamental reform of the
bureaucracy. How can you stop the minister?
2. Should bureaucrats and political advisers be accountable in public for their
advice?
3. Would it be best for everyone if politicians simply gave up and let the
bureaucrats run the country?
4. Too much political control of the bureaucracy reduces its efficiency; too
little control gives the bureaucracy great power. Is there a solution to this?
5. Have the bureaucratic structures left by colonial powers been an aid or a
hindrance to government in the third world?

Key reading
Heady, F. (1979) Public Administration: A Comparative Perspective (New
York: Marcel Dekker). A comprehensive study of comparative administra-
tion.
Blau, P. and Meyer, M. (eds) (1987) Bureaucracy in Modern Society, 3rd edn
(New York: Random House). An accessible introduction to the study of
bureaucracy.
Rowat, D. (ed.) (1988) Public Administration in Developed Democracies: A
Comparative Study, (New York: Marcel Dekker). A country-by-country
study tied together by comparative chapters.
Harding, N, (ed.) (1984) The State in Socialist Society, (London: Macmillan).
Contains much information on how bureaucracies were organised in
communist party states.
366 The Structures of Government

Further reading
In addition to Heady (1979) on comparative administration, Peters (1984) is
also useful, and considerably shorter. The collection edited by Suleiman (1984)
contains several good pieces on individual countries.
On individual first world nations, C. Johnson (1982) provides an insight into
bureaucratic power and policy-making in Japan. Self (1977) provides a
perceptive comparison of French, American and British administration. Heclo
and Wildavsky (1981) is a fascinating study of mandarin culture in Britain,
while Aberbach et at. (1981) is a major comparative study of the values of civil
servants and politicians in several Western countries.
For the bureaucratic model of communist states, see Meyer (1961 or 1965)
and the discussion in Dawisha (1980). Schurmann's (1968, chs 3-5) introduc-
tion to the Chinese administrative system is still useful despite its age. Much
information on the bureaucracy in communist states can be found in general
discussions of the state in socialist society. See, for example, Harding (1984)
and S. White et al. (1990, chs 3 and 6).
Okoli (1980) is a good (and short) introduction to bureaucratisation in
postcolonial states in Africa. Potter's (1986) analysis of the Indian civil service
is a cogent introduction to guardian bureaucracies in West Asia.
 • Chapter 15 •

The Military and the Police

The state in uniform 367 The police 380
The military: who
guards the guards? 367

• The state in uniform

Whatever their political complexion, all regimes face the problem of
coming to terms with non-elected institutions. The military and the
police force play crucial roles not just in society, but also in politics.
Military coups in the third world bear ample testimony to the impact of
armed forces in domestic politics. However, the military also influence
government in the first and second worlds, although in less dramatic
ways.
Whereas the bureaucracy is involved in making and implementing
laws, the police force is charged with upholding and enforcing the law.
The term 'police' is cognate with 'politics' and 'policy' - the police are
the guardians of the polis. In authoritarian states the police play an
important role in controlling and suppressing political opposition - the
police force are agents of the ruling elites, enforcing their political
objectives. But even in liberal democracies, the independence of the
police force has also been questioned. In particular, the surveillance role
of secret police organisations has been the focus of criticism from civil
rights groups.
Governments have their own priorities in responding to the problems
of 'the state in uniform'. The threat of a military coup has long been a
feature of political life in the third world, but has not been a dominant
concern for first world governments. Notwithstanding these contrasts,
the creation and maintenance of effective political control over these
non-elected institutions is a central problem confronting all govern-
ments in the contemporary world .

• The military: who guards the guards?

The military present special problems of political control in virtually
every society. Not only are the armed forces specialists in the use of

367
368 The Structures of Government

violence, but their organisational qualities of firm discipline, good

communications and substantial esprit de corps make the military at
least as important a political institution as the bureaucracy. The key
difference is that the military's influence on politics sometimes remains
latent. It may not have the same day-to-day impact on the political
system as the bureaucracy has, but the military retains the capacity to
seize power and hold on to it by force. This fact yields two key questions
about the military. First, how can civilian rulers ensure control?
Secondly, under what circumstances do the armed forces attempt to
seize power?

D The first world: the liberal model

The first world relies on a liberal model of civilian-military relations.
According to this, civilian politicians take complete charge of society's
affairs. The role of the military is to undertake the defence policy
decided by the civilian leadership - politics is not the business of the
military. In principle, the military does not formulate national security
policy. The civilian leadership decides on policy, and the military's task
is to decide how best to implement this policy.
Overall control of military affairs lies in the hands of civilian
politicians. For example, the commander in chief of the American
military is the president. In Britain, the formal commander is the
Crown, though ministers are the real decision-makers. Under the
liberal model, decisions relating to military affairs are ultimately
subject to the electorate's verdict. If voters do not approve of the
government's use of the military, they can register this disapproval in
elections. The government, and not the military itself, is held respons-
ible for the military's actions.

The military and policy-making

The liberal model of civil-military relations does not preclude a military
role in policy-making. At the very least, military figures must be
consulted regarding the viability of defence policy. Yet as US experience
shows, the armed forces can playa larger role than this. Although there
is no serious question of the Pentagon posing a direct challenge to the
supremacy of the elected government, the armed forces are a powerful
institutional group within the political system.
Military leaders are skilful players of Washington'S political game,
making full use of their status in society and technical expertise in their
 The Military and the Police 369

appearances before the Congressional Armed Services Committees, and

in their participation in the National Security Council. Through their
dealings with the media, the armed forces have also demonstrated
considerable skill in mobilising public opinion behind their cause.
During the Cold War, the American military made considerable use of
the potential threat from the Soviet Union to push for increased
spending, especially on high-tech research. The political atmosphere
allowed military leaders to exert influence so that the United States did
not allow the Soviet Union to gain any advantage, real or imagined.
Soviet military leaders exerted similar influence based on exactly the
same fears among Soviet leaders. The resulting arms race ensured that
military interests remained high on the decision-making agenda on both
sides of the Iron Curtain.
First world nations spend billions of dollars every year on their armed
forces. During the 1991 Gulf War, the British and US governments
committed themselves to liberating Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The
cost of the Gulf War became the focus for criticism from left-wing critics
who argued that the money would have been better spent improving
education and health services. All governments have to make important
choices regarding military spending. A nation only has limited financial
resources at its disposal, and every pound, dollar or rouble spent on the
military means that other areas of government spending will lose out.
Although military spending in the first world is high in absolute terms,
as Figure 15.1 demonstrates, many third world nations are higher
spenders in relation to their GNP.
The relationship between military and civilian leaders is changing as a
result of the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War.
Civilian politicians are facing expectations of 'the peace dividend' - a
cut back on military spending with the savings used either to cut taxes or
to increase public spending in non-military areas. Rather than pushing
for increased military spending, the armed forces are now lobbying to
limit the cutbacks. Furthermore, conflicts are emerging within the
various branches of the armed forces. Even where cutbacks are
accepted as inevitable, nobody wants their unit to be disbanded.
In the United States, relationships between the military, elected
representatives and defence contractors have at times smacked of
collusion rather than coalition. Considerable opposition to the Strate-
gic Defence Initiative (more commonly called Star Wars) emerged in the
late 1980s. The project still received firm backing from President Reagan
and continued despite objections that it was a colossal waste of money.
In general, however, America's armed forces pursue their objectives
through means that are perfectly legitimate in the context of the liberal
model of civil-military relations.
370 The Structures of Government

0
Japan
Sweden

R
Canada
Australia
Netherlands
France
Britain
I
China
I
USA
I
USSR
I
Libya
I
Angola
I
Syria
I
Nicaragua
I
Israel
I
Iran
I
Yemen Oem. Rep.
I
Saudi Arabia
I
Oman
I
Iraq
I
5 10 15 20 25 30
Military expenditure (% of GNP)

Source: World Bank (1990), World Development Report 1989 (New York: World
Bank, 1990).
Figure 15.1 Military spending as a proportion of GNP, 1986 (selected
countries)

In contrast to the United States, Japanese military spending is limited

by the constitution. After the Second World War, the American
occupiers forced the Japanese to accept a constitutional clause stipula-
ting that its defence spending could not exceed 1 per cent of Gross
National Product. The growth of Japan's economy since then makes
this figure more significant, and much defence research expenditure has
been disguised by being channelled through other departments, such as
the Education Ministry.

The military as a police force

Although the armed forces may not seek to intervene in the domestic
politics of liberal democracies, such a role may be forced upon them by
 The Military and the Police 371

civilian politicians. The potential for military action to become political

increases when the military is asked to undertake non-military tasks.
Britain is a good example. During industrial disputes involving the
fire and ambulance services in the 1970s and 1980s, the military was
brought in to undertake crucial lifesaving tasks. The British government
is empowered to deploy the military for urgent work of national
importance through the Emergency Powers Act of 1964 (Babington
1990). Although it was argued that the work being done was essential
for public safety, the involvement of military personnel in strike
situations remains a thorny issue.
The military is also 'politicised' when it is used to police domestic civil
disturbances. American troops, for example, were used to implement
federal desegregation orders during the civil rights struggle in the 1950s
and early 1960s. In Britain, the army was introduced into Northern
Ireland in 1969 because the police were unable to cope with the scale of
civil disorder. More than twenty years later, it is still there.
The state must be perceived as legitimate for the military to be seen
as apolitical. For the most part, this consensus does exist in the first
world. In areas such as Northern Ireland, or the Basque areas of
northern Spain, the consensus does not exist, and so the role of the
military remains controversial, with some viewing it as an agency of
occupation.

D The second world: the penetration model

The penetration model of civilian control is the opposite of the liberal
notion of a depoliticised military. The penetration model seeks to imbue
the armed forces with the political ideals of the civilian leadership. This
approach was taken furthest in communist party states. In the first
world, the military is very much the army of the state. The values of
many military officers may be right-wing, but the armed forces are not
party political. They are defenders of the state rather than defenders of
anyone party. In the communist world, although the military is there to
defend the state from foreign aggression, the armed forces are also
defenders of the party.

The party in the army

The Soviet Union provided an influential example of the penetrative
control of the military by the party - a model that was copied
throughout the communist world. The communist party went to
extraordinary lengths to ensure the political reliability of the military,
372 The Structures of Government

even at the cost of weakening its efficiency as a fighting force. For

example, Stalin's purge in 1937-38 of military officers perceived to be
politically unreliable virtually destroyed the Red Army's professional
leadership.
Stalin's paranoia provoked extreme measures to ensure political
reliability. Less extreme but still extensive measures of political control
were also employed. At each level of the military command structure, a
deputy commander or political commissar was responsible for political
affairs. These political officers reported to higher party officials, and
thus created a two-tier chain of command within the armed forces. One
chain of command went up to higher military officials, the other went
up to higher party officials and ultimately to the party's central
committee.
To further increase military reliability, conscripts were subject to
intensive political indoctrination. Thus, the armed forces acted as a
school for socialism. Furthermore, to become a career soldier, member-
ship of the party or Young Communist League was a virtual prerequi-
site. Security agencies also undertook extensive surveillance within the
armed services to keep tabs on 'unreliable' individuals.

The army in the party

Civilian penetration of the army results not only in the party placing
itself in the army, but also in the army gaining a place within the party.
This process was much more noticeable in China than in the Soviet
Union. The party and military became closely intermingled in China.
Revolution occurred as the result of a protracted military (or guerrilla)
struggle, so party and army became almost indistinguishable. In China,
military leaders believe that they have a right and indeed a duty to be
involved in civilian politics. Furthermore, the demobilisation of the
army in peacetime saw many old military leaders taking up positions
within the civilian leadership.
Military and political leaders in China are bound together through a
network of personal ties. Since 1949, the military has been deployed in
China for reasons other than national defense. During the Cultural
Revolution, the army was needed to restore order after virtual civil war
had brought the country to a standstill between 1966 and 1969. Then, in
June 1989, the military was brutally used to murder and disperse student
demonstrators from Tiananmen Square.
When the military intervened in Chinese politics, its actions were not
in conflict with party rule. Rather, the military acted as one element in a
ruling elite that encompassed party, state and military. Its interventions
were motivated by the need to restore order to a disintegrating society.
 The Military and the Police 373

Military leaders gained immense power and status in all communist

party states. In the Soviet Union, with party leaders and the KGB (the
secret police force), they formed a ruling class that enjoyed extensive
privilege - holiday homes, chauffered cars, access to scarce foreign
imports, special medical care. No waiting in queues for the officers of
the Red Army: for them, communism had already arrived.
Perhaps then, it should not have been too great a surprise when
leaders of the 'three ugly sisters' - the party, the military and the security
services - attempted to seize power and prevent the break-up of the old
Soviet system in August 1991. Although the timing of the coup took the
world by surprise, leading figures like Eduard Shevardnadze in the
Soviet Union had been warning for months of the danger that the old
guard might try to re-establish its position by force. However, as Exhibit
15.1 shows, the August coup was poorly conceived and badly executed-
an excellent example of how not to stage a coup.

The military and the collapse of communism

The potential for military intervention is strongest when political
authority collapses. During 1989 the communist world underwent
massive changes. As popular challenges to communist party rule
mounted, the reliability of the military as defenders of the ruling regime
took on increased importance.
With the exception of Albania and Yugoslavia, national revolutionary
movements played only minor roles in bringing communist parties to
power in Eastern Europe. Elsewhere, the dominant factor was the
'liberation' of German-occupied territory by Soviet armed forces. To
a large extent, communist party rule in Eastern Europe was underpinned
by the threat of Soviet military intervention. Where the Red Army
installed communist regimes from the outside, it fell to it to ensure that
communist rule continued against domestic opposition. In 1956 and
1968 the Soviet Red Army removed reformist political leaders in
Hungary and Czechoslovakia respectively. On each occasion, a regime
more in tune with the Soviet Union's thinking was installed. The Red
Army was also active in suppressing workers' uprisings in East Germany
in 1953 and in Poland in 1956.
Given the weak foundations for communist rule in much of Eastern
Europe, military backing provided an essential source of stability for
communist leaders. However, this backing depended on the Soviet
Union's adherence to the Brezhnev Doctrine. This doctrine asserted
that 'the gains of socialism were irreversible': in other words, Moscow
had the right to use any available means to ensure that Eastern European
remained within the Soviet Union's sphere of influence.
374 The Structures of Government

Exhibit 15.1 How not to stage your coup:

the Soviet Union, August 1991

'Over the years, President Gorbachev has got very tired . He needs some
time to get his health back' . Gennady Yanayev, acting president of the
Soviet Union, 19 August 1991.
'1 said, "You are reckless adventurers. If you want to kill yourselves,
that's your affair, but you will kill the country. Convey that to those who
sent you"'. Mikhail Gorbachev, reaction to being placed under house
arrest, 22 August 1991.

For sixty hours in August 1991, the Soviet Union teetered between its
authoritarian past and an uncertain but very different future.
President Gorbachev was placed under arrest in his holiday home
by a self-styled 'Emergency Committee' of leading party, state and
KGB officials. The conspirators aimed to turn the clock back and
reverse many of the changes that had taken place in the Soviet Union
since 1985. Their bungled coup attempt achieved the exact opposite.
The break-up of the Soviet Union was accelerated, the KGB was
dismantled and the communist party lost what was left of its grip on
power.
The failure of the August coup gives some pertinent examples of
how not to carry out your coup. First, the coup's leaders were
divided and lacked a clear plan of action. Almost as soon as
Gorbachev had been arrested, the new leadership began to fall
apart. The spate of 'illnesses' that afflicted coup participants was a
clear sign of lack of unity. Opponents were given the hope and
resolution that the coup could be defeated if they stayed firm in their
opposition.
Secondly, it is essential that a coup removes its targets from power.
Although Gorbachev was arrested, Boris Yeltsin remained free to
rally opposition against the coup. Had Yeltsin and Gorbachev been
arrested simultaneously, then the coup would have had more chance
of succeeding.
Thirdly, coups are more likely to succeed when there is a single
centre of authority in a nation. By August 1991, much power had
drained away from Moscow to leaders of the republics and city
mayors. In essence, the coup came too late - it was impossible to
seize all major centres of power in the country.
Fourthly, the new leadership must ensure that they use those levers
of power at their disposal. KGB officers are reported to have sat
around drinking tea, awaiting orders to carry out arrests that never
 The Military and the Police 375

came. The coup leaders also failed to gain full control of commun-
ications, thus aiding their opponents who maintained contact with
the watching world outside.
Fifthly, the coup organisers needed the collaboration of those who
exercised direct command over the armed forces. General Grachev's
refusal to send his paratroopers against the Russian parliament
building was perhaps the final nail in the coup's coffin.
And finally, reports from a variety of sources indicated that some
of the coup's leading figures were drunk for much of their three days
in power. If you need one thing above all else to carry out a coup
successfully, it is a clear head.

By the summer of 1989, the threat of Soviet intervention in Eastern

Europe had become remote. In a speech at the Council of Europe in June
1989, Gorbachev spoke of the possibility of political and social change
in Eastern Europe, commenting that such change would be: 'exclusively
the affair of the peoples themselves, any attempts to limit the sover-
eignty of states ... is impermissible.'
Gorbachev made clear to East European leaders that if their regime
had to be sustained by military power, then it would have to be by their
own armed forces, and not by the Soviet Union's. Although the use of
the Chinese Option (crushing the opposition movement by force) was
discussed in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, in the end the military
was not asked to intervene to defend the ruling party.
Even if the armed forces had been ordered to open fire on the
demonstrators, it is far from certain that these orders would have been
obeyed. Military leaders may have formed part of a privileged elite, but
ordinary soldiers (particularly conscripts) did not. They often had much
more in common with the demonstrators than they did with their
commanding officers. It is misleading to refer to the armed forces in
communist party states as a unified and coherent group, or of the
military as a single-interest group. Sharp divisions existed between the
interests of the military elites and those of the lower ranks who had less
to lose from the collapse of communist rule.
As a comparison between military intervention in China and
Romania in 1989 demonstrates, there is a very fine line between success
and failure in using the armed forces to suppress popular opposition
movements. In June 1989 the Chinese leadership sent the military into
Tiananmen Square in Beijing to clear the capital of protesters who had
been occupying the square since mid-April. The troops shot anybody
376 The Structures of Government

who got in their way, and tanks rolled over the makeshift tents occupied
by sleeping protesters. From the party leadership's viewpoint, the
exercise was a success. The streets were cleared and the party elite
retained its hold on power.
In contrast, when Romanian troops were faced with demonstrators
on the streets of Bucharest in December 1989, many decided to side with
the protesters. A short but bloody conflict ensued between the army and
Sec uri tate (secret police) units loyal to Ceaucescu. After a hastily
arranged trial, Nicolai and Elena Ceaucescu were executed, and the
resistance from the Securitate slowly but surely petered out.
In both China and Romania, the elite's survival depended on the
loyalty of the military. Some retired senior generals in China did oppose
the use of military force against unarmed and peaceful protestors. There
are also reports that individual soldiers were shot by their superiors for
refusing to carry out orders. But, overall, the military's discipline
remained firm and the regime won the day. In Romania, by contrast,
many soldiers refused to carry out Ceaucescu's orders, and the regime
fell.
Under normal conditions, controlling the military through the
'penetration' approach has proved successful. However, when normal
conditions break down and the military are asked to intervene in
domestic affairs, then the reliability of the armed forces cannot be
ensured. The key to keeping the military under political control in
communist party states was therefore maintaining political stability.
While the armed forces were confined to barracks, their political
reliability was not an issue.

o The third world: military coups

When political control of the military is not secured by the means
outlined above, the danger of a coup becomes endemic. Such coups have
been a feature of politics in the third world. Pinkney (1990, p. 11)
identified 56 countries that have experienced military governments since
1960, the vast majority in the third world. Since the end of the Second
World War, military intervention in politics has been the norm rather
than the exception in the third world.

Types of military rule

Military coups do not, in the long run, always result in military govern-
ments. Often, once the old ruler or party is overthrown, the military
 The Military and the Police 377

hands power over to a new civilian leader. However, in these cases, the
military usually acts as the effective ruler behind the scenes. Rouquie
(1982) has called these regimes supervised democracies. Furthermore,
even in states where the military retains power in its own hands, the
style of military leadership varies enormously (Rem mer 1989).
At the two extremes are inclusionary and exclusionary regimes. In the
former, the military leaders try to build a base of popular support
among the populace. Peron's military government in Argentina from
1946 to 1955 is a classic example of a populist regime. Peron undertook a
policy of state-led industrialisation and social welfare, based on a strong
trade union movement. According to Munck (1989, pp. 27-8) the central
feature of Peronism was the concept of the 'providential person' - a
benevolent leader attempting to build a strong, modern and wealthy
Argentina.
In exclusionary regimes, military leaders attempt to limit popular
participation in politics. For example in Chile between 1973 and 1989,
General Augusto Pinochet suppressed all potential sources of popular
involvement in politics (opposition political parties, trade unions, the
media and so on). Power was concentrated in the hands of his ruling
military clique.

Motives for military coups

Given the extent of military intervention in politics, the third world
provides excellent insights into the motives underlying military coups. In
a classic study, S. Finer (1975) distinguished five classes of motives:
national, class, ethnic, institutional and personalist. These may apply to
a particular case either singly or in any combination.
National motives are at work when military intervention is based on
officers' conceptions of the national interest. For example, in Pakistan
the threat of national disintegration prompted military intervention in
October 1958. In 1977 the military under General Zia again intervened
against the backdrop of political unrest. Although the Pakistan People's
Party (PPP) had won a majority in a general election, the opposition
parties refused to recognise the PPP's right to rule, claiming that wide-
scale ballot-rigging had taken place. The military deposed the PPP
government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and later executed him. In Thailand
civilian incompetence in managing domestic affairs has proved the
spark for military intervention on numerous occasions. For Thais,
'revolutions per minute' has more to do with the prevailing political
situation than the speed at which records play.
Class motives may be part of the military creed. Soldiers may act on
behalf of particular social interests. Needler (1968) suggested that in
378 The Structures of Government

Latin America military officers of middle-class background historically

sided with the middle classes in their struggle to wrest power from the
dominant landowning oligarchs. Right-wing military governments then
emerged in opposition to the growth of mass left-wing political parties.
Again, the example of Pinochet in Chile is pertinent here. An elected left-
wing government was shot out of power to the applause of much of the
middle class.
In post-colonial Africa, class interests are less important than ethnic
affiliations. Many coups are outgrowths of ethnic, religious or regional
tension within society. For example, the first Nigerian republic was
destroyed by coups driven by ethnic and regional rivalries. Further
examples of ethnic motives can be found in coups in other African
states, among them Zaire, Uganda, Chad, Liberia (twice) and Guinea-
Bissau.
Institutional interests can also provoke intervention. Threats to the
military's budget, autonomy, living standards or prestige all provoke
discontent in the armed forces. Six years after President Nkrumah was
removed by a coup in Ghana in 1966, the military overthrew the
reformist government of Dr Busia, which had been attempting to curb
the extravagant lifestyle of military officers. In much of the third world,
the military provides one of the few channels for ambitious young men
of modest background to achieve status and financial reward in society.
If these aspirations are frustrated, then a coup is more likely.
Finally, a military coup may be a vehicle for personal ambition. Such
motives are rarely sufficient in themselves to provoke a successful coup.
In Uganda, the authoritarian nature of Idi Amin's government between
1971 and 1979 was clearly shaped by his drive to attain personal power.
However, he was aided in his seizure of power from Milton Obote by
popular resentment against the civilian leadership, ethnic rivalries, and
widespread military concern over its declining position (Decalo 1976,
pp.201-11).

Back to the barracks?

The 1980s saw a trend towards democratisation in the third world.
Most notably in Latin America, but also in Asia and Africa, military
governments handed power back to elected civilian leaders. This forms
part of a worldwide trend epitomised by the collapse of dictatorship in
Eastern Europe and the collapse of legitimate alternatives to democratic
rule. As Hamburg (1988, p. 1) notes, just as the motivation for military
 The Military and the Police 379

Exhibit 15.2 How to stage your coup:

the mechanics of military takeover

The coup d'etat has been one of the main mechanisms for the
transfer of power in the third world. But how exactly does one go
about organising a military takeover? In a useful handbook, Luttwak
(1969) provided a compendium of advice for the politically ambi-
tious officer, concentrating on countries with a parochial political
culture where seizing power is a relatively straightforward matter.
Luttwak suggests that the planning stage is in many ways the most
dangerous. Those who ride to power on a coup are, by definition,
expert in its mechanics, 'I came in on a tank ' , said the Iraqi Prime
Minister in 1968, 'and only a tank will evict me'. Hence infiltration
of the army is risky, though to some degree essential. The key army
units are those based in or around the capital; the sympathetic
officers will probably be those with frustrated career ambitions or a
similar ethnic affiliation and political views to the conspirators. Even
if officers cannot be won over, the support of key technicians is often
sufficient to immobilise the unit while the coup is executed.
Essential elements in the coup itself include: seizing the presiden-
tial palace, if only for symbolic reasons; disrupting telecommunica-
tions; closing the airport; setting up road-blocks around the capital;
establishing a physical presence in public buildings; arresting
political opponents; and controlling the radio station. For your
message to the people, Luttwak offers a choice of styles ranging
from the messianic ('the bourgeoisie is abolished ... a new era of
equality between all citizens is inaugurated' - Colonel Bokassa,
Central African Republic, 1966) - to the rational-administrative
('Nkrumah ruled the country as if it were his private property . ..
We hope to announce measures for curing the country's troubles
within the next few days' - Ghana National Liberation Council,
1966).
If the forces that remain loyal to the previous government are
successfully dealt with, consolidation of the coup requires the
development of the regime's legitimacy, both domestically and
internationally. Military force will be as insufficient in maintaining
the military in office as it was necessary for obtaining power in the
first place. Generals who fail to become politicians very soon cease to
be either.
380 The Structures of Government

intervention in politics varies from case to case, so military reglmes

depart in response to different pressures.
First, the military regime may respond to pressure from civilian life-
either politicians or the population itself. Secondly, it may lose
credibility by failing to perform the military's main task - to act as a
fighting force. For example, the military junta in Argentina was
thoroughly discredited by failure in the Falklands (Malvinas) War
against Britain in 1982. Thirdly, the military may recognise that its
domestic policies have failed: the army simply gives up. Fourthly, the
military may decide that governing is not as easy as it seems; it therefore
chooses to return to professional military activities. Finally, some
regimes have been pressured by outside forces to hand power back to
the civilians. The United States's immense economic leverage in Central
and South America was successfully applied to the military regimes in
Bolivia, EI Salvador and Guatemala. International bodies such as the
World Bank are also more comfortable with civilian government.
However, as Hamburg (1988, p. 1) further comments, 'military
disengagement or withdrawal is rarely total or final'. The return to
civilian leadership can often be short lived, particularly if the new
regime does not give a high priority to the military's interests.
There have been many false starts on the road to demilitarisation.
Between them, Argentina, Peru and Honduras have embarked on re-
democratisation on no fewer than thirteen occasions since 1945
(Rem mer 1989, p. 52). In any case, withdrawal may only be partial.
When General Pinochet relinquished political power in Chile, he
retained his position as head of the armed forces. Power may now be
vested in the hands of civilian leaders in Chile, but Pinochet remains a
looming presence within the political system. As Salvador Allende said,
weeks before Pinochet's coup ousted him from power in 1973: 'It won't
cost you much to get a military man in. But by heaven, it will cost you
something to get him out!'

• The police
Although the military is occasionally used by governments to deal with
domestic disorder, its primary function is to pursue national defence.
Except for cases of severe civil disorder, the task of upholding and
enforcing the laws of the land belongs to the police.
There are two conflicting views of the police's role in society. In
essence, these see the police as 'citizens in uniform' (liberal perspective)
or as 'the state in uniform' (radical perspective).
 The Military and the Police 381

o Liberal and radical perspectives

The liberal view sees the police as 'disinterested custodians of public
order' (Brewer et al. 1988, p. 214). The police should be entirely
independent of political control. Officers' personal political opinions
should not affect how the police carry out their functions. All the laws of
the land should be enforced irrespective of how members of the police
view those laws.
For liberal theorists, policing is based on consent. The legitimacy of
police actions stems from broadly agreed values in society. Some
minorities may oppose certain police activities but, by and large, police
actions are accepted by most of the population as necessary and fair.
In contrast, the radical perspective views the police as an instrument
of domination. They are controlled by the state, and act to defend its
interests. Police forces are not a part of society, but apart from society.
They are agencies of state power - and of the interests that the state
represents. Rather than being a product of consent, the police are an
instrument of coercion. Whereas liberal theorists see the police as
servants of the public, radical theorists perceive the police as servants
of the state.
Liberal theorists agree that the radical perspective fits authoritarian
political systems. In South Africa under white rule, or in Eastern Europe
under communist party control, the police openly served the interests of
their political masters. However, the radicals suggest that this is also a
feature of policing in liberal democracies. Although the police's support
for the ruling elites may be less overt than in authoritarian regimes, it is
nevertheless a fact of political life.

o Structure and organisation

Police forces are usually either 'bottom-up' or 'top-down' in structure.
The 'bottom-up' style is prevalent in those nations where police forces
had their origins in rudimentary local patterns of law enforcement. Over
the years, the various local styles of patrolling and enforcement have
been merged, standardised and professionalised into a national system.
Although this process inevitably involves a degree of central control,
bottom-up police forces are often decentralised. For example, there is no
national police force in Britain (although the activities of the local forces
are coordinated on a national level). The balance between central and
local control is embodied in a tripartite division of power - central
government, local police authorities, and chief police officers.
382 The Structures of Government

Table 15.1 Police politics: a glossary

Term Description
Perspectives
Liberal The police are disinterested custodians of
public order - policing is based on consent.
Radical The police are agents of the state and an
instrument of coercion.

Organisation Example
Bottom-up Police forces originate from rudimentary Britain
local patterns of law enforcement. USA
Characterised by decentralised control.
Top-down The police are under the direct control France
of central government. Characterised by
national rather than local police forces.

Approaches
Community Police force is part of the community. Japan
The entire community is part of the law
enforcement process.
Reactive 'Heavy-handed' policing. Crime is Authoritarian
prevented by ensuring that everyone is regimes
aware of the power of the police.

Control mechanism
Internal The police is responsible for its own Most police
discipline, and investigates accusations of forces
wrongdoing by officers.
External Representatives of the local community or Sweden
elected civilian politicians playa major role
in policing the police.

Surveillance techniques
Overt The police makes sure that people know Communist
that their actions are being closely watched. party states
Covert Secret surveillance of people who are All countries
deemed to be a danger to the state.
 The Military and the Police 383

British police forces are financed through local authorities and are
politically accountable to local communities. Furthermore, local police
chiefs have considerable autonomy over operational tactics. Lacking the
resources to cope with every area of law enforcement, police chiefs are
forced to target priority areas or crimes.
The American system is a good example of decentralised control
within a 'bottom-up' structure. Local police forces are directly account-
able to locally elected or appointed police chiefs. There are around
40000 police forces in America. Virtually every municipal area with a
population of over 2500 has its own force. The vast majority of these
forces are very small indeed, employing less than ten officers (Brewer et
al. 1988, p. 110). The cost of local autonomy and control is the
duplication of activities, and a lack of national coordination. For many
petty criminals in the United States, a safe haven is only as far away as
the state, or even the county, border.
In 'top-down' systems, the police are directly controlled by central
government. The police force is seen as the guardian of the whole
political system, not just of private property and individual safety. This
system is the norm in much of continental Europe. Police forces are
financially dependent on, and accountable to, central political institu-
tions, rather than local organisations.
France provides a good example of 'top-down' policing. Although
small local police forces under the control of the local mayor do exist,
they only playa minor role in law enforcement. The major role is played
by two national forces, the Police Nationale, under the civilian control
of the Ministry of the Interior, and the Gendarmerie Nationale, under
the military control of the Ministry of Defence (Ritchie 1992).

o Specialisation
As the police's tasks have grown and diversified, so has the need for
specialisation within police forces. Most forces now contain many
structural subdivisions dealing with specific tasks: for example, crimi-
nal investigation, anti-drugs squads and specially trained tactical
weapons units.
With criminal activities spanning national boundaries, there is also an
increased role for international cooperation in policing. At times, this
takes the form of unilateral incursions into one country by another.
American attempts to hit the narcotics trade at source by seizing drugs
barons in Central America are a case in point. Due to their nature, such
police actions are usually performed by military or quasi-military units.
384 The Structures of Government

However, cooperation rather than confrontation is increasingly the

order of the day. From its headquarters in France, Interpol has long been
the main institution for coordinating cross-European criminal invest-
igation. Furthermore, bilateral contacts and investigations play an
increasingly important role in the fight against drugs trading and
international terrorism. National investigation agencies regularly swap
information and even coordinate their activities to retain the crucial
element of surprise. One example is the investigations in 1991 into
world-wide financial irregularities and money-laundering by the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International.
Although aspects of policing are becoming more international in the
first world, law enforcement remains strongly local in the third world.
Where police forces have not yet developed on a national scale, the
responsibility for local policing often falls on the shoulders of commun-
ity leaders. These 'big men' belong to families that have ex cerci sed
power in the local community for many generations. In tight-knit local
communities, their functions are usually more to do with adjudicating
local conflicts and upholding local traditions than criminal invest-
igation.

D Community or reactive policing?

As well as differing in terms of structure, police forces also differ in
terms of philosophy. On one side, there is the community approach,
typified by the image of the local British bobby on the beat. This
approach is favoured in Japan, which has one of the lowest crime rates
and highest detection rates in the developed world.
On the other side is the reactive approach. This involves a much
higher profile for the police force and a harder style. The community
approach places a premium on preventing crime by making the entire
community part of the law enforcement process. In contrast, the reactive
approach is based on preventing crime through instilling feelings that
the police is powerful and all-watching. This approach is the basis of
paramilitary-style policing in authoritarian political systems. It also
provides the basis of policing in some Western liberal democracies.
American police officers make no attempt to hide the fact that they carry
guns, and they will use them if required. In essence, the reactive
approach is based on instilling fear in the minds of potential offenders.
Elements of both styles of policing can be found in most police forces.
When the community approach fails to keep the peace, police chiefs
have little alternative than to resort to a more heavy-handed policing
style. However, it can prove extremely difficult to switch between
 The Military and the Police 385

Exhibit 15.3 Policing Japanese-style

The integration of the police into the local community characterises

policing in Japan. Police officers are assigned to police boxes (koban )
or residential police stations (chuzaisho), which act as the grass-roots
link between police and society. Japanese police officers are expected
to know and visit all the families under their jurisdiction during the
year - a feat that requires the ability to consume immense amounts of
tea . Japanese citizens accept that their lives will be closely monitored
by the local police officer. They also believe that the task of law
enforcement is not the sole responsibility of the police. Citizens form
themselves into local crime prevention associations, and meet
regularly with their local officer to pass on information on
suspected or potential offenders.
This community approach is more suited to (and successful in)
rural areas rather than urban centres with more mobile populations.
However, community policing is also practised in all Japanese cities.
The urban neighbourhood police officer - known as Mr Walkabout
(omawari-san) - is a common visitor at both the homes of local
residents, and at workplaces which employ workers from outside the
local area. In summary, police officers are highly regarded and
respected members of the local community in Japan (see Ritchie
1992).

the two systems. A heavy-handed police force will not be easily trusted if
it attempts to present itself as a community force. Furthermore, building
confidence in the police force is much more difficult than losing it. Years
of efficient community policing can easily be demolished by one or two
instances of 'heavy' police action.

Community relations
All policing relies on the cooperation of the local population to be
effective. Without information from the public, it is extremely difficult
to bring offenders to book except in the most authoritarian regimes
where trials are a mere formality. Such cooperation depends on the
extent to which the police force is regarded as a legitimate actor. Put
another way, it depends on the extent to which the police is perceived as
a repressive agent of state power. This is most likely to be the case when
the government itself is not accepted as legitimate. Under South African
apartheid, the control of all significant levers of power by the white
386 The Structures of Government

minority meant that the black population was fully aware of the police's
role as an instrument of white domination.
Where there is conflict over sovereignty, the police may also be seen as
an illegitimate force. For example, Basque separatists in northern Spain
do not accept that their land should be part of Spain. As such, they view
the police as an instrument of colonial occupation, and regard police
officers as legitimate targets for attack. In such circumstances, the
ability of the police to maintain the peace and enforce laws is severely
impaired, and often gives way to paramilitary policing, or direct
military control.
However, the system can also break down if the local community feels
that its interests are not represented by the police force. This has been
most clearly shown in the first world in the policing of minorities. In
Northern Ireland, for example, the Roman Catholic minority has never
had confidence in the local police force, which is predominantly staffed
by Protestants. In the early 1970s, 'no-go' areas were created and
barricades set up to keep the police force from entering Catholic
areas. Within this policing 'vacuum', there was not a total breakdown
in order. The illegal terrorist group, the Irish Republican Army (IRA),
meted out its own special punishments - executions, beatings, 'tar-and-
feathering' and 'kneecapping' (shooting somebody through the knee).
These punishments are not reserved for those foolish enough to cross the
IRA, but are also inflicted on 'normal' criminals.

D Policing the police

The notion of the accountability and control of police forces is a
fundamental issue. Who controls the controllers, who surveys the
surveillance agencies and who is to prevent beatings in police cells?
The degree of confidence in the police force depends on community
perceptions of police accountablity. If there is no right to appeal against
the actions of the police, then in general, there is likely to be a low level
of confidence. This public attitude can all too easily become self-
sustaining. If there is a low opinion of the police, it becomes difficult
to attract enough high quality recruits to improve the standing of the
force.
The relationship between the public and the police force is an unequal
one. Citizens are often unaware of their rights, and police can invoke
'catch-all' offences (such as breach of the peace) to detain individuals.
This places primacy on the need to have an effective complaints
procedure to allow citizens to redress the balance, if only after the event.
 The Military and the Police 387

However, most police forces favour and employ an internal com-

plaints procedure. In essence, the police investigates itself through such
bodies as the Internal Affairs Divisions in American police forces.
Although the British Police Complaints Authority does contain an
independent element, police representatives constitute a majority on
these bodies. Attempts to open police forces to more public scrutiny
have been opposed by the police. Most notably, the Belorgey reform
proposals in France, which advocated a greater role for the public in
monitoring police activities, encountered great hostility from all the
major police unions, and ultimately met with failure.
In some third world regimes, the police act with virtual impunity.
Police rapists in some parts of Asia are virtually invulnerable because a
known rape victim loses all social status. If she does report the crime,
there is often little to stop her being raped again by the police. In many
third world societies, becoming a police officer is a way of gaining both
income and status. Once inside the police force, a myriad of opportu-
nities for increasing that income - bribery and corruption - open up.
When a mass rape occurred at a Kenyan school in 1990, the police
refused to turn up until they were given 'money to buy petrol' i.e. bribed.
Despite closer controls on officers in first world police forces, the
abuse of police power is not confined to the third world. A key problem
is the emergence of a police subculture. Nowhere are police officers
renowned as namby-pamby soft-hearted liberals, and the view of the
police as sexist, racist, authoritarian men persists through much of the
first world. Despite belonging to the public sector, their politics (like
those of the armed forces) are predominantly conservative.
In extreme cases, the existence of such a subculture can lead to the
police imposing their own political agenda. The police in the southern
states of the United States strove to maintain white supremacy in the
face of anti-discrimination legislation by the federal government in
Washington. More usually, this aspect of police subculture encourages
stereotyping. Because deprived social groups (for example young male
blacks in white societies, Aborigines in Australia, American Indians)
provide more than their fair share of society's criminals, the police
assume that all such people should be treated with suspicion. As a result,
the treatment that people get from the police depends very much on their
social status.

D The police and politics

Some police forces are more vulnerable to political interference than
others. The more centralised a police force, the easier it is for politicians
388 The Structures of Government

Exhibit 15.4 Civilian control of the police in Sweden

Internal complaints procedures predominate in the first world.

However, in the more consensual democracies of Scandinavia,
where the tradition of ombudsmen acting as protectors of individ-
uals is well entrenched, 'outsiders' do playa prominent role. For
example, the Swedish police force is administered at the national
level by the Rikspolisstyrelsen - the National Police Board. Of the
eight ordinary members of the board, only two are representatives of
the police. The remaining six are members of parliament.
This role for elected civilian representatives is reproduced in the
118 local police districts . The local police board (which controls
finance, organisation and police appointments) is headed by the loca l
police commissioner, with the remaining six to eight places filled by
appointments made by the local council.
Furthermore, the Swedish police force attempts to build bridges
with the local community from the earliest possible stage. Local
police officers teach law and justice classes in loca l schools to create a
feeling of common interests between the citizen and the police
(A rcher 1985). And, would you believe, police officers on the street
still often give citizens a salute when responding to requests for
information.

to influence and manipulate the actions of the police. In the Republic of

Ireland, the Garda Siochana (the national police force) is headed by a
Commissioner who is directly appointed by the Minister of Justice. This
places the Commissioner in an extremely vulnerable position and makes
the process of applying political pressure much easier than in decen-
tralised systems (Brewer et al. 1988, pp. 87 and 226).
One source of political pressure on police chiefs is in response to
violent crimes that have shocked the nation. Faced with a government
wanting a quick conviction, it is not surprising that police forces
sometimes act with undue haste. The convictions of several suspected
IRA terrorists in Britain have been quashed on appeal as it became clear
that the police's evidence was either fatally flawed or had been
concocted to ensure a conviction. The fact that defendants spent many
years in prison while previous appeals were rejected cast a cloud over the
entire British criminal justice system.
In Sweden, the assassination of Premier Olaf Palme in 1987 led to
political pressure on the police to find the culprit. A massive invest-
 The Military and the PoLice 389

igation failed to bear fruit for two years, as political impatience grew.
When an arrest was finally made, the case against the defendant was so
flimsy and riddled with inconsistencies that it was thrown out. Political
pressure on police forces can therefore be seen as an obstacle to effective
and efficient policing, and in the long run proves to be counter-
productive.

o The secret police and surveillance

One crucial element in the relationship between politics and the police is
the question of surveillance. The issue is not whether surveillance should
take place - there is a high level of consensus that anti-terrorist
operations are legitimate - but one of whom should be watched.
Defining who is an 'enemy of the state' is not easy. Terrorists are
'enemies' but civil rights activists surely are not? This area is difficult to
control because surveillance has to be secret. People may suspect that
they are under investigation, but if the intelligence agencies are doing
their jobs properly, it is extremely difficult to prove. Secret policing, by
its very nature, is the least accountable area of police operations.
Thus, surveillance activity can easily cross ill-defined boundaries and
become political. Arguably, judgements on who is an appropriate and
legitimate target for police surveillance should be made by politicians.
Some surveillance agencies, however, defy political control. Indeed,
there have been repeated allegations that elements in the British security
services tried to destabilise the Labour Government of Harold Wilson in
the mid-1970s - the very entity that was supposed to control those
servICes.
The role of the police as an agent of political repression is most clearly
seen in authoritarian regimes. In these cases surveillance of the
population can be both overt and covert. Overt surveillance is
employed to create a firm belief in the minds of the population that
any heterodox or illegal activities will not avoid detection by the police,
and that severe sanctions will follow. As the Chinese saying puts it, 'kill
the chicken to scare the monkey'. In communist party states, this was
reinforced by 'show trials' - widely reported trials of dissidents and
political criminals to let the rest of the population know what was
awaiting them if they too crossed the line.
Overt policing of this sort is usually backed up by a network of
unpaid civilian informers. In China, representatives of neighbourhood
committees keep close tabs on the activities of their neighbours. It is
common to see the old women of a neighbourhood sitting outside,
knitting for the grandchildren - and quietly noting any visitors to the
390 The Structures of Government

area. After the suppression of the 1989 democracy movement in Beijing,

activists were often turned over to the police by members of their family.
Such cases were widely reported in the press to instil in the minds of the
'criminals' the sense that they could trust nobody, that they were alone
in the world, and that even their families disapproved of their 'counter-
revolutionary' activities. Similarly, the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein
has been described by exiled dissidents as one where the entire
population informs on itself.
Clearly, overt surveillance may not be sufficient to stamp out political
dissidence. Covert surveillance is often, therefore, an important tool in
political repression. As well as the unpaid civilian informers, members
of the security police infiltrate all areas of society, reporting back to
their superiors on potential troublemakers. The true extent of this secret
police penetration into civilian society in Eastern Europe will probably
never be known. However, it has become clear from the files found in
the Stasi offices in East Germany and the Securitate headquarters in
Romania that the network was vast. The Securitate played a major role
in maintaining Ceaucescu's rule and, disregarding popular hatred of
their organisation, resisted his overthrow until the end.
In communist party states, there was no separation of the secret police
from the ruling party. The head of the surveillance machinery was a
political appointment. Supreme loyalty to the party was expected and
demanded of secret police officials. Managing the secret police machin-
ery was an important stepping stone to holding political power in many
communist party states. Yuri Andropov, who headed the KGB in the
Soviet Union for fifteen years before becoming General Secretary of the
Communist Party in 1982, is perhaps the best-known example. However
he was not alone. Hua Guofeng in China, Honecker in East Germany
and Kania in Poland also made the transition from police chief to party
chief (Adelman 1984).
The use of the police to silence opposition is not limited to communist
party states. It has been a feature of the role of the police in
authoritarian regimes throughout the third world. Often organised on
paramilitary lines, the police have played a key role in political
repression in Latin America. It has been estimated, for example, that
between 1973 and 1990 under the dictatorship of Pinochet in Chile, there
were 15000 assassinations, more than 2200 political detainees who
subsequently 'disappeared', and 155000 prisoners who were held in
concentration camps throughout the country.
Similarly, after General Videla came to power in Argentina in 1976,
state kidnapping, torture and murder of political opponents became
systematic in the so-called 'dirty war'. Human rights organisations
estimate that over 7000 people became desaparecidos (missing per-
 The Military and the Police 391

sons) at the hands of the police. Little attempt was made to hide the
extent of the operation, with most being arrested in front of witnesses.
What happened to these 'missing persons' has never been explained,
although there is no doubt that most were eventually killed.
The reliance on police repression to maintain control over society has
led to many states being described as 'police states'. The ruling elites rely
not so much on building popular legitimacy for the security of their
tenure, as on the fear instilled by the actions of the police and l11ilitary
forces. Such examples of police repression can be found throughout the
third world.
However, more 'orthodox' policing also takes place in authoritarian
states. People are robbed and murdered all over the world; traffic
offences are not confined to liberal democracies. If the focus of policing
in authoritarian states tends to be on repression, it should not be
forgotten that police units also undertake more mundane functions of
law enforcement. The main difference between policing in these states
and in liberal democracies is the notion of what the police force is
defending. In 'police states' the interests of the ruling elite - the ruling
party or elites - are placed above notions of individual rights. The police
force, with a varying degree of commitment, does defend the individual
and the individual's property from attack. But personal freedoms are
ultimately subservient to the task of keeping the ruling elite in power.

Summary
1. In the liberal model of civilian control over the military (the first world),
civilian leaders take complete charge of society's affairs. The military is, to a
degree, depoliticised. In the penetration model (communist party states), the
civilian elites attempt to ensure that the armed forces share their political ideas,
and they promote loyal party members to all key positions within the military
establishment. The military are deliberately politicised.

2. Military leaders in the first world have operational autonomy to pursue the
national defence policy, under the control of the civilian leadership. However,
the military also attempts to influence decision-makers and public opinion to
support its own favoured policies.

3. The civilian leadership in liberal democracies occasionally orders the

military to intervene in domestic political situations. This is most likely to
occur when an industrial dispute has led to essential services being withdrawn,
or when the domestic police force fails to keep the peace during severe
breakdowns in law and order.
392 The Structures of Government

4. Military leaders in communist party states formed part of a powerful and

privileged ruling elite. Their influence was not confined to military affairs, and
many military leaders also held high office within the party leadership itself.

5. The key to keeping the military out of civilian politics in communist party
states was maintaining political stability. In times of political instability, the
army's reliability becomes crucial for regime survival.

6. Military regimes in the third world are either inclusionary or exclusionary.

In the former, the military leaders try to build a base of popular support among
the populace (Peron's Argentina). In exclusionary regimes, military leaders
attempt to suppress all popular participation in politics (Pinochet's Chile).

7. A key trend in contemporary third world politics is military withdrawal

from politics. However, despite this move towards democrat-isation, the lesson
of history is that military withdrawal is rarely final, and further military
takeovers in the future cannot be discounted.

8. The liberal view sees the police as disinterested and impartial custodians of
public order. In contrast, the radical perspective views the police as an
instrument employed by a dominant minority to defend their interests.
Whereas liberal theorists see the police as public servants, radical theorists
perceive the police as servants of the state.

9. The police's role as an agent of political repression is most clearly seen in

authoritarian regimes. Extensive surveillance of the population is combined
with a high-profile heavy-handed policing style to instil fear into the
population.

Discussion points
1. Given their overwhelming coercive power, why do military regimes ever
return power to civilians?

2. Is the military in your country an 'interest group'?

3. Which comes first, popular mistrust of the police force, or bad policing?
4. What is more dangerous, a police force independent of political control, or
one under tight political control?
5. Is policing without consent coercion?
 The Military and the Police 393

Kev• readin ub
Decalo, S. (1976) Coups and Army Rule in Africa, (New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press). An excellent introduction to military rule in Africa, written
near the peak period of military rule.
Munck, R. (1989) Latin America: The Transition to Democracy, (London:
Zed). Analyses how and why military regimes have given way to civilian
governments in Latin America.
Brewer, J. et al. (1988) The Police, Public Order and the State (Basingstoke:
Macmillan). A comparative study of the police in Great Britain, Northern
Ireland, the Irish Republic, the United States, Israel, South Africa and China.
Orwell, G. (1962) Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Secker & Warburg). The
classic nightmare vision of life in a police state.

Further reading
On the military, S. Finer's (1975) pioneering study sets the standards in terms of
breadth and cogency. Nordlinger (1977) is the starting-point for studying
civilian control, while Baynham (1986) is a useful update and Pinkney (1990)
is a good up-to-date work on right-wing military regimes.
Clapham and Philip (1985) is a collection on civil-military relations in a
number of third world countries. O'Brien and Cammack (1985) focus on the
crisis of military rule in Latin America. For military withdrawal from politics,
see Danapoulos (1988) for a general study, and Munck (1989) on Latin
America. For a case study on military involvement in domestic politics, see
Babington (1990) on the military in Britain.
Work on the military in the second world has been overtaken by the dramatic
events of recent years. However, Colton (1986) is a useful introduction on the
military in Soviet politics before perestroika. Joffe (1983) is similarly useful on
the Chinese military.
Brewer et al. (1988) is a good comparative introduction to the police, while
Ritchie (1992) is a useful introduction to law and order in Japan, France,
Britain and the United States. Roach and Thomaneck (1985) is a collection on
policing in Europe. Adelman (1984) is a good introduction to surveillance and
secret police forces in the communist world.
 .PARTS.
POLICIES AND
PERFORMANCE
Policies matter. In one country, government actions may be the
principal cause of human misery. In another, public policies may
help to create the conditions under which people can fulfil their
potential. Ultimately, politics matters because it affects people's
lives. In this final part, therefore, our focus shifts from the
structures of government to the policies that governments pursue.
We explore how the content and style of public policy varies not only
between the three worlds but also within them, over time.
 • Chapter 16 •
The Policy Process
The policy focus 397 The first world 406
Synoptic and incremental The second world 414
models 398 The third world: policy
Stages of the policy process 402 stagnation 421

Most political science (and most of this book) discusses the framework
of political institutions and processes within which government policies
are formed. Little attention is given to the substance of these policies -
their ideological flavour, their impact on society, their success or failure.
Yet this is like describing a factory without mentioning the products it
makes. Just as the purpose of a factory is to manufacture goods, so the
development and implementation of policy is central to government
activity. This point was belatedly recognised by political scientists in the
1980s. As a result, a large literature on policy analysis now exists. This
chapter reviews this material.

• The policy focus

One way to introduce the policy approach is to compare it with the
study of decision-making (pp. 14-16). A policy is a more general notion
than a decision. A policy covers a bundle of decisions. It involves a
general predisposition to respond in a particular way. When a
government says, 'our policy is to favour public transport', it is stating
an intention to make specific decisions with this attitude in mind. It is
not announcing a decision as such. (In fact, the practical 'decisions' may
never arrive at all. Window-dressing is one reason for having policies).
Typically, a policy will evolve when (and if) it is put into practice. It
will be modified in the field and have effects beyond those envisaged by
its original designers. For example, a plan, drawn up in a government
office, to reduce needle-sharing among drug addicts is likely to require
modification in the light of practical difficulties trying to reach drug
users and change their behaviour. A major advantage of a policy focus
over the decision-making approach is that it traces a policy beyond the
point of initiation to the point of delivery. It examines what goes on out
there in the world. Whether or not this is what politics is about, it is

397
398 Policies and Performance

certainly what politics is for. In consequence, the policy focus also

implies a concern with evaluating, and improving, public policy .

• Synoptic and incremental models

Modern policy analysis is informed by two general models of decision-
making - the rational or synoptic model, associated with H. Simon
(1983) and the incremental model, associated with Lindblom (1979).
The synoptic model requires decision-makers to examine a problem in a
comprehensive way. Specifically policy-makers must

1. Rank all their values;

2. Formulate clear options;
3. Calculate all the results of choosing each option;
4. Select the alternative which achieves most values.

This is an unrealistic counsel of perfection. It lacks force even as a

prescription of how policies should be made. It requires policy-makers
to foresee the unforeseeable and measure the unmeasurable. So the
advocates of synoptic models offer the notion of bounded rationality as
a more feasible alternative. To make policy-making more manageable,
this eliminates the comprehensiveness required by the full model. In
bounded rationality decision-makers focus on a few 'good-looking'
options and look only for a satisfactory rather than the best solution.
For example, in deciding on school reorganisation, a minister of
education will probably only consider the handful of options presented
by civil servants. The minister will relate these to a few core objectives -
improving numeracy among schoolchildren, say, or ensuring his or her
promotion in the next reshuffle. And the minister will probably
concentrate on the immediate implications of the reforms, ignoring
indirect and therefore less predictable consequences.
The incremental model was developed by Lindblom in reaction to the
synoptic model. Incremental policiy is change by small steps. Its central
feature is that policy is continually made and remade in a series of small
adjustments, rather than as a result of a single, comprehensive analysis.
It represents what Lindblom calls the 'science of muddling through', an
approach which may not lead to the achievement of grand objectives but
which at least avoids the making of huge mistakes. In incremental
policy-making, what matters is not that those involved should agree on
objectives but that agreement should be reached on the next step to be
taken, even when basic objectives differ. For instance, the education
minister might hold discussions with various interests - teachers,
 The Policy Process 399

Exhibit 16.1 T he language of policy analysis

The price of a new approach is a new jargon. Here is an abbrev iated

guide to the terms used in policy analysis; most are discussed fully in
the text.
The earliest debate was between rational and incremental models
of policy-making. The rational model (Simon 1983) holds that
decision-makers should try to consider all the consequences of all
options for all values before reaching a verdict. The incremental
model (Lindblom 1979) maintains that policy-makers make small
adjustments to patch up defects. They adopt a satisficing approach
(satisfying and sufficing) based on what is good enough rather than
what is best. The mixed scanning model (Etzioni 1976, pp. 90-6) is a
middle way; it argues for careful scrutiny of key problems and
routine monitoring elsewhere.
In ana lysing policy, it is important to identify the policy
community or network - the interlocking groups of politicians,
civil servants, local officials, quangos'> and interest groups involved
in a decision-making area. Ministries can become subservient to the
client group affected by their decisions; client groups include service
providers (such as doctors) who are generally more powerful than
service consumers (such as patients).
Policy communities or even countries can develop their own policy
styles (Richardson 1982) - their preferred, though not always
realised, way of making policy . Policy style is influenced by the
assumptive worlds (K. Young 1977) or policy frames (Hogwood and
Gunn 1984, pp. 119- 20) of the participants - that is, by their
assumptions, values and implicit theories about how society
works. The ability to control how an issue is discussed is a
significant aspect of agenda-setting. Control over what issues are
discussed is the other, and more important, aspect of agenda-setting.
The implementation of policy can be approached from a top-down
perspective (how can our goals be implemented down the line?) or
from the bottom-up (where those who apply the policy largely
determine it). But all are agreed that it is vital to distinguish policy
outputs (what government does) from policy outcomes (the con-
sequences of government activity). Many outcomes are unintended;
some contradict original objectives (Lewis and Wallace 1984) .

.. Quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation: bodies carrying out

public responsibilities but (officially) independent of government control.
400 Policies and Performance

administrators, professional associations - to try and sort out a solution

to an immediate problem. Almost by accident, if at all, a series of such
small changes might alter the direction of education policy.
What assessment should we give of these models? On a descriptive
level, there is little doubt that Lindblom's incremental account is more
accurate. Politicians rarely write on a blank sheet. Current policies are
constrained by past decisions. Once construction of an orbital motor-
way has begun, it makes no sense to leave the job half done. Once a
hospital has been built, it has to be staffed. The incremental approach is
also more sensitive to the politics of policy-making, whereas the
synoptic model is really an idealised account of individual rather than
group decision-making.
However incrementalism is not a model of how policy should be
made - at least not in all areas of government activity. As Lindblom
himself points out, incremental decision-making is based on dealing
with existing problems rather than avoiding future ones. Public policy is
seen as remedial rather than innovative. But the threat of ecological
disaster, for instance, has arisen precisely from human failure to
consider the long-term cumulative impact of industry upon the environ-
ment. Different forms of policy-making, then, are called for in different
areas in the public sector.
In the first world, incremental policy-making predominates. A
distinctive characteristic of liberal democracies (in peacetime) is their
lack of overall national goals. Government programmes chiefly reflect
past commitments and budgetary considerations about what is possible.
Policy mostly bubbles up to politicians from below rather than being
formulated at the top. This upward flow of policy is accepted as the
hallmark of a democracy even by politicians and civil servants
themselves. The style of policy-making is incremental, not transform-
ative.
Attempts to introduce more synoptic or at least disciplined forms of
policy-making have generally ended in tears (for a remarkable illustra-
tion from the second world, see Exhibit 16.2). Failures include Britain's
'National Plan' in the 1960s, and various efforts to introduce compre-
hensive program-planning in the United States. Where economic
planning has proved effective, as in France in the 1950s and 1960s, a
rare combination of circumstances was required. In France these
included: a strong state, a new generation of eager civil servants,
effective political leadership and a society ripe for postwar modernisa-
tion. Strategic economic planning has also been practised in Japan, with
close cooperation between government and business. However 'The
Plan' has gradually been downgraded in both France and Japan since the
1960s. In both countries, leading firms have become more international
 The Policy Process 401

Exhibit 16.2 China's Great Leap Forward . .. into starvation

By 1957, the process of rebuilding China's economy after years of neglect

and the ravages of war had been basically completed. For China's leader,
Mao Zedong, this meant that it was time to move forwards and hasten
the transition to communism - China was to take a Great Leap Forward.
Mao believed that if the masses were motivated to support a project,
then there was nothing that they could not achieve . Whereas the
capitalist world had developed by relying on capita l equipment,
expertise and professionalism, China would utilise ideological commit-
ment, mass mobilisation and organisation.
In the countryside, the peasants were organised into large communes.
Private property was pooled, and the distribution of all resources (food,
clothing and so on) was based on individual needs. To aid industrial
development, the rural population was exhorted to produce its own
steel. Furnaces were hastily built in every available space, and work
teams despatched to find available sources of coal and iron ore.
By the autumn of 1958, everything appeared to be progressing well. In
particular, the grain harvests were far better than expected, and
breaking record after record. Thinking that the country was awash
with grain, the central planners ordered peasants to grow more cash
crops (such as cotton and tobacco) and they transferred large amounts
of grain to urban centres.
But the success was all a sham. Spurred on by the desire to prove their
revolutionary commitment, party officials throughout the country
exaggerated their grain production figures. Furthermore, much of the
iron ore produced in the 'backyard' steel furnaces was poor quality and
unusable. In some communes, pots, pans and farm utensils were melted
down so that a high production figure for steel could be reponed.
The 'Great Lie' came home to roost in 1959 and 1960. In the space of
two years, half of all the cultivated land was hit by drought or floods.
Food consumption had increased during 1958 when it appeared that
there was more than enough to go around, so peasants had few or no
stockpiles to fall back on. It also became evident that when property was
being pooled in 1957 and 1958 many peasants had slaughtered and eaten
their livestock rather than allow it to be turned over to the communes.
The exact extent of the famine that followed is unknown. Coale's
(1981) estimate of 16.5 million deaths between 1958 and 1961 is one of
the lowest figures . At the other extreme, Mosher (1983) suggests that as
many as 30 million may have died in 1960 alone. The total figure for the
period from 1958 to 1963 is probably in the region of 40 million deaths -
a phenomenal price to pay for a utopian vision that went tragically and
bizarrely wrong.
402 Policies and Performance

and so less subject to influence from the national government. National

economic plans still state the government's priorities but without setting
out clear mechanisms for achieving them .

• Stages of the policy process

A distinction is often drawn between the four stages of the policy
process shown in Figure 16.1. These are:
1. Initiation the 'decision to make a decision' in a particular
area; otherwise known as agenda-setting.
2. Formulation the detailed development of a policy into
concrete proposals.
3. Implementation putting the policy into practice.
4. Evaluation appraising the consequences and success of the
policy.
This classification can give an artificial sense of coherence to the
policy process. These stages are analytical, not chronological. Bearing
this in mind, we will discuss each stage individually.

D Initiation
Why is health policy directed to treating illness rather than preventing
it? Why did ecology suddenly emerge as an issue in Western democracies
in the 1970s? Why is workers' control of industry not a major political

Initiation
...
... ,
\
\
Formulation ... ,
, (Feedback loops)
\
I
\
\
I
I
Implementation I
I

Evaluation

Figure 16.1 Stages of the policy process

 The Policy Process 403

concern? These are questions about the political agenda - about the
issues on which policies are (or are not) initiated. In any complex society
the agenda cannot be controlled by a single group; it is the product of
debate between a variety of competing though often unequal forces.
As the incremental model suggests, policy-makers respond to pro-
blems more than they anticipate them. Annual budgets wrest priorities
from governments reluctant to commit themselves. Manifest policy
failings, perhaps highlighted by the media, force a rethink. Crises such
as strikes, riots or major accidents demand immediate action. Except in
regimes which set out to transform society, policy agendas are fluid and
fast-flowing because they are made by events rather than by politicians
or planners.
However, in analysing influences on the agenda, it is useful to
distinguish between the general and specific priorities of government.
General priorities are usually influenced and sometimes determined by
public opinion. In the West, the fall in inflation in the early 1980s led to
growing popular concern about unemployment, a shift in priorities to
which governments attempted to respond, albeit with varying success.
This responsiveness to public concern was increasingly apparent in
communist states, too, though it came too late to save the regimes.
At a more specific level of policy initiation, the policy community
rather than public opinion becomes crucial. The policy community is
the network of interest groups, professionals, civil servants and
politicians constructed around a common interest in a particular policy
area such as education or defence. Routine policy-making springs from
the policy community rather than being imposed on it by either public
opinion or politicians. Australia is a good example of a country where
policy communities are especially important. In numerous boards,
agencies and quangos, the interests gather together to maintain their
own traditional privileges, often to the detriment of the general good.
Any group which wishes to influence the course of policy must become
accepted as a member of the policy 'club'. In Australia, as elsewhere,
non-members are organised out of policy-making just as effectively as
participants are incorporated within it.

D Formulation
Translating a feeling that 'something should be done' into precise
legislation or administrative proposals, and then enacting them, is a
core political craft. Like bringing a ship into harbour, many decisions
must be made correctly and in sequence if the goal is to be achieved.
There are essentially three tasks here:
404 Policies and Performance

1. Knowing when to proceed - the question of identifying the right

moment.
2. Knowing what to propose - the question of understanding the
problem so that the proposals will (apparently) ameliorate it.
3. Knowing how to proceed - the question of building a political
consensus around the proposals. Even where the legislature is party-
dominated, policies must be legitimately made to command
acceptance: political skill and parliamentary expertise are indispens-
able for policy legitimation in liberal democracies.

D Implementation
The main achievement of policy analysis has been to direct attention to
problems of implementation. Conventional political science generally
stopped at the point where a government took a decision. Putting the
policy into practice was regarded as a technical matter of administra-
tion. But this is much too simple. The failure of the social welfare
programme in the United States in the mid-1960s illustrates how, to
quote the subtitle of a pioneering study, 'great expectations are dashed
in Oakland; or, why it's amazing that Federal programs work at all'
(Pressman and Wildavsky 1973).
There are in fact a great number of conditions which must be met if a
policy is to be implemented successfully. First, there must be sufficient
time and resources, both overall and at particular 'bottlenecks' in the
execution of policy. Secondly, there should ideally be few 'stations'
where the policy has to sit, awaiting clearance from a variety of different
groups, each with its own interests. Thirdly, those in authority must be
able to achieve compliance from subordinates (Hogwood and Gunn
1984, ch.ll).
Few of these conditions are met in the United States, where a complex
network of federal, state and local governments is involved in each
policy area. Yet even when all these criteria are fulfilled, the policy may
still fail because of changes in external circumstances (bad luck) or
because the policy is not actually based on valid assumptions about how
to achieve particular objectives (bad policy).
The preceding paragraphs are based on a 'top-down' view of
implementation. The problem is conceived as one of facilitating
democracy by giving politicians the means of controlling unruly
subordinates. But what if circumstances have changed since the policy
was formulated? And what if the policy is just bad policy? Writers in the
'bottom-up' tradition (e.g. Barrett and Fudge 1981) argue that policy is
 The Policy Process 405

more likely to succeed if its executors have flexibility over application -

and hence, to an extent, over content. At 'street level' (i.e. the point
where the policy is put into effect) policy emerges from interaction
between local bureaucrats and groups affected by the policy. Here at the
sharp end, the objectives of policy can often be better achieved by
adapting its content to local conditions. For example, the practice of
education, health care and policing must surely differ between the rural
countryside and multi-cultural areas in the inner city.
Yet giving more scope to policy-implementers involves a risk. Once
the centre loosens its control, policy may be distorted to serve the
interests of administrators and professionals (teachers, doctors and
police) rather than 'customers' (schoolchildren, sick people and crime
victims). This trade-off between central control and flexibility in
application is the major dilemma in policy implementation. Liberal
democracies generally leave more discretion with those who apply
policy than communist states, where in th'eory the plan decides all.
But since the plan never worked as it should, administrators in
communist states often ended up with more discretion in practice than
their Western equivalents.
One solution to the dilemma of control versus flexibility is to
construct organisations around policies rather than to add new
objectives to existing institutions. Governments have achieved striking
successes when a single new agency has been given total responsibility
for solving a problem. Examples include the Japanese programme to
eliminate tuberculosis, or the American programme to put a man on the
moon by the end of the 1960s. When the responsibility is diffused, or
added to departments which have already developed their own style,
implementation problems become more acute. Of course the creation of
new agencies indicates a political will to solve the problem. Once the
spotlight moves to a different topic, as it soon does, the drive of street-
level bureaucrats often begins to decay. Lewis and Wallace (1984)
contend that consistent political direction is a major factor favouring
successful implementation - but calling for this, cynics might contend, is
like whistling in the wind.
Another problem with building organisations around objectives is
that the organisation rarely folds up when the job is done. It often
outstays its welcome. Ever since Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon
in 1969, the space agency NASA has been searching for new goals to
justify its existence. There are in fact very few examples of agencies
going into voluntary liquidation. Australia, surprisingly perhaps,
supplies two. The Metric Conversion Board was abolished when its
job was done and the Bicentennial Authority was dissolved after 1988
(Laffin 1989, p. 47).
406 Policies and Performance

DEvaluation
The job of policy evaluation is to work out whether a policy has
achieved its goals. Like the famous recipe for political stew which begins
'first catch your rabbit', this neatly sidesteps the problem of working out
what the objectives of policy really were. As we have seen, the political
motives behind a policy often differ from its ostensible purpose. But this
does not detract from the importance of the task. Few governments have
made much headway in building evaluation studies into the policy
process. In the United States, President Carter did insist that at least 1
per cent of the funds for any project be devoted to its evaluation. The
vast number of reports required meant a bonanza for photocopier
manufacturers but did not noticeably improve the effectiveness of
public policy. In general policy evaluation is most likely to carry weight
in consensual democracies with an anticipatory policy style - that is,
countries located in the top left of Figure 16.2. There are few such
countries.
Policy evaluations must distinguish outputs (what government does)
from outcomes (the effects, including the unintended consequences, of
government activity). The connection between the two is often tenuous,
especially when governments spend money with the supposed purpose
of reducing inequalities. Le Grand (1982) has argued that almost all
public expenditure in Britain on health, education, housing and
transport benefits the better off more than the poor, even when the
purpose is the exact opposite. Whether or not this claim is true, it is clear
that outputs and outcomes are two different things - and that policy
evaluation is therefore an important task which should become a
routine part of the policy process .

• The first world

Although policy-making in the first world is generally incremental
rather than synoptic, there are marked differences between liberal
democracies in how they reach decisions. Indeed, for the student of
comparative politics, the concept of policy styles is one of the more
interesting contributions of policy analysis.

D Policy styles
In contrast to the abstract nature of synoptic and incremental models,
the term 'policy styles' suggests that individual liberal democracies can
 The Policy Process 407

be characterised according to their own national way of reaching

decisions. Policy style is a preferred way of making policy ('a proced-
ural ambition') which is not always adhered to in practice.
For example, Richardson et al. (1982) suggest that Britain has a
predilection for consultation, especially with entrenched interests.
Sweden also consults widely but as part of a more rational search for
solutions to problems. The French policy style reflects secrecy and
stagnation most of the time, with occasional bouts of radical change led
by an assertive bureaucracy. (These oscillations in French policy-making
are no longer so evident now that the country has modernised.)
Richardson suggests the two main dimensions of policy style are:

1. Whether the government has an anticipatory attitude towards

policy-making (Sweden) or adopts a reactive, fire-brigade role
(UK).
2. Whether the government attempts to reach a consensus with
organised groups (United States) or is more inclined towards
imposing decisions on society (France sometimes).

This yields the pattern shown in Figure 16.2. Most liberal democracies
are concentrated on the right-hand side of the diagram - reacting to
rather than anticipating problems. Compared to other forms of
government, democracies also tend to congregate in the upper half -
seeking to construct a consensus rather than impose policy.
Where does a country's policy-making style come from? What are its
origins? The answer is partly historical. Crises call forth new procedures
which then become part of a country's political process. For example,
the depression of the 1930s forced most Western governments to adopt a
stronger role in the management of the economy. Equally, the Second
World War called forth national planning on a grand scale. It created
close consultation between governments and producer groups, links
which may have weakened, but have not disappeared.
There is also a cultural answer to the question, where do policy styles
come form? Decision-making processes in government inevitably reflect
wider cultural norms. For example, the Japanese policy-style seeks to
suppress the open display of conflict and disagreement, a characteristic
which is found in many non-state Japanese institutions, including the
family. The more open and pluralistic approach of American policy-
makers is also found among their local officials, educators and business
people. The more frequently people move between public and private
spheres, the greater the convergence of policy-making styles between the
two sectors. In France and Japan, for instance, there is a tradition of
movement from government to business.
408 Policies and Performance

Government
seeks
consensus
Sweden,
Japan US

Government Government
anticipates reacts to
problems problems

UK (under
France Thatcher)

Government
imposes
policy

Note: Position of countries is merely illustrative.

Source: Adapted from J. Richardson et al. 'The Concept of Policy Style' in Policy Styles
in Western Europe, ed. J. Richardson (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982), p. 13.

Figure 16.2 Dimensions of national policy style

The international environment is now a strong influence on policy-

making in the first world. Similar problems (such as an increase in
crime) show up in different societies at a similar time. Some solutions
(such as community policing) are also considered throughout the first
world. The mass media and international conferences between experts
both encourage the diffusion of policy. Thus, there is a tendency
towards policy convergence. Broader shifts in priorities also echo round
the democratic world. For example, in industrial policy, high-level
negotiations between government and peak associations representing
business and unions have become little more than talking shops in all
but some of the smaller European consensus democracies. The 1990s is
the decade of the competition state, rather than the corporate state.
Styles of policy-making may well vary from one sector to another,
however. It would be surprising, for example, if policy-making in the
field of health-care exactly resembled that in, say, defence or transport.
The policy communities are different. The problems and agendas are
different - and so the styles of policy-making are also likely to vary.
 The Policy Process 409

D The welfare state

Defining the welfare state
The transformation of first world countries from nightwatchman states
to welfare states was completed in the twentieth century. This perhaps is
the single major policy achievement of the liberal democratic state. To
understand public policy in liberal democracies, we must examine the
welfare state, for welfare consumes most of the state's financial
resources and much of the time of its officials.
What exactly is a 'welfare state'? It is usually defined as a state which
takes a prime role in ensuring the provision of a minimum standard of
welfare to all its citizens. The main aspects of 'welfare' are medical care,
education, housing, income maintenance and personal social services.
Several countries, such as France and Japan, now include a statement of
welfare rights in their constitutions.
The United States is one of the few remaining first world countries
which is not a welfare state. For example, it does not have a national
scheme ensuring prompt access to medical care. The United States's
policy style has generally preferred private solutions to public ones, and
also to distribute the 'porkbarrel' among a few favoured groups rather
than among the population as a whole.
The welfare state can be compared with the nightwatchman state
which preceded it. The nightwatchman state had limited functions.
These were mainly to maintain law and order, defend the country, and
deal with unexpected problems. The state lacked the desire, resources
and infrastructure to supply welfare services to people. Instead, these
were provided by private, informal sources: the family, the church, and
charities. With the possible exception of Japan, where the family is still
exceptionally important, these agencies have now been overtaken by the
state as the major supplier of services such as health, education and child
allowances.
The development of the welfare state parallels the extension of the
suffrage. In a sense, the welfare state is a form of the democratic state,
implying as it does the right of all people to basic standards of welfare. It
is an expression of citizenship. In the nightwatchman state, those who
received public welfare through the poor laws were denied the vote. In
the welfare state, a guaranteed minimum income is a benefit of
citizenship.

Development of the welfare state

As with the extension of the suffrage, the welfare state expanded at a
different rate at different times in different countries. It was a
410 Policies and Performance

transformation in small steps, a classic example of how a series of

incremental changes can bring about major change. The term 'the
welfare state' originated in Britain during the Second World War as a
contrast to Hitler's 'warfare state'. However, its origins lie further back,
in the period before the First World War, ironically in Germany itself.
Under Bismarck, Germany had pioneered social insurance schemes
which 'collectivised' risks such as accident and illness, at least for
industrial workers (see Table 16.1).
Building on such foundations, the period from the 1920s saw the
gradual extension of welfare in first world countries to more areas of life
(e.g. pensions and family allowances) and to more groups in the
population (e.g. rural people and dependents of industrial workers).
Public spending on welfare also grew rapidly during this period, partly
due to the expanding cost of providing pensions to an ageing popula-
tion. By the 1970s virtually the entire population was covered in most
democracies for the main aspects of welfare.
Several theories purport to explain the emergence of the welfare state
(Esping-Andersen 1990). These see the welfare state as:

1. A response to industrialisation. According to this, the transition to

an industrial society diminished traditional welfare providers such
as guilds and the extended family. The state filled the gap.

Table 16.1 Introduction of social insurance, selected countries

Industrial Unemployment Family
accident Health Pensions benefit allowances
Australia 1902 1945 1909 1945 1941
Austria 1887 1888 1927 1920 1921"
Canada 1930 1971 1927 1940 1944
Denmark 1898 1892 1891 1907 1952
Finland 1895 1963 1937 1917 1948
France 1898 1898 1895 1905" 1932
Germany 1871" 1883" 1889* 1927 1954
Italy 1898 1886 1898 1919 1936
Netherlands 1901 1929 1913 1916 1940
New Zealand 1900 1938 1898 1938 1926
Norway 1894 1909. 1936 1906 1946
Sweden 1901 1891 1913 1934 1947

* = innovator.
Source: C. Pierson, Beyond the Welfare State? (Oxford: Polity, 1991) table 4.1.
 The Policy Process 411

2. A response to modern bureaucracy. The emergence of a national

civil service, efficient and expansive, was the key device which made
a universal welfare service feasible.
3. A response to democracy. People are averse to risks and will seek to
collectivise them when possible. Collective welfare funding and/or
provision is therefore a consequence of extending the suffrage. As
Churchill put it, social insurance 'brings the magic of averages to the
aid of the millions.'
4. A response to working-class interests. The welfare state pushes back
the frontiers of the market. It takes services such as education out of
the market. The welfare state is therefore used by the working class,
and the social democratic parties representing it, to further its own
interests.
5. A response to capitalism. The market requires its failures to be
taken care of. Capitalism therefore gives the state some autonomy to
engage in welfare activities, even though these do not contribute
directly to profit.

The welfare state is probably best seen as part and parcel of the
overall process of transformation to modern, national and democratic
politics. Seeking a single, specific explanation is fool's gold. However, it
seems unlikely that the origins of the welfare state lie purely in the
demands of capitalism since communist party states also introduced
extensive systems of welfare provision.
Even if the welfare state was originally an aspiration of the working
class, the middle classes have proved adept at getting more than their
fair share. In many countries, newer benefits, such as subsidies for
higher education and house purchase, are heavily biased to the more
affluent. Furthermore, the postwar extension of the welfare state to the
whole population brought many affluent people within the net who had
previously been excluded from means-tested schemes (Goodin and Le
Grand 1987). This is an example of how policies can have unintended,
indeed surprising, consequences. It also shows how policies can, In
practice, be 'bent' towards influential groups.

Classifying welfare states

Now that most democracies have built their welfare states, we can see
that their constructions vary. For one thing, some are kitted out more
lavishly than others. What explains this variation? Why do some
countries spend more than others on their welfare state? Research
412 PoLicies and Performance

shows that the proportion of gross national product spent by a country

on welfare depends first and foremost on its level of affluence. Richer
countries spend a higher proportion of their national income on welfare
than do poorer countries.
By comparison, the political characteristics of a country, such as the
ideological flavour of its governing parties, are less important
(Wilensky 1984). However, after some vigorous debate within the
discipline, many political scientists now believe that political factors
do play at least a secondary role in influencing spending levels.
Centralised states (such as Britain) and those where parties of the left
have predominated in office (such as Sweden) tend to be high spenders.
The same applies to countries (such as Austria) in which Catholic
parties have been a major governing force. By contrast, low spenders
include several federal states (such as the United States) and those where
the right has been more influential (such as Italy).
But the qualitative distinctions between welfare states are more
important than these simple expenditure figures. These affect the whole
edifice of the welfare state and how citizens approach it. Esping-
Andersen (1990) distinguishes three different types of welfare state
found in the first world today:

1. The liberal (or limited) welfare state. Here the rules for gaining
benefit are strict and benefits are equally modest. Claimants are a small,
workless section of the population. This is not so much a welfare state as
state welfare. The traditional examples of these 'residual' welfare states
were the United States, Canada and Australia.

2. The conservative (or corporate) welfare state. Here the state is the
major provider but benefits are linked to jobs, depend on the 'paying in'
principle, and are benefits distributed in line with salary. Occupations
which serve the state, especially civil servants, often receive generous
treatment in sickness benefit and pensions. Germany is the classic
example of this type of welfare state. It is the predominant type in
continental Europe.

3. The social democratic (or Beveridge) welfare state. This is based

on the principle of equal, flat-rate benefits for all citizens. It was
advocated in an influential report by Lord Beveridge in wartime
Britain. A full-employment policy may also form part of the welfare
state. If benefits are to be reasonable, this is an expensive system. Unless
contributions are kept very high (as in Sweden), the effect tends to be a
two-tier system in which minimum state benefits are topped up by, for
example, company pensions.
 The Policy Process 413

A crisis of the welfare state

The 1980s witnessed the first real setbacks to the welfare state. The
underlying problem was financial: welfare states are expensive. As the
average age of the population increases, so the total cost of pensions,
medical care and support services goes up. But the working population,
which shoulders the burden, declines in number.
Further, demand on the welfare state increases when supply is low.
For instance, when unemployment goes up, so does expenditure on
unemployment pay - but the tax collected from the workforce goes
down. Thus the recession of the early 1980s caused severe problems for
welfare states.
An additional difficulty is that the welfare state is based on open-
ended commitments. The state guarantees to educate all young people,
to treat all people with AIDS, to give a pension to all people over sixty-
five. In so doing, some of life's risks are removed from the individual but
they are just placed on the state instead. And sometimes the state
miscalculates the odds. Even the best-informed actuaries cannot foretell
the future.
International pressures also matter. If the cost of one country's
welfare system is higher than all the rest, the economy loses its inter-
national competitiveness suffers. Pierson (1991, p.188) suggests that the
move to a more open international economy 'has curtailed opportunities
for the further development of national welfare states'. Given Japan's
importance in world trade, the relatively low cost of its welfare state
reduces the possibilities of extending the welfare state in competitor
countries. International pressures are forcing several Scandinavian
countries to reconsider their high levels of welfare provision, pressures
which will intensify as these countries join the EC.
Though often not addressed directly, the impact of welfare provision
on willingness to work is also a factor in the current problems
confronting welfare states. In Sweden, for example, more than 20 per
cent of employed women are off work, with pay, on any given day. As
Esping-Andersen delicately puts it (1990, p. 155), 'In Scandinavia, the
welfare state has taken upon itself to permit employees to pursue non-
work-related activities within the work contract.' Whatever the
significance of these figures (and some women are simply away having
children), such statistics influence the views of a public which has to
forgo a substantial chunk of its earnings in tax deductions in order to
pay for such benefits. In Scandinavia, public support for the welfare
state declined in the 1970s. Politicians began to fear 'taxpayers' revolts'.
These problems led to some retrenchment of the welfare state in the
1980s. Benefits were reduced, at least at the margin; eligibility rules were
414 Policies and Performance

tightened, especially by raising the pension age; charges were introduced

for services such as medical treatment; few new commitments were
taken on; and the state made an effort to revive the old caring agencies,
such as charities and the church. Some of this was done in the name of
subsidiarity, a German notion which means that welfare should be
provided at the lowest practical level. This edging away from a fully
comprehensive welfare state also reflected a general shift in the priorities
of governments from the social to the economic.
In New Zealand, cutting back the many branches of its welfare state
proved especially painful. New Zealand faced the unenviable combina-
tion of a declining economy, an ageing population, and a population
accustomed to a high level of benefit. In 1972 a Royal Commission had
made a crucial recommendation: 'anyone receiving benefits should be
able to enjoy a standard of living much like that of the rest of the
community, and thus be able to feel a sense of participation in, and
belonging to, the community.' Nearly twenty years later, undoing that
knot required what the finance minister called the 'mother of all
budgets' in 1991.
Elsewhere, the welfare state experienced a correction rather than a
crisis. On the whole, taxpayers' revolts have not materialised; the basic
structures of the welfare state remain in place. In Scandinavia, public
support for the welfare state increased again in the 1980s (Alber 1988).
In the Netherlands, which moved from a low-spending to a high-
spending state in the two decades after the war, social security benefits
were reduced in the 1980s but unemployment benefits remained the
highest in Western Europe, almost three times those in the United
Kingdom (Gladdish 1991, p. 156). The principle of citizenship is touted
less often in the 1990s than in the 1960s but its cash value remains
substantial.

• The second world

Communist states differed enormously from liberal democracies in their
policy styles. Communist states were planned societies, totally different
from the liberal, pluralistic, market-based countries in the first world.
Few would quibble with the point that economic failure played a
significant role in the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union. But why did planning fail? And did it achieve anything
before it did? To answer these questions, we must first look at how
planning worked. The Soviet Union is the clearest example because,
under communist party rule, it ran the most planned economy on
earth.
 The Policy Process 415

o The planned economy

The Soviet Union was the land of The Plan. GOSPLAN, the State
Planning Committee, drew up annual and five-year plans which were
given the status of law once they had received political approval.
Implementation was the responsibility of ministries which controlled
individual enterprises through a complex administrative network.
Detailed planning was forced by a command economy. A factory could
not buy its components on the market when there was no market.
Instead arrangements had to be made for another factory to manufac-
ture the parts and deliver them on time - and that factory in turn had to
be supplied with raw materials.
The flaw was obvious. For anything to go right everything had to go
right - and inevitably something went wrong! The right components did
not arrive at the right time so all sorts of informal, often illegal, deals
had to be fixed up to ensure the (often arbitrary) production quota was
met. Further, the whole system was dominated by planners and
producers, rather than customers. The centre, not the consumer
operating in a market, decided how many goods should be produced
at what price. Targets were based on quantity, not quality. As a result,
goods were shoddy when they were produced at all (see Exhibit 16.3,
p. 416). Local managers did not have any room for initiative, even
though they were often in the best position to see what needed to be
done. Many factories were 'value subtracting' - the value of the goods
going out was less than that of the raw materials coming in. In the end,
the planned economy just produced a shrug of the shoulders.

o What did the planned economy achieve?

So was the planned economy an unmitigated disaster? In the Soviet
Union and elsewhere, it did prove very successful at building the
foundations of industrial development, albeit at an often sizeable
human price. Heavy industry was the great success of the planned
economy. This was the case both in communist states which were
undergoing industrialisation for the first time, and in those which were
rebuilding after the ravages of the Second World War.
This success derives from the philosophy of the 'big push'. Stalin's big
push on industrialisation meant that between 1928 and 1938 industrial
production in the Soviet Union rose from 7 per cent to 45 per cent of the
American output (which was still below its full capacity in 1938 because
of the depression). More recently China and Cuba have applied the
416 Policies and Performance

Exhibit 16.3 'Private enterprise' in the Soviet Union

In the Soviet Union under communist rule the successful shopper had
to be an expert in the art of queuing. People would join a queue even
before they knew what it was for. They always had string bags in
their pocket, 'just in case'. A queue meant there must be something to
buy. You could only hope that they didn't run out of whatever it was
before you gOt to the front. Soviet women - rarely men - spent an
average of three hours a day queuing, probably longer than even the
most conscientious consumers in the United States. The difference is
that Americans went shopping while Russians went queuing
(Macqueen 1989).
With goods and services in short supply, the providers become
very powerful figures. T hey become the entrepreneurs of the planned
economy. If you can persuade them to tell you when a delivery is due,
you can be first in the queue in the morning. People join queues
partly because they assume that the person at the front has been
tipped off. Or even better, if you get to know the warehouse
storeman, you can go straight to him and avoid the queues
altogether. .
Even if you were at the front of the queue, you might still only get
a rough scrag of meat hanging off a bone, unless you have greased
the right palms. By 1990, roubles had become a currency of last
resort in the Soviet Union. A packet of foreign cigarettes can get you
the best cut of meat and a botde of vodka ensures that non-existent
train tickets suddenly become available. Dollars will get you
anything.
But even this may not be enough. A manager may have control
over meat supplies, but how does he or she get access to other scarce
resources? The obvious solution is for the providers to trade with
each other. If the car mechanic always gets a nice fresh salami from
the butchery, then the manager knows that he or she can always
count on getting spare parts for the car. If the stationmaster's
daughter gets high marks at school, then the teacher knows that
train tickets will materialise. As a result of this siphoning off, there is
even less left for those, such as pensioners, who have no favours to
offer.
So where does all this leave the ordinary man or woman on the
street? On the street, queuing for three hours a day.
 The Policy Process 417

philosophy of the big push to their own societies, again with spectacular
results. They have given high priority to specific objectives (adequate
housing, say, or improved life expectancy) and have allocated as many
resources as are needed to meet the goal. Certainly massive changes such
as these could never have resulted from incremental policy-making as
practised in liberal democracies. The big push is focused, not synoptic,
planning. Absolute priority is given to a single goal and blow other
consequences. Objectives determine budgets rather than vice versa. The
big push is a deliberately blinkered approach which ignores the overall
View.
Yet once the heavy industrial base had been constructed, the planned
system proved far less successful in generating light industrial and
consumer goods. Galbraith (1990) argues that the socialist system did
succeed in attaining its initial goals, but did not adapt to the new
challenges and requirements placed upon it: 'Capitalism in its original or
pristine form could not have survived. But under pressure it did adapt.
Socialism in its original form and for its first tasks did succeed. But it
failed to adapt.'
The Korean case neatly illustrates both the initial success of the
planned economy and its subsequent failure. The communist north and
capitalist south have existed as unfriendly neighbours since the north's
attempt to reunify Korea by force ended in failure in 1953. Since then,
the rival regimes have competed with each other on other fronts. The
economy has been a key area of competition. Until the mid-1970s, the
planned economy of North Korea outperformed the capitalist south.
Yet once it had recovered from war damage and built a heavy industrial
base, economic growth in the north slowed drastically. By about 1973,
the south surpassed its communist neighbour, and has been racing ahead
ever since.
Can a case be made in defence of the planned economy in communist
states? There are at least a few extenuating circumstances. First, massive
resources were diverted to military spending. Even in 1991, around 30
per cent of the Soviet Union's total industrial production was for
defence-related industries. The 'first world' quality of the Soviet
Union's military research contrasted sharply with the 'third world'
quality of life for the ordinary citizen.
Secondly, some communist states did sometimes choose a more equal
distribution of growth rather than the fastest possible growth. In 1990, a
World Bank report on China suggested that the egalitarian nature of
growth was one of the few successes of its planned economy.
Thirdly, although the record of economic development in the second
world is poor compared to the first world, such comparisons are not
418 Policies and Performance

always fair. China's economy does not appear in a favourable light

when compared with Germany's, the United States's or Japan's. In
comparison with many nations in the third world, China has not done
badly. The starting-point of development under the planned economy
must be considered.
Finally, most communist states had to do without American aid after
1945. Only Yugoslavia accepted American aid, an action that confirmed
its break with the Soviet Union. Economic isolation from the non-
communist world reduced the benefits of trade for communist party
states. In some cases, as in China during the Cultural Revolution, such
integration was not sought. At other times, it was denied by the West, as
for example in restrictions on technology transfer.

D Dismantling the planned economy

It was clear by the early 1980s that the planned economy had run its
course in industrial societies. Even leaving aside its implications for
individual freedom, it was simply not delivering the goods. Most of the
nations that had built their economies on a planned system were turning
towards the market as a way of kick-starting their economies back to
life. In Eastern Europe, movements to introduce market mechanisms
and break down the planning system were under way long before the
revolutions of 1989. In Hungary, the state relinquished many of its direct
controls over economic enterprises, and allowed market forces to set the
prices of some products.
In China, the reform process became caught between two stools.
Having pushed ahead with market reforms during the early 1980s, there
have now been some periods of retrenchment. Though private enter-
prise flourishes in the coastal regions and in agriculture, inefficient state-
owned industries have not yet been reformed and continue to drain the
state budget. Thus the Chinese economy has lost some of the benefits of
the planned system, but has not yet gained the full benefits of the market
system.
With the end of communist power in Eastern Europe, any remaining
constraints on moving towards a market economy, and integration with
the world economy, were removed. Yet initially there was no unre-
strained dash to the market. Partly this was because of lingering
scepticism about capitalism. This sentiment was best summed up by
Jan Urban (1990), a member of Charter '77 and later Chief of Staff of
Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia. He said, 'There is much that we want
and need from the west, but there is one thing which I do not want:
 The Policy Process 419

carelessness with people.' Like many others, he was reluctant to give up

completely the 'equality of poverty' which communist party rule had
produced. Many wanted to search for a (mythical?) 'third way' before
committing themselves to the capitalist road.
In addition, there was the question of what to do with the
functionaries of the planned economy. They could hardly be marched
into a lecture room through a door marked 'planners' and marched out
an hour later through a door labelled 'entrepreneurs'. Their job
descriptions might have changed but their outlook and knowledge
were unaltered. Their potential to stir up trouble was also unchanged.
It was a difficult problem.
By the early 1990s, some postcommunist states were grasping the
nettle of the transition. They were beginning the new and enormous task
of dismantling a planned economy. This is an example of a task where
an incremental approach is clearly inappropriate. Postcommunist
economies need a rebirth rather than a recovery. 'Marketisation' is a
long-term objective which must take priority over others. You cannot
run both a planned economy and a market economy alongside each
other. In the Soviet Union, where the planned economy collapsed but
nothing immediately replaced it, the economy was shrinking by about 1
per cent each month in the second half of 1991. Dismantling a planned
economy requires almost as much discipline as constructing it, except
that popular preferences can no longer be overridden so easily. Yet the
human and political problems caused by the transition are substantial.
The prices of previously subsidised goods have to go up if they are to
match production costs. People in inefficient factories have to lose their
jobs if production costs are to go down. Inevitably, some postcommun-
ist governments (Romania, Bulgaria?) will flinch at the task. Popular
attitudes to capitalism in postcommunist states are ambivalent, support-
ing the principle but cautious about the practical effect (see Exhibit
16.4).
But some postcommunist countries have made surprising progress.
The private sector's share of GNP in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslo-
vakia rose from less than one-fifth in 1989 to a third in 1991. Poland has
liberalised its banking system and sought to privatise 90 per cent of its
economy within five years. (In the 1980s Britain took twice as long to
privatise about a tenth of that amount.) Hungary also continued its
development of the market. Yet with the collapse of the Soviet economy
to the east, and a reluctance by the EC to open its doors immediately, the
international environment remained difficult. Even the most anti-
communist postcommunist must occasionally look back with nostalgia
to the false certainties of The Plan.
420 Policies and Performance

Exhibit 16.4 Mixed views about the market

A successful transition to a market economy in Eastern Europe depends on
popu lar attitudes as much as on government measures. A large scale
opinion poll (13,000 people) carried out in nine European countries and
three Soviet republics in 1991 suggested that the free market system had
strong majority support in most of Eastern Europe. But most East
Europeans would prefer a market economy along Swedish rather than
American lines. In other words, people want capitalism with welfare
guarantees and substantial government involvement (see Figure 16.3).
As the report puts it,
' while most East Europeans endorse the idea of a free market economy, they
don't trust the private sector to manage it. They want the state to run heavy
industries, transportation and telecommunications, and to be involved in
health care, banking, farming, consumer goods manufacturing, newspapers,
radio and television' (Atlantic Outlook 1991 ).
As one might expect, younger people were more enthusiastic about the
market and in more of a hurry to shift to it than older ones. But the
transition to the market economy is going to encounter considerable
obstacles in popular attitudes. For instance, large minorities in Czechoslo-
vakia, Poland, Russia and Lithuania favoured government-set limits on
profits. Figure 16.3 shows the extent of suspicion of business. In Russia ,
Ukraine and Lithuania entrepreneurs tend to be viewed in the same
negative light as black marketeers. After decades of anti-market propa-
ganda, this is not surprising. At the same time, attitudes to business in the
East European countries are much more positive. These are the countries
which have taken the fastest strides towards market economies.

East Germany
Czechoslovakia
Hungary
Poland
Russia
Ukraine
Lithuania

o 20 40 60 80
Percent
A Good Influence o A Bad Influence

Figure 16.3 Attitudes towards business people in eastern Europe

Source: Adapted from Times-Mirror Center for the People & the Press
(republished in Atlantic Outlook, no. 18, ovember 1991).
 The Policy Process 421

• The Third World: policy stagnation

The key determinant of policy style in most of the third world is lack of
government capacity. In the first world, local agencies of the state allow
the centre to influence the periphery. Decisions reached in Stockholm or
Paris carry through to Malmo or Bordeaux. The state penetrates society.
In the second world, dominant communist parties operated within
closed societies, conditions which were even more favourable to central
policy-making.
But in much of the third world governments lack the capacity to
implement their policies throughout the territory. They lack numbers on
the ground and must often rely on traditional local leaders who are
therefore able to veto the implementation of radical policies. Even at the
centre, the state is often taken over by dominant groups (military, ethnic
or class-based) which exploit the state's resources for their own benefit.
And the peripheral position of most third-world countries in the
international economy means serious attempts at policy-making are
frequently blown off course by the vagaries of international markets.
For instance, Tanzania's course towards Uja'ma (African village
socialism) lost headway, partly because of resistance and inefficiency
but partly because of crippling external constraints. Real policy-making
stops and the state sits becalmed in the water, drifting in response to the
forces acting upon it but lacking any momentum of its own.
Of course the formalities of planning continue but without any
effective contact with reality. Ambitious national plans are made
because of their public relations value, especially with international
development agencies; because they allow a swollen bureaucracy to
justify its existence; and because they legitimise the distribution of
resources to powerful groups and favoured areas. But the synoptic
veneer does not obscure the harsher realities.
Fortunately this gloomy portrait does not fit all the third world. Some
countries (e.g. India) are sufficiently large in population or production
to have achieved some insulation from the international economy.
Others (e.g. South Korea) have gained a more secure niche in the
international system by offering a manufacturing capacity rather than
just commodities. And a few communist regimes (e.g. China) acquired
the grip on society which meant that central policies do matter. But for
small, poor, noncommunist states, effective policy-making remains an
aspiration not a reality.
Nonetheless, are third world states making progress in improving the
length and quality of life? Are the trends at least moving in the right
direction? Some social indicators are showing signs of an improvement.
422 Policies and Performance

Life expectancy is growing as the developing world adopts basic

programmes of preventive medicine, though in much of sub-Saharan
Africa this is now threatened by the AIDS epidemic. Elementary
education has also expanded, increasing the proportion of the world's
population that can read and write. The birth rate has fallen though the
world's population is still growing.
But economic advance, which ultimately underpins social progress,
has slowed. Between 1945 and 1971 economic growth in the developing
world did at least match the industrial world. Indeed Brett (1985) argues
that the economic performance of the third world during this period
compared favourably with the developed countries during their
transition to industrial society. Growth was uneven, both within and
between developing countries, but it did take place.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, however, progress slowed and in some
countries went into reverse. The causes included: the collapse of the
fixed exchange rate system; the rapid increase in oil prices; the recession
in the Western world; the decline in commodity prices; and the rise in
interest rates at a time when the third world was falling into greater
debt. The newly industrialising countries, and those immediately
beneath them, coped well, but in the least developed countries ('the
fourth world') the situation became bleaker. In Africa, the gross
national product of 15 countries actually fell in the 1970s, and in many
continued to drop in the 1980s. Food production per head also declined
in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to a virtual collapse of the formal
economy as people resorted to the black market to ensure their own
survival. For the least developed countries, the disease of underdevelop-
ment intensified. More market-based economic policies, linked to loans
from agencies such as the World Bank, offer the main practical hope for
the 1990s.
 The Policy Process 423

Summar"
1. A public policy covers the general stance of government towards problems,
as well as its specific programmes. A focus on policy broadens our appreciation
of politics because it involves looking at how policies are put into practice, and
whether they work.

2. The synoptic model of policy holds that a policy-maker should consider all
the consequences of all the options before reaching a verdict. It is not a practical
proposition at all. The incremental model prefers change by small steps, both as
a description of how policy is made and as a model of how it ought to be made.
The main danger of incremental policy-making is that long-term cumulative
consequences are ignored.

3. The four stages of the policy process are initiation, formulation, imple-
mentation and evaluation. However, in practice these stages often occur
together; policy-making is not a tidy world. The latter two stages -
implementation and evaluation - are a distinctive concern of students of policy.

4. The policy style of a government is its preferred, if not always realised, way
of reaching decisions. For example, the Swedish policy style involves wide-
spread consultation as part of a careful search for solutions. Two dimensions of
policy style are (a) whether a government seeks to reach a consensus or to
impose policy; and (b) whether it anticipates or reacts to problems.

5. Policy styles in the first world are generally incremental, with policy
bubbling up from below and with many groups given a say in both forming,
and implementing, policy.

6. The welfare state is a major policy achievement of first world states.

Measured by expenditure, welfare is now the major activity of most first world
states. Welfare states divide into liberal, conservative and social democratic
forms. All have faced difficulties from rising costs, and increasing competition
in the global economy. Most have only needed to trim at the margins.

7. Under communist party rule, second world countries adopted a synoptic

approach, with centrally planned economies. These proved effective at
developing heavy industry but failed to adapt to a more sophisticated era of
light industry and consumer goods. Economic weakness was one factor in the
collapse of communist power.

8. Policy-makers in postcommunist states face an enormous task in dismant-

ling the planned economy. A market economy will cause medium-term
increases in prices and unemployment, yet postcommunist rulers do not have
the freedom to override public opinion which their predecessors possessed.
424 Policies and Performance

9. Except for coun{ries which establish a niche in the world economy, third
world states tend to' policy stagnation. The state lacks the combination of
autonomy from, and penetration through, society needed for effective leader-
ship. The result is often drift. However, much of the third world has made
progress in reducing the birth rate and illiteracy. This progress has not been
matched in sub-Saharan Africa, where many countries now also face the
catastrophe of AIDS.

Discussion points
1. You have been appointed Minister of Education in your government. What
are your priorities? How will your knowledge of policy analysis affect how you
will go about putting them into effect?
2. Where would you put your country in the map of policy styles on p. 408?
Has the country's position changed over the past ten years?
3. What are the implications of the failure of the planned economy in
communist party states for policy-making in the third world?
4. Is the synoptic or incremental model more appropriate for (a) transport
policy (b) education policy (c) ecological policy?
5. Do you agree with Zbigniew Brzezinski that 'communism is the grand
failure of the twentieth century'?

KC\. rcadin t"lu

Anderson, J. (1984) Public Policy-making (Orlando, Fla.: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston). A short and succinct introduction to policy analysis.
Hogwood, B. and Gunn, L. (1984) Policy Analysis for the Real World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press). An excellent discussion of the concepts used in
policy analysis.
Pierson, C. (1991) Beyond the Welfare State? (Oxford: Polity). A valuable
comparative review of welfare states and their prospects.
Bertsch, G. (1990) Reform and Revolution in Communist Systems (New York:
Macmillan). Looks at the reasons for and course of the crisis that broke out
in the 1980s.
 The Policy Process 425

Further readin ub
The reader edited by McGrew and Wilson (1982) is a useful introduction to
policy analysis. For an application of policy analysis to sectors, see Heidenhei-
mer, Heclo and Adams (1990). On policy styles, Richardson (1982) is the main
source, though restricted to Western Europe.
On implementation, the starting-point is the classic American study by
Pressman and Wildavsky (1973) while Barrett and Fudge (1981) is a more recent
British work. A very intriguing example of policy evaluation is Le Grand's
(1982) book on the outcomes of British social policy.
The welfare state is well served with several outstanding comparative books.
These include Flora and Heidenheimer (1981) and Esping-Andersen (1990) as
well as Pierson (1991).
There are now several books which apply the policy approach to particular
countries: see Burch and Wood (1990) for Britain and Peters (1986) on the
United States. Harrop (1992) is an application of policy analysis to France,
Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
For a more detailed introduction to the policy process in three worlds, see the
relevant chapters of Bertsch, Clarke and Wood (1992).
 • Appendix.
Information Sources for
Political Students
Books about specific Keeping up to date 430
countries and regions 426 Starting a literature search 430
Reference books 429 Books for the beach 430

• Books about specific countries and regions

A selection of introductions to the politics of particular countries and regions.
For author and publication details, see References (pp. 434ft.).

Afghanistan Benin
Gupta (1986). Allen et al. (1987).
Africa Botswana
Chazan et al. (1988). Harvey and Lewis (1990).

Algeria Brazil
Fattah (1988). Skidmore (1988).
Bulgaria
Asia, East
Bell, J. (1986).
Fairbank et al. (1989)
(China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam). Burkina Faso
Allen et al. (1987).
Asia, South
Baxter et al. (1991) Cameroon
(Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, DeLancey (1989).
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Canada
Sri Lanka). Dawson (1987); Fox and White
Australia (1991).
Emry and Hughes (1991); Smith and Central African Republic
Watson (1989). O'Toole (1986).
Austria Chile
Fitzmaurice (1991). Garreton (1989).
Belgium China, People's Republic of
Fitzmaurice (1991). Rodzinski (1988); Gray (1990).

426
 Appendix 427

Colombia Ghana
Pearce (1990). Pellow and Chazan (1986).
Congo Greece
Allen et at. (1987). Featherstone and Katsondas (1987).
Cuba Gulf
Azicri (1988). Bulloch (1984); Sandwick (1987).
Czechoslovakia Guyana
Wolchik (1991). Hintzen (1989).

Denmark Hong Kong

Fitzmaurice (1988); Miller, K. (1991). Miners (1981).

Dominican Republic Hungary

Black (1986). Heinrich (1986).

Egypt India
Tripp and Owen (1989). Brass (1990); Kohli (1988).

Ethiopia Indonesia
Clapham (1988). Crouch (1988).

Europe (East) Iran

White, S. et at. (1990); Blatt (1991). Chelabi (1990).

Europe (West) Iraq

Kesselman et at. (1987); Lane, J. and Khalil (1990).
Ersson (1991); Meny (1990); Ireland
Smith, G. (1989). Chubb (1982).
European Community Israel
Nugent (1991); Archer (1990). Pevetz (1984).
Finland Italy
Arter (1987). La Palombara (1987); Sassoon (1986).
France Japan
Wright, v. (1989); Ehrman (1983). Richardson, B. and Flanagan (1984);
Curtis (1988).
Gabon
Aicardi de Saint-Paul (1989). Korea
Kihl (1984).
Germany
Smith, G. et at. (1992); Rotfeld and Korea (North: Democratic People's
Stutzle (1991). Republic of Korea)
Scalapino and Lee (1971).
Germany (East)
Dennis (1987). Korea (South: Republic of Korea)
Macdonald, D. (1988).
Germany (West)
Conradt (1986); Paterson and Kuwait
Southern (1991). Bulloch (1984).
428 Appendix

Laos Philippines
Stuart-Fox (1986). Wright, M. (1988).
Latin America Poland
Wynia (1990); Lehmann (1990). Ash (1991); Kominski (1991).
Lesotho Portugal
Bardill (1985). Opello (1989).
Malaysia Qatar
Ahmad (1987). Bulloch (1984).
Maldives Romania
Baxter et al. (1991). Gilberg (1990).
Mali Sao Tome and Principe
Imperato (1989). Torp (1989).
Mexico Saudi Arabia
Story (1987). Farsy (1986).
Middle East Scandinavia
Bill and Springborg (1990). Elder, Thomas and Arter (1982).
Mongolia Singapore
Sanders (1987). Quah et al. (1989).
Mozambique Somalia
Torp (1989). Laitin and Samatar (1987).
Nepal South Africa
Baxter et al. (1991). Price (1991).
Netherlands Soviet Union
Daalder and Irwin (1989); Gladdish Hill (1989); Smith, G. (1992); White,
(1991). S., Pravda and Gitelman (1990).
New Zealand Spain
Gold, H. (1989); Wood (1988). Moxol-Browne (1989),
Nicaragua Sri Lanka
Close (1988). Tambiah (1986).
Niger Sudan
Chadick (1991). Niblock (1987).
Nigeria Sweden
Adekson (1981); Graf (1988). Milner (1990).
Pakistan Syria
Hyman (1990); Lamb (1991). Moaz and Yaniv (1987).
Paraguay Taiwan (Republic of China)
Lewis, P. (1982). Gold, T. (1986).
 Appendix 429

Tanzania United States

Bokoko (1988). Flammang et al. (1990); King (1990);
Peele, Bailey and Cain (1992).
Thailand
Xuto (1987). Uruguay
Taylor (1984).
Third World
Cammack, Poole and Tordoff (1988); Venezuela
Clapham (1985). Blank (1984).
Trinidad and Tobago Vietnam
Hintzen (1989). Beresford (1988).
Turkey Yugoslavia
Heper and Landau (1991). McFarlane (1988).
Uganda Zaire
Otunno (1987). Callaghy (1984).
United Arab Emirates Zambia
Bulloch (1984). Gertzel (1984).
United Kingdom Zimbabwe
Kingdom (1991); Norton (1991) . Herbst (1990).

• Reference Books
Bogdanor (1987) Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Institutions (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell).
Day (1988) Political Parties of the World (Harlow: Longman).
Instituto del Tercer Mundo (1990) Third World Guide 91192 (Montevideo:
Instituto del Tercer Mundo).
Kidron and Segal (1981) The State of the World Atlas (London: Heinemann).
Mackie and Rose (1982) The International Almanac of Electoral History
(Basingstoke: Macmillan).
Miller, D. et al. (1991) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Political Thought
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell).
Shils (1979) International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (18 vols) (New
York: Macmillan).

Reference books that are updated annually

Banks, A. (ed.) Political Handbook of the World (Binghamton, N.Y.: New
York State University, Centre for Social Analysis).
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The World Factbook (Washington D.C.:
CIA).
World watch Institute, State of the World (London, Sydney and Wellington:
Unwin Hyman).
430 Appendix

The Europa Yearbook (London: Europa).

The Middle East and North Africa (London: Europa).
The Far East and Australasia (London: Europa).
Africa South of the Sahara (London: Europa).
Statesman' s Yearbook (London: Macmillan).

• Keeping up to date
Keesings Contemporary Archives (London: Longman). A digest of current
affairs drawn from the press. An excellent index.
Facts on File (New York: Facts on File Inc.) An American publication, similar
in character and quality to Keesings.
The Times Index (Reading, Berks.: Research Publications). A comprehensive
index to everything printed in the London Times. Most quality newspapers
now publish regular indexes.
The Economist Index (London: The Economist Newspaper). A good starting-
point for information on economic affairs around the world.

• Starting a literature search

International Bibliography of the Social Sciences: Political Science (London:
Tavistock). An annual list of international books and articles on politics.
Listed by subject.
International Political Science Abstracts (Paris: International Political Science
Association). An annual and comprehensive international list of books and
articles on politics, indexed by subject and author, with short summaries of
the contents of each work.
British Books in Print (London: Whitaker). Listed by author and subject.
American Books in Print (New York: Bowker). Listed by author and subject.
Subject Guide to Books in Print (New York: Bowker). Over a million entries.
Listed by subject.

• Books for the beach

A brief list of interesting and readable paperbacks. They should all entertain; if
you reflect on their contents, they will also inform.

Conrad, J. (1963) The Secret Agent (London: Nelson).

Eco, U. (1983) The Name of the Rose (London: Seeker & Warburg).
Garcia Marquez, G. (1970) One Hundred Years of Solitude (New York: Harper
& Row).
Golding, W. (1954) Lord of the Flies (London: Faber & Faber).
 Appendix 431

Huxley, A. (1955) Brave New World (Harmondsworth: Penguin).

Koestler, A. (1973) Darkness at Noon (London: Hutchinson).
Orwell, G. (1962) Nineteen Eighty-Four (London: Seeker & Warburg).
Orwell, G. (1972) Animal Farm (London: Heinemann).
Paton, A. (1959) Cry, The Beloved Country (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Swift, J. (1975) Gulliver's Travels (New York: Dutton).
Tressel, R. (1969) The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (London: Lawrence
& Wishart).
Turnbull, C. (1984) The Mountain People (London: Triad).
Vargas Llosa, M. (1987) Captain Pantoja and the Special Service (London:
Faber).
 References

Aberbach, J. (1981) Bureaucrats and Politicians (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press).
Abercrombie, W., Hill, S. and Turner, B. (1980) The Dominant Ideology Thesis
(London: Allen & Unwin).
Adekson, ]. (1981) Nigeria in Search of a Stable Civil! Military System
(Aldershot: Gower).
Adelman, J. (1984) 'Introduction' in Terror and Communist Politics: The Role
of the Secret Police in Communist States, ed. J. Adelman (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview).
Ahmad, z. (1987) The Government and Politics of Malaysia (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
Aicardi de Saint-Paul, M. (1989) Gabon: The Development of a Nation
(London: Routledge).
Alber,]. (1988) 'Is there a Crisis of the Welfare State?', European Sociological
Review (4) 181-207.
Alford, R. and Friedland, R. (eds) (1985) Powers of Theory: Capitalism, the
State, Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Allen, C. et at. (1987) Benin, The Congo and Burkina Faso: Politics, Economics
and Society (London: Pinter).
Almond, G. and Powell, G. (1978) Comparative Politics (Boston, Mass.: Little,
Brown).
Almond, G. and Powell, G. (1988) Comparative Politics Today: A World View
(Chicago: Scott, Foresman).
Almond, G. and Verba, S. (1963) The Civic Culture (Princeton, N.].: Princeton
University Press).
Almond, G. and Verba, S. (eds) (1980) The Civic Culture Revisited (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press).
Altshuter, A. (1973) 'The Goals of Comprehensive Planning' in A Reader in
Planning Theory, ed. A. Faludi (Oxford: Pergamon), pp. 188-207.
Amin, S. (1977) Imperialism and Unequal Development (Hassocks, Sussex:
Harvester).
Anderson, J. (1984) Public Policy-making (Orlando, Florida: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston).
Andeweg, R. (1991) 'The Dutch Prime Minister: Not Just Chairman, Not Yet
Chief?', West European Politics (14) 116-32.
Archer, C. (1990) Organizing Western Europe (London: Edward Arnold).
Aristotle (1962) The Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
Arter, D. (1984) The Nordic Parliaments: A Comparative Analysis (London:
Hurst).

432
 References 433

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 Glossary of Concepts

Agenda-setting 1. The ability to include (or exclude) issues for discussion and
decision within a political organisation, and thus an important political
resource. 2. The idea that the media in general, and television in particular,
influence what we think about, if not what we think.

Agitprop Short for agitation and propaganda activities. A term mainly used
in reference to communist party states.

Apparatchiki Literally 'the men of the apparatus', from the Russian. The full-
time party officials in communist party states who acted as watchdogs and
troubleshooters, enforcing party control over all areas of policy.

Assembly A multi-membered body which considers questions of public

policy, and with constitutional powers to make law. Assemblies (or legisla-
tures) have one core, defining function: 'They give assent, on behalf of a
political community that extends beyond the executive authority, to binding
measures of public policy' (Norton, 1990a, p. 1).

Authoritarian Any form of rule which pays little or no attention to public

opinion, individual rights or government by consent. Authoritarian govern-
ments brook no opposition, and simply impose their will on the population.

Authority Basically the right to make lawful commands. Authority enables

rulers, or those empowered by them, to secure compliance on grounds accepted
as legitimate by those affected. The bases of authority may vary: see
charismatic authority, legal rational authority and traditional authority.

Balkanisation Originally referred to the division of the Balkan region into

several small, mutually hostile and frequently warring states. Now applied to
any country, region or organisation that fragments with similar consequences.

Basic Law The constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany. Used more
generally to mean a framework or outline law.

Bicameral Two-chambered, usually of assemblies.

Bretton Woods The postwar system of international financial regulation,

devised at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, USA, in 1944. It was based on
fixed exchange rates, pegged to the US$, which was freely convertible into gold.
The Bretton Woods system broke down in the 1970s.

458
 Glossary 459

Brezhnev doctrine The assertion that the 'international gains of socialism'

were irreversible. In effect, the Soviet Union claimed the right to ensure by
force, if necessary, that the communist party states of Eastern European
remained within the Soviet sphere of influence. This doctrine was renounced
by Gorbachev, with shattering results.

Bureaucracy Popularly an epithet for verbiage and 'red tape', and, literally,
the rule of officials. The complex of public organisations carrying out
administrative functions and responsibilities in the name of the state - in
effect, the engine-room of the state.

Bureaucratic politics The idea that, as civil servants' careers are linked with
the fate of their department, they will act to promote the status of their
department (and so their jobs). For example, bureaucrats will seek to maximise
their department's budgets and resist reforms which diminish their importance.

Cabinet A committee of senior government ministers which meets to discuss

business confidentially. The leading executive body in parliamentary systems
of government.

Capitalism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Case study The detailed study of a specific example within a broader

category. A method of study widely employed in political science.

Catch-all parties Parties that trawl the electoral market in search of whatever
support they can find. Electoral success is more important for catch-all parties
than consistency of policy or principle.

Charismatic legitimacy This reflects mass devotion to a leader whose

extraordinary personal qualities entitle him or her to rule. Charismatic leaders
are obeyed because they inspire the population.

Chinese option Refers to the use of military force to clear Tiananmen Square
of students calling for democratic reforms in Beijing in June 1989. The Chinese
option was one of the alternatives considered by Eastern European leaders but
discarded, when faced with similar demonstrations later in that year.

Cohabitation Used to describe a power sharing arrangement where repre-

sentatives of different parties hold leading posts in government. The term
originated in France, where the President may represent one party, while the
Prime Minister represents another.

Collective responsibility Ministers share public responsibility for the deci-

sions agreed by the Cabinet.

Communism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

460 Glossary

Communist federalism A device by which communist regimes allowed

cultural, but not political, autonomy to national minorities.

Community policing A style of policing that emphasises close contacts with

the community, and fosters the idea that the police are not apart from but a
part of the community. Exemplified by policing in Japan.

Comparative history An approach to explaining key political developments

(such as revolutions) through the analysis of a small number of examples.

Competition state A phrase describing how, in an interdependent modern

world, the state fights for investment, markets and trade to enhance the
nation's international competitiveness.

Confederalism A weak form of political association between sovereign states

- for example, the Commonwealth of Independent States that replaced the
Soviet Union.

Consensus democracy A political system in which power is diffused through-

out the government and the parties. Executive authority is shared among
members of a formal or informal coalition, drawn from various parties. The
executive does not dominate the legislature as it does under majority
democracy. There is a multi-party, rather than a two-party, system. The party
system reflects several dimensions of cleavage rather than only one. Elections
are typically held under proportional representation rather than first-past-the-
post.

Conservatism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Constitution A set of rights, powers and procedures regulating the structure

of, and relationships among, the public authorities, and between the public
authorities and the citizens. Constitutions are the laws that govern the
governors.

Corporatism In the traditional sense, corporatism is a system in which the

state organises a series of 'corporations', each of which represents groups of
workers and employers, although remaining subordinate to the state. As
applied to modern states, corporatism refers to the tendency for policy to
result from negotiations between the government and organised, officially
recognised interests.

Coup d'etat The overthrow of a political leader or regime by military force.

Cult of personality The promotion of a leader as the epitome of the

revolution. Adulation of the wisdom and greatness of the leader on an all-
embracing scale.
 Glossary 461

Cultural imperialism The promotion of international influence by cultural

means (e.g. ideas, films and TV, lifestyle) rather than by military, economic or
political power. Most often used to refer to the worldwide influence of US
culture, though other countries like France and Britain also attempt to project
their culture internationally to some extent.

Customary interest groups Natural social units such as the family which are
still important in the politics of many societies. For example, in much of the
third world, politicians and officials are expected to use their office to benefit
their family or ethnic group.

De-aligned electorate Where social groups do not determine how people vote,
and where people lack strong ties to parties.

Dependency theory Suggests that the whole international economy operates

to the disadvantage of the third world, because ex-colonies remain economic-
ally tied to and dependent upon former imperialist powers. The theory argues
that the third world has been systematically 'underdeveloped' by advanced
capitalist nations for their own benefit.

Deregulation The removal of controls on economic activity to allow market

forces to act unhindered by government intervention. A relative rather than an
absolute concept - intervention is reduced rather than totally removed.

Desaparecidos From the Spanish, literally the disappeared ones. Refers to

individuals picked up by the police or security forces in Latin America under
authoritarian regimes, and subsequently never heard of again. They were
almost certainly murdered by their captors.

Deviant cases The study of an atypical or unique case - a case that diverges
from the expected pattern. By understanding why the case is unique, the study
attempts to explain why other cases conform to a 'normal' type.

Deviating election The majority party loses the election due to short-term
factors such as candidate appeal. However, the presumption is that voters who
deviate from their normal choice retain their underlying allegiance and return
to it in later contests.

Direct elections Where elected representatives are directly voted into office by
the mass electorate, and not by lower-level representatives as with indirect
elections.

Dominant party states Where a single party controls politics for a consider-
able period of time. Although opposition parties do exist, they are tolerated
only as long as they show no signs of winning any elections that matter.
Dominant parties use patronage, control of the media and ballot-rigging to
maintain their position in a formally competitive party system. Examples
462 Glossary

include the Partido Revolucionario Institucional in Mexico and the People's

Action Party in Singapore.

Dual control Where administrative units come under the control of both the
local and national government. For example, a provincial administrative office
in China is responsible to both the provincial government and to a ministry of
the central government.

Elected dictatorship Where an elected government with a large majority can

effectively do what it likes, within the confines of a desire to be re-elected at the
next election.

Elitism An approach to studying politics that stresses the importance of

decision-makers and power holders, as opposed to the mass of the population.
Even in liberal democracies, there is inevitably a ruling elite. This elite may
incorporate economic as well as political and military leaders, though it may
also be prone to splits and to opposition from counter-elites.

Evolutionary change Gradual and incremental change that can, over time,
transform the way a government works.

Executive The structure of political roles at the highest level of government,

i.e. the president or prime minister, plus other ministers and top decision-
makers. In effect, the executive includes those positions occupying the
commanding heights of government.

Externally created parties Parties that had their origins in demands for the
ballot and for legislative representation by excluded strata of the populations -
for example, the working-class socialist parties which spread across Europe at
the start of the twentieth century.

Faction An organised group with a reasonably stable membership inside a

larger body. Factions are most common in political parties.

Factionalism A state of competition between different factions within a larger

political unit. Factionalism can be motivated by different factors - for example,
ideology, spoils, personal attachment, regional identity etc.

Fascism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Federalism A constitutionally guaranteed sharing of power between levels of

government - some powers of decision are granted to provincial (sub-national)
governments, while others remain the sole concern of the national government.
The degree of independence for provincial governments (and conversely, the
power of the national government) varies from country to country. Citizens of
a federal system remain subject to the authority of both the central and the
provincial governments, each of which acts directly on the citizen.
 Glossary 463

Focused comparison A comparison based on a small number of countries,

typically just two (a paired comparison). Most often the comparison concen-
trates on particular rather than on all aspects of the countries' politics.

Functionalism 1. An approach to studying politics which concentrates on the

functions which any political system must perform if it is to survive and operate
effectively. Specifying these functions is extremely difficult. In practice,
functionalist explanation dwells upon the wider consequences for society of
particular political practices and institutions. 2. An approach to explaining
revolutionary change that concentrates on a government's failure to perform
the functions expected of it.

Fundamentalism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Glasnost From the Russian, literally translates as 'openness'. Initially referred

to the policy introduced by Gorbachev of allowing frank and open discussion
of public issues in the Soviet Union. The term has now passed into the language
of international politics.

Global village The notion that the world has so shrunk through expanded
contacts and the spread of mass media that it now resembles a village.
Everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and the actions of one
inhabitant can affect the lives of many others.

Government Has several related meanings, of which the most important are:
1. any settled pattern of decision-making within and for a group; 2. the
structure of offices and institutions which performs this task; 3. the incum-
bents of the major offices within this structure ('the Government').

Guardian bureaucracy Where the national bureaucracy, mainly in third

world countries, sees itself as the main guarantor of the survival and integrity
of the state, against the instability and debilitating effects of party competition
and electoral politics. Under these circumstances, the bureaucrats may take
over most of the functions normally performed by elected governments.

Hegemony The predominance of one group, class or nation over others,

usually by means other than brute force.

Ideal-type A description of the essential characteristics of a concept in

heightened, even extreme form, but which recognises that few, if any, real-
world cases will possess all of these characteristics.

Ideology The basic values and ideas which people hold about the nature of
society, and the role of politics and government within it. For brief descriptions
of major ideologies, see Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.
464 Glossary

Incremental model of policy making Changes in policy by small steps. Policy

is continually made and remade in a series of small adjustments, rather than in
bold sweeps.

Indirect elections A system of elections of two or more levels, where

representatives are chosen by those who are themselves directly elected. The
US president, for example, is technically chosen by the electoral college, elected
by the American people.

Institutional interest groups Formal organisations acting as interest groups

within government, i.e. sections of the bureaucracy or armed forces seeking to
promote their values, priorities and objectives. Because of their proximity to
the decision-making process, they can have major impact upon policy-making.

Interdependence The expanding range of international commitments taken

on by nation states reduces the room for manoeuvre available to governments.
Economically and politically, the action of any nation state will be constrained
by, and have an impact on, the politics and economy of other nation states.
Global warming and ozone depletion illustrate the extent of interdependence in
the world today.

Interest aggregation The process of combining demands on government and

turning them into a manageable number of alternatives. In effect, this means
that some demands are selected and many are ignored.

Interest articulation The expression by groups and individuals of needs,

wants and demands to government. Interest articulation occurs to some
degree even under authoritarian regimes, but is a prominent and highly
organised feature of politics in liberal democracies.

Interest group Independent organisations which try to influence public

policy. Interest groups seek to influence government, but, unlike political
parties, they do not aspire to become it.

Interest theory Maintains that the function of ideology is to rationalise

interests. Ideology is essentially a gloss upon self-interest, advancing a case
for (or against) particular groups within society.

Internally created parties Parties that were formed by cliques within an

assembly joining together for electoral purposes. Such parties were typically
dominated (originally) by upper class politicians.

Least developed countries The poorest third world countries, many in Africa,
which have per capita incomes below $1000 a year. They almost entirely lack a
manufacturing base, and usually depend heavily on one or two commodities
for export earnings. See also less developed countries.
 Glossary 465

Legal rational authority That based on a framework of laws or clearly

specified rules. Legal rational authority, typical in modern societies, belongs
to the office, not personally to the office-holder. There is normally a right to
appeal against decisions which exceed or misuse the authority granted.

Legitimacy In political science, mostly used in a descriptive sense to indicate

acceptance by the ruled of the ruler's authority - that is, the ruler is seen as
having the right to govern. A legitimate government is not necessarily a just or
worthy or even popular government.

Less developed countries Those third world countries where significant

economic development has taken place, but the modern sector of the economy
is internationally uncompetitive (unlike the NICs) or dominated by transna-
tional companies. See also least developed countries, newly industrialising
countries.

Liberal democracy A qualified form of democracy based on popular elections

and representative government but with strong concern for individual
rights. The concept of a liberal democracy is in essence protective. Government
derives from and is accountable to the people but its powers are limited in
various ways, so that the rights of individuals and minorities are balanced
against majority rule.

Liberalism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Majority democracy Sometimes referred to as the Westminster model. A

single party forms the government and wields extensive executive powers until
the voters offer their verdict at the next election. Thus only the self-restraint of
the ruling party stands between majority democracy and elected dictatorship.

Mass media Refers to methods of communication which can reach large

numbers of people at the same time. Television and newspapers are the most
important; others are posters, radio, books, magazines and cinema.

Moderate multi-party systems Those systems characterised by governing

coalitions made up of parties of similar ideological persuasion. Hence they
are said to be centripetal - strengthening the centre. Coalition members come·
and go but continuity of policy is maintained. Examples include the Nether-
lands and the Scandinavian countries most of the time.

Nationalism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

New politics A style of political participation which goes beyond, and

sometimes even excludes, traditional participation through political parties
and election campaigns. Advocates of new politics are often willing to consider
unorthodox forms of participation: demonstrations, sit-ins and sit-downs,
boycotts and political strikes. New politics tends to be associated with
466 Glossary

broad, rather than class-based, objectives, for example, nuclear disarmament,

feminism, protection of the environment.

Newly industrialising countries (NICs) Rapidly developing nations in the

third world. Most are found in the Pacific Rim of East Asia (South Korea,
Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong). They combine a stable, if often authoritar-
ian, political system with a coherent development strategy.

Night watchman state A state which performs only limited functions. These
were mainly to maintain law and order, defend the country and deal with
unexpected problems.

NIMBY Acronym for Not In My Back Yard. Refers to usually localised

groups formed to oppose changes in their vicinity, for example, the construc-
tion of a new motorway or power station.

Nomenklatura Literally a list of names, from the Russian. The system in

communist party states whereby the party vetted appointments to all major
posts in society, drawing them from a list of suitable candidates. This helped to
ensure party domination of all significant positions in both government, and
society at large.

Normal elections An election in which voting directly reflects partisanship

and the party with the greatest share of party identifiers (formerly, for example,
the Democrats in the USA) wins the election.

Oligarchy The rule of a few. A tiny elite dominates political life and the mass
of the population are inactive. In a competitive oligarchy, there is a more
complex structure involving some degree of competition for power, but
popular involvement remains limited.

Ombudsman A post of Scandinavian origin, widely adopted elsewhere, to

investigate cases of bureaucratic mismanagement or cases where individuals
feel that they have been mistreated by government. In effect, a bureaucratic
watch-dog.

One-party state Where politics is dominated by a single party, e.g. commu-

nist party states. Other parties sometimes exist, but are not allowed to
challenge the dominance of the ruling party in any serious way.

Parochial political culture A condition, once widespread but probably now

rare, in which people are unaware or only vaguely aware of the existence of
central government.

Participant political culture Citizens know that they are affected by the
political system but also believe that they can influence it.
 Glossary 467

Partisan de alignment Refers to the weakening of traditional bonds between

voters, parties and social groups.

Patronage The practice of politicians, civil servants and military officials

exploiting their access to government resources to benefit their families and
supporters.

Patron-client relationship A relationship in which the 'patron' provides

protection, services or rewards to the 'clients' (usually individuals of lower
status) who become the patron's political followers.

Peace dividend The expectation that with the end of the Cold War military
spending can be reduced and the savings used to reduce taxes or improve
welfare and other public services.

Peak organisations A conglomeration of interest groups organised into a

national centre, in order to have the maximum leverage on government
decision making, e.g the Confederation of British Industry or the Swedish
Landsorganisationen (national trade union federation).

Perestroika From the Russian, meaning 'reconstruction'. A term popularised

by Gorbachev and referring to the wholesale transformation of the neo-
Stalinist Soviet economic and political system.

Peronism A classic example of a successful populist movement. Between 1944

and 1955 in Argentina Juan Peron constructed a nationalist and welfare-
oriented authoritarian regime based on lower-class support. Peronism
remained a significant force decades after Peron's overthrow by the military.

Pluralism A form of rule in which many people and interests are involved in
decision-making, with different people and interests influential in different
areas of policy. Where elitism focuses on rule by a minority, pluralism
emphasises rule by minorities, i.e. no single group dominates decision-
making.

Polarisation The intensity of ideological differences between parties.

Polarised multi-party systems Those party systems where ideological differ-

ences between the parties are so wide and deep that they severely limit the
number of feasible coalitions. Some parties, typically the Communists, are
excluded from government altogether. Until the 1970s Italy was an example of
a polarised multi-party system.

Policy The word has many uses, but a simple definition is that policy is any
course of action designed to promote, maintain or prevent some state of
affairs.
468 Glossary

Policy evaluation Appraising the consequences and degree of success of a

policy in achieving its objectives.

Policy formulation The detailed development of a policy into concrete

proposals.

Policy implementation Putting policy into practice.

Policy initiation The 'decision to make a decision' III a particular area;

otherwise known as agenda-setting.

Policy style This suggests that political systems can be characterised accord-
ing to their own national way of reaching decisions. Policy style is a preferred
way of making policy - a procedural ambition - which is not always adhered to
in practice.

Political culture What people think about politics - their beliefs, values and
emotions. It does not refer to actual political behaviour - indeed behaviour may
conflict with prevailing attitudes.

Political party The defining characteristics of a political party are a conscious

aim (realistic or not) to capture decision-making power, alone or in coalition;
seeking popular support through elections or other means; and a permanent
organisation.

Political participation Activity by individuals or groups intended to influence

who governs or how they do so.

Political system Broadly, the political arrangements of a society, embracing

all factors influencing collective decisions, The political system thus includes
processes of recruitment and socialisation, parties, voters and social move-
ments which are not a formal part of government.

Politics Defining what 'politics' is has been the object of much controversy.
We define it here as the process by which groups of people, of whatever kind or
size, make collective decisions.

Populism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Postindustrial A term used to describe how power and wealth generation in

the advanced industrial countries are increasingly based on knowledge,
education and service industries rather than on the property ownership and
manufacturing industry associated with industrial capitalism. The class-based
politics of the latter is increasingly giving way to postmaterial politics,
reflecting non-acquisitive values. See also postmaterialism.
 Glossary 469

Postmaterialism A political outlook that takes material well-being for

granted and concentrates on 'higher-order' values, for example life-style issues
such as ecology, nuclear disarmament and feminism. Postmaterialism tends to
be stronger among younger, better-off, well-educated people.

Poverty trap A situation in which poor people find that any increase in
income is cancelled out by loss of welfare benefits or increased taxation. Thus
they are often unable to work their way out of poverty. A similar trap affects
poor countries: as they reach a certain level of development, they cease to
receive aid or preferential treatment from international aid donors.

Power A central but much disputed concept of politics. Defined here as the
production of intended effects - the capacity of an individual, group, party,
class, etc. to get what it wants by securing the compliance of others through
whatever means.

Power deflation Describes the situation when a political system is unable to

cope with the pace and number of pressures for change. Leaders become
swamped by the demands placed upon them, and are unable to satisfy popular
expectations. As a result, legitimacy is lost, and a progressive reduction of
system effectiveness follows.

Premature bureaucratisation Refers to third world states where modern

bureaucratic structures were bequeathed by departing colonial powers but
without the modern political system and culture needed for the bureaucracy to
function effectively.

Promotional interest groups Sometimes called attitude, cause or campaign

groups, these are set up to promote common ideas, values or activities.
Environmental pressure groups are examples.

Proportional representation (PR) A class of electoral systems which are

designed to, and generally do, produce a more equal relationship between
votes and seats than the various majority systems.

Protective interest groups Sometimes called sectional or functional groups,

these are formally organised groups which exist to protect the material interests
of their members, be they miners, college lecturers or managing directors.
Trade unions and employers' organisations are prime examples of protective
groups.

Public opinion An often cited definition is that public opinIOn is 'those

opinions held by private individuals that government finds it prudent to
heed'. More broadly, it is the views shared by a community of people
(whether a village or a nation) on matters of controversy.
470 Glossary

Public opinion poll A scientific way of measuring the views and attitudes of
the mass public by administering questionnaires to samples of individuals
chosen according to strict criteria. Opinion polls have revolutionised our
understanding of public opinion, and give both governments and their
opponents far more accurate information about what ordinary people think
of them.

Realigning {'critical'} election An election that changes the underlying

strength of parties and redefines the relationships between parties and social
groups. Realigning elections are important events, for example the New Deal
victory of the Democratic Party in the USA in 1932.

Redemocratisation The process of rebuilding civilian democratic control

over society after the end of a period of military rule. Also referred to as
'post-military politics'.

Regimented participation People are forced to participate in politics whether

they want to or not. A stage-managed display of support for the ruling party.
Common in the second world under communist party rule.

Reinforcement thesis The concept that the mass media strengthens but can
not transform the political attitudes and behaviour of the electorate.

Relative deprivation Describes the gap between what people think they are
entitled to {their value expectation} and what they are actually getting {their
value capability}.

Retrospective voting Casting one's ballot in response to government perfor-

mance. The phrase conveys much of the character of contemporary voting
behaviour. Electors form an overall assessment of the government's record and,
increasingly, they vote accordingly.

Revolutionary change Any wide-ranging change may be loosely defined as

revolutionary. However, a tighter definition of political revolutions concen-
trates on whether there is a fundamental and long-lasting change in the
distribution of power in the nation concerned.

Sinatra doctrine The popular term to describe Gorbachev's hands-off

attitude to Eastern Europe, renouncing any further intervention by the Soviet
Union. The leader of each of the countries of Eastern Europe could now claim
that he was free to 'do it my way'.

Social group A focus of identity for individuals which binds them together in
some way. The determining factor - the glue that produces group cohesion -
varies. It may be class, religion, region, family, etc.
 GLossary 471

Social movements Social movements are broader, and less organised, than
interest groups. They seek, and emerge from, changes in attitude and awareness
across large segments of the public. Social movements are promotional in
character but they are not in themselves interest groups, for example the
women's movement.

Socialisation The transmission of values, attitudes and beliefs across genera-

tions. The study of what, when and how people learn about politics.

Socialism See Exhibit 4.2 on pp. 92-4.

Sovereignty The ultimate source of legitimate power in society. Sovereignty

belongs to the body which has the right to make laws for a country. Also refers
to the independence claimed by every nation state. The extent of sovereignty is
often in practice restricted, in both respects.

Spiritual pollution A term used by the Chinese communists to describe the

spread of 'decadent bourgeois' ideas from the west, polluting the purportedly
socialist ethics of the population.

State An umbrella term that covers the whole range of offices which make
and enforce collective decisions for society. Ministers, judges, legislators,
bureaucrats, generals and the police all form part of a single organisation of
public offices known as the state.

State-centred An approach to studying politics that originally examined the

institutions and constitutions of government, in isolation from society. It has
now evolved to emphasise the impact of the state on society.

Strain theory The concept that ideologies arise in response to social

dislocation. They are seen as symptoms of a malfunctioning society, for
example the rise of fascism in interwar Germany.

Subject political culture Where people see themselves as affected by govern-

ment but not able to influence it - as with people living under a dictatorship.

Supervised democracies Where military regimes hand power over to civilian

leaders, but remain in control by manipulating the civilians behind the
scenes.

Subsidiarity A principle derived from German federalism, that services

should be provided at the lowest practical level of government. Now often
used in the context of the European Community to mean that decisions should
be made and implemented at lower levels where possible.

Synoptic policy-making The view that policy-makers should consider all the
consequences of all the options before reaching policy decisions.
472 Glossary

Totalitarianism A totalitarian regime attempts to control and reshape all

aspects of society. Exemplified by Stalin's Russia: autocratic, highly coercive,
ideological and all-embracing.

Traditionallegitimacy Authority based on custom and an established way of

doing things - for example the King has the right to govern because the King
has always governed.

Transnational corporations (TNCs) Also known as multinationals, TNCs

are companies that operate in many different nations across the globe. The
ideal-type TNC will have no single national emphasis; in practice, most major
TNCs are US-based.

Unicameral One chambered, usually of assemblies.

Unitary government Where the powers and sovereignty of government are

concentrated in central government. Local government is thus subject to the
legal authority of the centre.

Voluntary participation People can choose whether to get involved with

politics or not (e.g. by voting or abstaining) and how to get involved (e.g. by
joining a party or signing petitions). Voluntary participation is chiefly found in
liberal democracies.

Welfare state A state which takes a prime role in ensuring the provision of a
minimum standard of life to all its citizens. The main aspects of 'welfare' are
medical care, education, income maintenance, personal social services and
housing.
 Index

Aberbach, j., 353, 366 Albania

Abercrombie, Wo, 155 communist collapse, 29
Aborigines, 192, 349, 387 elections, 188, 189, 267
Active assembly, 298-9 executive, 330, 331
Adams, c., 425 mass media, 177
Adams, ] ohn, 267 parties, 188, 189, 207, 373
Adelman, ]0' 390, 393 political culture, 142
Administration, 280, 290 religion, 188
see also bureaucracy Alber, j., 414
Administrative justice, 280 Alford, Ro, 22
Africa Algeria, 60, 79
assemblies, 289, 306-7, 336 Allende, Salvador, 380
bureaucracy, 362, 363, 366 Almond, Go, 33, 35, 42, 136-9, 153-5
communism, 54 Al-Sabah family, 250
constitutions, 263, 267 Alternative vote, 192-4, 197
decolonisation, 47, 263 Amin, Idi, 378
democracy, 64, 65, 338, 378 Amin, So, 127, 132
economy, 46, 58, 60, 128, 129, 132, Amnesty International, 315
169, 338, 422, 464 Anderson, ]0,424,425
elections, 190, 267, 336, 338 Andeweg, Ro, 327
ethnic divisions, 378 Andropov, Yuri, 332, 333, 390
executives, 336, 341 Angola, 370
federalism, 271 Apparatchiki, 55, 56, 246, 458
judiciary, 284, 336 Aquino, Cory, 62
mass media, 179 Arabian Gulf, 288
military; coups, 59, 63, 255, 336, Archer, c., 388
378, 393 Argentina
parties; party systems, 251, 255, constitution, 272
257, 307 economy, 58, 124, 125
policy-making, 424 executive, 338, 467
political culture, 362, 363 federalism, 272
political participation, 168-9 judiciary, 284
religion, 80 mass media, 178
welfare, 422, 424 military; coups, 125, 169, 284, 338,
see also individual countries 377, 380, 392, 467
Agenda setting, 175, 181, 399, 458, police, 39(}-1
468 political participation, 169
Agitprop, 176, 246, 458 trade unions, 377
Alabama, 351 welfare, 377

473
474 Index

Aristocracy (form of executive; government; prime

government), 26 minister, 23, 217, 295, 314,
Aristotle, 25, 26, 67 322-9, 341
Armstrong, Neil, 405 federalism, 191, 271-6, 283
Arter, Do, 301, 312, 320 and global ecology, 322
Asia interest groups, 212-13, 217, 218,
assemblies, 306-7 223, 224, 403
communism, 126 judiciary, 274, 283
decolonisation, 47 mass media, 356
democracy, 378 monarchy, 322
economy, 58, 116, 120, 126 parties, 194, 200-3, 218, 290, 293,
military, 59, 378 325,326
police, 387 policy-making and style, 323, 403,
political system, 45 405
see also individual countries political culture, 137-9, 153,
Asia-Pacific Economic 202-3,291
Cooperation, 116 trade unions, 200, 218
Assemblies, 24, 33, 215-8, 287, welfare state, 410, 412
288-312,323-4,458,464 Austria
committees, 289-92, 296-9, 302-4, bureaucracy, 225, 342, 351
309, 370, 355 democracy, 51, 52
first world; liberal democracies, economy, 105,225
51,287,294-302,310,20 elections, 322
functions, 287, 292, 307-10 executive; president, 322
and policy-making, 293-4, federalism, 272, 275, 351
298-310 foreign affairs; and international
postcommunist, 289, 302-5, 310, organisations, 84, 115
340 interests, 225, 226
second world; communist, 289, parties, 201, 225, 412
302-5,310,312 political participation, 162
structure, 288 religion, 412
third world, 299, 305-8, 310 trade unions, 225
types, 298-9, 310 welfare state, 410, 412
Associational ties, 210, 211, 231 Authoritarianism; authoritarian
Association of South East Asian regimes, 458, passim
Nations, 116 Authority, 16-21,458, passim
Assumptive world, 399 types, 17-21,460,464,471
Atlanta, 13 Automobile industry, 116, 118
Australia Avineri, So, 99
assembly, 191-3,289-91,293,295,
297, 314, 322-6
bureaucracy, 217, 349 Bachrach, Po, 16,22
democracy, 51 Bagehot, Walter, 309, 321
economy, 102-5, 107, 116, 119, Baghdad, 109
223,271-4,370 Bahrain, 249
elections; electoral system, 156, Bailey, c., 300, 311, 312
160, 191-4,295 Bakhash, So, 99
 Index 475

Balkans, 97, 167, 180, 189-90, 458 Beveridge, Lord, 412

see also individual countries Bhutan, 249
Balkanisation, 361, 458 Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, 377
Ball, A., 232-3 Bianchi, R., 230
Baltic states, 122-3, 272 Bicameral assembly, 288-9, 458
see also individual countries Bierce, A., 95
Banda, President Hastings, 337 Bismarck, Otto von, 410
Bangladesh, 250 Blackstone, William, 7,8
Bank of Credit and Commerce Blake, D., 125, 130, 132
International, 384 Blau, P., 17, 22, 365, 366
Banting, K., 286 Blondel, j., 210, 288, 312
Baratz, M., 16, 22 Bodin, jean, 7, 8
Barber, j., 293, 341 Bogdanor, Y., 187,207,208,263,285
Barkan, j., 191 Bokassa, Colonel, 379
Barnes, S., 181 Bolivia, 169, 338, 380
Barrett, S., 404, 425 Bolsheviks, 32, 79
Barry, B., 138, 155 Bordeaux, 421
Basic Law, 458 Bottom-up view of policy, 399, 404-5
see also Germany, Federal Botswana, 61
Republic Boulding, K., 10, 22
Basques, 199, 371, 386 Bounded rationality, 398
Baynham, R., 393 Bowman, M., 286
Bebler, A., 64 BP,107
Beck, P., 208 Branch party, 238
Beer, S., 288 Brasov, 87
Beijing, 79, 106, 110, 209, 349, 375, Brazil
390,459 assembly, 307, 308
Belgium bureaucracy, 308
assembly, 296, 325 democracy, 62
coalitions, 296, 325 economy, 108, 128, 129, 170
constitution, 261, 264 elections, 338
democracy, 51 executive; president, 338
economy, 105, 107 federalism, 271
elections; electoral system, 156, military, 307, 338
192,296 police, 62
executive; government; political participation, 170, 307
cabinet, 160, 296, 322, 325 Brett, K., 422
and international Bretton Woods, 113, 130,458
organisations, 115, 265 Brewer, j., 381, 383, 388, 393
interests, 220, 224 Brezhnev, Leonid, 303, 332
monarchy, 322 Doctrine, 88, 264, 373, 458
parties; party system, 239, 296, 322 Brinton, C, 73, 99
Bell, D., 201 Bristol, 292
Benelux customs union, 115 Britain
Benin, 338 assembly, 7, 8, 32, 66, 216, 218,
Berlin, 28, 84, 86, 110, 119, 120, 209 262, 264, 266, 289-91, 293,
Bertsch, G., 65, 257, 424, 425 295-301, 303, 312, 323, 326
476 Index

Britain (cant.) welfare state, 39-40, 350, 406, 410,

bureaucracy, 39-40, 342, 349-56, 412,414,425
364, 366 Brown, A., 155
constitution, 32, 262, 266, 269 Brown, B., 42
democracy, 50-1 Brundtland, Gro Harlem, 158
economy, 69, 77, 102-5, 107, 113, Brussels, 218, 270
114, 119, 125, 12~ 183, 223, Brym, J., 208
226, 271, 350, 370, 419 Bucharest, 28, 57, 87, 166, 167, 376
elections; electoral system; Bulgaria
voters, 51, 158, 181, 191-3, assembly, 304
195, 205-8, 240, 293 communist collapse; 1989
executive; government; cabinet; revolution, 29, 56, 82, 85, 87,
prime minister, 8, 23, 32, 66, 89,90
160, 278, 281, 299, 300, 314, democracy;
322-6,328,329,341,349,356, postcommunism,87-9
368, 389 economy, 121, 419
foreign affairs; commonwealth; elections, 188, 189, 207
empire; global ecology; global ethnic divisions, 57, 85
village; and international interest groups, 228-9
organisations, 7, 24, 47, 61, mass media, 178, 189
69,109-11,115,184,265,270, parties, 87, 178-9, 188, 189, 207,
271, 322, 338, 339, 369 247
interests, 213-21, 223, 226, 233, policy-making, 419
407 political participation, 167
judiciary, 7, 279-81, 286 religion, 188
mass media, 110, 157, 175, 181, Bulgarian Socialist Party (former
356 Communist Party), 188, 189,
military, 368, 370, 371, 380, 393 247
monarchy, 66, 135, 150, 322, 368 Bull, M., 255
national revolution, 99 Bundestag: Bundesrat, see Germany
parties; party system, 13, 51, 183, Burch, M., 425
196, 199, 200, 215, 218, 223, Bureaucracy,S, 18,20,210-2,215-6,
234,237,239,241,254-5,278, 231,342,343-63,364,365-8,
279, 293, 296, 326, 351 459,466
police, 381-4, 387-9, 393 first world; liberal democracies,
policy-making and style, 39-40, 217,287,314,342,349358,
299, 323, 400, 406-8, 425 364, 366, 411
political culture, 135-9, 150-2, functions, 342-4
291 organisation, 345-51, 359-60,
political participation, 150, 157, power, 344-7, 355, 364
158, 162, 181, 297, 298 policy making, 342 344, 364, 367,
referendums, 184,265 464
terrorism, 281, 388 political control, 352-8, 364
trade unions, 183, 200, 218, 226, recruitment, 351-3
281 second world; communist, 55, 56,
transport policy, 406 92, 122, 245, 314, 330, 342-5,
unitary system, 276-9 358-61, 364-5
 Index 477

third world, 60, 147, 337, 344, parties; party system, 30-1, 195,
361-4, 421, 469 196,199,202-3,241,291,293,
see also administration, individual 346
countries political culture, 202-3
Bureaucratic politics, 345, 459 welfare state, 40, 410, 412
Burgess, M., 286 Canadian Bankers' Association, 213
Burke, Edmund, 292, 295 Cape Verde, 338
Bush, George, 169, 174, 31 Capitalism, 46, 47, 54, 63, 92, 127,
Busia, Dr, 378 279,411,459
Butler, D., 207, 208 development of, 76, 77, 90, 127
Marxist analysis, 69, 70, 95, 96,
Cabinets, 459 139, 155
see also individual countries and Caplan, Gerry, 217
regions; executive Carlos II, King Juan, 263, 322
Cain, B., 293 Carnoy, M., 22
Cairns Group, 119 Carter, James, 184, 204, 315, 317
Calvinist Reformed Political Carter, S., 333, 341
Federation, 194 Cartwright, J., 341
Calvocoressi, P., 132 Case study, 37-8, 39, 41, 459
Cambodia, 161 Castles, F., 38, 39, 183, 257
see also Kampuchea Castro, Fidel, 330, 331
Cammack, P., 65, 393 Catalans, 199
Campaign for Nuclear Catch-all party, 253, 459
Disarmament, 213 Catholic Church, 27, 57, 76,144,153,
Campbell, A., 203, 208 188, 199,211,228,412
Canada Caucasus Republics, 272
assembly, 218, 291, 293, 205, 296, Caucus party, 237-8
314,326 Cawson, A., 226, 233
bureaucracy, 346, 349 Ceaucescu, Elena, 87, 89, 167, 376
constitution, 261, 264, 269-71, Ceaucescu, Nicolai, 82, 85, 87, 89,
283 167, 177, 247, 330, 376, 390
democracy, xvii, 51, 52 Cell party, 238
economy, 105, 107, 113-6, 370 Central African Republic, 379
elections; electoral system, 25, Centre-periphery conflict, 199, 248
191-3, 195, 295 Cerny, P., 103
ethnic divisions, 264, 265, 276, Chad, 378
279 Chan, S., 132
executive; government; prime Charismatic authority, 17-18, 21, 459
minister, 23, 217, 218, 264, Charter '77, 228, 247, 418
295,314,322,325-9,341 Chernenko, 332
federalism, 30, 270, 271, 274, 276, Chernobyl, 111. 176,274
283 Chile
and global ecology, 112 assembly, 305
interests, 213, 217, 218 democracy, xvii
judiciary, 283 economy, 58
military, 379 executive; government, 377
monarchy, 322 mass media, 178, 377
478 Index

Chile (cant.) Christian Democrats

military; coups, 377, 378, 380, 392 France, 199-200
parties, 377 Italy, 199-200, 239, 240, 325-6
police, 390 Churchill, Winston, 411
trade unions, 377 Chrysler, 107
China Cigler, c., 232-3
assembly, 288, 302-3 Civic culture see political culture
bureaucracy, 345, 349, 359-62, Civic Forum, 87, 187, 188, 228, 247,
366,462 248,253,418
constitution, 269, 271 Civil rights movement (USA), 161,
communist revolution, 47, 69-71, 283,371
74, 372 Civil servants, see administration,
corruption, 186 bureaucracy
Cultural Revolution, 284, 331, 360, Clapham, c., 65, 181, 257, 337, 341,
372,418 393
economy, 38, 46,47, 102, 119, 120, Clarke, M., 106, 129, 425
303,345,370,401,415-18, Class
422 elections and parties, 199,201,203,
elections, 185-6 205, 306
emperors, 71 and communism, 55
ethnic divisions, 79 and liberal democracy, 50, 51, 211
executive, xvii, 98, 330, 372 and political culture, 139, 148, 154
global ecology, 111, 112 revolution, 68-9, 77, 377
Great Leap Forward, 331, 401 and the state, 421
interests, 228, 303 and welfare, 411
judiciary, 283 Claude, I., 132
mass media, 176, 359 Client group, 399
military, 333, 360, 370, 372, Coale, A., 401
375-6 Coalition, 51, 192, 195, 196,206,234,
parties, 56, 164, 170,235, 243-6, 240,294-6,337,340,465
302-3,333,372,471 Cohabitation, see France
police, 283, 389-93 Cohan, A., 67, 99
policy-making and style, 302-3, Cold War, 126, 191,320,334, 369,
401,405,417,422 467
political culture, 142-4 Coleman, James, 23
political participation, 142-3, 156, Collective responsibility, 328, 459
164, 165, 170, 181 Collier, D., 40, 42
population, 54 Colombia, 107, 127, 128
power distribution, 23 Colton, T., 393
1989 uprising, 37, 73, 83, 372, Columbus, Christopher, 100
375-6,390,459 Common Cause, 214
Chinese option, 375, 459 Common Market, see European
Chinese People's Political Community
Consultative Conference, 303 Commonwealth of Independent
Chirac, Jacques, 267, 318 States, 460
Christ, 17 see also Russia, Soviet Union
Christensen, R., 99 Communal ties, 210, 211, 229, 231-2
 Index 479

Communism; communist states, 28, frameworks of comparison, 31-7,

54,55,78,458,460 41-2
communist failure/collapse, 28, 37, techniques of comparison, 37-41,
45-7, 55, 56, 60, 63, 65, 67, 460,463
82-90, 93, 97-9, 120, 144-5, Competition state, 103-4, 460
153, 177, 180, 186, 229, 231, Competitive oligarchy, 58-9, 460
246,302,340,369,373,423, Confederalism, 268-70, 285, 460
424 Congress, see United States assembly
ideology, 92, 95, 96,459 Congress Party, 61, 251-2, 273
see also individual countries, Consensus democracy, 50, 51, 53-4,
regions and headings; and 224,406,408,460
communist federalism Conservatism, 35, 40, 92, 96, 460
Communist federalism, 272-3, 460 Conservative Party
Communist party Britain, 51, 183,205,234,278,279,
Albania, 188, 189, 373 326
Bulgaria, 87, 178, 247 Canada, 195, 199,2223,291,346
China, 56, 164, 170,235,243-6, Constitutions, 19,20,25,31,33,261,
302-3, 333, 471 262,263-86,284,460
Czechoslovakia, 246 constitutional change, 263-6, 285
Finland, 241 first world; liberal
France, 199, 200, 237, 301 democracies, 50, 229
Hungary, see Hungarian Socialist second world; communist, 32,
Workers' Party 262-4
Iceland, 241 third world, 32, 262, 267
Italy, 27, 199, 200, 237, 241, types, 262, 285, 458
254-5 see also individual countries and
North Korea, 245 regions
Poland, 304-5 Contra rebels, 171, 317
Romania, 247 Convention People's Party, 250
Russia, 235 Converse, P., 152, 203, 208
Soviet Union, 176, 187, 247, 257, Corporatism, 14, 16, 222, 224,
264,332-4,371-4 225-30,231,233,460
Yugoslavia, 246, 373 Corruption, 152, 362-3
in communist states, 28, 33, 35, 46, see also individual countries and
55,56,242-7,273,281,314- regions
15,333,358,364,371-2,390 Costa Rica, 128, 169
see also individual countries and Cotta, M., 288, 298, 312
regions Council of Europe, 115, 375
Community policing, 382, 384, Coup d'etat, 29, 59, 67, 89, 173,250,
385-6, 408, 460 267, 337, 377, 460
Comoros, 308 see also individual countries and
Comparative history, 42, 68, 73-4, regions
79,460 Crampton, R., 189
Comparative politics, 26-42 Crewe, I., 208
advantages and problems, 23-30, Crick, B., 4, 5
40-1 Crimean War, 79
controlling comparisons, 30-1 Croatia, 272
480 Index

Crouse, T., 181 De-aligned electorate, 25, 461

Cuba Deaver, Michael, 217
economy, 415, 417 Decalo, S., 378, 393
executive, 330 Defence policy, 15, 55, 368, 369, 391
parties, 170 see also individual countries
policy-making and style, 415, 417 De Gaulle, Charles, 265
political culture, 144 Democracy, passim
political participation, 170 see also consensus democracy,
political system, 54 liberal democracy, majority
1959 revolution, 74 democracy, protective
Cult of personality, 60, 330-1, 335, democracy, supervised
340,460 democracy, individual
Cultural imperialism, 461 countries and regions
Customary interest group, 210, 211, Democracy Wall Movement, 228
461 Democrats Party
Czarnogursky, Jan, 335 Australia, 201
Czechoslovakia USA, 152, 203, 204, 219, 466
assembly, 87, 304-5, 335-6 Deng Xiaoping, 330
bureaucracy, 56 Denver, D., 208
communist collapse; 1989 Denmark
revolution, 29, 85, 87-9, 247, assembly, 296
335, 375 coalitions, 296
democracy; postcommunism, xvii, democracy, 51
56, 82, 87, 89 economy, 105, 107
economy, 54, 120,418 elections; electoral system, 194, 296
elections, 56, 187-9 executive; government, 160, 296
ethnic division; nationalism, 229, and international
272 organisations, 115,265
executive; president, 305, 335-6 parties, 239, 296
federalism, 272 political culture, 141
interests, 228 welfare state, 53, 410
parties, 187-9, 246-8 Dependency theory of third
police, 85 world, 124, 126-30, 461
policy-making, 418 Derbyshire, I. 24, 27
political culture, 144 Derbyshire, j., 24, 27
religion, 188 Deregulation, 113-14, 183,461
1968 uprising, 85, 144, 246, 373 Desapareceidos, 390-1, 461
Deviant case, 37-9, 461
Daalder, H., 237, 257 Deviating election, 204, 461
Dahl, R., 6, 9, 14-16,21,22,64,286 Diamond, L., 64, 65, 208, 306
Daimler-Benz, 107 Direct election, 182-4, 185-6, 191-6,
Dalton, R., 208 461
Danapoulos, C, 393 Djilas, M., 65
Davies, j., 72-3, 78, 81, 99 Doe, President, 250
Dawisha, K., 366 Dogan, M., 24, 42
Dawson, K., 155 Dominant party state, 461
Dawson, R., 155 Douglas, Roger, 183
 Index 481

Downs, A., 236 Easton, D., 33, 34

Dresden, 166 East African Federation, 271
Dreyfus, F., 280 Eberle, J., 110
Dual control, 349, 462 Eccleshall, R., 110
Dual state theory, 279 Ecoglasnost, 228
Dual system, 276, 277, 278, 285 Ecology, see environmentalism,
Dubcek, Alexander 85, 87, 246 environmental issues, Green
Duchacek, 1.,262, 286 parties, postmaterialism
Du Fresne, K., 209 Economies
Dunedin, 214 blocs, 114-21, 130
Dunleavy, P., 22, 314, 345, 350 command economy, 55, 63
Du Pont, 107 employment/unemployment, 25,
Dutch-Shell, 107 206,403
Duverger, M., 195,208,27-8,256-7 first world; liberal
democracies, 45-8, 58, 60, 63,
Eastern Europe 228 72,97,104, 108, 113-19, 124,
assemblies, 288, 298, 299, 304 126-30, 138, 141, 183,206,
bureaucracy, 56, 122, 360 235,403,407,412,423
communist party collapse; 1989 inflation, 25, 206, 403
revolutions, xvii, 28, 29, 45, laissez-faire, 56, 93
47, 60, 64, 65, 73, 82-91, 96, markets, 36, 47, 76, 96, 108-91,
99, 110, 144-5, 165-6, 177, 113-14,123,254,279,467
181, 187, 209, 241-2, 252-5, planned, 38, 274,407,414-23
304, 317, 334, 335, 338, 360, postcommunist, 45, 56, 62, 63,
372,375,378,459,470 121-4,336,419,423
democracy; postcommunism, xvii, privatisation, 56, 103, 128, 129,
45,56,57,90,96,97,121,145, 183, 229, 249, 350, 360
178, 187, 252 regulation; deregulation, 113-14,
development of communism, 54 461
economy, 56, 120-3, 144-5, 229, second world; communist, 45-7,
249, 418 54-8,62,63,119-21,128,130,
elections; electoral systems, 178, 144-5, 249, 423
185, 187, 193, 207 third world, 45-8, 57-63, 72, 97,
executive; government, 304 103, 108, 112, 115, 124-32,
and global ecology/global 179,250-1,339,363,369,
village, 109-12 421-2, 461
interests, 229 world economy, xvii, 47, 57, 58,
judiciary, 284 63,69,101-31,339,413,418,
media, 178 421-4, 458-5
nationalism, 93, 97, 189, 248 Ecuador, 338
parties, 82-8,242,246, 247, 253, 333 Edelman, M., 6
police, 284, 381, 390 Education policy, see welfare state
policy-making, 299, 418 Egypt, 128, 231
political culture, 145 Ehrman, H., 217
political participation, 166 Eisenhower, President Dwight, 216,
see also individual countries; 317
Europe Eisenstadt, S., 181
482 Index

Elazar, D., 262 elections/electoral systems; voters,

Elected dictatorship, 50, 462 194, 203, 208
Elections, 30, 67, 202-8, 468 executive; government, 32, 47
compulsory voting, 156 parties, 202
first world; liberal political participation, 159
democracies, 33, 170-1, see also individual countries,
182-7, 187, 190, 192, 196, Eastern Europe, EC, EFT A,
206-8, 333 Western Europe
postcommunist, 187-90, 206-8 European Coal and Steel
second world, 35, 182 Community, see European
third world, 59-63, 182, 190-1, Community
207, 208, 339 European Commission, see European
types, 203-4 Community
Electoral systems, 24, 191, 196, 206, European Community (EC)
207 as an economic bloc, 114-15, 123,
see also individual countries and 124, 184, 265, 271
regions, first past the post, and interest groups, 217, 218, 226
proportional representation, and sovereignty, 7, 8
single transferrable vote, commissions of, 114, 218, 270
alternative vote, list system, Common Agricultural
second ballot system Policy, 114-15, 119
Elder, N., 224 constitutions (treaties), 265, 269,
Elite political culture, see political 270
culture development and future, 263, 265,
Elitism/Elitist theories of 309, 413, 419
power, 12-14, 15,20,22,462, European Coal and Steel
467 Community, 265
EI Salvador, 380 European Court of Justice, 270
Emy, M., 103, 137 European Economic Community,
Engels, Friedrich, 55, 99, 176 184,265
England, see Britain European Monetary System, 256
Environmental issues, 4, 97, 138, 161, European Parliament, 265, 270
166,210,213-15,218,222, Exchange Rate Mechanism, 114
228-9, 274, 400, 402, 465, 468 European Economic Community,
see also Green parties, see European Community
postmaterialism, new politics European Free Trade Association
Environmentalism, 92, 96 (EFTA), 115, 123
Estonia, 122-3 European Parliament, see European
Ershad, General, 250 Community
Erickson, K., 42 European Monetary System, see
Esping-Anderson, G., 410, 412, 413, European Community
425 Evans, P., 32, 42
Ethiopia, 337 Evolutionary change, 66-7, 462
Etzioni, A., 399 Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM),
Epstein, L., 257 see European Community
Europe, 24, 115, 117, 119 Executive, 25, 31, 33, 313, 314, 341,
economy, 102, 116,226,231 458, 460, 462
 Index 483

functions of, 313-14, 339 executive, government, president,

first world/liberal democracies, 50, cabinet, 53, 160, 296, 314-20
51,315-29, 285, 287, 300, parties, 53, 194,200, 241, 246
333 political participation, 163
postcommunist, 335-6, 340 welfare, 53, 410
second world/communist, 314-15, and international
329-36,340,341 organisations, 115
third world, 284, 306, 315, 336-40 Finnbogadottir, Vigdis, 158
see also individual countries and Finocchi, R., 327
regions, cabinets, Fiorina, M., 171, 206, 293
government, prime ministers, First-past-the-post, 24, 25, 50--3,
presidents, political systems, 192-3, 195-7, 201, 240, 241, 295
party systems First World, see individual headings,
Externally created parties, 234, 237, countries, regions
238,462 First World War, 78, 102, 277, 314,
Exxon, 107 410
Fitzmaurice, ]., 225
Faction; factionalism 239-41, 246, Flammang, J., 109, 171
255,325-8,347,462 Flanagan, W., 208
Falklands War, 125,338, 380 Flora, P., 425
Fascism, 13, 68, 93, 95, 96, 195, 202, Florida, 223
224,462 Focused comparison, 37, 39-41, 463
see also individual countries, Ford Motor Co., 100, 107
parties, National Socialists Foot, Michael, 174
Federal Government, see individual Forsyth, M., 270, 276, 286
countries Fox, G., 346
Federalism, 24, 31, 50, 51, 261, France
268-77,282,283,285,286,462 assembly, 267, 296, 297, 301, 353
Feminism, 93, 141, 161,215, 465, bureaucracy, 76-9, 217, 342, 348,
468 351-3,356-8,366,400,407
see also National Organisation for cohabitation, 318, 459
Women (NOW) constitutions, 262-3, 267, 269, 280
Ferejohn, J., 5, 293 economy, 102, 105, 107, 113, 114,
Feudalism, 47, 90, 93, 142-3 125,370, 400, 402
Finance electors/electoral system, 143, 202,
financial world, 6, 28, 108-9, 458 318
and governments, 108-9 executive, president, government,
Finer, H., 358 prime minister, Council of
Finer, S., 2. 12,22, 233, 377, 393 Ministers, 160,267,280, 301,
Finland 318-19,356,357,459
assembly, 296, 297, 319 foreign affairs, empire and
bureaucracy, 319, 354-5 international organisations,
coalitions, 53, 296 47,69,115,265,339
democracy, 51, 53 Fourth Republic, 238, 267, 297,
economy, 53, 105, 107 351,324
elections/electoral system, 160, French revolution, 71, 74, 82,
194,296 88-90, 99, 110, 263
484 Index

France (cant.) German Democratic Republic (GDR)

global ecology and global communist collapse/1989
environment, 110, 111 revolutions, 82-3, 266, 268
interests, 214-17, 219, 220, 226, economy, 83, 120, 121,420
227 elections, 84, 86, 185, 189
judiciary, 279, 280 German reunification, 82-3, 266,
Franco, General Francisco, 248, 263 268
Frank, A. Gunder, 127,257 interests, 228
Franklin, M., 208 judiciary, 280
Franks, c., 291 mass media, 177
Frears, ]., 301 parties, 189
French Revolution, see France police/stasi, 390
Friedgut, T., 181 1953 uprising, 373
Friedland, R., 22 Germany, pre-World War II
Fudge, c., 404, 425 economy, 25
Fukuyama, F., 96, 99 fascism, 95, 202, 280
Funafuti, 288 judiciary 280
Functionalism; functionalist racism, 94
approach welfare, 415
in revolution 68, 70-1, 77, 98, 99, Germany, Federal Republic
463 assembly, 322-3, 328-9, 275, 281,
in political systems 33-6, 463 296, 297, 312
Fundamentalism, 93, 95, 463 bureaucracy, 342, 351-6, 358, 364,
Fused system, 276, 277, 278, 285 412
coalitions, 324, 325
constitution (Basic Law), 262-3,
Gabon, 338 266-9, 325, 328-9
Galbraith, ]., 417 environmental issues, 274
Gallup, George, 172 democracy, 51
Gambia, 61 economy, 69, 102, 105, 107, 114,
Gandhi, Indira, 158, 252, 324 121, 177,225,418
Gandhi, Mahatma, 17 executive, government,
Gandhi, Rajiv, 252 Chancellor, president,
Garantismo, 267 cabinet, 106, 274, 322-5,
Gardner, ]., 256-7 328-9
Garibaldi, Guisseppi, 348 federalism, 272-5, 283, 322-3, 351
Garson, G., 253 interests, 226-7
Gatekeepers, 34 and international organisations,
Gaullist Party, 301 115, 265, 266
Gayle, D., 103 judiciary, 279, 280, 283
Geertz, c., 91, 99 ombudsman, 356
General Agreement on Tariffs and parties, 201, 254, 291
Trade (GATT) 119 political culture, 138, 141
General Electric Co., 107 political participation, 162
General Motors Corp., 107, 220 reunification, 82-3, 121, 266, 268
Geographic interest groups, 214 subsidiarity, 414, 471
George, S., 132 terrorism, 161
 Index 485

transport policy, 275 Griffiths, F., 233

welfare state, 274, 410, 412, 472 Group of Seven (G-7), 114
Gerth, H., 342 Guardian bureaucracy, 362, 366, 463
Ghana, 59, 250, 337, 378, 379 Guatemala, 380
Ghana National Liberation Guinea, 59
Council, 379 Guinea-Bissau, 378
Gibbins, J., 154-5 Gulf War, 96, 109, 126, 197, 249,
Ginsberg, B., 182, 208 369
Gitelman, Z., 181 Gunn, L., 399, 404, 424, 425
Gladdish, K., 296, 324, 325, 414 Gurr, T., 72, 99
Glasgow University Media Gwertzman, B., 181
Group, 220
Glasnost, 83, 166, 176, 177,332, 335,
463 Hamburg, R., 380
Glenny, M., 177, 181 Hampton, W., 286
Global ecology, 101, 111-13 Hancock, W., 137
Global village, 101, 109-11, 179,463 Hankiss, E., 248
Global warming, see environmental Harding, N., 365, 366
Issues Harrison, M., 220
Gomulka, Wladislaw, 121 Harrop, M., 37, 175, 182, 199, 207,
Goodin, R., 411 208,425
Goodrich, G., 103 Harvey-Jones, Sir John, 122
Goodwin, A., 19, 21, 99 Hausa-Fulani emirates, 146
Goodwin, B., 94 Havel, President Vaclav, 85, 87, 187,
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 9, 28, 56, 83, 84, 335
86, 110, 166, 187, 247, 264, 287, Heady, F., 343, 364-6
304, 332-6, 374, 375, 463, 467 Health Policy, see welfare state
Governors' Conference (USA), 275 Heath, A., 139
Government, 5, 20, 463, passim Heclo, H., 39-40, 366, 425
Grachev, General, 375 Heidenheimer, A., 425
Gramsci, A., 140 Held, D., 48, 64
Grant, W., 40, 103, 233 Hermet, G., 207, 208
Gray, J., 155 Hill, R., 155, 257
Greece, 26, 87 Hindus, 93, 97
Ancient Greece, 26 Hine, D., 239, 327
assembly, 288, 322 Hirschmann, A., 132
economy, 107 Hitachi, 107
elections/electoral system, 192 Hitler, Adolf, 17, 94, 202, 410
executive, government, 322-3 Ho Chi Minh, 330
international organisations, 115, Hockling, B., 132
266 Hodgkins, B., 271
political culture, 138, 141 Honecker, Erich., 86, 390
Green Party (Finland) 194 Hogwood, B., 329, 399, 404, 424,
Green Party (Germany) 201 425
Greenpeace, 215 Holland, see Netherlands
Greenstein, F., 150, 354 Holland, Sid, 216
Griffith, J., 281, 286 Holmes, L., 65
486 Index

Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell, 279 Iba, M., 108

Honduras, 380 IBM, 101, 107
Hong Kong, political system, 466 Iceland, 53, 115, 158,241
economy, 58, 105, 106, 107, 223, Ideal-type, 343, 463
466 Ideological hegemony, 139-40
political culture, 147 Ideology
interest groups, 223 in communist states, 212
Hough, J., 227 definitions, 91, 98, 463
House of Commons, see Britain, and elections, 190, 196
Canada and interests, 464
House of Lords, see Britain and parties, 239
House of Representatives, see USA and revolution, 90--7
Housing Policy, see welfare state theories of, 91, 95-6, 98, 99, 471
Hoxha, Enver, 330, 331 types, 92-4
Hua Guofeng, 390 see also individual ideologies
Hughes, D., 103, 137 IKEA,123
Hughes, Chief Justice Charles Evans, Iliescu, President lon, 247
282 Incremental model, 398-9, 400--3,
Hume, David, 144 406,417,423,464
Humphrey, S., 86 India
Hundred Flowers Movement, 165 assembly, 251, 273, 322-3
Hungarian Democratic Front, 188 bureaucracy, 361-3, 366
Hungarian Democratic Forum, 228, coalitions, 61
253 constitution, 261, 269
Hungarian Socialist Party, 86, 247 and democracy, 60--2, 97
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party, economy, 61,129,422
246,247 elections, 23, 25, 191-3
Hungary, 54, 56 ethnic divisions, 93, 97
1956 uprising, 144, 373 federalism, 271, 273
assembly, 86 and global ecology, 112
bureaucracy, 360 judiciary, 282-4
communist collapse/1989 parties, 61, 251-2, 273
revolutions 29, 84, 86, 88 policy-making, 422
economy, 229, 249, 360, 418-20 political culture, 146
elections, 56, 86, 185, 188, 189 political participation, 170
executive, 330 prime minister and executive, 61,
democracy, postcommunism, 82, 158, 322-4
84, 86, 89 religion, 261
interests, 227, 228 welfare, 261
parties, 86, 188, 189, 229, 246--9 Indirect elections, 191-6, 463-4
policy-making, 418-20 Indonesia, 116, 170
political culture, 144 Industrial revolution, 198-202, 248,
religion, 188 255
Hunter, F., 13 Inglehart, R., 138, 141, 142, 155,
Huntington, S., 181 201
Hussein, President Saddam, 60, 197, Institutional interest group, 210,
337, 390 211-12,464
 Index 487

Institutional Revolutionary Party Ireland, Republic of, 107

(PRI), 219, 230, 252 assembly, 216
Instituto de Tercer Mondo, 131, 132, economy, 107, 141
178 elections/electoral system, 193, 322
Interdependence, xviii, 6, 7, 8, 20, 28, executive and president, 322
30,41,47,48,57, 100-10, interests, 216
112-14, 123, 124, 130, 132,460, and international organisations,
464 115,265
Interest aggregation, 235, 464 police, 388, 393
Interest articulation, 464 political participation, 141
Interest groups, 6, 31, 34, 35, 161, Irish Republican Army (IRA), 281,
209-10, 211-30, 231, 293, 343, 386
344,354,349,464 Islam, 18, 19, 79-82, 93, 95, 97, 98,
channels of access, 215-20, 231 188,284
in liberal democracies/first world, see also Shi'ites, Sunnis
50,172,210-12,214,217,218, Israel
222-8, 231-5, 423 assembly (Knesset), 262, 322-3
in communist party states/second constitution, 262, 266
world, 212, 220, 227-9, elections/electoral system, 193, 194
231-3 economy, 128,370
in postcommunist states, 212, 229, executive, 322-3
231 military, 370
in third world, 211, 220, 229-32, parties, 194, 219, 240
461 police, 393
types, 210-15, 231 Italy
see also individual countries and assembly, 267, 296, 301, 322-3,
regions, trade unions, interest 328
theory, pluralism, bureaucracy, 348, 356
corporatism coalitions, 296, 325-7
Interest theory, 91, 95, 464 constitution, 263, 267, 328
Internally created party, 234, 237, democracy, 54
250,464 economy, 108, 114, 183
International Monetary Fund (IMF), elections/electoral system, 296
125, 126, 129, 130, 339 executive, president, prime
Interpol, 384 minister, Council of
Iran, 18 Ministers, 296, 301, 322-8
Iranian revolution (1979), 17, 19, fascism, 68, 202, 280
32, 74, 75, 79-82, 88-91, 93, interests, 216, 219
99 and international organisations,
economy, 80, 81,370 115,265
and fundamentalism, 95 judiciary, 267, 280, 281
military, 370 media, 175
Shah, 17, 79-81, 231 and national revolution, 199
theocrats and temp ora lists, 80, 97 ombudsman, 356
Iran-Contra scandal, 317 parties, 27, 199, 200, 201, 219,
Iraq, 59, 60, 109, 197,249, 337, 369, 236-41,254-5,296,310,
370, 379, 390 325-8
488 Index

Italy (cont.) first world/liberal

political culture, 136, 138 democracies, 279-83, 285
policy-making, 301 second world, communist party
political participation, 162 states, 281, 283-4
religion, 27, 199 third world, 284
terrorism, 161 see also individual countries
trade unions, 200, 219
unitary system, 278 Kaase, M., 181
welfare state, 410, 412 Kadar, Janos, 84, 330
Ivory Coast, 59, 338 Kampuchea, 54
see also Cambodia
Jackson, R., 341 Kania, Stanislaw, 390
Jakarta, 124 Kashyap, S., 289
Japan Katastroika, 334
assembly, 309 Katz, R., 234
bureaucracy, 216, 342, 347-9, 352, Kaufman, Gerald, 181, 325
353, 366 Kautsky, j., 127, 132
constitution, 268, 370 Keddie, N., 81, 99
empire, 70, 362 Kennedy, P., 132
economy, 102, 104-7, 113, 114, Kenya
116, 119, 124, 125 assembly, 307, 312
executive/prime minister, 327, 347 economy, 60, 128
and global ecology, 112 elections, 140-1
interests, 216, 226 executive/president, 60, 307, 337,
mass media, 175 338
military, 370 federalism (East African
monarchy, 263, 322 Federation), 271
parties/party system, 239, 240, 327, military, 60
348, 353 parties/party system, 60, 251
police, 382, 384, 385, 393, 460 police, 387
political culture, 147 Kenyan African National Union
policy-making/style, 309, 400, 402, (KANU),251
405-9,425 Kenyatta, President Jomo, 337
welfare, 39, 405, 409, 413 Keohane, R., 132
Jaruzelski, President Woyciech, 84, Kesselman, M., 280
304 KGB (Committee of State Security),
Jayanntha, D., 168 see Soviet Union
J-curve theory, 72-3, 78, 81 Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruholla, 17-19,
Jenkins, x, 132 79,80,91
Joffe, E., 393 Khrushchev, Nikita, 332
Johnson, c., 71, 99, 342, 366 Kim, c., 157, 306, 312
Johnson, N., 291 Kim II Sung, 55, 330, 331
Jones, G., 341 Kim Jong II, 331
Jordan, Kingdom of, 249 King, A., 341
Jordan, G., 233 King, Martin Luther, 17
Judiciary,S, 31, 33, 261-2, 271-86, Kircheimer, 0., 253, 257
471 Knesset, see Israel
 Index 489

Knutsen, 0., 141 federalism, 271 272

Kochan, L., 99 foreign affairs, 59
Kohli, A., 61 interest groups, 230
Korea, North judiciary, 281
assembly, 185 military coups, xvii, 59, 62, 65,
elections, 184,185 169, 306, 336, 338, 378, 393
executive, 55, parties; party systems, 252, 306-7,
parties, 55, 184, 185, 245 378
policy-making, 417 police, 390, 461
military, 55 political participation, 168-9
economy, 120, 331, 417 Latvia, 122-3, 187
Korea, South Laver M., 21
assembly, 306, 307, 312 Lawson, Nigel, 356
economy, 58, 102, 105, 107, 113, League of Austrian Industrialists, 225
116, 125, 126, 170,223,417, Least developed countries, 57, 58, 63,
422,465 422,464
executive, president, 231, 306 Lederman, S., 183
interest groups, 223, 231 Lee Kwan Yu, 252
parties, 306 Lees, J., 312
policy-making, 417, 422 Legal rational authority, 18,21,465
political participation, 170 Leggett, Robert, 294
Korean War, 109 Legitimacy, 465, passim
Kremlin, 184 Le Grand, J., 36, 406, 411, 425
Krenz, Egon, 86 Lehmbruch, G., 233
Kudrle, R., 40 Leipzig, 84, 86, 166
Kuwait, 57, 197, 249, 336, 369 Lemarchand, R., 181
Lenin, Vladimir, 54-6, 69, 70, 98,
Labour Party (Australia), 194,200, 135, 164, 176, 330, 331, 334
203, 218, 325 Leningrad, 187
Labour Party (Britain), 13, 51, 174, Le Pen, Jean, 152, 202
183,196,199,200,205,218,239, Less developed countries, 46, 57, 58,
255, 351, 389 465
Labour Party (Israel), 240 Levine, S., 52
Labour Party (New Zealand), 183, Levitin, T., 141
196, 203, 255, 325 Levy, D., 284
Laffin, M., 405 Lewis, D., 399, 405
Lampert, N., 166, 181 Liberal democracy, 48-50, 465,
Laos, 54 passim
LaPalombara, J., 219, 257 challenges to, 68, 78, 80, 96-8
Lasswell, J., 294 development and spread, 47-57,
Latin America 60-5,77,90,91,180,207,281,
assemblies, 281, 306 305-6, 310, 338-9, 378
democracy, 64, 65, 378, 393 see also democracy, consensus
decolonisation, 47 democracy, majority
economy, 47, 124, 169,306 democracy, protective
elections, 190, 267, 306 democracy, individual
executives, 306, 336 headings
490 Index

Liberal Democratic Party Mair, Po, 256-7

(Britain), 240 Majority democracy (Westminster
Liberal Democrats (Japan), 239, 240, model), 14, 16,50-1,52--4, 192,
327, 347, 353 193-5,206,465
Liberal Party (Australia), 194 Malawi, 298, 337
Liberal Party (Britain), 196,241 Malaysia, 58, 102, 107, 116, 322
Liberal Party (Canada), 196 Malmo, 421
Liberal theory of third world, 124, Malta, 193
125, 129, 130, 132 Malvinas War, 1225, 338, 380
Liberalism, 77, 93, 96, 465 Manilla, 62
Liberia, 250, 378 Mannheim, Ko, 95
Libya, 60,128,370 Maoris, 52
Liebert, Uo, 288, 298, 312 Mao Zedong, 69, 70, 98, 119, 185,
Lijphart, Ao, 37, 42, 50, 51, 54, 64, 284,302-3,330,331,360,401
153,208 Marcos, Ferdinand, 62, 190, 307, 336
Lindblom, c., 398--400 Marginal assembly, 198-9
Lincoln, Abraham, 174 Markus, Go, 152, 203, 208
Linz, L., 64, 65, 208, 306 Marmor, To, 40
Lippman, Wo, 175 Marsh, Ao, 163, 181
Lipset, So, 64, 65, 140, 198, 202, 208, Marx, Karl, 13, 54, 55, 56, 68-71, 75,
256-7 90, 96, 99, 100 139, 176
List system, 193--4 see also Marxism
Lithuania, 122-3, 187, 420 Marxism
Little, Ro, 101, 131 and political culture, 136, 139--40,
Local state theory, 279 150, 155
Loewenburg, Go, 312 and power, 162
Logrolling, 294 and communist leadership, 330
London, 108, 109, 199 ideology, 91, 96
Long, So, 181 role of ideology, 95
Loomis, Bo, 232-3 theory of revolution, 68-70, 77, 79,
Louis XVI, 76 97-8, 99
Lukes, So, 22 view of world economy, 132
Luttwak, Eo, 379 Marxism-Leninism, 54, 56, 70, 330
Luxembourg, 115, 194, 201, 265 Massachussetts, 351
Lynd, Ro and Ho, 13 Mass media, 31, 148-50, 154,219-20,
231,254,354,403,458,461,463,
465, 470
McCauley, Mo, 333, 341 first world/liberal democracies,
MacDonald, Flora, 346 136,140,170,172-5,179,205,
McGrew, Ao, 425 220, 356, 408
McKenzie, Ro, 13, 237 second world/communism, 151,
Mackie, To, 329 175-8, 227, 245
McKinlay, Ro, 101 third world, 146, 178-9, 229
Macqueen, Ao, 416 postcommunism, 177
Machiavelli, Niccolo, 337 see also individual countries
Macridis, Ro, 42 Matsushita, 107
Madison, James, 48 Matthews, To, 212-13, 217, 218
 Index 491

Mayhew, D., 312 Mills, C. Wright, 14, 15,342

Mayntz, R., 325 Millard, F., 232-3
Mazoweiki, 84 Minimal assembly, 298-9
Meech Lake Accord, 246 Mitterrand, President Fran~ois, 103,
Melbourne, Lord, 328 174,267,318
Mendes-France, Pierre, 313 Mixed economy, 399
Merkl, P., 257 Mladenov, 87
Metternich, Count von, 342 Mobil, 107
Mexico Mobutu Sese Seko, President, 250,
constitution, 272, 284 336,339
corruption, 190 Moi, President Daniel Arap, 338
democracy, 62 Monarchy, 17, 18,26,47,58,90,216,
economy, 115, 116, 129 313,321-2
elections, 190 see also individual countries
federalism, 272, Mosca, Gaetano, 12, 13
interests, 219, 230 Moscow, 9, 120, 167, 187, 247, 287,
judiciary, 284 334, 373
parties, 219, 230, 252, 462 Mosher, F., 5, 401
political culture, 136 Moyser, G., 157, 181
revolution, 74, Multinational corporations, see
trade unions, 230 transnational corporations
Meyer, M., 365, 366 Multi-party system, 25, 51, 53, 60, 82,
Mezey, M., 298-9, 307, 311, 312 84,218,240-1 251-3,299,306,
Michigan model, see political 338-9,460
socialisation moderate, 241, 465
Michels, Robert, 12, 13 polarised, 241, 467
Middle East, 57-60, 82, 284 Muncie, Indiana, 13
see also individual countries Munck, R., 64, 65, 377, 393
Military,S, 10, 15, 154,210-12, Munro, H., 24
367-80, 461, 471 Muslims, see Islam
and policy-making, 368, 463 Mussolini, Benito, 202
first world, 367-71, 391
second world/communism, 245, Nadel, F., 354
308,367,371-6,391-2 Nader, Ralph, 221
third world, 29, 59, 60-3, 65, 267, Nagy, Imre, 84
284,338,367,369,376-80, Nagymcras,84
392, 393, 421 Napoleon Bonaparte, 77
see also individual countries, coup National Democratic Party, 250
d'etat National Front, 152, 202
Military rule, 156,250,284,338,377, Nationalism, 11, 51, 59, 63, 70, 76,
393,470 79, 93, 94, 96-8, 140, 143, 153,
Milan, 108 189,199,229,248,250,264,286,
Milbrath, L., 181 304,465
Miliband, R., 148, 149, 155 National Farmers' Union (NFU), 213,
Militia party, 238 221
Miller, D., 21 National Organisation for Women
Miller, W., 141, 182, 199,207,208 (NOW), 215
492 Index

National Party (Australia), 194 interests, 216, 224,295

National Party (New Zealand), 326 judiciary, 283
National People's Congress, see media, 327
China military, 370
National Rifle Association monarchy, 322
(NRA),221 national revolution, 199
National revolution, 198-202, 248, ombudsman, 356
255 parties; party systems, 194, 199,
National Salvation Front 237, 239, 295, 322, 324, 327
(Romania), 82, 87, 188,247,249 political culture, 139, 141, 153,
National Socialist German Workers' 295
Party (Nazis), 94, 202, 238 political participation, 162, 297
Nation-state, passim religion, 199, 327
development and spread, 45-66, 76 welfare state, 410, 414
first world; liberal Neustadt, R., 341
democracies, 45-54, 63-5 Neves, Tancredo, 338
and interdependence, 100-32 New Deal, 14,204,273,282,300
postcommunist, 56-7 New Democratic Party
second world; communist, 54-7, (Canada), 241
63-5 New Forum, 86, 228
third world, 57-65 New Hampshire, 113
see also state, interdependence New Haven, Connecticut, 15, 16
Neary, I., 36 Newly Industrialised Countries
Needler, M., 377 (NICS), 57, 58, 63, 104, 422,
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 252 466
Nelson, D., 286, 312 New politics, 154, 159, 161, 163, 180,
Nelson, ]., 181 465
Neoconservatism, 154-5 see also environmentalism,
Neo-Destour party, 59 environmental issues,
Nepal,17 postmaterialism,
Nestle, 107 postindustrial revolution
Netherlands New York, 107, 108,223
assembly, 283, 289, 295-7, 324-8 New Zealand
bureaucracy, 327, 351, 356 assembly, 52, 191-2,218,288,291,
coalitions, 324, 325-8 293, 295, 300, 314, 323-6
constitution, 261, 283 bureaucracy, 351, 352
democracy, 51 constitution, 52, 266
economy, 105, 107, 370 democracy, 51-3
elections; electoral systems; economy, 52, 105, 107, 116, 119,
voters, 156, 194, 205, 289, 183, 414
295-6, 327 elections; electoral system, 160,
executive; government, cabinet; 191-3, 240, 295
prime minister, 160, 295-6, executive; government, prime
322-5, 327, 328 minister, cabinet, 23, 52, 183,
foreign affairs; empire; 209,295,300,314,322-6,328,
international 341
organisations, 47, 115, 265 and global ecology, 112
 Index 493

interests, 214, 226-7 Norway

media, 175 democracy, 54
monarchy, 322 economy, 105, 107, 141
parties, 30-1, 52, 183, 196, 201, electoral system, 160
203,239,241,255293,325, executive; government, 158, 160
326 interests, 226, 227
policy-making, 323 and international
political culture, 152, 291 organisations, 115, 265
unitary system, 30, 31, 276, 351 parties, 200
welfare state, 52, 410, 414 political culture, 141
Nicaragua, 171, 370 referendums, 265
Nicholson, Bo, 160 welfare state, 53, 410
Nie, No, 157, 181, 208 Nuclear disarmament, 161, 213,
Nigeria 465
assembly, 305 see also postmaterialism, new
corruption, 362 politics
economy, 107 Nugent, No, 266
elections, 169 Nye, Jo, 132
ethnic divisions, 378 Nyerere, President Julius, 251
federalism, 271
military coups, 169, 305, 362, 378
political culture, 146 Obote, Milton, 378
Nightwatchman state, 409, 466 O'Brien, Do, 65, 285, 393
NIMBY (not in my back yard), 214, October Revolution, see Russian
466 Revolution
Nissan, 116, 119 Oil exporters (third world
Nixon, President Richard, 152, 282, states), 57-8, 63
317 Okoli, Fo, 363, 366
Nkrumah, Kwame, 250, 337, 378, O'Leary, Bo, 22
379 Oligarchy, 26, 58, 59, 63,239,466
Nomenklatura, 244, 466 Olsen, Do, 312
No-party systems, 149, 251, 256 Olson, Mo, 223, 232-3
Nordic Council, 115, 270 Oman, 17, 370
Nordlinger, Eo, 393 Ombudsman, 354, 356, 466
Normal elections, 204, 466 One and a half party systems, 240
North America, 102 One-party systems, 249-51, 253, 256,
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation 296, 299, 338, 466
(NATO), 115, 171 Opello, Wo, 306
Northern Ireland Organisation for Economic
military, 371 Co-operation and Development
paramilitary organisations, 238 (OECD), 39, 115, 120
police, 386, 393 Organisation of Petroleum Exporting
religion; social! religious Countries (OPEC), 128
divisions, 152, 195, 199, 386 Orwell, Go, 393
terrorism, 152, 386 Oslo, 172
Norton, Po, 287, 290, 294, 308, 311, O'Sullivan, No, 99
312,458 Ottawa, 172
494 Index

Ougadougou, 110 and interests, 215, 218,231

Ozbudun, 284 organisation, 236-45, 255
Ozone layer, see environmental and political systems, 6, 31-4
Issues social bases, 196-203, 218, 253,
255
theories of, 253-4
Packenham, R., 307 types, 234, 238
Paired comparison, 39 agrarian, 200, 219
see also focused comparison Christian Democrat, 200, 239
Pakistan, 107, 190, 305, 364, 377 communist, 199-200,207,235-8,
Pakistan People's Party, 377 241-7,253-7,273,281,302-3,
Palach, Jan, 85 467,470
Paldam, M., 206 conservative, 200, 234, 238
Palme, Olaf, 388 fascist, 202
Pantfouflards, 217 green, 92, 201, 205, 218, 235
Paraguay, 314, 338 nationalist, 235
Parentela, 219 of reaction, 202
Pareto, V., 12, 13 social democratic, 209, 257,411
Paris, 109, 166, 421 socialist, 13, 24, 159, 200, 202, 234,
Park, President, 231 238, 254-6, 462
Parkin, F., 140, 155 see also individual countries,
Parkin, S., 201 parties and regions
Parliaments, see individual countries Partisan dealignment, 25, 203, 205,
and regions, assemblies 206,461,466
Parliamentary systems, 8, 24, 25, Party Commission (Austria), 225
295-7, 299,310, 314, 317, 318, Party identification, 203, 204, 206
320-9, 339-41 Party of Labour (Albania), 188, 189
see also individual countries Party systems, 23, 37, 240-1, 249-53
Parochial political culture, 136, 137, first world, 50-1, 240-1
145,146,151,152,379,466 postcommunist, 247-9
Parry, G., 22, 157, 181 second world; communist, 241-9
Parsons, T., 8, 9 third world, 59, 60, 63, 168, 235,
Participant political culture, 136, 137, 249-53, 256-7
145,214,466 types, 240-1, 249-53, 256-7, 460
Parties, 161, 174, 233, 234, 235-54, see also individual countries,
255, 256-7, 468 regions and types of party
first world; liberal system
democracies, 172, 183, 218, Pateman, c., 139
235, 253, 255 Paterson, W., 40, 257
postcommunist, 229, 231, 247-9, Patterson, S., 312
256 Patron-client relationships, 61, 65,
second world; communist, 207, 156,168,180,190,240,250,336,
235-81, 302-3, 467, 470 362-3, 466, 467
third world, 59, 60, 63, 168, 235, see also clientelism
249-53, 257, 463 Peace dividend, 369, 467
and elections, 183, 192, 195, 196 Peak organisations, 212, 467
functions, 235-6, 255 Peil, M., 155
 Index 495

Pelassy, M., 24, 42 Polarisation, 240-1, 467

Penniman, H., 208 Police, 5, 6,10, 11, 18,20,56,380-93,
People's Action Party, 252 471
People's Party (Bangladesh), 250 approaches to policing, 382,
Perestroika, 83, 264, 304, 332-5, 393, 384-6
467 control of, 382, 386-9
Peron, Juan, 169,377,392,467 first world/liberal
Peronism, 169, 377, 467 democracies, 367, 381, 384,
Peru, 338, 380 387
Peters, G., 348, 366, 425 organisation, 381-3
Petrocik, J., 208 second world/communism, 228,
Philip, G., 393 245,246,382,389,390,393
Philippines surveillance, 382, 389-91
assembly, 305, 307 theories of, 380-2, 393
corruption, 62, 90, 336-7 third world, 384, 387
democracy, 62 see also individual countries,
economy, 116 community policing
elections, 190 Policy, 397, 467
Philips, 107 Policy-centred approach, 36-7, 41
Pierson, c., 410, 413, 424, 425 Policy community, 399, 403, 408
Pinkney, R., 376, 393 Policy evaluation, 398, 402, 406, 423,
Pinochet, General Augusto, 337, 338, 468
377, 378, 390, 392 Policy formulation, 314, 402, 403-4,
Pirelli, 108 423,468
Pluralism, 14-15, 16, 20, 22, 29, 60, Policy frame, 399
222,223-4,227-30,231,459 Policy implementation, 35, 36, 41,
Pluralist theories of power, 14-16,20, 246,277,313,314,320,339,344,
22 402,404-5,423,425,468
Poland Policy initiation, 397, 402, 403, 423,
assembly, 186, 298, 304-5, 336 468
constitution, 86 Policy-making; policy process, 35,
communist failurel1989 293-4, 298-310, 342, 367, 368,
revolution, 82, 84, 86, 88, 397-425,463
186-7, 247, 335 first world/liberal
democracy/postcommunist, 82, 84, democracies, 171,299-302,
86,89 400,404-14,417,421
economy, 121,304-5,419,420 models, 398-402, 464, 470
elections, 56, 84, 184-8, 304-5 postcommunist, 419, 423
executive/president, 304-5, 335-6 second world/communism, 302,
interest groups, 227, 228 400,403,405,411,425
parties, 184, 186, 188, 247-8, 304 stages of, 402-6, 467-68
police, 390 third world, 421-4
policy-making, 304, 419, 420 see also individual countries,
political culture, 144 policy, policy-centred
religion, 57, 144, 188, 228 approach, policy style
trade unions/Solidarity, 249 Policy network, see policy
1956 uprising, 373 community
496 Index

Policy outcome, 399, 406 Political socialisation, 33, 35, 138,

Policy output, 399, 406 141,147-8,153,155,203,206,
Policy style, 399, 406-7, 408, 421, 208,236,255,292,297-8,310,
423, 425, 468 471
see also individual countries first world/liberal
Political Action Committees, 218, democracies, 138, 141,203
219,293 Michigan model, 203
Political concepts, 3-22 second world/communism, 155
Political culture, 67, 91, 135, 136-52, theories of, 136, 148-51, 153-4
153, 154-5, 468 see also political culture
civic culture, 146-9, 153-5 Political systems, 5-6, 15, 24, 33, 34,
dite political culture, 144, 151, 54,71,468
152-5 functions of, 35
first world/liberal interpreting, 463
democracies, 135-42, 145, and political culture, 138
151-4, 214 see also individual countries
postcommunist, 145 Politics
second world/communism, 135, defining, 3, 4, 5, 9, 20, 468
142-6, 151, 153, 155 studying, 3, 4, 20, 36
theories of, 136, 148-51, 155 Polity, 26
third world, 145-7, 153, 155, Polsby, N., 15, 208, 354
362 Pomper, G., 183
tradition and modernity, 146-7 Populism,124, 377, 468
Political learning, see political Pork barrel, 293, 294, 409
socialisation Portugal
Political participation, 135, 148, 149, assembly, 288, 298
156, 157-8, 179, 180-1 constitution, 261
first world; liberal economy, 141
democracies, 135-8, 156-62, elections/electoral systems;
168, 179-81 voting, 192, 194, 205, 322
postcommunist, 156, 162, 165-7, executive/president, 322
180 foreign affairs; empire; and
second world; communist, 156, international
162-7, 180, 181 organisations, 47, 115, 266
third world, 156, 167-70, 180, parties, 201, 254
181 political culture, 141, 298
types, 156-7, 470, 472 political participation, 298
see also individual countries and welfare, 141
regions Postcommunist/postcommunism,
Political recruitment, 33, 35, 152, 194, passim
255, 292, 297-8, 310 and state, 56
first world/liberal see also individual countries,
democracies, 236-9 Eastern Europe
second world/communism, 243 Postindustrial revolution, 126, 198-9,
third world, 307-8 201, 248, 255, 468
see also individual countries, Postmaterialism, 97, 136, 141-2, 150,
political culture 154-5,159-62,199,201,469
 Index 497

see also environmentalism, Protective interest groups, 210, 211,

environmental issues, Green 212, 213, 216, 220, 221, 231,
parties, new politics, political 469
culture, political Protestantism, 90, 153, 188
participation, social Proto-typical coentry, 25
movements Public Against Violence
Potter, D., 366 (Czechoslovakia), 187
Poujadists, 202 Public opinion, 170, 171-3, 215, 219,
Poverty trap, 126-7,469 235,354,356,403,469
Powell, G., 33, 35, 42, 64 see also individual countries
Power, 4, 6, 7, 17-22, 32, 48, 50, 71, Public opinion poll, 470
184,284,285,309,461,466 see also public opinion
concept of, 8-9, 12,20,469 Putnam, R., 155
distribution of, 23, 29, 30, 51, 54, Pye, L., 155
66,269,317-18,320-1,351,
459
forms of, 10, 11, 12, 16, 20 Qudafi, Colonel, 128
see also individual countries, Qatar, 249
bureaucracy Quebec, 264
Power deflation, 71, 469
Pozsgay, Imre, 84
Prague, 87, 166, 209 Racism, 94, 96, 140
Pravda, A., 181, 208 Radical Party (France), 238
Premature bureaucratisation, 363, Rae, D., 208
469 Randall, V., 256, 257
Presidential systems, 25, 295, 299, Ranney, A., 218, 239
306, 314-20, 324, 339 Ray, J., 107, 114, 131, 132
Presidents, see also individual Reactive assembly, 298-9, 300, 301,
countries, executive, presidential 309,310
systems Reactive policing, 382, 384, 385-6
Pressman, J., 404, 425 see also police
Pressure groups, see interest groups Reagan, M., 286
Prewitt, K., 155 Reagan, President Ronald, 91, 174,
Prime Ministers, see individual 184,204,217,226,273,294,317,
countries, executive 350, 369
Prins, G., 86, 99, 181 Realigning elections, 204, 470
Promotional interest groups, 210, Redemocratisation, 62, 338-9, 378,
213-14, 216, 219, 221, 231, 469 380,470
Proportional representation Reds (Finnish Communists), 53
(PR), 23, 25, 54, 192, 193-6,202, Referendums, 51, 52, 184
206, 239, 240, 295, 327, 460, see also individual countries
469 Regimented participation, 156,
see also individual countries, 162-5,167,180,470
electoral systems, list systems, see also political participation
multi-party systems, Single Reinforcement thesis, 175,470
Transferrable Vote Relative deprivation, 72, 73, 77, 78,
Protective democracy, 48, 49 80,83,98,177,470
498 Index

Religion, 11 military, 177, 375-6

religion and parties, 199, 200, 202 parties, 82, 188, 247-9
see also individual religions, police; Securitate, 89, 376, 390
countries and regions policy-making, 419
Remmer, K., 377, 380 1990 protests, 57
Representation, 8, 222, 224, 231, 234, religion, 188
292-5 Romanian Social Democratic Party,
Republican Party (USA), 203, 204, 248
219 Romanian Socialist Democratic
Retrospective voting, 206, 470 Party, 248
Revolution, 18,24,40,54, 66, 67, Rome, 109, 166
68-83,90-6,97,98,235,263, Rosberg, c., 341
330,470 Rose, R., 183,200,207,208,257,316,
and ideology, 90-7 341
theories of, 68-75, 77, 80, 81, 83 Roskin, M., 344
97-8 Rouquie, A., 207, 208, 377
see also China, Cuba, Eastern Rourke, F., 354
Europe, France, Iran, Mexico, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 135
Russia, United States, Rowat, D., 349, 365, 366
individual countries of Rueschemeyer, D., 42
Eastern Europe, comparative Rush, M., 233
history, coup d'etat Rusk, J., 217
Revolutionary change, 470 Russia
Richardson, B., 233, 399, 407, 408, assembly, 167, 287, 375
425 economy, 47
Riker, W., 271, 275, 286 executive; president, 247, 264
Riksdag, see Sweden parties, 235
Ritchie, E., 383, 385, 393 1905 revolution, 78
Roach,393 1917 revolution, 32, 47, 54, 56, 69,
Robertson, D., 262 71, 74, 75, 78, 82, 88-91, 99,
Robinson, Mary, 323 100
Rocard, Michel, 318 Tsar, 69, 78
Rokkan, S., 195, 198, 208, 256-7 under Lenin, 98
Roman Empire, 100 under Stalin, 471
Romania see also Soviet Union,
assembly, 304 Commonwealth of
bureaucracy, 56 Independent States
communist collapse; 1989 Rustow, D., 42
revolution, 57, 82, 85, 87, 89,
90,167,177,375-6 Sad at, President Anwar, 231
democracy; postcommunism, 56, Saich, T., 256-7
87 Sanzona, J., 286
elections, 82, 87, 185, 188 Sao Tome, 338
ethnic divisions; nationalism, 57, Sartori, G., 27, 42, 240, 257
189 Saudi Arabia
executive, 330 economy, 57-8,370
media, 177 military, 370
 Index 499

monarchy, 17,58,216,249,336 Senegal, 59, 337

no-party system, 249 Senghor, President Leopold, 337
Saunders, P., 279 Seroka, J., 64
Scandinavia Shah of Iran,
assemblies, 288, 312 Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, see
bureaucracy, 356 Iran
democracy, 224 Shapiro, M., 283, 286
economy, 418 Shaw, M., 291, 297, 312, 341
elections/ electoral Shehu, Mehmet, 331
system/voting, 193, 205 Sherrill, R., 294
interests, 224, 226 Shevardnadze, Eduard, 373
and national revolution, 199 Shi'ites, 80, 91
media, 175 see also Iran, Islam, Sunnis
ombudsman, 356, 388 Sichuan, 349
parties/party system, 219, 234, 240, Simeon, R., 286
241,324 Simon, H., 398, 399
political culture, 141 Simon, R., 140
unitary system, 278 Sinatra Doctrine, 88, 470
welfare, 278, 413-14 Singapore
see also individual countries, economy, 58, 102, 105, 106, 116,
Nordic Council 466
Schattschneider, E., 237 parties, 252, 462
Sch6pfiin, G., 144, 256-7 political culture, 147
Schubert, G., 281 political system, 462
Schulz, D., 181 Single Transferable Vote (STV), 193
Schumpeter, J., 13, 50 Skilling, G., 227, 233
Schurmann, F., 366 Skocpol, T., 16,22,32,40,42,74,77,
Schwartz, B., 70 79, 80, 98, 99
Scottish National Party (SNP), 199 Slovakia, 272, 360
Scruton, R., 7 Slovenia, 189, 272
Searls, E., 357 Small Landowners' Party, 229, 249
Second Ballot System, 193 Smith, G., 254, 264, 275, 277, 282,
Second World 286
and power, 32 Smith, M., 131, 132
and state, 63 Smith, N., 127
see also communist party, Social Credit Party (New Zealand),
individual countries and 241
headings Social democracy, 91
Second World War, 14,33,47,54,68, Social Democratic Party (British),
113,168,192,240,314,330,355, 196, 239, 241
359,362,370,376,407,415 Social group, 9, 13, 25, 470
Segal, G., 102, 131, 132 Socialisation, see political
Selassie, Emperor Haile, 337 socialisation
Self, P., 366 Socialism, 94, 96, 264, 471
Semetko, H. 181 Socialist Party (France), 353
Senate, (United States), see USA Socialist Party (Japan), 240
assembly Socialist Party (Sweden), 37
500 Index

Social movements, 33, 214-15, 471 federalism/ confederalism, 268,

see also women's movement, new 271, 272, 374
politics, postmaterialism, foreign affairs, 54, 59, 82, 88, 144,
environmentalism, 191,320,373,375,459,470
environmental issues, global village/global ecology, 110,
postindustrial revolution 111
Social psychology, 68, 71-2, 98, 99 interests, 212, 216, 207
Social security, see welfare state judiciary, 283
Society-centred approach, 32, 33--6, media, 176, 177, 303-4
41,42 military, 216, 253, 330, 335,
Sofia, 87 369-75,393
Solidarity, 82, 84, 86, 121, 186, 228, parties; Communist Party, 56, 176,
247-9, 253, 304 187, 242, 247, 264, 332-4,
Sorauf, F., 257 371-4
South Africa, Republic of police; KGB, 167,216,246, 335,
apartheid, 20 373, 374, 390
economy, 107 policy-making/style, 303-4, 332,
elections/electoral system, 193, 195 414-20
parties, 203 political culture, 135, 142-5, 155
police, 381, 385-6, 393 political participation, 142-3, 166,
Sovereignty, 7-8, 20, 27, 77,113,114, 167, 181
276, 283, 289, 295, 302, 386, and power, 9
471 referendums, 186
Soviet Union (Union of Soviet trade unions, 212
Socialist Republics) see also Russia, Commonwealth of
assembly/Supreme Soviet, 287, Independent States
288, 303-4, 332, 334 Spain
bureaucracy, 335, 359-61 assembly, 288, 298
collapselfailure of communism/ constitution, 261, 263, 285
USSR; 1980s' changes, 32, 67, elections/ electoral
83, 96, 110, 135, 165--6, 247, system/voters, 192, 194, 205
268, 334, 360-1 ethnic divisions, 386
1991 coup attempt, 167, 247, 264, executive, government, 160
287, 332-5 foreign affairslinternational
constitutions, 264, 269, 332 organisations, 47, 115, 263,
democracy, postcommunism, 121 266
defence, 417 military, 371
ethnic divisions; nationalism, 79, monarchy, 263, 322
93,229 parties, 199, 248, 254
economy, 47, 79, 107, 120, 123, police, 386
334-5, 370, 414-20 political culture, 141
elections, 184-7, 303-4, 335 political socialisation, 298
executive, government, prime religion, 263
minister, president, transition to democracy, 322
presidium, 264, 330, 332, 334, Spero, H., 132
369,463 Spiritual pollution, 413
Sri Lanka, 168, 170
 Index 501

Stability, 11, 19, 35, 58, 62, 68, 75, constitution, 261, 269
103,135,137,138,153,240,263, democracy, 54
373 executive/government, 160
Stalin, Joseph, 32, 235, 264, 283, 330, economy, 105, 107, 183, 370
332-3,359,372,415,471 elections/electoral system, 194
State,S, 20, 471, passim interests, 212, 407
development, 101 and international
first world/liberal democracies, 32, organisations, 115
279,409 monarchy, 322
postcommunist, 56 military, 370
second world/communist 32, 63, trade unions, 212
245 parties, 37, 200, 201, 254, 412
third world, 32, 60, 61 police, 382, 388, 389
state-church conflict, 199, 202 policy-making/style 301-2, 309,
and fascism, 93 407, 408, 423
and liberalism, 93 unitary system, 351
and revolution, 74 welfare state, 39--40, 53, 349, 410,
see also interdependence, 412
state-centred approach, Swedish Federation of Labour, 212
nation state Switzerland
State-centred approach, 31-3, 471 democracy, 51
Statistical analysis, 37-9, 41 electoral system, 192, 194
Stavropol, 334 federalism, 272, 275, 283
Stockholm, 421 judiciary, 283
Stouffer, S., 101 and international organisations,
Strain theory, 91, 95, 471 115
Strange, S., 128, 132 political participation, 162
Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Synoptic model, 398-9, 400-2, 406,
Wars), 369 417, 421, 423, 471
Stroessner, General Alfredo, 314, 338 Syria, 59, 60, 370
Subject Political Culture, 136, 137,
145, 151, 471 Tadzhikistan, 185
Subsidiarity, 414, 471 Taiwan
Suleiman, E., 341, 366 economy, 58, 102, 170,466
Sullivan, ]., 151 political culture, 147
Sunnis,80 political participation, 170
see also Islam; Iran; Shi'ites political system, 466
Supervised democracy, 377, 471 Tanzania
Supreme Court (United States), see bureaucracy, 60
USA economy, 128, 169-70, 251, 421
Supreme People's Assembly (Korea), executive, president, 251
see Korea, North; assembly federalism, 271
Supreme Soviet (USSR), see Soviet media, 178
Union party system, 59, 251
Sweden policy-making, 421
assembly/Riksdag, 301-2, 309, 388 political participation, 169-70
bureaucracy, 39--40, 344, 349, 351 political system, 59, 60
502 Index

Tasmania, 193 Transnational corporations, 58,

Terrorism, 221, 388, 389 103-8, 122, 132, 170, 219, 465,
see also individual countries 472
Texaco, 107 Transport policy, 274, 275, 408
Thailand, 102, 116, 377 see also individual countries
Thatcher, Margaret, 91, 108, 157, Treaty of Rome, see European
174,183,196,223,226,279,301, Community
341,348,350,351,408 Truman, Harry, 233, 317
Third world Tsar of Russia, see Russia
and global ecology/global village, Tucker, R., 99, 155
109-12 Turkey
and power, 32 assembly, 288, 305, 312
spread of democracy, 58, 60--4, judiciary, 281, 284
180 military, 305
and the state, 60, 61 Turner, K., 155, 290
theories of, 124-32, 461 Tuvalu, 288
see also individual countries, Two-party system, 240-1, 299
regions and headings Tyranny, 26, 48
Thomaneck, ]., 393
Thomas, A., 257 Uganda, 271,378
Thompson, j., 140 Ukraine, 420
Thyne, I., 352 Unicameral assembly, 288-9, 302,
Timisoara, 59, 87 472
Tiananmen Square, 83, 372, 375, Union of Democratic Forces, 189
459 Unitary system, 261, 268, 274-9, 285,
Tito, josip, 70, 330, 331 286,472
Tocqueville, Alexis de, 25, 71, 72 see also individual countries
Topf, R., 139 United Arab Emirates, 57, 336
Tokyo, 107-9 United Kingdom, see Britain,
Top-down view of policy, 399, 404 Northern Ireland
Tordoff, W., 251, 257 United Nations, 47, 101
Totalitarianism, 93, 189, 227, 283, United States of America
335,472 assembly, 8, 29, 32, 49, 160,
Townsend, j., 181 217-19,266,281,282,289,
Toy Manufacturers' 290,293-300,306-12,315,
Association, 171 317,351, 355, 369
Toyota, 107 bureaucracy, 1n, 308, 317, 320,
Trade unions,S, 140, 199, 210, 212, 342,349-51,355,364,366
213,220--4,227-9,254,469 corruption, 355
first world; liberal democracies, constitution, 32, 48, 49, 66, 262-3,
159, 200, 227-8 266-70,274,282,285,351
second world; communist, 227-9 defence, 369
third world, 168, 408 democracy, 25, 49, 51
see also individual countries as deviant case, 38-9
Traditional authority, 17, 18,21,143, economy, 102, 105, 107, 108,
471 113-16, 119, 124, 129, 130,
Traditional regime, 156, 216, 288 273, 370, 418
 Index 503

elections; electoral system; Values Party, 201

voters, 48, 181, 184, 186, Vartola, J., 354
191-3,203-4,208,239,253-4, Vatican, 100
293-4,315 Venezuela, 169, 252, 272
executive; government; president; Verba, S., 136--9, 153-5, 157, 181,
cabinet, 8, 24, 32, 49, 152, 191, 208
281,282,299-300,314-18, Videla, General, 390
320,329,333,341,355,368-9 Vietnam, 102, 138, 141, 161,330
federalism, 49, 27D-6, 286, 317, Volkswagen, 107
351, 412 Voltaire, 90
foreign affairs; and global Voluntary participation, 156, 162,
ecology/village, 4, 59, 62, 81, 167, 180, 187,472
109-12,126,179,316,338-9, Von Beyme, K., 237, 240, 257
369, 380 Voters; voting behaviour, 33, 35,157,
fundamentalism, 93 207,208
ideology, 95-6 see also elections, individual
interests, 214-21, 226--7, 232-3, countries and regions
293, 300, 309
judiciary; supreme court, 8, 48, 49, Waisman, C, 284
266, 272, 274, 28D-6, 315,317, Walesa, Lech, 84, 186, 335
339 Wallace, H., 399, 405
media, 174, 175, 178,316,356,369 Wallace, George, 152
military, 14, 368-71, 393 Wallas, G., 236
parties; party system, 24-5, 37, Wallerstein, I., 28, 132
152, 183, 200-4, 219, 237-9, Warnock, J., 132
241,253-4,257,273,293-6 Warren, Chief Justice, 283
police, 381, 382, 384, 387, 393 Washington (USA), 172, 487
policy-making and style, 299-300, Washington, George, 174
308-9,400,404-9,425 Watergate, 152-3, 161,282,317, 320
political culture, 24-5, 135-9, 141, Watson, L., 262
151-3, 202-3, 461 Watt, E., 22
political participation, 159, 161-3, Webb, B., 32
181, 287 Webb, S., 32
power, 23 Weber, Max, 17, 18, 20, 22, 90, 143,
public opinion, 171, 172, 281 342,362,363
revolution; War and Declaration Weiner, M., 257
of Independence, 67, 88, 109 Welfare; welfare state, 11, 12, 15,32,
and sovereignty, 8 36--40, 58, 183, 199, 235, 274-8,
transport policy, 275 280,409,424,425,471,472
welfare, 39, 40,275,409,412 first world; liberal
Urban, Jan, 418 democracies, 398-403, 406,
Uruguay 408--14, 423
economy, 58 second world; communist, 411,
executive, 338 414-21
military, 338 see also individual countries and
Urwin, D., 200 regions
USSR, see Soviet Union Weller, P., 325, 326, 341
504 Index

Wellington (New Zealand), 172 Wolinetz, R., 257

Welsh Nationalist Party (Plaid Women
Cymru),199 in government, 158, 160
Wenceslas Square, 87 and political participation, 159
Western Europe and suffrage, 160, 192
assemblies, 314 see also feminism, National
and communism, 27, 46,83 Organisation for Women
economy, 107, 113 Wood, B., 425
and global village/ecology, 109, Wood, G., 214
112 World Bank, 39, 112, 125, 126, 129,
interests, 293 130,339,370,380,417,422
executives, 314 Wright, D., 286
monarchy, 322 Wright, V., 318
policy style, 425 Wynia, 308
see also individual countries,
Europe, European Yanayev, General, 374
Community, West European Yeltsin, Boris, 187,247,264,287,334,
Union 374
West European Union, 115 Yemen, 370
Westminster Model, see majority Young, H., 341
democracy Young, K., 399
Wheare, K., 286 Young Communist league, 372
White, G." 346 Yugoslavia
White, S., 64, 65, 120, 143, 155, 181, bureaucracy, 359
256-7,303,312,366 civil war, 272
White, W., 291 economy, 120, 518
Whites (anti-communists of ethnic divisions; nationalism, 57,
Finland), 53 97,189,229,248-9,272,276
Whitlam, Gough, 322 executive, 330
Wightman, G., 187 federalism, 271, 272, 276, 359
Wilcox, K., 276 interests, 227
Wildavsky, A., 208, 366, 404, 425 parties, 246, 373
Wildemann, R., 257
Wilensky, H., 412 Zaire, 250, 336-7, 378
Williamson, P., 233 Zambia, 59, 124, 251, 338
Wilson, G., 210, 226, 232-3 Zaslavsky, K., 208
Wilson, Harold, 389 Zhirkov, Todor, 87, 88
Wilson, M., 425 Zia, President, 190, 377
Wiseman, J., 64, 65 Zolberg, A., 257