Understanding Comparative Politics: A Framework for Analysis

Understanding Comparative Politics Understanding Comparative Politics examines current and past approaches to the stud...

Author: Mehran Kamrava

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Understanding Comparative Politics

Understanding Comparative Politics examines current and past approaches to the study of comparative politics and proposes a new framework for analysis. Mehran Kamrava achieves this through a comparative examination of state and social institutions, how they interact and the political cultures within which they operate. Based on the composition of their institutions and the pattern of relations they have established with their societies, Kamrava broadly categorises states into democratic and non-democratic varieties. He includes new democracies and pseudo-democracies in his first variety. Societies, however, he divides into three general types: democratic polities, found mainly in the first world, are accustomed to the rules and norms of democracy and are characterised by a high level of statesociety fusion; newly democratising polities dominate in regions such as South America and Eastern Europe which have undergone processes of democratisation in recent years; while non-democratic societies, in which either a democratic system has not evolved or has not taken root, tend to be found in Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East. Understanding Comparative Politics traces the evolution of comparative politics as a discipline and points to the strengths and weaknesses of past and present comparative methodologies. This book will be invaluable for any student of comparative politics wishing to go beyond a straightforward institutional analysis and comparison of a small group of countries. Mehran Kamrava is Associate Professor of International Studies and J.S.Seidman Research Fellow at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Understanding Comparative Politics A Framework for Analysis

Mehran Kamrava

London and New York

First published 1996 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1996 Mehran Kamrava All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-43469-2 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-74293-1 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-13011-5 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-13012-3 (pbk)

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

vii 1

Part I Approaches to comparative analysis 1 States and systems The state The political system Bringing the state back in Conclusion Notes

7 8 11 17 22 22

Part II The comparative study of politics 2 A synthesis An alternative paradigm Conclusion Notes

31 32 41 41

3 State and social institutions State institutions Social institutions Conclusion Notes

43 43 49 55 56

4 Political culture Progenitors of political culture Varieties of political culture Comparative politics then and now Notes

58 59 65 70 72

v

vi

Contents

Part III State in comparative perspective 5 State classifications: democratic varieties State classifications First world democracies New democracies Pseudo-democracies Conclusion Notes 6 State classifications: non-democratic varieties Inclusionary populist regimes Bureaucratic-authoritarian dictatorships Conclusion Notes

77 78 81 88 92 95 96 101 101 109 114 115

Part IV Society in comparative perspective 7 Society classifications: democratic varieties Developments in culture Democratic political cultures Social institutions Conclusion Notes

121 122 129 133 146 147

8 Society classifications: newly democratising polities Political culture Social institutions Conclusion Notes

152 155 162 168 169

9 Society classifications: non-democratic varieties Political culture Social institutions State-society relations Conclusion Notes

173 175 180 182 183 185

Conclusion Bibliography Index

186 190 216

Acknowledgements

The writing and publication of this book would not have been possible without the kindness and generosity of a number of individuals. I am thankful to my family for their unwavering support and love throughout work on this and other projects. I am also grateful to the many colleagues and associates at Rhodes College who often interrupted their work to discuss with me some of the facts and issues mentioned here. I was fortunate to have held the J.S.Seidman Research Fellowship from 1993 to 1995, thus being able to purchase numerous books and hire research assistants for work on this and other manuscripts. I am grateful to the Seidman Foundation, especially to Dr P.K.Seidman, and to my colleagues and the administration of Rhodes College for making this generous fellowship possible. Parts of Chapter 7 originally appeared as an article in Third World Quarterly. Vol. 14, No. 4, (1993), and I am thankful to the journal’s editor for allowing republication here. Natalya Hicks and Catherine Cozart, who were my research assistants during the final phases of work on this manuscript, deserve special thanks for their superb work and their special assistance on this and a number of other projects. Mrs Annette Cates and other staff members of the Rhodes College Burrow Library were instrumental in locating many of the sources used here, and I appreciate their enthusiastic and highly professional assistance. Most of all, I feel indebted to my students. Many of the ideas contained here were first tested and tried in my courses and seminars on comparative politics at Rhodes. I am grateful to those students who were the first audience for much of this book, and especially to those whose inputs and comments over the years have helped sharpen my focus. Of course, I alone bear responsibility for any of the book’s shortcomings.

vii

Introduction

Political science in the mid-twentieth century is a discipline in search of its identity. Through the efforts to solve its identity crisis it has begun to show evidence of emerging as an autonomous and independent discipline with a systematic theoretical structure of its own. The factor that has contributed most to this end has been the reception and integration of methods of science into the discipline.1 Thus began the discussion of the discipline of “political science” in the 1968 edition of the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Indeed, the discipline within which this book falls has been one in search of an identity, defining and redefining its very core, its analytical agendas, and the concepts and methodology with which it has sought to prove its points. The sub-field with which the book is specifically concerned, that of comparative politics, has undergone even wider oscillations in its search for an adequate paradigm, an overall conceptual and theoretical framework based on a certain methodological approach. But there has also been a growing realisation by a number of comparitivists that, because of its very nature, comparative politics neither needs nor can it really achieve a paradigm, and that the best the discipline can do is to build testable explanatory theory. It is within this vein that the present book is written. The book presents a modified framework for comparative political analysis; but its approach is neither radically new nor does it pretend to be. What the book does is to draw on existing explanations and approaches in order to give theoretical cohesion and to explicitly spell out an approach that the logic of the recent literature on comparative politics implies. Comparative politics has undergone significant theoretical and paradigmatic changes in recent decades. Particularly since the 1980s, a new generation of scholars have revamped and rejuvenated the study of the subject. The discipline, or at least specific paradigms within it, have been brought “back in”. Yet interest in society, which dominated the 1

2

Introduction

field in the 1960s and the 1970s, has not completely subsided, and there is still reference to it in relation with the state, even if only implicitly and as an auxiliary. It is to this precise interrelationship between state and society that the present work seeks to pay closer attention. Thus, the reader may quickly note a deliberate measure of continuity in the arguments presented here and those put forward in some of the previous publications on the subject. Although analytically different in its arguments and emphases from the current “mainstream” genre of literature on comparative politics, the present study is a logical outgrowth of the scholarly works of the past decade or so. The arguments contained in the following chapters form the implicit underpinning of many recent thematic as well as case-study comparative examinations. The aim here is not necessarily to lay out a new paradigm to comparative politics but rather to give more explicit direction to a newly emerging analytical framework that seeks to examine politics within different national, political, social, and cultural settings. In the following chapters, the book calls attention to the inseparability of both “state” and “society”, and more importantly their mutual interaction, as the very essence of comparative politics. In its theoretical odyssey from the start to the present, comparative politics has been marked by shifting emphases on either one of these two domains of analysis. But politics is made up of a complex web of political as well as social forces and events. Put differently, politics takes place within the state, and within society, and also between state and society. Only the socalled systems approach, by now largely discredited, has sought to examine the entire systemic context within which states and societies operate. The contribution of this approach lies in its detailed attention to the links that bind state and society. Nevertheless, the approach’s insistence on the fusion of state and society minimises, and at times even discards, the quite separate roles that states and societies may play in shaping the political arena. The framework outlined here, to the contrary, highlights the separateness of state and society, both analytically and in actual fact, but does maintain that the two remain in constant interaction. It is this interaction, the book argues, itself a product of characteristics and forces within state and society, that forms the very essence of politics. Politics is the actual process and the context within which statesociety interactions are formulated and take place. Therefore, it is a naturally changeable and diversified phenomenon. Its character and nature—its determining dynamics, its norms and values, its limitations and boundaries, and its overall direction—all vary according not just to the existing social and political institutions within a polity but also

Introduction

3

according to unique historical events, prevailing international circumstances, and the types and extent of available economic resources at the disposal of both state and social actors. Each state and society relates to one another in a unique and particular way, one that at any one time represents the “national politics” of a given country. Yet, despite this uniqueness, there are broad similarities that can be found among various types of political systems. While the exact nature and manner of interaction between states and societies may vary among different nations, enough parallels in patterns of state-society relations and in the functions of state and social institutions exist to enable the comparativist to classify various nations into different political categories. In other words, it is possible to find certain societies and certain states whose interactive relations are shaped by more or less similar dynamics and follow basically similar patterns. Cross-national and comparative analysis must thus concentrate on three specific levels: the similarities that underlie certain states, the similarities that underlie certain societies, and the similarities that underlie the relationships between the two. This argument is further developed in Chapter 2, and then applied comparatively to states and societies in Parts III and IV respectively. The manuscript is divided into four parts. Part I entails an examination of the various paradigms in comparative politics. Despite the rich and indepth contribution that each of these paradigms has made to the study of the discipline, Chapter 1 argues that each framework fails to consider one or another central aspect of analysis. Part II concentrates on an alternative framework of analysis, entailing discussions on state and social institutions in Chapter 3 and political culture in Chapter 4. Chapter 2 attempts to rectify this paucity by proposing an alternative analytical framework for studying comparative politics. Having earlier defined politics as the interaction between state and society, this chapter elaborates on the contexts and the ways and means through which states and societies interact on a comparative basis. Parts III and IV take the level of analysis one step further, examining states and societies in comparative perspective. Chapters 5 and 6, both in Part III, examine the underlying characteristics of democratic and non-democratic states, while the chapters in Part IV examine societies in democratic, democratising, and non-democratic polities. Part IV makes brief and cursory forays into the field of sociology which, after all, as the study of societies, is the section’s main concern. Sociologists would, however, surely be disappointed in the section’s broad-stroke approach to such fundamental sociological concepts as “social institutions”, “structures”, and the like. The focus of the book is politics, although, by its very definition, allusion to and an understanding of social dynamics is

4

Introduction

inescapable. The book’s main arguments and thesis are summed up in the conclusion.

NOTE 1

David Easton. “Political Science”. David Sills (ed.) International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 12. (New York, NY: Crowell Collier & Macmillan, 1968), p. 282.

Part I Approaches to Comparative Analysis

1

States and systems

Despite having been a subject of intellectual curiosity for centuries, comparative politics did not begin to attract serious scholarly attention until the closing years of the last century. It was only then that a growing number of scholars began studying and comparing politics on a cross-national basis. Most of these early comparativists were English speaking, and a majority American. Not surprisingly, their early writings did not extend far beyond comparative examinations of American and European politics. Over the years and decades since, the schools of thought and the approaches employed by these and other comparativists as well as the areas of their focus have undergone fundamental and radical changes. The scope, direction, and focus of comparative politics has been and continues to be influenced by a plethora of diverse and disparate phenomena, a development not unlike that experienced by most other speculative sciences. Such variables as the evolving international system, the growth of the modern nationstate and its far-reaching social and political ramifications, diplomatic alliances and hostilities, national prejudices and preferences, and ideological predispositions and biases have all contributed to the ways in which comparativists interpret politics and develop methodological approaches to the subject. In more ways than comparativists like to admit, the study of comparative politics has been captive to the national and personal predicaments of its principal scholarly interpreters as well as the changing beats of history. That shifts in the major theoretical and methodological approaches to comparative politics happen to loosely correspond with changing historical eras is more than simply coincidental. In fact, such changes in the study of comparative politics have in most instances been, even if indirectly, a result of evolving historical, national, or international circumstances. It is with this understanding that the different approaches to comparative politics need to be examined. These theoretical and methodological 7

8

Approaches to comparative analysis

changes to the study of comparative politics form the focus of the present chapter. The concept of “state” has always been pivotal to the general study of political science and that of comparative politics in particular. In the present century, concern with the state has passed far beyond debate over its mere definition. An overwhelming number of scholars, both past and present, have come to view the state as the locus of political power and thus as the primary area where analytical focus needs to be concentrated. In fact, up until the “behavioural revolution” of the late 1950s and the 1960s, the study of the state virtually dominated the field of comparative politics. The emphasis on the state was somewhat overshadowed in the 1960s and the early 1970s and instead such concepts and approaches as the “political system” and “systems analysis” gained increasing currency. But the retreat of the state was short-lived and its utility to comparative analysis was rediscovered by a new generation of scholars in the late 1970s and the 1980s. Essentially, the discipline had come full circle. Within a few decades it had discovered, abandoned, and rediscovered the centrality of the state to comparative politics.

THE STATE Prior to the dawn of the twentieth century, political science existed largely in the shadows of the disciplines of history and philosophy. But the growing complexity of politics, coupled with a concurrent rise in the domestic and international functions of the state in the mid- to late 1800s, attracted a number of scholars to the systemic and scientific study of politics, which many at the time called “the science of the state”.1 Thus, from the very beginning, the study of politics and that of the state were considered to be intricately entwined. Political science, and comparative politics with it, became of particular interest to scholars in Europe (especially in Britain) and in the United States, where separate historical developments had begun pushing politics into the forefront of intellectual curiosity. In Britain, by the end of the nineteenth century the British Constitution was gradually changing from a liberal into a liberaldemocratic one. The coming of age of the American political system, having withstood the ravages of the Civil War of the 1860s and its democratic politics having acquired increasing complexity, similarly attracted the attention of a growing number of scholars in the United States.

States and systems

9

Formal-legalism In both Britain and the United States, prevailing political and constitutional circumstances prompted scholars to concentrate on the legal and institutional facets of politics, thus popularising an approach that has since come to be known as formal-legalism.2 In the United States, in fact, the establishment of the American Political Science Association in 1903 was a direct result of efforts by interested scholars to study “comparative legislation”.3 “Political institutions”, declared one of the Association’s first presidents, “by which I mean constitutions and forms of government, representative assemblies, national and local, and such like matters, are the principal subjects with which our science deals.”4 These state institutions and other “structural forms” became the primary focus of scholars of the time.5 The early pioneers of formal-legalism viewed the state as a natural and universal phenomenon. “Of all…social institutions, the state has been one of the most universal and the most powerful”, wrote a notable political scientist at the time. 6 “The state is an almost universal phenomenon”, wrote another, adding: Everywhere, and in all times, we find men, as soon as their social life begins submitting to the control of a public authority exercising its powers through an organization termed Government.7 Considerable attention was paid to the origin and nature of the state and to the sources of rational justification for its authority.8 Texts such as Dealey’s The Development of the State and Willoughby’s An Examination of the Nature of the State dominated the field.9 The state was seen as neither artificial nor deliberate, owing its origins instead to “certain essential human attributes”.10 Its development was viewed as part of civilisation’s natural evolutionary progress, 11 its spheres of influence multiple, and its functions numerous.12 The state was seen as an integral part of the human equation, its importance, particularly in the context of global politics immediately before and after World War I, amplified by its growing domestic and international assertiveness and the differentiation of its structures.13 Even the “non-political agencies” that regulate social order, such as social customs and human interest, were seen as somehow inextricably bound with such overtly political factors as the rule of law and political authority.14 Some of the other prominent characteristics of this “traditional”, state-centred approach to the discipline included a strong emphasis on description, parochialism, conservatism, and a lack of detailed attention

10


to theory. 15 To a great degree, the fact that most of the early comparativists were European or American resulted in their focus on the political institutions of their respective countries at the expense of the rest of the globe. German scholars, inspired by the writings of Max Weber, focused on (and glorified) the role of the state and its increasingly omnipotent bureaucracy. 16 Both American and British scholars, meanwhile, of whom the Englishman James Bryce was a prime example, were interested in the dynamics and the mechanisms through which democracy operated both in the United States and in Britain.17 Beginning in the 1930s, the scope of the comparativists grew to include such countries as France, Germany, and the Soviet Union, but the essentially parochial and ethnocentric nature of the discipline remained unaltered. For the legal-formalists, most non-Western governments appeared to lack formal and legal governmental structures and therefore contained little that could be studied anyway.18 Much of the early scholarly production of the time was also descriptive, presenting accounts of different types of political arrangements and their distinguishing features. States were seen as either “pluralistic” or “monistic”, and their organisations were described in terms of their “juristic and political processes”.19 What mattered was whether a particular government was constitutional, non-constitutional, democratic, or un-democratic.20 Comparative analyses seldom extended beyond comparing the distinguishing features of republican versus monarchical governments. In most comparative publications, nevertheless, comparisons were rare and emphasis was instead placed on examining one state in itself as opposed to comparing it with others. This descriptive nature of early comparative politics in turn robbed it of a strong theoretical basis and an ability to formulate and develop testable generalisations relating to political processes. 21 Concentration on existing political institutions also brought on a measure of conservatism that tended to stress the permanent and the unchanging. Existing political institutions were seen as having attained their highest forms, leaving little room for future changes and transformations.22 Realism The formal-legal or “statist” approach remained prevalent well until after World War II. The focus and emphasis of the approach was, however, slightly altered beginning in the 1930s. Whereas in the 1910s and the 1920s comparative politics had concerned itself with historical and institutional description, coupled with a good deal of pontificating (“a nation of missionaries”, in the words of one scholar23), the post-

States and systems

11

World War I era was marked by a sobering realism and by greater attention to detail. The idealism that characterised earlier writings was rudely shattered by the War, the Great Depression, and the rise of totalitarianism in Europe. The emphasis of comparative politics thus turned towards the examination of more concrete phenomena and towards inductive empiricism. 24 The discipline became both more “scientific” and more “comparative”. Systemic, cross-country analyses and comparisons became more prevalent, even if for the most part still elementary in character.25 Description and data collection were seen as only one facet of the three-dimensional nature of the “comparative method”; discussions of “causality” and “ethical evaluation” were deemed as equally essential.26 The “territorial” state, unevolved and not terribly sophisticated in its conduct and its administration, was said to have collapsed and been replaced by an entirely new type of state.27 This was a state whose primary concern was with geopolitics and with space—political, international, and economic space.28 This new state, itself the product of a new global context, required new manners of analysis. Especially immediately before and for long after World War II, the new state was operating within an environment that contained such previous unknowns as the atom bomb, the cold war, NATO, national liberation movements, and the like. 29 These were all variables that comparative politics now needed to take into account. Any approach to comparative politics, no matter how thorough and theoretically sound, could no longer afford to focus on the state alone and ignore the many other dimensions of politics.

THE POLITICAL SYSTEM It was partly as a result of this very realisation and partly as a direct consequence of the social upheavals of the 1960s that an alternative, non-statist approach to comparative politics took hold in the 1960s and the 1970s. Moreover, the post-World War II era awakened political scientists to the limitations of their parochial and ethnocentric approaches and the inescapable need to examine the non-Western polities of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Such raging phenomena of the 1960s as “modernisation”, “liberation”, “political development”, and others could not be adequately explained or conceptualised through the prevailing methods of comparison. The growing importance of the Third World in international politics only accentuated the need for alternative frameworks.30 The ensuing search for alternatives was most fruitful, leading not only to a proliferation of scholarly works on the subject but

12


indeed to the coming of age of comparative politics as a securely established field of intellectual inquiry. 31 What resulted was a “behavioural revolution” within comparative politics, in turn resulting in the development of an approach far richer in its theoretical underpinnings and its methodological applications. The new approach had three broad characteristics. Most noticeably, it focused on dynamic and ongoing processes and called for the rediscovery of the impact of policy decisions on such processes. It also drew itself closer to other social sciences, sociology and social psychology in particular, in order to account for the various multi-dimensional phenomena linked to politics. Lastly, it embodied and in turn led to what one scholar has called “a theoretical reorientation of the whole field”.32 Overall, the focus shifted away from the state and on to society. No longer was mere notice of state institutions and their legal obligations sufficient; the “political system” as a whole needed to be considered, its processes, its policies, and its environments—in other words, its “functions” as well as its “structures”—all needed to be taken into account. Systems approach Much of the groundwork for this new approach to comparative analysis was laid by Ervin Laszlo and David Easton, both of whom were largely responsible for popularising the concept of “system” and what subsequently came to be known as the “systems approach”. Inspired mostly by natural and biological sciences, Laszlo argued that the animate universe can be seen as one unending array of systems and subsystems, each of which is itself made up of smaller systems and is in turn part of a larger one. “A systems science can look at a cell or an atom as a system”, he wrote, “or it can look at the organ, the organism, the family, the community, the nation, the economy, and the ecology as systems, and it can view even the biosphere as such. A system in one perspective is a subsystem in another.”33 Although writing (in 1972) a few years later than Easton, Laszlo wanted to set forth a paradigm of general theory based on a systems philosophy.34 Easton, however, was more specific in his utilisation of the systems approach and applied it to political life. A political system, he maintained, is i) distinguishable from the environment in which it exists and open to influences from it; ii) its internal structures and processes are determined by the nature of its interaction with its surrounding environment; and iii) its ability to persist is dependent upon the flow and availability of feedback from the environment back to decision-makers and other political actors.35 Thus, what is important is the degree and nature of social interactions between

States and systems

13

individuals and groups. 36 Political structures and their exact characteristics are only of secondary importance. There are, Easton argued, “certain basic political activities and processes characteristic of all political systems even though the structural forms through which they manifest themselves may and do vary considerably in each place and each age.”37 It is the “processual nature“ of political interactions that must form the focus of analysis. Successive scholars, impressed by Easton’s arguments, later fused the terms “structure” and “function” into this line of analysis.38 Structural functionalism Perhaps the most comprehensive and paradigmatic formulation of the systems approach has been developed by Gabriel Almond and his frequent scholarly collaborator, G.Bingham Powell, Jr. Almond and Powell built on the general premises laid by Laszlo and Easton. They argued (and to this day still continue to argue) that all political systems exist in both a domestic and an international “environment”. Environment in this sense is taken to mean the domestic civil society or the international arena, itself made up of other political systems. The system receives “inputs” of demands and supports from these environments, converts them, and returns them back to the environment through its “outputs”.39 The inputs and outputs are transactions between the system and its environment; the conversion process is internal to the political system.40 The input functions through which a system interacts with its environment include political socialisation and recruitment, interest articulation, interest aggregation, and political communication, while the output functions are made up of rule-making, rule application, and rule adjudication.41 Inputs may be initiated by elements within the domestic society, by the political elites, or by the international environment. Outputs, meanwhile, can either be extractive (in terms of, for example, taxes or personal services), regulative (influencing forms of behaviour and participation), distributive (bestowing goods, services, opportunities, and the like), or symbolic (affirmation of values; displays of political symbols, etc.).42 Inputs, outputs, and the life of a political system in general, cannot be fully understood without an adequate appreciation of the nature and role of the prevailing “political culture”. Almond originally defined political culture as “particular pattern of orientations to political action”.43 He (and Powell) later refined this definition in order to more intricately tie it to political development. “The political culture”, they claimed, “affects the conduct of individuals in their political roles, the content of their political demands, and their

14


responses to laws…[It] shapes the actions of individuals performing political roles throughout the political system”.44 Within this framework, there are four characteristics that all political systems have in common and can thus be compared on: 1 All political systems, including the simplest ones, have political structures. They may thus be compared to one another according to the degree and form of structural specialisation. 2 The same functions are performed in all political systems, though these functions may be performed by different kinds of structures and with different frequencies. Systems may be compared on the basis of their functions, the frequency of such functions, and the kinds of structures performing them. 3 All political structures, no matter how specialised and regardless of whether found in primitive or modern societies, are multifunctional. Political systems may be compared according to the specificity of function of structure. 4 All political systems are “mixed” in a cultural sense. There are no allmodern or all-primitive societies based on their respective degrees of rationality or traditionality. Comparison can be made by focusing on the dominance of one aspect over another.45 The question that structural-functionalists ask is explicit and direct: in each political system, what structures are performing what functions?46 Within this vein, the systems approach sought to develop a systemic theory through which the discrepancies between the developed and the developing countries could be explained. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, dubbed by the United Nations as “the decades of development”, political development, or lack thereof, became the prime concern of a growing number of structural functionalists and a plethora of publications on the subject soon followed.47 Consistent with its basic tenets, structural functionalism pointed to the comparative lack of structural differentiation and the paucity of functional complexity on the part of some states vis-à-vis others. “Political development”, “modernisation”, order and stability—these and the many other phenomena associated with the “new states”—were all analysed and examined within the contours of structural functionalism. Here again the essence of the inquiry pointed towards processes and policies: the developing countries, by virtue of “developing”, are embroiled in the process of modernisation. The process of modernisation is at once revolutionary, complex, global, lengthy, homogenising, phased, irreversible, progressive, and systemic.48 Modernisation means mass

States and systems

15

mobilisation; mass mobilisation means increased political participation; and increased participation is the key element to political development.49 If a political system is “developed”—i.e. if it is characterised by sufficient degrees of institutionalisation and an ability to foster and thrive on political participation—then it can survive. Otherwise it crumbles and falls.50 Political development is the institutionalisation of political organisations and procedures.51 A political system that can “maintain stability and cope responsibly with social conflict” is considered to be developed.52 But, according to this perspective (or paradigm, as its proponents view it), political development is not merely “political” and entails a series of other, related changes—or “crises”— that can have fundamental ramifications for the social system in general and for individual members of the community in particular. In his seminal work on the subject, Leanard Binder isolated five specific changes or crises: the crisis of identity, the crisis of legitimacy, the crisis of participation, the crisis of distribution, and the crisis of penetration.53 A critical appraisal Despite the considerable intellectual excitement that Eastonian systems theory and Almond’s structural functionalism generated in the 1960s and the 1970s, a number of deficiencies within the dominant paradigm sent the comparativists of the 1980s in search of yet other alternatives. There were two broad categories of problems with the structuralfunctionalist approach. To begin with, there were a number of significant ambiguities and shortcomings within the theoretical underpinnings of structural functionalism itself. With time and more critical examinations, the seemingly foolproof premises of the once popular paradigm came under increasingly critical scrutiny. Specifically, the structuralfunctionalist approach was critiqued on grounds of its inherent conservative bias, its conceptual obfuscation, flaws in its internal logic—particularly the tautological nature of its central premise—and its limited applicability. 54 The approach’s assumption of constant and regularised interaction between a political system and its environment overlooks (or at best minimises) the possibility of change and ignores the potential for societal or political conflict. In short, the approach assumes the maintenance of the status quo under most if not all circumstances.55 The preoccupation of particularly Almond and Powell with confusing jargon and their tendency to present rather simple phenomena in complicated ways also hinder an adequate understanding of their structural-functionalist perspective. But, more importantly, the resort to jargon prompted a number of observers to question the

16


approach on substantive grounds: “old story in new terminology”, “reformulation of old topics”, “otiose and confusing”, to quote from a few critics.56 One observer went so far as to argue that “what Almond has to say could have been said without using this systems approach and it would have been said more clearly”.57 Lastly, the structural-functionalist approach suffered from a not too subtle ethnocentrism. The paradigm’s concern with a structurally differentiated and secular political system, with regular interaction between the political system and its environment, and with a processual flow of input and output make it far more readily applicable to the democratic systems of the West than to authoritarian and dictatorial ones. Cases in which socially originated political input were nonexistent or minimal, as in most non-democracies, were often left out of structural functionalism or, if discussed, their political characteristics were re-interpreted in order to fit the analysis. In examining developing countries, interestingly, Almond and his collaborators chose to focus on political inputs rather than on the operations of the system as a whole.58 In another similar study on political culture, only the democratic nations of Britain, West Germany, Italy, the United States, and Mexico are targeted for examination.59 Besides these internal shortcomings, structural functionalism began confronting challenges from another emerging (or, rather, re-emerging) paradigm in the late 1970s and the 1980s. In the intervening decades, new global and political realities prompted comparativists to once again shift their focus of analysis. The societal and psychological focus of the behavioural revolution had been spawned by an intellectual curiosity associated with such developments as the mass mobilising effects of fascism and the psychologically unsettling upheavals of the 1960s.60 But did this approach adequately conceptualise about and explain politics? For many, structural functionalism shed useful light on the importance of and the interplay between previously overlooked dynamics. Yet it also overlooked one central force: the state. In systems terminology, nobody looked inside the “little black box” on which inputs, outputs, and feedbacks operated.61 It was within this context that the analytical utility of the state was once again discovered. The dissatisfaction with theoretical premises of the system’s approach was reinforced by its incongruence with a number of global political and diplomatic developments taking place round the world, especially in the 1970s and the early 1980s. Scholars began taking a second look at the state and its significance as a focus of study. In the Third World as well as in the West, it was increasingly thought, the nature of politics could be better conceptualised by refocusing attention on the

States and systems

17

state. In the Third World, the state—i.e. the government and all coercive and administrative arms attached to it—was seen as the prime locus of development, be it political, social and cultural, or economic development. Except for in episodes of revolution and other political anomalies, the flow of influence from state to society was seen as far stronger than that from society to state. The growth of the “welfare state” in selected Western countries and the omnipotence of state in the former communist nations also called for a reorientation of analytical energies. The expansion of governmental intervention in societal affairs after World War II, even in the advanced democracies, coupled with the growing distinction between what is considered “public” and what is “private”, necessitated the re-evaluation of the role of the state.62 Especially in centralised, command economies, the role of the state could not be considered as being on equal terms with that of other mechanisms of the system.63 Moreover, the manner in which international politics had evolved, particularly within the context of the cold war, called for paying increasing attention to the dynamics and the ramifications of inter-state relations.64 Even after the termination of the cold war in the late 1980s, the Balkanisation of numerous countries is bound to ensure the relative supremacy of the role and nature of state in determining the political character of the emerging new countries. The “neo-statist” era was thus ushered in and there were calls for “bringing the state back in”.

BRINGING THE STATE BACK IN Beginning in the early 1980s and lasting up to the present, a number of significant works have been published as a direct result of the movement aimed at refocusing attention on the state as the primary tool of comparative analysis. Earlier, an increasing number of authors had emphasised the role of the state either in specific case studies (especially for Latin American countries), or in relationship to other social and political phenomena such as revolutions or international relations.65 But most representative of the current trend is the publication in 1985 of a book under the title of Bringing the State Back In, which deals specifically with the importance of the state as the focus of analytical inquiry.66 The book is an outgrowth of research done by members of the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) newly established Research Planning Committee on States and Social Structures. The Committee, founded in 1983, was designed to “foster sustained collaborations among scholars from several disciplines who share growing interests in states as actors and as institutional structures.”67

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Broadly, there are two distinguishable groups of scholars who have in the last decade called for the need to refocus on the state. On one side are those who point to the state’s authority as the determining factor in the political life of a nation. What is important for them is the nature and composition of the state, its actors, its functions, and its ability to withstand challenges from within and from the outside. Preference is given to examining the “institutional structures” of the political system, particularly those from which power and influence flow, namely the state.68 Theda Skocpol and Eric Nordlinger are two of the more notable examples of this group of “neo-statist” scholars.69 On another side are scholars with decidedly more pronounced ideological inclinations. These are the “radical” critics of the structural-functionalist approach and its conservative underpinnings. The alternative they propose points to the dependent relationship between the Third World and the capitalist West, one which, they maintain, is most apparent in the relationship between the “centre” and the “peripheral” states. Immanuel Wallerstein and Fernando Cardoso are just two examples of a vast pool of proponents of the dependency theory. These and other dependency theorists have been around since the 1960s, but the general rediscovery of the state in the 1980s recast a more favourable light on their earlier writings.70 Dependency theorists are not usually credited with putting emphasis on the role and nature of the state. Instead, they are noted for their virulent ideological debate with modernisationists.71 This is not without justification, for some of the notable dependency theorists do minimise or overlook the importance of not just the state but of the larger domain of politics altogether in favour of economics. 72 Nevertheless, some dependentistas have paid careful attention to the state as the crucial institution through which a lopsided and unequal relationship between a “hegemonic core” and a “dependent periphery” is maintained.73 This approach has been most fully developed by Wallerstein.74 Wallerstein views an examination of the state to be pivotal to understanding the various institutions within society such as classes, ethnic and national groups, and households. These institutions are “defined by the state, through the state, in relation to the state, and in turn create the state, shape the state, and transform the state.”75 He also maintains that there exists a single “interstate” or global “capitalist world-economy” system.76 This system originally developed in sixteenth-century Europe and remains intact to this day. Within this capitalist world-system, “the state is an institution whose existence is defined by its relation to other ‘states’.”77 This relationship with other states, a relationship which like all other capitalist relations is motivated by profit incentives, determines the powers of states, their authority, and the extent of their sovereignty.

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At all historical junctures, according to Wallerstein, there has been a “power hierarchy” of states, but at no time has the hegemony of the powerful states been totally unchallenged.78 Despite Wallerstein’s arguments, the central concern of the dependency approach remains the economy rather than the state. In fact, only recently have some proponents of the dependency theory began modifying their strict reliance on the economy alone.79 The state, its functions and its changing nature, has also attracted the attention of some who are not avowed dependency theorists but whose intellectual curiosity was ignited by the approach and its traces can still be found in their writings.80 Avowed neo-statists, on the other hand, have argued their point more forcefully, if not necessarily more convincingly. They have also called for increased attention to the roles and functions of the state in relation to other societal or environmental (to use systems theory jargon) forces. To enhance the credibility of their approach, the neostatists have frequently attempted to closely link it with the “mainstream” of political inquiry.81 Nordlinger, for example, maintains that concern with “institutional explanations, problems of rule, control and order, a polity’s disjunctures, stresses, and struggles over allocational and procedural issues, and the past as it patterns the institutional present” have been longstanding preoccupations of political scientists.82 Unlike structural-functionalists, state-centred theorists do not see the political system as an entwined organism and draw analytical distinctions between the state and society. Emphasising the importance of the state, they start with the assumption that most if not all policies are imposed on society from above. Within this context, they see the state not as weak and under the influence of various social groups and classes, but rather as autonomous from pressures emanating from below.83 In cases when the interests of the state and society happen to differ, state actors have several capacities and opportunities that enable them to “forestall the emergence of preferences that diverge from the state’s”.84 The state can be defined as a collection of individuals who make public policy through bureaucratic and other governmental agencies and in turn derive their authority from them.85 These “public officials” invariably “translate their own preferences into authoritative actions”, regardless of society’s preferences, through 1 their capacity to be autonomous from society and an ability to reinforce societal convergence, deference, and indifference; 2 bringing about a shift in societal preferences so as to align them with their own preferences;

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3 freeing themselves from societal constraints; and 4 relying on the inherent powers of the state.86 Nordlinger later argued that this does not necessarily mean that the state regularly has a greater impact on society than society has on the state. “Without in any way minimizing the importance of societal actors and variables,” he wrote, “the state can advantageously be accorded analytical priority.”87 Skocpol, who was one of the main figures behind SSRC’s Research Planning Committee on States and Social Structures, has similarly called for increased attention to the role and significance of the state. States, she argues, are an integral and highly significant part of domestic and international political equations. For Skocpol, an examination of states must consider both the domestic environment over which they govern as well as the international context within which they operate.88 She claims that states not only maintain and manipulate the domestic social and political order but must also manoeuvre for survival and advantage in relation to other states.89 In their domestic and international pursuits, states must grapple with two intertwined variables: the extent of their “autonomy”, and their “capacities”. A state has autonomy when it can “formulate and pursue goals that are not simply reflective of the demands or interests of social groups, classes, or society.”90 The extent of this autonomy is not constant and may vary over time, depending on such factors as the nature of official strategies and policies and “the structural potentials” for pursuing autonomous action that a state may have at a given time.91 The ability to reach these autonomous goals is dependent on a state’s “capacity”. Simply put, state capacity refers to an ability “to implement strategies and policies”.92 Such enforcing abilities may vary according to a state’s sovereign integrity, the effectiveness of its administrative and military control, the loyalty and skill of its officials, and the amount and nature of the resources at its disposal.93 But Skocpol points to an important additional element. She maintains that states are significant because their structures, activities, and their strategies not only have intended domestic and international consequences but unintended ones as well. “States matter not simply because of the goal-oriented activities of state officials”, she argues. They matter because their organizational configurations, along with their overall patterns of activity, affect political culture, encourage some kinds of groups formation and collective political action (but not others), and make possible the raising of certain political issues (but not others).94

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The investigator needs to look “more microscopically at the ways in which the structures and activities of states unintentionally influence the formation of groups and the political capacities, ideas, and demands of various sectors of society.”95 The arguments of other neo-statists are not very different from those of Nordlinger or Skocpol. Most call for a reversal of the psychological reductionism which they consider to be inherent to systems theory.96 Instead, they argue, the state needs to be taken seriously as “a powerful, authoritative ensemble of institutions that enjoy an autonomy to advance state interests sometimes against the interests of weighty groups in society and economy.”97 Far from being an integral part of a larger whole, states by themselves perform a number of crucial functions. They have their own objectives and interests, as well as the capacity to put such objectives and interests into affect.98 They regulate, enforce, and define what is in the interests of the community and the individual, and distinguish between those interests that are legitimate and those that are not. 99 In the advanced capitalist nations of the West and in other countries with “strong” states, states often have considerable powers to regulate, penetrate, and organise society. Their functions range from generating income by imposing taxes to mustering popular support in order to reorient social order. Not all states, however, can be autonomous or sufficiently strong to survive or to function effectively, with their ability to formulate and implement goals and policies varying according to circumstances.100 The neo-statists are not, of course, without their critics. Almond and others have especially questioned the neo-statist approach on several significant conceptual and analytical points.101 Almond challenges the assertion that systems theory and structural functionalism are reductionist of the state and governmental institutions. He claims that his approach merely “recognized the processual character of politics” and examined institutions “in terms of what they actually did”.102 State-centrist theorists, on the other hand, are seen by Almond as guilty of employing concepts that are “loosely defined”. Except for Nordlinger, whose definition of state is seen by Almond as too narrow and specific, neo-statists are accused of not adequately defining many of the concepts which they frequently use. State, society, “strong and weak states”, or “strong and weak societies”— all common in the neo-statist jargon—are said to be hardly defined or conceptualised.103 “So many dimensions are conflated here”, Almond says of the neo-statist paradigm, “that they cannot expect this approach to research to be taken seriously.”104 Another observer argues that “the statists hit on a good idea…but they went too far with it.”105 Since the statist approach deals with such abstract concepts as “state” and “society”,

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the question of where the boundary of one ends and the other begins is never fully answered. Thus, the concept of “state” as a unitary, solitary reality, and as a measurable force is poorly defined.106 Some have in fact gone so far as to maintain that neo-statism is “neither a theory nor a coherent critique of one. It is simply an argument that the organization of political life makes a difference”.107

CONCLUSION Since the early 1900s, comparative politics has undergone significant changes in its focus, methodology, and arguments. It has changed from being a descriptive science, focusing almost solely on institutions and organisations, into an evolved and complex paradigm explaining the inner workings of society and later the state. Within the span of a century or so, comparative politics has discovered the centrality of the state, then society, and then the state again. Nevertheless, to maintain that the discipline has come full circle is less than completely accurate, for in the process it has drawn itself closer to and has retained some of the insights offered by psychology, sociology, international relations, and history. The debate concerning the superiority of one approach over another is far from subsiding and in fact continues to rage in scholarly journals and in books. Despite highly significant analytic and theoretical advances to the field, the dominant approaches presented here in one way or another neglect pertinent areas of analysis. The next chapter outlines the general parameters of an alternative approach that seeks to redress some of these analytical shortcomings while at the same time retaining its applicability to disparate and varying political contexts.

NOTES 1 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State”. Political Science. Vol. 37, (1989), p. 521. 2 Ibid., p. 522. See, for example, A.V.Dicey. The Law of the Constitution. (London: Macmillan, 1885). 3 Jesse S.Reeves. “Perspectives in Political Science, 1903–1928”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 23, No. 1, (February 1929), p. 1. 4 James Bryce. “The Relations of Political Science to History and to Practice”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 3, No. 1, (February 1909), p. 6. 5 George Sioussat. “Notes on Works in Political Science”. The Sewanee Review Quarterly. Vol. 15, No. 3, (July 1907), p. 372.

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6 Raymond G.Gettell. “Nature and Scope of Present Political Theory”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 18, Supplement, (February 1914), p. 48. 7 W.W.Willoughby. An Examination of the Nature of the State. (London: Macmillan, 1922), p. 14. 8 Raymond Gettell. “The Nature of Political Thought”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 17, No. 2, (May 1923), p. 206. 9 See also, George Sioussat. “Notes on Works in Political Science” for a discussion of other works published at the time, most of which dealt with the state. 10 W.W.Willoughby. An Examination of the Nature of the State, p. 134. 11 James Quayle Dealey. The Development of the State: Its Government Organization and Its Activities. (New York, NY: Silver, Burdett, & Co., 1909), p. 26. 12 Jesse Reeves. “Perspectives in Political Science, 1903–1928”. p. 10. 13 Raymond Gettell. “Nature and Scope of Present Political Theory”, p. 49. 14 See John Dickinson. “Social Order and Political Authority”, (Parts 1 and 2). American Political Science Review. Vol. 23, No. 2, (May 1929), pp. 293– 328 and Vol. 23, No. 3, (August 1929), pp. 593–632. 15 James A.Bill and Robert L.Hardgrave. Comparative Politics: The Quest for Theory. (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981), p. 2. 16 Sigmund Neumann. “Comparative Politics: A Half-Century Appraisal”. Journal of Politics. Vol. 19, (August 1957), pp. 374–5. 17 See, George Sioussat. “Notes on Works in Political Science”, pp. 374–5. For a discussion of the role of the “vote” in the United States see, Munroe Smith. “The Consent of the Governed”. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science. Vol. 15, No. 1, (October 1914), pp. 82–8. For an examination of the government of the United States see, Henry L.Stimson. “The Principle of Responsibility in the Government”. Vol. 15, No. 1, (October 1914), pp. 20–6. 18 James Bill and Robert Hardgrave. Comparative Politics, p. 5. 19 George H.Sabine, “Pluralism: A Point of View”. American Journal of Political Science. Vol. 17, No. 1, (February 1923), p. 49. See also, Ellen Deborah Ellis. “The Pluralist State”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 14, No. 3, (August 1920), pp. 393–407. 20 George Sioussat. “Notes on Works in Political Science”, pp. 373–5. 21 James Bill and Robert Hardgrave. Comparative Politics, p. 7. 22 Ibid., p. 6. 23 Sigmund Neumann. “Comparative Politics: A Half-Century Appraisal”, p. 381. 24 Ibid., p. 377. 25 See, for example, Karl Lowenstein. “Autocracy Versus Democracy in Contemporary Europe”, (Parts I and II). American Political Science Review. Vol. 29, No. 4, (August 1935), pp. 571–93, and Vol. 29, No. 5, (October 1935), pp. 755–84. 26 Leslie Lipson. “The Comparative Method in Political Studies”. The Political Quarterly. Vol. 28, No. 4, (October-December 1957), pp. 374–6. 27 John H.Herz. “Rise and Demise of the Territorial State”. World Politics. Vol. 9, No. 4, (July 1957), p. 457.

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28 Sigmund Neumann. “Comparative Politics: A Half-Century Appraisal”, pp. 379–80. 29 John Herz. “The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State”, especially pp. 489–93. 30 James Bill and Robert Hardgrave. Comparative Politics, pp. 13–15. 31 Ibid., p. 10. 32 Sigmund Neumann. “Comparative Politics: A Half-Century Appraisal”, p. 383. 33 Ervin Laszlo. The Systems View of the World. (New York, NY: George Braziller, 1972), p. 14. 34 Ronald Chilcote. Theories of Comparative Politics: The Search for a Paradigm. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1981), p. 153. 35 David Easton. A Framework for Political Analysis. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 24–5. 36 Ibid., p. 49. 37 Ibid. 38 Ronald Chilcote. Theories of Comparative Politics, p. 169. 39 Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. “Introduction”. Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell (eds) Comparative Politics Today: A World View. 5th edition, (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 4. 40 Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. Comparative Politics: System, Process, and Policy. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, & Co., 1978), p. 9. 41 Gabriel Almond. “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics”. Gabriel Almond and James Coleman (eds). The Politics of Developing Areas. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), p. 17. 42 Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. “Introduction”, pp. 11–12. 43 Gabriel Almond. “Comparative Political Systems”. Journal of Politics. Vol 18, (August 1956), p. 396. 44 Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. Comparative Politics, p. 25. 45 Gabriel Almond. “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics”, p. 11. 46 Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. “Introduction”, p. 17. 47 See, for example, the seven volumes of work on political development published in the 1960s under the auspices of research done by the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Sciences Research Council. They include, Lucian Pye, (ed.). Communications and Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Joseph LaPalombra (ed.). Bureaucracy and Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Lucian Pye and Sidney Verba (eds). Political Culture and Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); James S.Coleman (ed.). Education and Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1965); Joseph LaPalombra and Myron Weiner (eds). Political Parties and Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); and, Leonard Binder, et al. Crises and Sequences in Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971). 48 Samuel Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 360–2. 49 Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay”. World Politics. Vol. 17, No. 3, (April 1965), p. 383.

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50 Ibid., p. 407. See also, Samuel Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 78–92. 51 Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay”, p. 393. 52 Leonard Binder. “Crises of Political Development”. Leonard Binder, et al. Crises and Sequences in Political Development, p. 66. Emphasis added. 53 Ibid., p. 65. 54 Ronald Chilcote. Theories of Comparative Politics, p. 179. 55 Ibid., p. 180. 56 Ibid., p. 181. 57 Quoted in ibid. 58 Gabriel Almond. “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics”, p. 17. 59 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), especially p. 37. Although Mexican politics cannot be characterised as democratic, it is far less authoritarian, especially at the time when the study was prepared, than most other similar polities. 60 Sigmund Neumann. “Comparative Politics: A Half-Century Appraisal”, p. 382. 61 Theodore J.Lowi. “The Return of the State: Critiques”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), p. 888. 62 Sergio Fabbrini. “The Return of the State: Critiques”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), p. 894. 63 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State”, p. 527. 64 Ibid. 65 See, for example, John Dunn. Modern Revolutions: An Introduction to the Analysis of a Political Phenomenon. 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Theda Skocpol. States and Social Revolutions. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and, Alfred Stepan. State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). 66 Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds). Bringing the State Back In. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 67 Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol. “Preface”. Bringing the State Back In. p. vii. 68 Sergio Fabbrini. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 896. 69 See Eric Nordlinger. On the Autonomy of the Democratic State. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Theda Skocpol. “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research”. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol Bringing the State Back In. pp. 3–37. 70 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State”, p. 527. 71 For a review of the debate between proponents of the modernisation school and the dependency approach see, Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 35–41. 72 See especially, Andre Gunder Frank. Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil. (New York, NY: Monthly Review Press, 1967).

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73 See, for example, Michael Bratton. “Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment”. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 26, No. 3, (September 1982), pp. 333–72. 74 Immanuel Wallerstein. The Politics of the World Economy: the States, The Movements and the Civilizations. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 75 Ibid., p. 29. 76 Ibid., p. 37. 77 Ibid., p. 29. 78 Ibid., p. 30. 79 See, for example, Michael Bratton. “Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment”, and, David Collier (ed.) The New Authoritarianism in Latin America. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979). 80 Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter are two of the more notable of this group of scholars. See especially, Phillippe C.Schmitter (ed.) Military Rule in Latin America: Functions, Consequences and Perspectives. (London: Sage, 1973), and, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds). Transitions From Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). 81 Sergio Fabbrini. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 896; Eric Nordlinger. “The Return to the State: Critiques”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), p. 879. 82 Eric Nordlinger. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 897. 83 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution In: Political Science and the State”, p. 528. 84 Eric Nordlinger. On the Autonomy of the Democratic State. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981) p. 7. 85 Ibid., p. 9. 86 Ibid., p. 7. 87 Eric Nordlinger. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 884. 88 See, for example, Theda Skocpol. “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research”, p. 19. 89 Ibid., p. 8. 90 Ibid., p. 9. 91 Ibid., p. 14. 92 Ibid., p. 16. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., p. 21. 95 Ibid. 96 Theodore Lowi. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 887. 97 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State”, p. 528. 98 Ibid., p. 529. 99 Sergio Fabbrini. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, pp. 896–7. 100 John Dearlove. “Bringing the Constitution Back In: Political Science and the State”, p. 529. 101 See Gabriel Almond. “The Return to the State”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), pp. 853–74, as well as the articles

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by Theodore Lowi and Sergio Fabbrini entitled “The Return to the State: Critiques” in the same volume, in pages 885–91 and 891–8 respectively. Gabriel Almond. “The Return to the State”, pp. 855–6. Ibid., p. 869. Ibid. Theodore Lowi. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 891. Ibid. Sergio Fabbrini. “The Return to the State: Critiques”, p. 897.

Part II The comparative study of politics

2

A synthesis

As the previous chapter demonstrated, there has been considerable debate among comparativists concerning the adoption of an appropriate approach to the discipline. In many ways this debate has come to resemble the “dialogue of the deaf” of a decade earlier between modernisationists and dependency theorists.1 Each of these approaches have in their own way shed great light on previously unexplored angles, and each has deepened and enriched the level of analysis by its critique of the one before. But, as previously demonstrated, arguments over which line of inquiry best provides a method of comparison continues to rage in books, in university lecture halls, and in scholarly journals. As some of the quotations presented in the last chapter indicate, at times the debate has lost sight of the issues at hand and has degenerated into oneupmanship and name-calling. Successive generations of scholars appear to have learned little from the ones before. State-centred analyses of the earlier days drew attention to the importance of political institutions and their forms, but their insights and contributions were largely neglected by the behaviouralists. The behaviouralists pointed to the significance of social forms, only to be overlooked by neo-statists. What, then, is the comparativist to do? Which, if any, of the approaches to comparative politics is more sound as an analytical, theoretical, and methodological explication? This chapter seeks to answer these questions, not by reiterating the strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches but by proposing an alternative approach to study of comparative politics. As the following pages will argue, each of the existing approaches contributes something significant in helping further the study of the subject. Nevertheless, in their separate ways, they each ignore or overlook one or another crucial facet of comparative analysis. Here I do not attempt to devise an analytical framework that puts a definitive end to the debate. Instead, I draw on the insights 31

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The comparative study of politics

provided by the various approaches to formulate, as much as possible, a comprehensive analytical framework for comparative examination. The goal here is to present more of a synthesis in order to address the analytical paucity left by other works rather than to outline a new approach from scratch.

AN ALTERNATIVE PARADIGM The main premises of the approach laid out here are as follows: politics is neither strictly “political” nor “social”, it is both; the conduct and practice of politics is influenced by such factors as the nature and strength of existing political institutions, their democratic or dictatorial nature, their accessibility, their agendas, and the like; but also important are such non-political factors as the nature and the demands of social actors, their beliefs and their values, the institutions around which they cluster, the opportunity to use those institutions for political purposes, and so on. Comparative politics needs an analytical framework that takes into account both the political institutions as well as the social milieux within which the art of politics takes place. Nations assume their particular characteristics not just because of the political institutions that govern over them but also because of the forces and institutions which exist at the social level. The interaction between the political and the social domains forms the crux of politics. There is a clear and undeniable distinction between “state” and “society”; yet these two phenomena are inextricably linked to one another. State is the source from which all “official” political power emanates. It rules over society. Society, on the other hand, is comprised of a collectivity of people who are under the same form of political control and who share common modes of beliefs and behaviour across long spans of time and space.2 Both state and society are made up of and can be conceptualised as being two different sets of “institutions”. State institutions are structured, perform specific functions, have defined agendas, and their initiatives frequently result in tangible consequences. Their very existence and functions are specifically designed for the exercise of power over the larger society. Social institutions, however, are largely amorphous and without clearly defined structural forms. They may and in fact often do have goals, but those goals do not necessarily entail the exercise of power. The functions they perform are often intangible, though their consequences are not necessarily any less significant than those performed by state institutions. Social institutions in one way or another reinforce group identity and solidarity, providing the web of

A synthesis

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bonds which, taken together, make up society. What differs from one nation to another, and what must thus be the concern of the comparativist, is the manner and the nature in which the interaction between state institutions and social institutions varies across national boundaries. The assumption that state and society are separate from each other rather than being entwined parts of a holistic system, as structuralfunctionalists maintain, is a crucial point of departure to the approach proposed here. It is an inescapable fact that within any community of people, whether a tribe or a nation, there are some who for one reason or another are in control of resources through which they can effect the behaviour, beliefs, and lives of others. Even in the most egalitarian settings, there are individuals or groups of individuals who stand out because of certain characteristics which distinguish them from others. In primitive societies such characteristics might have been bravery, physical stature, or a more gifted intellect. In the modern nation-state, these distinguishing characteristics tend to fall into three broad categories. First, there are those who control or have access to greater or more profitable economic resources. These economic resources are often interspersed between the state and society, and the degree of access of one (the state’s or society’s) as opposed to another depends on specific circumstances, abilities, and goals. Some states, particularly those inspired by Marxist doctrines, may desire to have a monopoly over all economic resources and activities, while others may seek to minimise their ability to control or to even regulate economic transactions. There are also those who are in charge of or have access to political resources. These are public officials and government functionaries who, through the resources available to them, can regulate the behaviour of others, extract resources from them, and enforce their will on them. Collectively, these officials and the mechanisms through which they perform their functions form the state. Lastly, there are people who are in charge of defining and legitimating social resources. These social resources are the intangibles for which people in a collectivity or in groups long and which provide for them different means of identity. They include such phenomena as religion, values, and the various tenets of culture. The people who cluster around these social resources, and thus claim a common sense of identity, together form the society. Politics involves the give and take and the exercise of power which goes on within the state and within society. But its scope and dimension extends further than that. Often overlooked by scholars, the dynamic nexuses between state and society are equally important, and in some instances are in fact more dominant, in determining the ultimate

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character and intrinsic nature of politics. Politics is, in brief, comprised of complex and changeable patterns of interaction between state and society. The exact nature and course of these interactions depend on the specific circumstances that may prevail in a given context, including the availability and the competition over valued economic, political, and social resources. These patterns of state-society interaction may change over time, as may the composition of the resources which both state and society prize, the perceived or actual value of those resources, or the individuals who control them. There is, nevertheless, a certain degree of continuity and resilience in the ways that states and societies interact with one another over time. This interaction between state and society constitutes the pivotal point of focus through which comparative analysis can be conducted. Central to the essence of comparative analysis must be the study of such phenomena as the emergence and subsequent evolution of state-society interactions, the resilience or changeableness of these interactions, their solidity or fluidity, their conflictual or consensual nature, their institutional bases and their valuative nexuses, and their ideological underpinnings. Within any given polity, these interactions are almost invariably highly complex, multidimensional, and by nature differ from one national context to another. There are, nevertheless, broad similarities and parallels which may be found in state-society interactions across national boundaries and in select groups of countries. It is through their respective institutions that a state and society interact. These institutions may vary in their structures, their names, and in their constituent components from one nation to another. Furthermore, institutions designated as similar in different countries may perform diametrically opposed functions. The institution of the political executive in one country (belonging to the state), for example, may facilitate open political participation for those interested in doing so, whereas the same institution in another country may do everything possible to prevent any type of political participation from taking place. Social institutions such as the family or religion may also play varying roles in differing national contexts. What is important is that even in different national settings, state and social institutions constitute and provide the actual forums and the tools through which state-society interaction is made possible—an interaction which is, by nature, different from one polity to another.3 Regardless of their names and other designations, therefore, the various relationships that state and social institution have with one another, and the overall context within which those interactions take place, are crucial to understanding politics.

A synthesis

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State The functions of the state, or more specifically of state institutions, can be classified into four broad yet intertwined categories. They include regulation, extraction, enforcement, and the setting of the public agenda.4 To begin with, states regulate public behaviour and thus modify the social setting, both intentionally and unintentionally. Every state has a set of goals and agendas. Regardless of what these agendas may be, whether economic, social, or political, their pursuit requires that the state regulate some types of public behaviour, restrict or ban others altogether, and encourage still others. These functions of the state directly affect the ways in which certain social groups go about their daily lives. Still other groups may be indirectly and inadvertently affected and their lives consequently altered, even if the ensuing alterations are only minimal and their affects not readily apparent. An example would be the launching of a road construction project by the state. The specific intent behind the construction of the road may be to facilitate better lines of transportation and communication to the marketplace for farmers and other agrarian producers. But the construction of the road may have several unintended results as well. Other social groups such as merchants and migrant labourers may find the new road beneficial for their own economic purposes. The road may also facilitate travel for other members of the community, or it may make the once-unknown road banditry a common type of criminal activity. Roadside vendors and guest-houses may prosper economically and thus change their social and cultural outlook. The road can also make it easier for the government’s tax collectors or its rural development officials to visit the peripheral areas, thus touching the lives of those who might not otherwise have been affected. This example demonstrates how one specific regulative act (the building of a road designed to influence the lives of farmers) can potentially have numerous other unintended consequences as well. Another function that states perform is to extract resources from the larger society. This may be in the form of collecting tax revenues or other types of material goods, or calling on the services and expertise of social actors for furthering state goals. Again, resource extraction by the state impacts on society and does so both directly and indirectly. Public service by the head of a household, for example, influences not only his or her life but also those of other family members as well. Similarly, the extractive relationship that state has with the larger society involves more than just extraction (in terms of employment) and exploitation (in terms of natural resources). The relationship

36


involves a complex web of interactions, some directly between the state and social actors and some indirectly. Certain relationships may also evolve among social actors themselves based on their respective dealings with the state. Compulsory education laws, for example, dramatically alter traditional patterns of interaction between educational establishments (not just elementary schools but adult literacy and vocational training centres as well) and various members of society (children, adults seeking to overcome illiteracy or acquire more skilled training, and their respective teachers). Closely related to the extractive functions of state are those of enforcement. States often extract goods and services in order to more effectively enforce their agendas. This in turn points to the interpretive functions of the state. States clarify and give expression to the “public agenda”. The manner of enforcement and the types of institutions involved in enforcing state agendas depend on the nature of the agendas involved, the resources available to the state, the targets of those agendas, and the overall nature of the relationship that exists between state and society. State agendas may be reflective of popular sentiments and thus easily enforceable. At times, however, states may set and define agendas for the public regardless of their interests or demands. Nondemocratic governments frequently herald and pursue their agendas under such euphemistic banners as the “people’s will” and the like. If the prevailing social circumstances prompt popular resistance to the state’s agendas, then enforcing these contentious agendas would depend on the state’s resolve and on the strength and the reliability of the resources at its disposal. It is important to realise that states function not just in relation to the society over which they rule but also in relation to other states. States are not alone; they operate in an international context inundated with other states. In addition to the domestic environment, a considerable amount of state energies are directed towards dealing with other states. These international functions of the state are parallel to the domestic ones. States have international agendas just as they do domestic ones. They extract goods and services from domestic resources and at times even from international ones (e.g. the relationship between a powerful country and its satellites) in order to enforce their own agendas. In so far as agendas are concerned, states try to pursue policies which enhance their position vis-à-vis other states. In so doing, they regulate (or at least attempt to regulate) the conduct of other states as well as those of their own citizens. Almost every state, for example, imposes heavy penalties on those accused of compromising “national security”. Furthermore, states may and do

A synthesis

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influence the behaviour of other states and in turn get influenced by them. International influences on states are reciprocal. The institutions through which states interact with one another and with their own societies are numerous and varied. Invariably, these state institutions take the form of either decision-making bodies, belong to the bureaucracy, or are part of the military and the police force. The institutions within the state that make decisions have historically been divided into three broad categories of the executive, the legislature, and the judiciary. 5 Whether dictatorial or democratic, made up of a presidency or a monarchy, comprising a parliament that is active or one that is politically marginal, or having a meaningful judiciary or only a nominal one, the decision-making institutions of state principally define and set the public agenda. In the international arena, they represent and defend the state among other states, while domestically they claim (rightly or wrongly) to stand for the good of the public. These institutions represent the highest echelons of the state and are often endowed with much of the political power that is exercised. By themselves, however, these institutions are not capable of enforcement. There are instances where those state institutions that are specifically designed to implement and to enforce, most notably the military, assume decision-making functions also and essentially run the state. But this is the case only in military-based regimes. To enforce and implement their decisions and the agendas they set, non-military states rely on bureaucracies as well as on coercive institutions, namely the civil service, the police, and the armed forces. The military maintain domestic order and defend against incursion by other states. The bureaucracy, meanwhile, implements laws and regulations, regulates public behaviour, and extracts goods and services from society and from other available resources. State institutions provide the pivotal links between those in positions of power and authority and the rest of society. They are the principal mechanisms through which the state communicates with society. These institutions are often shaped and their functions are guided by the ideological orientations and the biases of those who are in their control. While their powers and their specific roles vary within each political system, they all perform essentially the same functions across the board. The effectiveness of these institutions and how they go about performing their functions depend upon their resources, their goals, and their general relationship with society. It is through these institutions that political actors engage in the act of government, through which the art of politics is played out. Providing the structural buttresses of the political system, they are central to its political

38


stability or vulnerability. State institutions, and with them those in positions of power, face the possibility of collapse and overthrow under three broad circumstances: i) when they are weak and vulnerable due to internal or external pressures; ii) in instances when they do not have legitimacy within society at large or at least among politically relevant segments of it; and iii) when they are unable to withstand challenges from collective or individual groups within society.6 But social circumstances and conditions are equally as important. Dynamics within society can significantly influence not just the viability of states but the general manner of their conduct and their performance as well. The central task of state institutions is to strike some sort of working arrangement with society, be that arrangement coercive or consensual. This they cannot possibly do without regard to existing characteristics within society, particularly in reference to the social institutions around which much of the life and identity of social actors revolve. It is thus important to focus attention on not just the state and its institutions but also on society and the institutions attached to it. Society While state institutions are of crucial importance in influencing politics, it is largely through their interactions with social institutions that the exact nature of political life and the “how” and “why” of politics is determined. Social institutions, as mentioned earlier, do not have the structural manifestations that state institutions do. They are, rather, intangible phenomena that endow a community of people with a collective sense of identity. This collective sense of identity may revolve around a number of diverse factors. A common set of beliefs or a common ideology, shared experiences and sentiments, common rituals, shared ethnic lineage, a common attachment to a geographic area, or similar racial characteristics can all serve as seeds around which social institutions grow and evolve. Within any one society at a given time, there may be several social institutions in existence simultaneously, often overlapping and at times reinforcing each other. Because they are sources of collective identity, social institutions may and in fact often do vary from one nation to another. A socially based phenomenon that may be highly consequential in one society, may be only minimally relevant in another society, and completely nonexistent in still others. In a racially diverse society for instance, each race may serve as a separate and pivotal social institution in itself. Such may not necessarily be the case in another society—a racially

A synthesis

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homogeneous one, for example—in which the institution of race may play only a muted role. Nevertheless, some of the social institutions that are most commonly found in different societies, albeit with varying degrees of influence, include family and kinship, tribe, religion, race, ethnicity, and various forms of secular ideology, of which nationalism is the most prevalent. At their core, social institutions may be highly abstract. But their consequences both for social actors and for the state are very real. Most religions, for example, are based on highly abstract notions that cannot necessarily be scientifically proven or explained. But in most societies religion is a powerful social institution. It has considerable and very real consequences for society at large and for those political actors attempting to govern it. Nationalism and tribal allegiances are similarly intangible in nature but have very pronounced consequences. Within a given society, the importance of one particular social institution may vary with time. Social institutions are passed on to and are perpetuated by successive generations. In the process, they are invariably modified. Nationalism may have very different meanings for war veterans and for their children and grandchildren who live in peace. Religion can be viewed differently by those living in periods of uncertainty as opposed to tranquillity. Racial identity has differing levels of significance for those living in racially tense times as opposed to periods of racial harmony. The same holds true for other social institutions such as the family and kinship, ethnicity, or particular sets of values. Consequently, the political significance of social institutions, and the context within which they interact with state institutions and with political actors, vary over time. A particular social institution that is highly politically significant at one time may be politically marginal at another. State institutions may find a social institution that was once an obstacle to their functions no longer an impediment but even perhaps a source of expediency. Changes and alterations within one institution are also bound to affect the way that the institutions from the other side deal with it. If religion becomes politically oppositional, then state institutions must modify themselves accordingly in order to contain the ensuing threat. If a tribe stops being supportive of a regime and launches a secessionist movement instead, state institutions alter their functions in order to meet the challenge. When racial tensions flare up, the state strengthens its regulative and enforcing capacities to maintain order. But the flow of changeable influences between state and society is not only bottom-up, from society to state, and may occur in the opposite direction. Particular policies pursued by states may weaken, placate, antagonise, or strengthen specific social institutions. State agendas may

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call for the total abolition of certain social institutions that are political nuisances—religion or ethnicity, for example—and the encouragement of others which support specific goals (such as nationalism). Political goals and initiatives that are carried out by state institutions are as instrumental in affecting the social order as are the workings of social institutions in influencing the political environment. State-society nexus The relationship between state and society, or more accurately between their respective institutions, is often part of a recognisable and regularised pattern of interaction. At least while there are no changes in the functions and the relevance of the institutions involved, there is a more or less clear pattern in the ways that state and society interact with one another. At any given time, state and social institutions perform specific functions in relation to each other. State initiatives that influence society are all defined by the state’s agendas, its abilities, and the general prevailing political environment. Barring sudden and unexpected changes, a state’s pattern of conduct in relation to society can be safely predicted based on knowledge of its institutions and their abilities and agendas. The manner in which societies interact with states, meanwhile, can be discerned through an understanding of the prevailing political culture. Political culture is “all the publicly common ways” of relating to the political establishment.7 It is that aspect of the popular culture that deals with politics, or, put differently, it is the collective perceptions that people have of politics.8 Political culture defines the general boundaries within which society at large and social institutions in particular relate to politics. But the connections between political culture and social institutions do not end here. It is through social institutions, and often because of them, that specific traits within the political culture develop. Social institutions are mechanisms for collective identity, and part of that identity is formed in relation to existing political circumstances. Thus, social institutions and political culture are often intricately intertwined. Equally important are the ways in which the expression of political culture is frequently facilitated through social institutions. Such phenomena as religion, race, ethnicity, kinship, and nationalism, all of which involve collectivities of people and their sentiments, provide excellent opportunities through which people can make their political views and perceptions known. Similar to the relevance and functions of states and social institutions, political culture also changes over time. But so long as the major tenets of political culture remain constant and predictable, so does the overall manner in which society relates to state.

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CONCLUSION Comparative politics needs to examine the forces at work both within society as well as within the state, and, more importantly, the resulting interrelationship between them. Emphasis on the state alone overlooks the importance of social dynamics and their potential consequences on politics. In the opposite direction, viewing politics in terms of the workings of a holistic system (in the structural-functionalist sense) undermines the significance of independent and autonomous actions by those in positions of political power, such as the formulation and enforcement of agendas. While social or political dynamics may be singularly important in particular cases, it is their interaction with one another and their mutual exertion of countervailing pressures which form the core and essence of politics. All states and societies have institutions that are attached to them, and all state and social institutions interact and result in politics. These are phenomena that are universal to all political and social settings and can thus be comparatively applied to seemingly different cases. More importantly, it is in these very interactions and in the workings of social and political institutions that a thorough understanding of a nation’s political life—one which does not neglect crucially relevant but non-political forces—can be reached. It is to the elaboration of this theme that the next chapter turns.

NOTES 1 2 3

4 5

Michael Bratton. “Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment”. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 26, No. 3, (September 1982), p. 333. Anthony Giddens. Sociology: A Brief but Critical Introduction. (London: Macmillan, 1982), p. 10. Almond discusses the “universality of the political functions” in “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics”. Gabriel Almond and James Coleman (eds). The Politics of Developing Areas. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), pp. 12–25. Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. Comparative Politics: System, Process, and Policy. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 12. Put differently, the state is made up of “a set of institutions invested with the authority to make binding decisions for people and organizations juridically located in a particular territory and to implement these decisions using, if necessary, force”. Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Peter Evans. “The State and Economic Transformation: Toward an Analysis of the Conditions Underlying Effective Intervention”. Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol (eds). Bringing the State Back In. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 46–7.

42 6 7 8

The comparative study of politics For a treatment of the role of state in revolutionary eruption see Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 11–26 Stephen Chilton. “Defining Political Culture”. Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 41, No. 3, (September 1988), p. 427. For more on political culture see Chapter 4.

3

State and social institutions

A major theme of this book is its definition of politics as events occurring within the state, and within society, as well as between them. It is, by and large, this interaction between the two plains that has escaped the careful attention of most scholars, with much of the emphasis having been put on either the state or the society and rarely on the nexus connecting them. There are two determining characteristics to both the functions of states and societies and to the nature of the interaction between them. First, as the previous chapter pointed out, both states and societies are made up of institutions that serve as their building blocks and constituent components. It is through these institutions that the interaction between state and society is made possible. Thus, the role of state and social institutions is pivotal in determining the very nature of the political process. Equally crucial, however, is the role of political culture, which provides the overall normative context within which this interaction takes place. This chapter examines the role and significance of state and social institutions, and political culture is analysed in Chapter 4. Together, political culture and state and society’s institutions determine the politics of a nation within itself and serve as highly useful analytical tools for comparative study.

STATE INSTITUTIONS Every state is comprised of a variety of institutions through which its agendas are determined and implemented. From the conduct of international relations to dealing with domestic forces within society, from implementing laws and regulations to controlling or indirectly influencing the economy, states perform a spectacularly wide range of functions. At the risk of redundancy, it may be worth reiterating here 43

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some of the main characteristics of states laid out earlier. State may be defined as “the source from which all official power emanates”, power, that is, which is exerted in relationship to society. Regardless of the ideological lenses of its individual leaders or the overall premises on which their rule is based (i.e. the regime), all states basically perform the universal function of exerting control and power over society. What varies is the nature of the relationship that states and societies establish with one another. States also operate internationally, exerting power and in turn being influenced by other states and by multi-national, non-state agencies such as private companies and various international organisations. This relationship with society and with other states or non-state agencies is carried out through a plethora of specialised institutions, each of which, depending on the structural complexity of the state, performs one or a number of specific tasks. This chapter examines states and their component institutions in comparative perspective and analyses the nature and the causes of the diversity which marks their relations with society. Before doing so, however, it is important to examine the very processes through which state institutions are initially established, i.e. political institutionalisation, as well as the processes through which they grow in strength and complexity, i.e. political development. Political institutionalisation and development are the logical complements of one another. The former occurs first and, at some point, it may be followed by the latter. A sharp and clear distinction needs to be drawn between political institutionalisation and political development. Admittedly, the terms used to denote the phenomena for which they stand are somewhat arbitrary and have at times been used interchangeably, although the phenomena themselves are quite different. Political institutionalisation must take place in order for political development to occur. However, political development does not necessarily occur simply because there has been political institutionalisation. The importance of this distinction extends to more than a choice of words or concern with jargon. Despite many scholarly inferences to the contrary,1 the two phenomena are actually different. Whereas political development carries with it a normative connotation, as will shortly be discussed, institutionalisation does not. Institutionalisation At its core, political institutionalisation is the most fundamental stage of the state-building process, referring to the “effective establishment of governmental authority over society through especially created political


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structures and organs.”2 It involves nothing more than attempts by the state to give institutional resonance to its exercise of power. In Huntington’s words, institutionalisation “is the process by which organizations and procedures acquire value and stability.”3 It involves neither democracy nor any other less coercive political system, nor any other type of rule which may somehow be considered as normatively better. This normative quality is a characteristic of politically developed rather than institutionalised states. Political institutionalisation is merely the establishment of a state institutionally. I have elsewhere elaborated on the phenomenon thus: institutionalisation needs to be seen as precisely what it stands for: the penetration, both objectively as well as subjectively, of society by existing political institutions. The degree to which a particular system is institutionalised depends not on the extent to which it corresponds to democratic rules and practices but on its success in penetrating the various levels of society, hence resulting in popular compliance with the body politic, whether voluntarily or through an actual or perceived threat of coercion. Thus institutionalisation involves more than the mere mechanical penetration of society by various governmental organs and institutions. It carries with it an implied emotional and ideological acceptance, whether forced or voluntary, of the credibility of institutions which emanate political power.4 Political institutionalisation occurs on two levels: within the state itself, and in relation to society. Prior to establishing and defining the institutional venues through which state-society interaction takes place, the state must outline for itself the norms and principles upon which it will operate both internally and with society. In this sense, political institutionalisation signifies the routinisation of certain political procedures and the prevalence, whether due to precedents or to legal prescriptions, of certain principles over others among the political actors themselves. The state develops a set of “rules of the game”, a code of conduct which may be implicit in its behaviour or may be explicitly spelled out in a constitution or in other official documents of the same sort. Once this aspect of political institutionalisation is complete, the state can then go about establishing actual institutional nexuses with society. What these institutional nexuses may be, their precise powers and influence, and the open or repressive nature of their relationship with society is in no way predetermined and varies from one particular case to another. These institutions may be legislatures designed to represent freely or to manipulate and deceive, bureaucracies designed to control

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and stifle or to ensure the protection of rights, police forces designed to suffocate or to defend liberty. They may have different names, and some institutions found in one state may not even exist in another. Whatever they may be, they are all institutions which through the process of institutionalisation bring about a regular flow of interaction with society or, more specifically, with certain strata and institutions within society. A politically institutionalised state may be non-democratic or democratic; it is not necessarily either one or the other by definition. Similarly, a state that is considered to be more institutionalised as compared to others simply has had greater success in formulating guiding principles and codes of conduct within itself and in establishing and maintaining institutional links with society. In its crudest form, political institutionalisation is synonymous with the political efficacy of the state. Development Political development, however, is something quite different. On a purely organisational and structural level, there is little difference between a politically institutionalised and a politically developed state. Both have a plethora of highly specialised institutions whose functions are central to the continued viability of the state. This is the important contribution which scholars in the 1960s and the 1970s made to enhancing our understanding of both political institutionalisation and political development. To the likes of Binder, 5 Coleman, 6 and Huntington,7 political development revolved around the institutional characteristics and capabilities of the state. The linchpin to the concept for these and most other authors was the capacity of the state to satisfy socially generated demands for increased political participation and mobilisation. “Modernization means mass mobilization”, Huntington wrote, “mass mobilization means increased political participation; and increased participation is the key element of political development.”8 Political development was thus seen as the process of “admitting all groups and interests, including newly recognized interests and new generations, into full political participation without disrupting the efficient working of the political system and without limiting the ability of the system to choose and pursue policy goals.”9 In this sense, political development was perceived as a multifaceted process, a “syndrome”.10 This syndrome involved not just the organisational differentiation of the state or its capacity to integrate, respond, and adapt, but also to ensure the equality of its citizens.11 What grows in political development is power, both within the state and among the various strata of society. Political development entails the distribution of power between state and


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society, and within society, while the stability of the state is kept intact.12 Although these scholars carefully avoid taking their argument to its logical conclusion, their definition of political development comes extremely close to that of democracy. Despite their significant contributions, these institutional definitions of political development are seriously wanting. In the sense discussed above, political development is seen as little more than an equalising process of political institutionalisation, whereby the state offers the institutional means through which popular demands for political participation can be satisfied. In its most simplistic form, political development is political institutionalisation with a taint of democracy. That may indeed be the case in certain circumstances, but it is not necessarily the case all the time. A clear analytical distinction must be drawn between political development and democracy. Political development may eventually result in a democratic polity, but the two are not necessarily synonymous. The intricate social and political dynamics that underlie a democratic polity will be outlined in Parts III and IV. Here I make the simple assertion that democracy is political development and more, involving not only the democratic institutionalisation of the state but also the socio-cultural determination of maintaining it, that is, what contemporary scholarship has come to label as “civil society”. What political development does entail is increasing the strength of normative and valuative bonds with society, bonds which may or may not be democratic.13 Central to this concept of political development is the role of political culture, that intangible nexus which serves as a gauge of the social and cultural resonance and legitimacy of the state. Political development brings about a stronger state, not necessarily due to the strength of various institutions, although that certainly is important, but because of the strength of the cultural and normative bonds between state and society. A politically developed state is one which is normatively backed by a supportive political culture, a support which is not nominal but substantive, not manipulated or coerced, but voluntary.14 The distinction between political development and political institutionalisation is revealing. Whereas political institutionalisation is the process whereby state structures and procedures are strengthened and solidified, political development is the process whereby those structures and procedures are normatively endorsed and accepted by the people. Political development is thus intricately entwined with the adoption and routinisation of norms and values expounded by the state into the political culture. In the sense defined here, then, political development has much to do with the way society perceives the state and the degree of normative

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support it generates for the state, or more specifically its agendas and leaders, its rules and premises, and its institutions and structures. Political development, therefore, points to the strength and long-term viability of the whole regime rather than just the state. In addition to ensuring the effectiveness of organisations and structures, which is the responsibility of the state, political development necessitates that there be genuine social support and valuative identification with the body politic. What is necessary is a normative and emotional fusion linking society and state together. This emotional fusion between society and the state is strongest in democracies, in which society has a vested interest in the state’s activities, its composition, and its policies. In democratic states there are also well-evolved and comparatively effective institutions which are pivotal to the maintenance and viability of the state. These states are, therefore, highly developed politically. It is, however, theoretically possible and empirically probable for a nondemocratic state, particularly those whose legitimacy rests on personal charisma or other inclusionary means, to foster strong emotional ties with society without being democratic. This is particularly true of postrevolutionary states, in which state-society relations are marked by strong emotional undercurrents between the revolutionary leadership and the popular masses. Meanwhile, in other overwhelmingly “conservative” countries, the most notable of which include Saudi Arabia and other sheikhdoms in the Persian Gulf (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, and Oman), the relative strength and longevity of the regimes is underpinned by neither democracy nor charisma or any other means of political inclusion. The source of the regime’s strength in such cases lies instead in the political cultures of these countries which, notwithstanding their individual and unique characteristics, are overwhelmingly supportive of the political establishments in existence.15 Political development is possible without democracy. In fact, political development has no uniform direction or pattern, its most important determinant being the measure of support and popular identification which it enjoys among the politically relevant strata of society.16 States, whatever their individual characteristics may be, have in common a series of characteristics and certain phenomena which they may or may not undergo. All states are comprised of institutions and component structures, all structures need some institutionalisation in order to function viably, and, despite surface appearances, states remain essentially weak unless they undergo political development, which is defined here as the measure of the strength of the regime rather than just the state. As the discussion on political development just illustrated,


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however, even attempts at focusing on the state alone necessitate that forces and nuances within society also be taken into account. At any rate, politics by definition involves far more than the mere study of the ordinarily political. The state itself, the manner and nature of the state’s interactions with society, the mutual flow of influence between state and society, the means and mechanisms through which state-society interactions take place, and the changeableness of these linkages all form the crux of political analysis. Thus, an adequate understanding of politics cannot be attained without reference to society, or, more accurately, without examining the components and functions which, in totality, make up society. Society, it was earlier argued, is comprised of a series of “institutions”. The following section examines these social institutions and their relationships with the state, which is itself comprised of a variety of institutions. Such an examination necessarily entails an in-depth analysis of political culture as well, for political culture provides the contextual framework within which state-society interactions occur. Societies and political cultures are each unique in their subtle nuances as embedded in their respective historical and national experiences, their cultural values, and in other similarly unique characteristics. Nevertheless, as the following chapters will argue, it is possible to discern broad similarities between the various social and cultural milieux of industrialised democracies, the newly democratising polities of Latin America and Eastern Europe, and the remaining nondemocratic systems found in the Third World. Before comparing examining each of these three categories, however, the phenomena of social institutions and political culture need to be more fully elaborated upon.

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Similar to states, societies may be conceptualised in terms of their composition by various institutions. Unlike state institutions, however, which are more rigidly defined in their structural characteristics and their specific functions, social institutions are more loosely structured and perform their functions more subtly. Despite these differences, social institutions are, nevertheless the society’s counterparts to the institutions which comprise the state. Conceptualising societies in terms of clusters of social institutions is nothing new and has been part of a long tradition of sociological analysis.17 A few noted sociologists— Talcott Parsons and Anthony Giddens, to name just two—have even gone so far as to assert that “institutions are by definition the most

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enduring features of social life.”18 Yet despite its repeated utilisation by a variety of scholars, or perhaps because of it, little consensus has developed over the concept’s precise definition. At the most elementary level, the majority have perceived of social institutions as “the basic focus of social organization, common to all societies and dealing with some of the basic universal problems of ordered social life.”19 In this sense, social institutions—be they the institutions of family and kinship, education, economics, politics, culture, race, or other means of social stratification—are seen as means through which “patterns of behaviour” are regulated. 20 They constitute the “social matrix” within which members of society acquire their values and, consequently, aspects of these institutions are reflected in their personalities.21 Institutions, it is widely agreed, refer to recurring or persisting patterns of behaviour and interaction. Something that has become regularised is generally considered to have become “institutionalised”. Thus, social institutions provide general methodical and valuative blueprints according to which societies behave and function, especially at “the collective level”. They are, as some maintain, “a complex system of attitudes, norms, beliefs, and roles outlining what should occur to solve a societal problem.”22 Other scholars, while concurring with these general premises, emphasise the more restrictive attributes of institutions, perceiving them as mechanisms through which human behaviour is patterned and controlled.23 Social institutions clearly do exert considerable influence over the values, orientations, and the general behaviour of members of society. They provide the contours and the overall guidelines through which and because of which certain social norms emerge and in turn evolve. As Parsons observed some time ago, a society’s institutions are comprised of “a complex of patterned elements in role-expectations which may apply to an indefinite number of collectivities.”24 Yet an extremely fine analytical distinction concerning the precise nature of social institutions needs to be made. When discussing social institutions it is important to distinguish between those institutions that have primarily emerged out of and revolve around common values and shared orientations (for example, such institutions as money and property), as opposed to those which involve organisations and other forms of institutional collectivities, regardless of how amorphous and formless they may be.25 These different types of social institutions serve quite different functions. In the sense of collectivities and organisations, social institutions are invariably comprised of groups of members (e.g. family, church, etc.) who together hold certain valuative orientations and, as a collective group or as individual members of a collective group, interact among themselves, with


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other social groups, and with the state. Normative social institutions, on the other hand, do not in themselves constitute segments or groups within society. Rather, they form those regulative values which govern and influence interactions among social groups and between them and the state. These are “norms that cohere around a relatively distinct and socially important complex of values.”26 The focus in this book is on those social institutions that have an organisational or collective element. Without borrowing too heavily from the structural-functionalists, of whom Parsons is one of the most notable, social institutions can be seen as amorphous structures that are comprised of groups of people brought together by a series of bonds and commonalities. These institutions govern and legitimise the norms and values of their constituent members.27 The connection between social institutions and groups or segments within society is an intricate one. In the sense employed here, social institutions are made up of groups and segments that have certain bonds and ties in common. However, in itself, not every group of individuals is an institution. A group may be defined as “any collection of social beings who enter into distinctive social relationships with one another.”28 Institutions, on the other hand, entail “established forms or conditions of procedures characteristic of group activity.”29 Thus, members of a tribe or an ethnic population, a family, a religious sect, and other similar groups, all of whose orientations and behaviour are shaped and influenced by virtue of their membership within that collectivity, belong to their respective institutions. Social institutions provide the general structural and normative context within which members of that institution, whether individually or in a group, formulate their thoughts and values, interrelate with one another and with others in society, and interact with the state. It is a “clustering” of these social institutions which, taken together, form the structural basis of society, providing among their members a common sense of identity.30 Several important analytical questions arise and need to be answered. Exactly what types and categories of social institutions are there? How and why are they formed? What roles and functions do they play? What is their relationship to individual behaviour and independent initiative? And, in so far as the focus of this book is concerned, how and why do they interact with institutions within the state? The precise nature of social institutions and the broad categories which they form depend directly upon the specific historical and actual circumstances that may exist within a given society. Institutions revolve around those social phenomena that bestow a group of people with a common sense of identity, and, through time and experience, form the general contours of that group’s orientations and activities. There are, consequently, some

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institutions which can be universally found in all societies—those of the family and religion being the most notable—while certain other institutions may be found only in other types of societies. In certain instances, even if a specific social institution exists in form, it may not be as consequential to the overall life and conduct of society as the same institution may be in another society. Tribal and ethnic institutions, for example, form a pivotal and inseparable part of African and to a lesser extent Middle Eastern societies. An adequate understanding of these societies cannot possibly be attained without considering the role that tribal and ethnic institutions play in them. But it would be almost entirely meaningless to speak of the defining social and political roles of tribal and ethnic institutions in Western liberal democracies, for example. Each society needs to be examined individually to see what institutions it is comprised of, the specific functions they perform, and how important they are to the society’s overall life and its conduct. Nevertheless, it is not impossible to discern broad typologies of institutions (as the following sections attempt to do) which are most commonly found in societies that share together some similarities in their historical evolution, their normative values, and in their prevailing predicaments. To begin with, there are certain “universal” social institutions which can be found in all societies. They include family and kinship, religion, and education.31 There are other institutions that may be uniquely important to specific societies. Most notably, in countries where democratic political systems have not taken root and thus the divide between social and political institutions is much more clearly demarcated, the social institutions which revolve around tribal, racial, and ethnic identities often play a central role in giving direction to the social and political life of the country. Lastly, there are social institutions that are not innate to social organisation but are rather outgrowths of particular socio-political contexts, the most exemplary of them being political parties and other socially based movements. These types of social institutions are unique to liberal democracies. In societies in which democratic systems have evolved and are in operation, various socially based, formal institutions such as political parties or issuespecific movements (e.g. environmental or women’s rights groups) can potentially come to constitute important, though at times small, social institutions. These are institutions that transcend the domains of politics and society, serving as overlapping linkages between state and society, being at one and the same time both political and social institutions. The initial development and the evolution of social institutions directly depend upon those phenomena which bestow a group of people with a sense of collective identity and a common set of values and


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norms. Social institutions, therefore, can evolve around whatever factors whose attached values a group of individuals, for one reason or another, wish to maintain and perpetuate. Three basic, interrelated phenomena combine in order to make up a social institution: a group of people, all of whom are endowed with a sense of common identity, and who share and are bound together by certain norms and values. Thus, at any given point in the life of any society, a social institution may be in the offing. Some institutions may take longer to form as compared to others. Family institutions, for example, are formed almost constantly in all societies. Other institutions whose scope is wider and membership more disparate, such as ethnic or religious institutions, may be formed with less rapidity and take considerably longer to mature. Nevertheless, given the appropriate ingredients and circumstances, there should be no impediments to the emergence of a social institution. The cores around which social institutions evolve may be primordial in scope (the family or the tribe), or encompass a broader nucleus that espouses a specific set of values and thus fosters a collective sense of identity (religion, political parties, educational establishments, and the like). Most social institutions can become hallowed with time and their durability and persistence increases along with what may be called “time-space stretch”. 32 But mere historical longevity is no guarantee as to the viability of a particular social institution. There may be circumstances, both social and otherwise, which may impede or strengthen the viability of an institution. A political establishment, for example, may be bent on controlling or even destroying the institution of religion (as in the former Soviet Union), and that can significantly influence the fortunes of that institution as a whole and its individual members in particular. The very existence of education as a social institution (as opposed to an auxiliary of the regime) is also directly dependent upon the policies of the state and the measure of independent autonomy which educational establishments enjoy. What is important is to examine the circumstances that allow some institutions to continue and flourish, and do so in a certain manner and at specific periods, as opposed to other institutions whose importance and viability may be subsiding or even diminishing. Another important attribute of institutions that needs to be considered is the degree and nature of the influence they exert on the behaviour and actions of their constituent members. Sociologists have long debated over the constraints, or lack thereof, which social institutions impose on the norms and activities of their individual members.33 By definition, institutions provide broad guidelines for thought and action for their members: most members of the same ethnic group have the same allegiances and loyalties; adherents of a religion generally hold the same

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values and engage in similar rituals; and members of the same political party almost always espouse on the same ideals and goals. Nevertheless, while social institutions often “channel and control” individual behaviour, there does also exist a good measure of “deviance” or at least autonomy on the part of individual members.34 Institutions provide “constraints” and “incentives”, but only that. They do not impose upon society immutable and rigid blueprints according to which every social member must behave and think. Human agency and independent initiative—choice—is an inescapable attribute of every society. 35 Offspring may go against family tradition; fellow tribal leaders may pledge alternate allegiances; co-religionists may think and behave differently; those registered with one party may vote for another. It also needs to be noted that under particular circumstances and specific conditions, the actual role and importance of certain social institutions may decline. Due to broader social and cultural developments a church may dwindle in membership and lose much of its appeal (as was the case with the Dutch Reform Church in South Africa in the mid- to the late 1980s); a trade union may become weak because of ineffective leadership, certain cultural traits, or due to economic conditions (as has been the case in the United States for a number of decades now); and various links between the government and the governed (as in corporatist bodies in Latin American countries or the institution of the wasta (“go-between” or social broker) in the Middle East) may lose their resonance in times of political upheavals and instability. The ramifications of such a decline for the larger society and the bodies politic are discussed below, in Chapters 7 through 9. These and other deviances from institutional norms may be caused by two broad yet interrelated categories of developments. Most commonly, deep dissatisfactions among those strata who perceive their access to means of opportunity may prompt them to modify their values and behaviour, even if that entails re-interpreting or even ignoring certain institutional norms. In other instances, new patterns of behaviour may emerge among subgroups in an institution who find themselves at odds with those institutional patterns that are supported by groups other than themselves and by the law. 36 As an institution, the religious establishment may be non-political or, as the case may be, supportive of the state. However, if some religious clerics find their interests threatened by the political establishment, they may, given the right circumstances, evolve into a new institution of their own. The politicisation of Islam for some (but not all) Muslims in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s and the birth of liberation theology in Latin


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America in the 1980s, both of which altered the very nature and functions of religion in their respective regions, gave rise to new institutions. The changes from within and the emergence of new and alternative religious institutions were due to widespread dissatisfactions with prevailing norms and values on the part of those seeking to make religion socially and politically relevant.

CONCLUSION States and societies are both made up of institutions, and it is through such institutions that the crucial nexus between the two is made possible. Typical state institutions include those affiliated with the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of the government, among others, while social institutions, which are less easily discernible, are those that bestow on social actors their distinct senses of identity. Some social institutions are universal to all societies—chief among them the family, educational establishments and their products, and religion—and some others are particular to specific societies—race, ethnicity, tribe, and others. Although the existence of a specific institution is important in itself, what also determines the character of a political system is the exact roles and functions that its various state and social institutions play in relation to one another. All societies, for example, entail the institution of the family. But family is a far more important political force in the Middle East than almost anywhere else. The political importance of religion also varies from one social setting to another, as does that of such universal state institutions as the military and the bureaucracy. Thus, the task of the comparativist is to determine both the precise nature of existing state and social institutions and to analyse their broader significance to the overall political nature of the system being examined. It is within this context that the overriding importance of political culture becomes clear. How and why social institutions interrelate with one another is determined and influenced by the general culture. The relationships between social and political institutions, however, are shaped and largely determined by political culture. Social institutions, and the groups and individual actors of which they are comprised, behave politically within the general parameters set by the prevailing political culture. Nevertheless, just as the self-regulating nature of social institutions are not always an iron cast over the behaviours of subgroups and individuals, neither is political culture an immutable determinant of political views and orientations. Both phenomena allow for what at

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times may amount to considerable deviations from the norm. It is to the examination of political culture that Chapter 4 turns.

NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17

See, for example, Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay.” World Politics. Vol. 17, No. 3, (April 1965), p. 393, in which Huntington equates political development with the “institutionalization of political organizations and procedures”. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 2. Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay.” p. 394. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, pp. 2–3. Original emphasis. Leonard Binder. “The Crisis of Political Development.” Leonard Binder, et al. Crises and Sequences in Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 3–72. James S.Coleman. “The Development Syndrome: Differentiation-EqualityCapacity”. Leonard Binder, et al. Crises and Sequences in Political Development, pp. 73–100. Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay.” pp. 386– 430. Ibid., p. 388. Leonard Binder. “The Crisis of Political Development.” p. 68. Emphasis added. James Coleman. “The Development Syndrome: Differentiation-EqualityCapacity.” p. 75. Ibid. Vernon W.Rutton. “What Happened to Political Development?” Economic Development and Cultural Change. Vol. 39, No. 2, (January 1991), p. 279. This definition is greatly influenced by Stephen Chilton’s arguments as elaborated in Defining Political Development. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988), especially in chapter 1. See Chapter 4, for a detailed discussion of political culture and the need to distinguish between regime orientations and political orientations. Iliya Harik. “The Origins of the Arab State System.” Ghassan Salame (ed.). The Foundations of the Arab State. (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 23–4. “Politically relevant” social strata refers to those groups in society who can influence or have the potential of influencing the course of political events or the conduct of the state in more immediate ways as compared to others. In Saudi Arabia or parts of North Africa, for example, the urban classes or rural-based landed proprietors are in an immeasurably better position to express themselves politically or to influence the course of political events—and are more directly influenced by the agendas and initiatives of the state—as opposed to remote and dispersed Bedouins. See, for example, Talcott Parsons. The Social System. (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1951); S.N.Eisenstadt. “Social Institutions.” David Sills (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 14. (New York, NY:


18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33

34 35 36

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Crowell Collier & Macmillan, 1968), pp. 409–29; Anthony Giddens. The Constitution of Society. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); and, Anthony Giddens. Social Theory and Modern Sociology. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1987). Anthony Giddens. The Constitution of Society, p. 24. S.N.Eisenstadt. “Social Institutions.” p. 409. Ibid., p. 410. W.Richard Scott. Social Processes and Social Structures: An Introduction to Sociology. (New York, NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1970), p. 199. Candace Clark and Howard Robboy. Social Interaction: Readings in Sociology. (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 1988), p. 347. Original emphasis. Jack P.Gibbs. Control: Sociology’s Central Notion. (Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), p. 422. Talcott Parsons. The Social System, p. 39. Peter Blau. Approaches to the Study of the Social Structure. (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1975), p. 96. W.Richard Scott. Social Processes and Social Structures, p. 527. Peter Blau. Approaches to the Study of the Social Structure, p. 12. Jerry D.Rose. Introduction to Sociology. (Chicago, IL: Rand McNally, 1974), p. 222. Ibid., p. 223. Anthony Giddens. The Constitution of Society, pp. 164–5. Most scholars tend to discuss political and governmental institutions alongside social institutions. See, for example, Jerry Rose. Introduction to Sociology p. 15, In S.N.Eisenstadt. “Social Institutions.” p. 410, the author speaks of “institutional spheres”, identifying such spheres as family and kinship, education, economics, politics, cultural institutions, and social stratification. See also, W.Richard Scott. Social Processes and Social Structures, p. 529. Anthony Giddens. Social Theory and Modern Sociology, pp. 221–2. Peter Blau. Approaches to the Study of Social Structures, pp. 8–9; Candace Clark and Howard Robboy. Social Interaction, p. 348; Robert K.Merton. Social Theory and Social Structure. (New York, NY: The Free Press, 1968), p. 176; Jerry Rose. Introduction to Sociology, pp. 281–2. Jerry Rose. Introduction to Sociology, pp. 281–2. Anthony Giddens. The Constitution of Society, p. 171. Robert Merton. Social Theory and Social Structure, p. 176.

4

Political culture

There are few phenomena and even fewer concepts in the social sciences over which social scientists are in accord. “Political culture” belongs to this rare category, for despite considerable focus on it for a number of years by scholars of different persuasions, there is overall agreement on its precise meaning and, more importantly, on its complex relationship to concepts of state and society. In its simplest form, political culture refers to a set of values and orientations which determine and influence the public’s perception of politics.1 In their pioneering study of the subject, Gabriel Almond and Sydney Verba conceptualised political culture in terms of a link which connects macro- and micropolitics together.2 It would perhaps be more accurate to see political culture as exactly that: the culture of politics, or, put differently, as normative links between society and politics. “Political culture”, I have written elsewhere, entails the collective political attitudes of a population, their views and orientations toward the body politic in general and toward specific political events, symbols, and activities. Political culture is part of the more general culture of society and as such is deeply affected by it, and its orientations are implicit, unconscious, and often taken for granted and treated as a priori. Political participants do not consciously reflect on the doctrinal orientations or the political characteristics that are brought on by political culture, and are not even aware that political culture expresses itself in their daily activities and thoughts. As such, political culture is a shared and society-wide framework for political orientation and encompasses the society in its entirety.3 Political culture is, consequently, “the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics.”4 It has the 58

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same effect on political behaviour that the general culture has on social behaviour: it shapes and provides guidelines not only for political values and orientations but also for “patterns of mass political behavior”.5

PROGENITORS OF POLITICAL CULTURE Most scholars maintain that political culture is shaped and determined by political socialisation, which they broadly define as “the process whereby the individual learns about and develops orientations to politics”.6 Political socialisation is basically the process of attitude formation towards political objects, values, and processes. This learning process, Almond and others maintain, may occur either through direct experience with and exposure to politics or in a latent and indirect manner.7 Political socialisation is seen as encompassing “all learning, formal and informal, deliberate and unplanned, at every stage of life cycle, including not only explicitly political learning but also nominally nonpolitical learning that affects political behavior.”8 Given its wide reach and multifaceted nature, political socialisation occurs through a variety of “agents”, some of the more notable of which include the family, the educational system, religious organisations, peer groups, occupation, mass media, political parties, the social and cultural environment, and contact with various governmental agencies and structures.9 Thus, political socialisation is an ongoing process and may occur at various periods in the life of the citizen. Two broad periods or “stages” of socialisation may be distinguished. The first stage consists of induction into the general culture, which often (though not always) occurs prior to adulthood. The second stage involves more explicit socialisation to political life, when the views and beliefs formed are more explicitly political.10 These stages are not, however, necessarily sequential, for explicit political socialisation can occur early on in life, concurrent with or even before the individual has been socialised into the general culture. 11 A child raised during a prolonged period of national trauma, for example, may form opinions about political matters long before forming values and orientations towards non-political issues. Political socialisation The concept of “political socialisation” is a useful tool for conceptualising the process whereby political culture is formed. By itself, however, the concept is too broad as it encompasses socialisation processes that are not directly political. Scholars have, as shown,

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qualified the concept so that it can embody non-political sources that may bring about political orientations. Nevertheless, a more focused way of conceptualising the processes whereby political orientations are formed is to view political socialisation as one of the determining factors rather than as an all-embracing phenomenon. Narrowly conceived, political socialisation may be viewed as “the deliberate inculcation of political information, values, and practices by instructional agents who have been formally charged with the responsibility.”12 In this sense, political socialisation assumes an overwhelmingly political character, carried through by political agents, and separate and distinct from such non-political means of acculturation as cultural values, social conditions, and historical experiences. Political socialisation thus becomes a deliberate process, carried through by political organs, as opposed to a latent one in which the agents are non-political.13 Thus defined, political socialisation may be perceived as a decidedly political venture: the process whereby political institutions and actors—whether formal or informal, in power or not—specifically set out to inculcate certain political values among the populace. There are, nevertheless, a number of other significant phenomena that shape political culture but are not in any way political in themselves. Just as the general culture is not merely made up of purely cultural phenomena, neither is political culture shaped and influenced by factors that are only political. Thus, a different typology for the contributing causes of political culture is needed. Four specific yet intertwined and overlapping factors can be identified. Broadly, they include history and historical experiences; specific conditions and forces within society; the particular values which the general culture upholds; and, political socialisation (as narrowly conceived here). Depending on the specific nature of prevailing circumstances, any one of these factors may be more consequential than the others in shaping the political culture of one particular society. History Of the four phenomena that broadly form and influence political culture, history has the greatest resonance and is thus somewhat more consequential, for it encompasses within it not only specific events but also an accumulation of values and traditions which society has over time come to cherish or reject. Political culture, as one observer has noted, “is the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the members of that system, and thus it is rooted equally in public events and private experiences.”14 Values are

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important in themselves, but those hallowed with history are even more so; social divisions and/or cohesiveness affect political culture, but the ones that are historically rooted do so much more fundamentally and at a deeper emotional and psychological level. History uses values and norms as wheels through which it progresses, and, in the process, it shapes and moulds the human psyche. But the causal relationship between history and political culture is not merely through subtle, progressive, accumulative experiences. History also affects political culture, and does so profoundly, through its dramatic flares—those events which involve masses of people directly and tangibly, those events which people come to recount as “historic”.15 Such events as international and civil wars, revolutions, and prolonged economic crises can greatly influence the political culture of a nation for successive generations. The more potent the curse of history, or the more charitable its blessings, the more profound are the consequences of historical events on political culture, whatever the direction of such influences might be.16 Social forces Concurrent with and in fact reinforcing historical influences on political culture are those characteristics and dynamics that exist within a particular society. Those characteristics that determine the actual composition of a society, as well as the valuative orientations of those constituent members, also have direct bearing on a country’s political culture. The existence of specific groups or of social frictions and discords may significantly influence society’s perceptions of politics. A society torn by tribal or ethnic cleavages, for example, views politics quite differently from one which enjoys a measure of homogeneity and social harmony. In African countries, most of which are ridden by factional and ethnic strife, the exercise of politics has a distinctly different meaning than it does in countries where such frictions do not exist. In the former case, the prevailing political culture may in reality be a fragmented cluster of smaller, non-cohesive, parochial political cultures. 17 But for political culture to be influenced, social characteristics need not necessarily be as sharply divisive or chaotic in their outcomes. Disparities in wealth and prestige, and the orientations of those who control them, may also be of great significance in determining the overall nature and direction of a nation’s political culture. Clerics, war veterans, members of a specific race, and the affluent, to name only a random sample of social groups—each of whom may have political agendas of their own—can significantly shape and

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influence the collective sentiments of the general populace towards the body politic. Culture Cultural values have a similarly consequential relationship with political culture. Values embedded in such matters as popular beliefs regarding religion (and the way that religious tenets are perceived and interpreted), the family (or larger manifestations of it, such as a clan, a tribe, or an ethnic group), the role of the individual within the larger society (such values as individualism, collectivism, racism, etc.), and the way that society ought to be (vigilant, pacifist, compassionate, reflective, etc.), can all have direct bearing on popular understandings of, and perceptions towards, the political establishment or towards politics in general. Popular collectivist sentiments may enhance the social legitimacy of regimes espousing socialist doctrines. The prevalence of religious convictions among social classes may foster oppositional activism among the subjects of a regime which seeks to promote an atheistic platform. International and domestic belligerence on the part of a state may not bode well with a society that for the most part abhors violence and upholds pacifism. Values need not, however, necessarily have an overtly political connotation in order to influence the overall contents of the political culture. Non-political values and experiences can and often do have significant political reverberations. 18 Values regarding the family or gender roles, for example, neither of which are necessarily political in themselves, once put in the broader context of social norms as they relate to politics, may become central pillars of the political culture. Patrimonial family relations may accentuate the legitimacy of charismatic leaders and make cults of personality more prevalent; strong religious convictions may heighten political demagoguery and unwillingness to compromise; reverence for elders may generate support for an older statesman; preoccupation with economic mobility and advancement may breed political satisfaction, even apathy and complacence.19 State initiatives In their own way, historical experiences, social conditions, and cultural values each significantly contribute to the formation of political culture. Nevertheless, by far the most blatant efforts specifically aimed at carving out particular political values and orientations occur through the

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initiatives of the state. The formation of political values through contacts with the state, narrowly defined here as political socialisation, may occur both directly, in the form of specific efforts by the state towards creating particular political values, or indirectly, through unavoidable interactions which the average citizen needs to have with the modern state. Direct, state-sponsored political acculturation is more prevalent in non-democratic regimes, particularly those whose popular legitimacy is heavily based on such intangibles as cult of personality or, more commonly, some sort of doctrine. Such regimes often have specific institutions that serve as “ideological bureaux”, in function if not necessarily in name, and are designed to guide popular thought and culture. In many Third World countries, there are cabinet-level ministries whose specific job it is to define the regime’s legitimacy and to give popular currency to values supporting it. 20 The greater the reliance of the regime on doctrine and ideology as opposed to historical performance and routinised beliefs, the more dependent it is on fostering specific political and cultural values which support its interpretations of the universe. Such regimes thus sponsor mass rallies, their leaders give fiery speeches, school texts are rigged to support their values and specific interpretations, local committees are set up for political indoctrination and participation, public confessionals are held, sentiments are manipulated—all designed to make citizens emotionally involved in the political process and to inculcate in them highly pronounced views about political objects and principles.21 Less blatant methods of inculcating political mores are used with even greater frequency. Regimes often subtly build cults of personality and, even more frequently, cults of state through a variety of means and methods. Some erect monuments and even in some cases build entire cities (as in the Ivory Coast city of Yamasukra, the birthplace of the country’s founder-president, Felix Houphouet-Boigny) designed to signal their glorious tenure in power to their own peoples and to others. That most such edifices are often unsightly does not detract from their intended symbolic importance. That few, if any, states succeed in their attempts to mould culture seems of little concern to would-be cultural engineers in power. Their aim is to bring about an entirely new cultural milieu in which the political establishment and its supporting values play a central and indispensable role. Other subtle means of statesponsored political acculturation include employment in the bureaucracy and exposure to the educational establishment. Employment in state bureaucracy, which in the developing world is the primary source of urban occupation, entails with it tacit endorsement of the regime politically as well as normatively. Occasional purges and selective

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promotions not only reward the politically correct and punish the deviant but, in the process, define the political and cultural values which the state deems as acceptable. The role of the educational system, whose curriculum is often heavily impregnated with the political values of the regime, is even more important in promoting a doctored political culture. The social sciences, the humanities, and other speculative sciences are particularly prone to reinterpretation—or, more accurately, corruption— by the regime’s ideological pundits in charge of defining the politically permissible contours of social thought. Not surprisingly, the social sciences are often frowned on, both by students and by policy-makers, viewed with suspicion and largely considered as irrelevant. 22 Independent social and political conceptualisation is unwelcome and not encouraged, seen as nothing more than “intellectual masturbation” by potential non-conformists. The very concept of education becomes warped, and its disciplines acquire unique and unusual meanings: civic education becomes civility as defined by the regime; history becomes looking through the regime’s historical lenses; political theory becomes negating all other ideologies but the regime’s; sociology becomes praising the social norms of the regime; and philosophy becomes seeing the logic of the regime. Political indoctrination through the educational establishment occurs in democratic regimes as well, at times more subtly and thus more effectively.23 Nevertheless, state-sponsored political acculturation in democratic polities occurs far less directly and involves much less manipulation. In fact, the state’s influence over popular political values occurs not necessarily because of official programmes of ideological indoctrination but because of the interaction that exists between the average citizen and various agencies of the state. By definition, democracies involve routinised processes of interaction between social actors and the state. Politics, participatory as it is by nature in democratic polities, is not only shaped by the participation of the masses but, in turn, helps shape their political views and orientations as well. Voting, campaigning, writing to one’s parliamentary representative, listening to political debates and deliberations, dealing with the bureaucracy—these and other forms of contact with various political bodies play a highly significant role in determining one’s views towards the state. These types of political action influence political orientations in non-democratic societies as well, though they are far more consequential in advanced, industrialised democracies. Political participation in non-democratic polities is often merely perfunctory, at times even obligatory, and few participants consider their actions to be of any real significance to the overall functions of the state. Ballots are

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cast for pre-approved candidates; presidents and parliamentarians attain power and leave office as a result of deals and quarrels in which the public is rarely involved; what people say about the political establishment and what they truly feel are often quite different. The citizen may be appalled at the corruption that permeates the political system but may readily become a participant in it in order to pursue goals that he or she could not otherwise attain. Expressing devotion to the leader, either in the form of deifying him or voting for him in successive elections, does not necessarily attest to his genuine popularity. But in democracies there are no compelling reasons for the citizen to be politically dishonest. The real political values and attitudes that are formed through dealing with the state, whether positive or negative, are reflected through polls, the ballot box, the media, and other available forums for political expression. Furthermore, it must be remembered that there is a considerable degree of fusion in industrialised democracies between state and society, and the boundaries between the two are often blurred. The state cannot, as a result, escape the results of its own effects on society.

VARIETIES OF POLITICAL CULTURE As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, political culture is by no means monolithic. Political cultures vary, not just between nations but within them as well, as differing social groups within the same society may have considerably different views concerning the political establishment. And, as in non-democratic countries, there may be fundamental differences between the political culture that the government promotes and the genuine sentiments of the masses. More broadly, general characteristics may be found in certain political cultures as opposed to others, thus giving each distinctively different characteristics. There is, therefore, a need for analysing the differences and distinguishing characteristics that may exist between as well as within different political cultures. In this respect, internal and crossnational differences in political cultures may be placed into three broad analytical categories. The first is categorisation by the degree to which a political culture is conducive either to free participation or to a more restrictive political environment. As conceptualised in Almond and Verba’s celebrated work, political cultures may be “parochial”, “subject”, or “participant” depending on whether the political establishment is, respectively, traditional, authoritarian, or democratic.24 A second category of differences are those which exist within political

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cultures, especially between the political culture of the masses and that of the elite of the same nation. Elite and mass political cultures thus need to be differentiated. 25 Lastly, clear distinctions need to be made, especially in non-democratic polities, between the political culture which is expressed out of political expedience and the political culture which is genuine and uncoerced. The facade of regime orientations needs to be distinguished from actual political orientations and each analysed separately. Purview of political culture The distinction of political cultures into parochial, subject, and participatory ones is not necessarily in form only and may also arise out of different degrees of emphasis. In a specific political culture, parochial tendencies may outweigh subject ones, or participatory traits may predominate others. Parochial political cultures are most commonly found in traditional political establishments, such as the remaining conservative sheikhdoms of the Middle East (e.g. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and to a lesser extent Jordan and Morocco), and those found in parts of Africa where elected “presidents” are in reality acting emperors. In these political systems, there are very few or no specialised political roles and thus the political leader’s legitimacy rests not just on political considerations but on religious, social, economic, and ethnic or tribal factors as well.26 The average citizen is uninterested in the workings of the political system and is instead concerned with parochial and more immediate matters—the well-being of the extended family, economic survival, strengthening of patronage ties, etc. He or she is thus only dimly aware of politics.27 In subject political cultures, however, the citizen is made deliberately aware of politics by the system itself, although the flow of information is only one way, from the state to the citizen, and heavily refined at that. Society is turned into a passive subject of the government and is told what its political views and orientations ought to be.28 Dictatorial and authoritarian governments, which aim at either keeping their masses docile or at fostering concocted forms of legitimacy, often survive through the maintenance of subject political cultures in which the people are told how and what to think about politics. The contrast with participant political cultures is striking, for in participant cases society is freely and actively involved in forming and expressing opinions about politics. In democracies, this active awareness about politics serves as yet another glue through which the state and society come as close to being fused together as is possible. This involves a high degree of cognition and awareness, not just of the

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political directives of the state but, more importantly, of how to go about influencing politics as well.29 Mass and elite varieties Political cultures are also divided within themselves into the culture of the elites and of the masses. This important distinction has been made and highlighted most convincingly by Lucian Pye. 30 Pye does not, however, make plain exactly which elites he is discussing. The distinction between the masses of average citizens and elites is clear in itself. However, it is unclear whether reference is to political elites, economic elites, cultural elites, or all. “The elite political culture”, Pye writes, “involves the attitudes, sentiments and behavior patterns of those who through the operation of the political recruitment function have been brought to active roles within the political system and have a direct effect on the outputs of the system.”31 This implies focus on the political elite. In the next sentence, however, Pye goes on to say that “the elite political culture thus involves primarily those in authoritative structures but also the leadership elements of the nonauthoritative structures and processes”, hinting of possible links between the political cultures of the political elite and that of the cultural elite. But the political and the cultural elites do not always have the same political views and perceptions, as the countless examples of politically disenchanted intellectuals in the Third World demonstrate. Literary figures and essayists, university professors and students, journalists, and other members of the educated elite may and indeed often do have views and opinions about politics that are neither similar to those of the masses nor in agreement with those of the political elite. At the same time, the political views of the economic elite, who as a group are often dependent on the maintenance of the status quo for preserving elite positions, are frequently congruent to those of the political elite. Thus, while the distinction between “elite” and “mass” political cultures is an extremely important one, various types of elites need to be distinguished and their respective political cultures separately analysed. Mass political cultures, meanwhile, are also internally divided, and to this Pye devotes much attention. Within every society, there are some social strata who are politically more attentive and those who care little for politics. 32 Class, regional background, ethnicity, and social grouping may also serve as impediments to the development of a homo-geneous mass political culture, resulting not just in pluralism but indeed in a plethora of differing political subcultures.33 In some

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instances, as in most (but not all) industrialised democracies, the political culture of the masses is unified enough to foster overall agreement over the general contours of the political establishment. There is in these political cultures often broad agreement concerning the appropriate boundaries of political life and, consequently, “respect to some degree for functional specialization in the handling of issues and for the relative autonomy of the different domains of political decision making.”34 In Western Europe, there has been a steady rise in the electorate popularity of the new right and the ideological balance has tilted more in favour of conservative parties and politicians. Nevertheless, most British citizens support either the Labour or the Conservative Party, as most French support the Socialists, the Centrists, or the Gaullists, the Germans the Social Democrats or the Christian Democrats, and the Americans the Republicans or the Democrats. In Italy, however, while most citizens agree over the general desirability of parliamentary democracy, the electorate has historically been sharply divided in its allegiances for the Popular Party (the old Christian Democrats), the Communists, the Socialists, and a number of other, smaller parties. But in the March 1994 parliamentary elections, which were widely considered a watershed for Italy as they were held under new electoral laws, the electorate opted for the rightist coalition Alliance for Freedom in preference over the more mainstream parties. The differences among the political subcultures of the Italians are too great and, consequently, neither segment is dominant enough to effectively subdue or to absorb the others. Nevertheless, the political system as a whole retains its legitimacy among the popular masses. In most Third World societies, meanwhile, even broad agreements over the general “rules of the game” do not exist.35 Sharply fragmented political cultures are often quite prevalent, in which the population even lacks a broad agreement over the way in which political life needs to be conducted. 36 As Pye has keenly observed, “an almost universal feature of the political cultures of developing societies is the absence of a widely shared understanding as to what should be the generally accepted limits and potentialities of political action.”37 Regime and political orientations Lastly, a fine distinction needs to be drawn between political orientations and regime orientations. In cases where society cannot freely express its opinions concerning the domain and the exercise of politics, there are clear differences between attitudes towards specific

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political objects as opposed to attitudes towards politics in general. I have elaborated on this subtle distinction in a previous writing: Political orientation refers to those collective sentiments that govern the public’s general outlook toward politics as a field of practice, as an abstract science, and as a general outline for the attainment of community or national power. Regime orientation, however, refers to public sentiments toward the specific political actors who currently hold the reins of power, the institutions they have established, and the laws they have devised. The objects of attention are tangible and currently at work. Orientations toward politics, on the other hand, are orientations toward the field of politics rather than toward specific, existing objects.38 Almost all governments, democratic or not, try to some extent to shape and influence the political beliefs and attitudes of their citizens. Nevertheless, authoritarian regimes are far more blatant in their attempts at political indoctrination, and frequently clumsily inefficient at it, and thus their very zealous quest for valuative legitimacy adds to their popular image as illegitimate. As a result, the public’s outwardly manifest orientations towards the political system (its regime orientations) are almost invariably different from its sentiments towards politics as a field (its political orientations). A final point that needs to be made concerning political culture is its changeability over time. Every political culture changes through time, some more fundamentally than others, some more abruptly than others. Catalysts for change in political culture include whatever phenomena may result in cultural discontinuity—such as rapid industrialisation, wars, and radical policy shifts39—as well as the internal dynamics of societies themselves, which, by nature, inhere change. The ongoing processes of “social change”, natural and inevitable as they are, invariably influence those values that pertain to politics. Over time, social actors and institutions change, if not necessarily in nature often at least in political significance, as do popular values and their connotation. The institution of religion may be viewed as politically irrelevant and insignificant at some points, but, as in Eastern Europe after the fall of communism, it may emerge as an integral part of the social and political arena at some other points. Changes that result in the growing transformation of extended families into nuclear ones, thus lessening the importance of the family patriarch, may in turn negatively influence the people’s perceptions of charismatic, patriarchical political leaders. The eventual settlement of a migrating tribe has definite consequences for its

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members’ political culture, especially if the settlement is politically induced rather than a result of geographic or other natural developments. In short, society’s own internal dynamics often bring about changes in popular political perceptions. But even more blatant changes occur in political culture due to the changing priorities of the political establishment itself. As political sands shift, so does the focus and aims of political socialisation. Depending on the circumstances they face, states may try to promote the virtues of economic austerity or consumerism, virulent patriotism or laid-back complacence, cults of personality or vilification of others. What results, with varying degrees of success, of course, are variations in the political culture as influenced by political socialisation. As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, political culture is multifaceted and involves a multitude of forces and nuances which result in the formation of popular opinions towards politics. Political culture, it was argued, provides the general normative context within which statesociety interactions take place. The various internal divisions which mark a particular political culture, meanwhile, highlight the highly complex and multi-levelled links between the different social groups and the state. State-society interactions, it is crucial to remember, do not occur only mechanically, through political parties or the largely lifeless idiom of mammoth bureaucracies. There are emotional and psychological dynamics at work also, either repelling society from the state or drawing it ever closer to its leaders and their agendas. Whatever the specific characteristics of a particular political culture may be, its centrality in greatly influencing the nature of the relationship between state and social institutions is irrefutable.

COMPARATIVE POLITICS THEN AND NOW Within the last century, the study of comparative politics has come full circle. Pioneer comparativists discovered the utility of the state and focused on examining its characteristics, its component institutions, its viability and strength, and the like. Their approach was mostly descriptive and highly ethnocentric, using the democratic governments of the West as the basis of comparison. The birth of fascism and the totalitarian state in Europe in the 1930s and the 1940s perpetuated the popularity of the approach and enriched its theoretical sophistication. But the “behavioural revolution” of the 1960s, sparked by the social upheavals that were at the time raging in Europe and in the United States, pushed the state into the background and instead celebrated the

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“political system”, and focused on the examination of sociological, contextual, or “input” factors. The political system was seen as an integrated mechanism within which a political centre constantly received inputs from the domestic and international environments, converted them, and fed them back out as outputs. The concept of state was criticised as too vague and as arbitrary and artificial. But the neo-statists disagreed, arguing instead that the process of conversion that goes on inside the “little black box” of systems needed far greater attention than systems theorists were willing to admit. They criticised the systems approach as being essentially conservative and as inattentive to the possibility of political initiative and change from within the state. But in their zeal to re-emphasise the importance of the state as the principal focus of analysis, the neo-statists themselves overlooked the possibility that social dynamics within societies and the ways which they affect the political establishment can also be instrumental in determining political outcomes. While in many circles the state has reasserted its analytical supremacy since the early 1980s, it was never able to completely foreshadow the role of society. Implicit in the writings of many comparativists has been a subtle dichotomy between state and society and attention to the nuances between them. This chapter calls for a sharper focus on the analytically separable state and society and on the institutional and normative bonds that link them. According to the framework devised here, emphasis must be placed neither exclusively on the state nor on society, but rather on the links and the nature of the interaction between the two. State and society are distinct entities, not in any sense artificial but each possessing very real and consequential institutions. The two are, however, in constant contact with one another, each relating to the other through their respective institutions. State institutions perform four broad functions, each designed to facilitate the effective establishment of power over society. These functions include regulating social behaviour, extracting goods and services, the setting of agendas, and implementing those agendas. The focus, of these functions is not just the domestic society but the international arena as well, for each state exerts influence on and is influenced by other states. Social institutions, meanwhile, are those intangible phenomena that provide for means of collective identity. Their principal function is to give meaning and resonance to the symbols and values in which a group of people believe. They are the principal mechanisms through which society exercises pressure on and formulates inputs into the state, a process of interaction that occurs within the context of the existing political culture. Political culture is the transcendental link that binds state and society

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together. There are also institutional links that provide a direct nexus between state and society, although the distinct boundaries of state institutions and social institutions remain essentially intact. 40 Parastatals—enterprises that are jointly owned by the private sector and by the state—are examples of such institutions, although they are neither universal nor do they fit the definition of social institutions advanced here. It is the study of the nature of the interaction between states and societies, the dynamics that bring state and social institutions more closely into synch or lead to friction between them, and the precise functions of the institutions in existence in both state and in society that provide an adequate yardstick for comparative examination. Classification of states, societies, and the interaction between them into similar (if not identical) categories is inescapable due to the common underpinnings which characterise clusters of political systems. It is undeniable that the politics of certain groups of nations are more closely related than those of others. These commonalities in turn make the task of categorisation and analysis easier and reinforce the validity of certain universal and comparative assumptions. The remaining chapters of the book are devoted to comparative examinations of states and societies, discussed in Parts III and IV respectively.

NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7

See, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963); Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” David Sills (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 12. (New York, NY: Crowell Collier & Macmillan, 1968), pp. 218–25; Lucian Pye. “Identity and Political Culture.” Leonard Binder, et al. Crises and Sequences in Political Development. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971) pp. 101–34; Dennis Kavanagh. Political Culture. (London: Macmillan, 1972); Stephen Chilton. “Defining Political Culture.”Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 41, No. 3, (September 1988), pp. 419–45; Harry Eckstein. “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change.” American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), pp. 789–804; and, Ronald Inglehart. “The Renaissance of Political Culture.” American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 4, (December 1988), pp. 1203–30. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 32. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 137. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 218. M.Margaret Conway. “The Political Context of Political Behavior.” Journal of Politics. Vol. 51, No. 1, (February 1989), p. 6. Dennis Kavanagh. Political Culture, p. 28. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 328.

Political culture 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

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Fred Greenstein. “Political Socialization.” David Sills (ed.). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 14. (New York, NY: Crowell Collier & Macmillan, 1968), p. 551. Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell. “Political Socialization and Political Culture.” Gabriel Almond and G.Bingham Powell (eds). Comparative Politics Today: A World View. 5th edition. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1992), pp. 36–9. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 219. Ibid. Fred Greenstein. “Political Socialization.” p. 551. Dennis Kavanagh. Political Culture, p. 30. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 218. Walter Rosenbaum. Political Culture. (New York, NY: Praeger, 1975), p. 17. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, p. 138. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 17. Ibid., p. 368. Ronald Inglehart. “The Renaissance of Political Culture.” p. 1208. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, p. 14. This was far more commonplace in the former Soviet-bloc countries, where the legitimacy of the communist regime had to be constantly defined, refined, and promoted. Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 77–9. For a more detailed examination of this issue see, Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, pp. 158–60. See, S.E.Gottlieb. “In the Name of Patriotism: The Constitutionality of ‘Bending’ History in Public Secondary Schools.” The History Teacher. Vol. 22, (August 1989), pp. 411–95. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 20. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 220. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 17. Ibid., p. 45. Ibid., pp. 17–18. Ibid., p. 45. See, Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.”; and, Lucian Pye. “Identity and Political Culture.” Lucian Pye. “Identity and Political Culture.” p. 103. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 220. Lucian Pye. “Identity and Political Culture.” p. 103. Lucian Pye. “Political Culture.” p. 221. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, p. 139. Walter Rosenbaum. Political Culture, p. 37. Lucian Pye. “Identity and Political Culture.” p. 108. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, p. 144. Harry Eckstein. “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change.” p. 796. Timothy Mitchell. “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 85, No. 1, (March 1991), p. 78.

Part III State in comparative perspective

5 State classifications Democratic varieties

The political transformations that were the catalysts of the new world order of the 1990s, as well as those which resulted from it, were both numerous and dramatic. Whatever the causes of the “great transformation” of the 1980s, classical typologies of states, and ultimately of various political forms, fell apart with the demise of the greater part of the Second World. The easily discernible “three worlds of politics”, with their sharply divided patterns of interaction between their respective states and societies, gave way to a much more complicated set of political relationships. In the new era, the worlds of politics have not just changed but have indeed become revolutionised, making the need for a revision and reformulation of traditional notions of comparative politics inescapable. Neither states nor societies, nor in fact the relationships between them, can any longer be properly conceptualised within the context of analytical norms developed over the past forty years or so. To one extent or another, all have undergone fundamental changes. As recent global events have demonstrated, such conventional labels as “democratic”, “communist”, and “authoritarian”, or even different variations of them, are no longer strictly applicable. A new typology is needed to adequately account for the new patterns of relationships that have evolved during the “New World Order” between states and societies. It is possible to distinguish four distinct though very broad types of states currently in existence. Based on their component institutions and the nature of their nexuses with society, these state types include First World democracies, which have much greater degrees of historical longevity; the more recent democracies which were born out of the democratisation processes of the 1970s and the 1980s; proto- or quasi-democracies, in which such democratic mechanisms as elections and political parties exist but the spirit of democracy does not; and non-democratic states, which frequently take the form of either bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes or 77

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inclusionary populist ones. The first two types of states are democratic, i.e. marked by open and consensual patterns of interaction with their respective societies, though by virtue of their age and supporting social values the former are, so far at least, far more stable than the latter. In quasi-democracies, state-society interaction is somewhat minimal and does not extend beyond certain elite circles. The last category is made up of non-democratic states, although to some extent the inclusionary policies of populist regimes bestows on the population a perception of democratic participation. In both inclusionary populist regimes and in authoritarian dictatorships the flow of influence is one way, from state to society. Both are in essence “command systems”, but their supporting mechanisms and the underlying dynamics of their interactions with society are radically different. Whereas inclusionary populist regimes include broad strata of society within their institutions, authoritarian dictatorships strive to achieve the exact opposite and seek to exclude as many participants from the political arena as possible.

STATE CLASSIFICATIONS Before examining each of these state categories in greater detail, it may be useful to briefly look at some of the other categorisations used to classify states. The categories of states mentioned above, it is important to remember, are based on the underlying relationships between various state institutions with the institutions of their societies. This is consistent with the definition of politics and the analytical framework laid out in previous chapters. That the categories forwarded here are distinctly political, however, does not necessarily preclude other standards for categorisation. Depending on one’s particular perspective, states may in fact be classified according to their general status within the international system, their economic capabilities, or, alternately, their leadership. Classifications of states into “weak” and “powerful”, “radical” and “conservative”, “patron” and “client”, “modern” and “traditional”, or “developed” and “developing”, to name but a few, have been particularly prevalent within the social science literature of the past few years.1 Two of these patterns of classification—are based on status within the international state system and the other on economic capabilities—have received greater attention than others and thus deserve closer examination. Internationally framed classifications of states have been both more contentious as well as more prevalent. Dependency theorists are especially likely to classify states into such categories as “patrons” and

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“clients” or those belonging to “centre” and “periphery”. It is, nevertheless, possible to classify states based on their diplomatic positions and initiatives without getting bogged down in ideological debates. Different states do undertake different types of action in the international arena, have varying goals and preferences, and can exert different amounts of influence. In fact, Harry Redner has distinguished five broad types of states based solely on their external criteria. They include “autonomous”, “community”, “client”, “independent”, and “satellite” states.2 Autonomous states are those with enough domestic resources and international clout to be able to act with full autonomy, both domestically and diplomatically. Though their numbers are few, the powers of such states are considerable. They include such countries as the United States, Japan, China, and to a lesser extent India. 3 Community states, of whom those in the European Community (EC) and in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are the most notable, are those which “cannot undertake wholly autonomous activities out of line with their fellow members but act to a considerable degree in concert with each other”.4 Client states, on the other hand, are economically and militarily dependent on more powerful nations, or, at the least, cannot ignore impulses emanating from them. Most Arab states of the Middle East and those in Latin America find themselves in such a predicament, compelled by the force of circumstances to pay close attention to other, more powerful state or non-state actors.5 Satellite states are in a more vulnerable position, though their numbers have in recent years greatly declined following the collapse of the Soviet empire. Some of the current satellite states include Lebanon (which has now been under Syrian influence for some time), Lesotho and Swaziland (both dominated by South Africa), and, potentially, the brand new republics of central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Kyrgystan), for whose allegiance the dominant powers of the region (especially China, Iran, and Turkey) are vying.6 Lastly, there are some states which try to assert a measure of independence in the international sphere, though some are more successful than others. Austria and Iran are two of the more varied examples of states that strive to attain diplomatic and economic independence vis-à-vis more powerful actors.7 Closely related to diplomatic and international positions of states are their economic capabilities. There is, in fact, often a direct correlation between a state’s diplomatic history and its present economic prowess. More specifically, states can be classified on the basis of their economic accomplishments and the types of policies they adopt for attaining

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industrial development: An economic/diplomatic classification of states results in a fivefold typology: the industrial capitalist states of Western Europe and Japan, bureaucratic-authoritarian states, dependent states, nationalist states, and, for lack of a better term, “decline” states. 8 Industrialised capitalist states, found primarily in the democracies of the First World, invariably promote and protect private and corporate ownership in a free and competitive market with minimal interference from governmental agencies.9 Bureaucratic-authoritarian states also strive to enhance the economic and industrial competitiveness of their countries, most under the auspices of capitalist development, although to achieve their goals they develop highly penetrative and often repressive mechanisms which seek to direct even the most mundane aspects of social life. Nevertheless, as a general rule, dictatorships have not been particularly successful in bringing about industrial development, and their economic success depends on existing social, political, and historic circumstances within specific countries.10 Nationalist states are similar to bureaucratic-authoritarian ones in their industrial predicaments and economic aspirations, although they lack the latter’s intricate networks of coercion and socio-political manipulation designed for directing and guiding industrial development. They are, in essence, coercion-free capitalist states that are not quite yet fully democratic. India, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Venezuela are some of the more notable countries in this category.11 Dependent states, meanwhile, found principally in Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean, are those that rely primarily on the export of raw materials in order to sustain power structures which continue to remain weak and brittle. Their ruling classes are, consequently, relatively pliable and highly vulnerable to negative economic developments from abroad.12 Lastly, there are states that appear to be in irreversible and chronic decline both in their political power and in economic capabilities. Having achieved formal independence relatively recently, these states never fully attain sufficient power to repel potential challenges from the outside and from within their own fragmented and fractious societies. For them mere economic survival, never mind development, is a struggle. Examples of this group of countries include Uganda, Zaire, Ghana, Chad, and Kampuchea.13 Such a typology of states is useful for measuring their comparative economic and diplomatic strengths and weaknesses. In particular, this typology helps us to clarify and examine the specific position of a given state within the international state system. Though while not inaccurate, such a categorisation of states does not fully reflect the dynamic patterns of interaction which states assume relative to their societies. As accurate


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as these categories may be in their own right, they deal with the domain of politics tangentially and only in so far as it is affected by economic or other international forces. With politics being the interaction that occurs between the respective institutions of state and society, its comparative examination requires a focus on those functions and characteristics of various states and societies that are singularly political. Economics, diplomacy, and a plethora of other factors do indeed combine to form the complex web of interactions through which states and societies communicate and influence one another. But each on its own is only part of a larger whole. Classifying states, by virtue of their manoeuvrability or extractive capabilities, may be analytically useful, for specific purposes that is, but it is at best politically reductionist. What is needed is a more comprehensive framework within which the political relevance, place, and contributions of both states and societies can be examined. The central question which comparative politics seeks to address is deceptively simple: how does a specific state influence a society and how does a specific society influence a state? The answer requires the provision of typologies of states and societies based on their mutually interactive relations. The different types of states outlined at the start of the chapter—First World democracies, new democracies, quasidemocracies, inclusionary populist regimes, and authoritarian dictatorships—are state-types which tend to influence and interact with their societies in broadly identifiable and separate manners. In essence, the concern with these states revolves around their social significance, in the same way as focus on societies is centred on their impact on the state. This chapter focuses on the three democratic varieties of states—viable, new, and pseudo-democracies—with non-democratic states the subject of Chapter 6.

FIRST WORLD DEMOCRACIES Compared with other states, the democratic states of the First World are the oldest, most stable, and by far the strongest in terms of their capacity to mobilise, manage, and even extract social and economic resources from their societies and from other states. Nevertheless, neither their age nor their pattern of development and evolution are by any means uniform. The present uniformity that exists among First World states was, only as far back as the 1940s and the 1950s, preceded by a chequered political history wrought by unpredictable oscillations, violent overthrows, and foreign occupation. First World

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democracies are an essentially post-World War II phenomenon. The historically most resilient democratic states of the First World number only a handful, among them Britain, the United States, and Switzerland. Almost none of the other European countries, even those which at some point did have democratic states, have had a continuously democratic political history. The fascism that swept across the continent in the 1920s and the 1930s crumbled some of the working democracies and devoured others under the weight of occupation.14 It was only after the military defeat of fascism, coupled with the social and cultural shocks which accompanied the whole experience, that democratic states were carefully engineered throughout the continent. So far, these democracies have proven remarkably resilient, pre-dating most other contemporary state types. To a large extent, the enhanced capabilities of the democratic states of the First World are derived from the close and highly integrative nature of their relationships with their societies. By nature, a democratic system is one that freely facilitates the expression of demands and initiatives from members of society on any topics and agendas they may choose. For a viable democratic polity to thrive and to survive, the institutions and the underlying premises of both the state and society need to mutually reinforce one another. So far as the democratic state is concerned, the links that bind state and society together appear in the form of a series of highly evolved and complex political institutions designed to formulate and to give expression to the popular will. These are institutions upon which the very foundations of the state depend, the most crucial of which include legislative and judicial bodies, the executive, and the various branches of the bureaucracy. While these are institutions that are commonly found in all types of systems, what makes them uniquely important for democratic states is the principal functions which they perform. In democracies, legislatures and judiciaries are designed to ensure a regular and unimpeded flow of public input from society into the state. In dictatorial and populist regimes, however, they perform markedly different functions (see below). Democratic executives are also uniquely different from dictators and populist demagogues, as they are elected by popular mandate and are constrained by the wishes of the electorate. The whole system is based on a constitutional blueprint that is also popularly upheld and, in fact, at times even cherished. These characteristics of democratic states result more or less in their fusion with society, and, combined with features endemic to democratic societies themselves, almost inextricably tie the two together. This social permeability of democratic states, particularly those with greater


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historical and cultural resonance, in turn bestows them with an unparalleled measure of stability and strength. A closer examination of various institutions in democratic states sheds more light on the underlying causes of their comparative strength. Not only do the prevailing social norms (as formulated within the context of political culture) lend added support to the executive, the legislative, and the judicial institutions of democratic states, the unique features of these institutions themselves greatly enhance their resilience. As mentioned earlier, democratic legislatures and judiciaries are primarily designed to be interconnecting links between state and society.

Legislatures To varying degrees and in one form or another, legislatures generally perform three broad functions in all political systems. They serve as “advisory boards” to the executive; legislate and make laws; and provide an institutional forum through which societal interests and demands are represented within the state.15 It is these latter two functions, those of legislation and representation, which form the very essence of democratic legislatures and which provide for them (and consequently for the larger state) a solid and self-perpetuating basis of support.16 Far from performing “advisory” or other perfunctory functions, democratic legislatures are invariably deeply involved in the actual process of politics, whether by influencing and determining government policy or by facilitating channels of societal participation in the state. Whereas in dictatorial and populist regimes the functions of legislatures are mostly those of legitimisation and mobilisation respectively, in democratic states they have wide latitude in their powers and obligations. Through their representative functions and their links to the larger society, democratic legislatures provide means of access for the recruitment and socialisation of political leaders and elites. Most such legislatures are empowered to select, approve, question, or pass no confidence votes on heads of government and their cabinet members, while others control finance, question ministers, debate issues, and critique policies. 17 Legislatures in democratic states carry forward the political process either by actively launching policies and legislation, as in the United States, or assume a more reactive role vis-à-vis the initiatives of the executive, as the “Westminster-type” legislatures of Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia do.18 They all are, nevertheless, in one way or another integral and vital institutions without which democratic states could not fully function.

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Judiciary Judicial institutions play a similarly paramount and important role in the viability of democratic states, one which, significantly, they do not play in non-democratic states. In all political systems, the judicial branch performs both a societal as well as a political role. At the societal level, all judiciaries adjudicate between members of society by mandating and interpreting laws and regulations. This function is standard to all judicial systems regardless of the type of state to which they belong, although their legal dictums and interpretations can vary significantly depending on different national and historic traditions and social and cultural patterns. What does differ enormously from one type of state to another is the specific political role that judiciaries play. In non-democratic states, judiciaries are designed to prevent unsolicited inputs and other expressions of opinion regarding the political process. They are essentially protective institutions that use existing laws as weapons to guard against potential demands for political participation emanating from within society. During the tumultuous political events in China in Spring 1989, for example, the judicial system vigorously sought to protect the Chinese state from social demands. Many of the student protestors who had gathered in Tiananmen Square to voice opposition to government policies were quickly arrested and found guilty of having engaged in “anti-state” crimes.19 But judiciaries in democratic states serve almost diametrically opposite functions. A telling contrast to the Chinese case would be the US Supreme Court’s upholding, in 1989, of the right of American citizens to burn the American flag if they so wished: democratic judiciaries protect society from possible encroachments from the state, as opposed to the other way around. Their principal aim is to keep the powers of the executive in check and to ensure that the political liberties and rights of those in society are not abrogated. More specifically, democratic judiciaries assume four political responsibilities: they engage in judicial reviews and interpret the constitution; arbitrate between the state’s various institutions; provide general support for the polity; and define and protect the political liberties of individuals. 20 Throughout, the democratic judiciary maintains strict independence from possible influences by the executive, though the executive does, in most cases, appoint the higher echelons of the judicial branch.21 Executives Equally instrumental in determining the very essence of democratic states are their executive institutions, namely the head of government


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(or, as the title may be, the head of state), and the successive echelons of administrators and bureaucrats who operate under his or her command. The nature of the executive branch directly correlates with the prevailing nature of politics and the relationship between state and society. The more consensual and frictionless the interaction between state and society—i.e. the more democratic the political process—the less dictatorial and centralised the executive tends to be. However, when the relationship between state and society is a conflictual one and dictatorial traits dominate the political arena, the state tends to be more centrifugal in its powers and intolerant of diverging tendencies. Indeed, in most non-democratic polities, it is often nearly impossible to distinguish between the executive and the state. Most non-democratic executives view themselves, and many often indeed are, the state. In contrast, the democratic executive’s functions are only one of a whole array of functions that the state performs, albeit an increasingly central one. Democratic executives are “creatures of society” and are elected and limited by it. 22 Whether presidential or parliamentary in character, executives of democratic states are circumscribed in the scope of their powers and their tenure in office by legal and constitutional restraints. In recent years, the executive branch of democratic states have consistently grown in power and autonomy as compared with other institutions, due largely to the increasing importance and complexity of fields of action under the executive’s usual purview, such as international diplomacy, public administration, and military policy. The decline in the comparative powers of legislative institutions has been particularly noticeable. 23 Yet despite this relative predominance of democratic executives, their essentially constrained nature within the states remains unaltered. As two authors on the subject have recently noted, “in democracies, as in no other political regimes, the command structure is carefully circumscribed and meticulously surrounded by institutional safeguards against those who trespass into areas of decision making outside their allotted field or who attempt to use short cuts in making decisions.”24 Other components In order to execute policies and initiatives, executives in all states inescapably come to rely on a surfeit of bureaucratic and administrative networks and agencies. For democratic states, however, bureaucracies pose a peculiar dilemma. Particularly in more advanced and powerful states, bureaucratic agencies tend to have an inherent tendency to engage in a bit of autonomous policy-making when the

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opportunity arises. Thus traditional distinctions between rule-making and rule application, or even between political executives and professional administrators, can at times become disconcertingly blurred. 25 The pervasiveness and unimpeded proliferation of bureaucracies, even in the most libertarian of states, has only compounded the potential problem of undermining due processes of democratic decisionmaking. 26 The fusion, or more accurately confusion, of executive and bureaucratic duties and responsibilities is even more probable in parliamentary systems, particularly in Japan and Britain, where few differences separate the top echelons of the bureaucracy from members of the legislature. 27 Nevertheless, the dominance of the so-called New Right and its unrelenting conservatism in most First World democracies throughout the 1980s, of which Prime Minister Thatcher and President Reagan were the most colourful representatives, did to a certain extent dampen the seemingly unabated growth of bureaucratic powers. The exact effects of the New Right phenomenon on the powers of the state are difficult to gauge. For while the proponents of the movement were virulent in their call for a minimalist state, they were as equally determined not only to enhance the state’s military capabilities but also to enable it to push their own conservative agendas through society. Nevertheless, the “anti-statist” predisposition—or at least rhetoric—of the New Right, coupled with its general mistrust of government bureaucracy and calls for a return to a freer market economy, did somewhat curtail the growing powers of administrative networks in the 1980s.28 How lasting this trend will prove remains to be seen. A further reason for the institutional resilience of democratic states is the corporatist underpinnings which most tend to have. Corporatism, in its broad sense, denotes the convergence of varied and disparate interests within and alongside a state for the furtherance of common goals which happen to coincide. It involves the “joining of public agencies and private interest groups in the making and implementing of governmental policy.”29 The intimately close and multifaceted interactions between societal and state actors in democratic polities often facilitate the emergence of “democratic corporatisms”, although, as it will be shown later, non-democratic states can also assume corporatist features. Although there are no absolute and conclusive correlations between industrial capitalism and democracy, today’s democratic states of the First World invariably preside over highly developed capitalist economies.30 Advanced capitalism gives rise to special interest groups, who cooperate among themselves, as well as with the democratic state, in order to further their interests. Corporatism and consensus democracy


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can thus potentially become logical extensions of one another. 31 Consequently, such polities are endowed with yet an additional set of institutions which provide the nexuses between an open and democratic state and a supportive society. By virtue of their goals and functions, meanwhile, the emerging “corporate” institutions are neither strictly societal nor exclusive components of the state. Instead, they transcend the state-society divide, assuming and absorbing features and functions of both and in the process reinforcing their adjoining attributes. Lastly, the pivotal role of constitutions in maintaining the overall structure of democratic states, which are inherently reliant on highly artificial and carefully engineered political arrangements, cannot be overlooked. The general parameters of the state, the extent and manner of its interactions with society, and the functions of its central institutions are often detailed in constitutions, whether written or unwritten. “Constitutions”, wrote S.E.Finer, a noted British scholar of comparative politics, “are codes of rules which aspire to regulate the allocation of functions, powers and duties among the various agencies and offices of governments, and define the relationships between these and the public.”32 They are “power maps” that outline the “territorial distribution of power within the nation-state”. 33 Their role is, consequently, of insurmountable importance in democratic polities, where the institutions of the state perform clearly defined functions and are subject to close scrutiny by each other and by society. “Constitutionality” has thus become an inalienable feature of almost all democracies, even for those, like Britain and Israel, which do not have clearly spelled-out, written constitutions. But not all constitutions are democratic. Some outline political systems that are blatantly non-democratic, while others are in reality “fictive” and merely give the illusion of democracy. 34 For a constitution to be democratic, it needs to guarantee equality to all citizens before the law and in their access to means of political control. A democracy, in other words, “cannot allow a constitutional distinction between citizens and subjects, or between first- and second-class citizens.”35 Moreover, democratic constitutions identify factors which will enable society to freely interact with and in turn influence the state. This is ensured through such constitutional provisions as the rights of assembly, free expression of political views, habeas corpus, and protection against unwarranted state actions.36 However, no matter how comprehensive or grandiose in their enumeration of civil and political liberties they may be, constitutions are meaningless if they are not reinforced by supportive social and cultural milieus. Throughout the 1960s and the 1970s, for example, liberal democratic constitutions

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were found in almost every Latin American country. Few, however, ever gained much social and cultural resonance so long as the region’s bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes remained in power.37 There needs to be a broad-based and unshakable societal consensus, as well as political commitment, towards the desirability of the core principles of a democratic constitution for it to actually become a meaningful political frame of reference. For democratic constitutions, remaining viable necessitates nothing less than an “effective majority agreement on the great issues”.38

NEW DEMOCRACIES Democratic states, as the above discussion shows, inhere a number of features which automatically enhance their strength and durability as compared to other state types. Democratic polities are comprised of pervasive and far-reaching institutional links arising from both the society and the state, which foster among them a routinely harmonious and stable pattern of interaction. In turn, popular legitimacy is fostered and democratic institutions and practices become increasingly acceptable to society’s various strata. Particularly in the industrially advanced nations of the First World, the economic successes of democratic states only accentuate their incomparable levels of popular legitimacy and social acceptance. Moreover, the very self-regulating and restraining mechanisms that greatly limit the scope of actions and powers of democratic states, help endow them with a rather selfperpetuating character. State leaders and actors may change frequently, but despite the political demise of leaders, and, indeed, precisely because of its occurrence at regular intervals, the democratic state remains remarkably stable. The challenge of survival Nevertheless, not all existing democratic states are so uniformly stable. Neither, for that matter, have all democratic experiences in the past been unbridled successes.39 In particular, the newer democratic states that have begun appearing around the globe since the end of the 1980s find themselves confronted with a series of debilitating and at times seemingly insurmountable obstacles which threaten their very foundations. Democratic states have proliferated not only throughout Southern Europe, Latin America, and now Eastern and Central Europe, but have also, albeit timidly, begun to appear in parts of Asia, Africa,


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and the Middle East. Some of the more successful and notable examples of recent democratic states include Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela in Latin America; South Africa and Senegal in Africa; India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in South Asia; Turkey in the Middle East; and the Baltic republics, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland in Central and Eastern Europe. 40 Despite this unprecedented proliferation, however, these relatively recent democratic states face a plethora of difficulties in their quest for political viability and survival. These obstacles are numerous and varied, and can greatly differ depending on the particular state in question. It is, none the less, possible to discern certain broad factors which, to one degree or another, can pose potential threats to the emerging wave of democratic states. They include, among others, democratically uncommitted and uncompromising actors within the state, the fragility of systemic means of support for democratic practices and institutions (including, in some instances, corporatist ones), and lack of supportive political cultures and other society-wide facilitators to democracy. The fledgling democracies of Nigeria and Peru fell to coups by the military and the president respectively, and, particularly in the years following their initial establishment, the democratic systems of Argentina and the Philippines—especially during President Aquino’s term—faced constant threats from elements within the armed forces. Social structures and cultural values are of paramount importance in lending support and acceptability, not just to democratic states but indeed to all types of political arrangements that involve continuous interaction between state and society. As earlier discussed, democracy involves a measure of fusion and synchronisation between state and society. This necessitates a widespread, if not necessarily uniform, commitment by most or all social strata to democratic institutions and practices. Society must not only support a democratic state but, more importantly, must be overwhelming in its support. Many of the newer democratic states, however, preside over societies whose characteristics make the generation of such a support extremely difficult or at best tenuous. This is not to imply that there are always democratic elites who try to lead undemocratic masses by the nose. Politicians may become democratic only when it suits their needs, as some of the examples of communists-cum-democrats in Eastern Europe have shown us. By the same token, traditions of consensus and tolerance can be found in many pre-industrial societies, even if the gap between village democracy and pluralism at the level of the nation-state may prove difficult to bridge. There are, nevertheless, certain social and cultural features that can hamper the viability of democratic states. While Part IV will examine

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these socio-cultural characteristics more thoroughly, some of the more prominent ones can be highlighted summarily here. Perhaps most crucial is the absence of a democratically nonsupportive political culture and social values. Political culture is comprised of the collectivity of popular attitudes and perceptions towards the body politic. Since the newer democratic states are new, presiding over societies that are not terribly familiar or experienced with this particular brand of polity, their normative and valuative supportbase is not as fully developed and reliable, at least initially, as they may need it to be. Democracy requires the active participation, commitment, and consensus of those in society. Especially in nations where democratic experiences have been historical rarities, such essential factors may not be readily available and may have to be cultivated over time and through deliberate social engineering (in the same way as they were in Japan, for example). It is this reason—the absence of widely held convictions to democratic values—that often leads to the obsolescence of thoroughly democratic provisions of newly devised constitutions. Wildly different levels of social and economic infringement among various segments of the same society can also further polarise differences in political culture and, therefore, jeopardise a budding democratic state. Lastly, an emerging democratic state needs to have the determined support of a corresponding civil society that is pluralistic, autonomous, and vigorously organised.41 A number of the new democracies, especially those born in recent years in Eastern Europe, are supported by zealously democratic civil societies. Yet most of the societies in which democratic states have recently appeared, at least in Africa and parts of Asia, happen to be torn by extreme and at times violent factionalism and inter-ethnic or other forms of animosity. Apart from social dynamics, there are a number of political variables that can also derail or at least drastically reduce the viability of democratic states. As in all other types of states, the role played by executives is one of critical importance in the conduct and the overall health of new democratic states. But in their particular case, the centrality of the leadership is even more magnified. Whereas a society needs to have a general consensus concerning the desirability of a democratic polity, the resolve and commitment of leaders to maintain that democracy must be absolutely unshakeable. Since, in these states, democratic principles and institutions are particularly fragile and have little or no historical precedents, the agendas and actions of executives are even more directly linked to maintaining the viability of the whole polity. The responsibilities of leaders in new democracies are far more onerous than those in the First World, where systemic and routinised


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democratic procedures make undemocratic deviations far more difficult and unlikely. Leaders in the new democracies, however, need constantly to remind themselves of the need to reject temptations to resort to undemocratic means, to be willing to turn to non-partisan sources of legitimacy, to accept coalitions with disloyal opposition if necessary, and to refrain from abusing the coercive resources of the state in order to keep themselves in power. They must, additionally, be skilful enough not to subject the state to unnecessary crises which it may not be able to withstand because of its relative youth.42 Reorienting political priorities by making them democratic is also crucial. But it involves more than just obedience to democratic norms. While the state must reformulate its goals and guard against excessive centralisation, it can ill afford to become too weak and therefore unable to deliver the social, political, and economic goods that members of society expect of it.43 Poor performance on various fronts, in fact, is a frequent catalyst for the collapse, not just of democratic states but indeed of most others as well. Leaders in new democracies face an added dilemma. Their eagerness to maximise their legitimacy prompts many to place most of society’s unsolved problems on their agenda simultaneously. In the process, however, not only do they find their initiatives subject to an array of previously non-existent democratic checks and balances, but, more importantly, they also increase the number of people for whom such reforms can have potentially negative consequences.44 The difficulties and obstacles that the newer democratic states face are numerous and varied in nature. Their success and continued viability is thus by no means a foregone conclusion. Some of these obstacles are similar to those that First World states faced in the earlier stages of their political development, though this is not to suggest that the successful evolution of democratic states in the First World is certain to be replicated elsewhere. Nevertheless, there do exist certain factors which can potentially help sustain the emerging democracies. A number of farreaching and fundamental social and cultural phenomena, to be fully discussed in the next section of the book, have so far combined to underwrite the viability and resilience of the new democracies. To begin with, almost all of the new democratic states have come into power after the humiliating and ruinous failure of other, non-democratic, alternatives. In their separate ways, the rule of military juntas left as many scars on Latin America as did the communist regimes on Eastern Europe. There is, in these two regions at least, a compelling imperative on the part of both state and social actors to make democracy work and to help it endure and thrive. International and economic factors are also

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of critical importance. The international state system that has taken shape in recent years, the “New World Order”, is one in which democratic states find supportive dynamics. The economic predicaments of Latin American and Eastern and Central European states, and their dependence on economic aid from First World democracies, also serve as strong incentives for remaining democratic. For Europe’s new democracies, the desire for greater integration with their more affluent and stable neighbours to the west provides added motivation.

PSEUDO-DEMOCRACIES A number of Third World polities, both old and new, have embraced the principles of political democracy and, on the surface at least, are endowed with all the features and the institutions which democracies are made up of. Nevertheless, despite all the political trappings of democracy, the essence of this particular form of polity does not reach within the depths of society. The political establishment remains essentially detached and isolated from social currents and nuances, operating by its own rules and largely managing to avoid extensive and meaningful contact with the masses or popular classes. At best, the democratic state skims no more than the tip of the societal iceberg, including with itself socio-cultural and economic elites but not much more. These are Third World political systems that are democratic in appearance but not in substance, in institutions but not in spirit. These are, awkwardly put, pseudo-democracies. What distinguishes pseudo-democracies from First World or other viable democracies is not their relative youth or their geographic concentration in one particular region. Among them are polities that are both old and young and they are found throughout the Third World.45 The distinguishing characteristic is civil society, or rather lack thereof, whose absence in pseudo-democratic polities makes the practice of politics for the most part socially vacuous and meaningless. Civil society, which is key to the birth and the continued existence of viable democracies, is an absent phenomenon in pseudo-democracies. As a social and political phenomenon, civil society entails the political self-organisation of society, a largely spontaneous and haphazardly orchestrated move on the part of the popular strata of society to bring about and to sustain a political system which is at once both democratic and is based on the collective desires of the populace. In a polity in which civil society pervades, therefore, not only is there a determined effort on the part of society to maintain the democratic


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political order but there are also a number of supporting social and cultural phenomena which keep democracy intact and meaningful. The political culture is democratic, and the society as a whole has a vested interest in protecting the democratic essence of the system (see Chapter 4). None of these support mechanisms exist in a pseudodemocracy, however, and the distance between state and society is wide enough to allow the former to operate without close and intimate attention to the latter. The empty democracy Pseudo-democracies do, nevertheless, have all the window-dressings of democracy, the most notable of which are constitutional governments, political parties, and regular elections. These are not by any means dictatorial regimes and their political arenas do, in fact, involve a genuine measure of democratic give and take. However, an unmitigated elitism permeates the system. As in Taiwan, India, Turkey, and Kenya (as well as Japan), in a number of pseudo-democracies the pivotal political forum for state-society interaction is often in the form of a single, dominant political party, one within which political contests revolve more around personalities rather than principles, factional quarrels rather than policy differences. Even in polities in which there are a number of political parties vying for greater popular support, as in the Caribbean and certain Central American countries, their purview does not quite reach beyond the ranks of the social and economic elites. Political parties may be voted in and out of office, but to the larger population they hardly mean much more than their acronyms and their colourful banners and symbols; presidential or parliamentary candidates frequently take turns getting elected to office. Even if the voting is not rigged and is free of manipulation or fear and intimidation, the citizen casting a vote is unlikely to be aware of the issues for which his or her candidate platforms, which will most likely not be too different from the stands of other candidates. Voting becomes perfunctory and devoid of substantive meaning, as do most other rituals associated with the practice of democracy: marches and rallies, canvassing, waving banners, etc. Once the hype is over, democracy is largely forgotten about until the next election. Society ceases to have any meaningful impact upon the workings and the conduct of the state. Democracy is forgotten, not because the new guardians of the state are necessarily opposed to it (which they may indeed be) but because of the pressing nature of the so many other concerns which society faces. Unemployment and declining living standards, crime and other societal conflicts all soon divert

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popular attention from the field of democratic politics, which to most looks remote and beyond reach. Besides an inherent democratic elitism which bestows on the system a semblance of democracy, pseudo-democratic polities embody a number of other systemic characteristics which set them apart from praetorian regimes. In stable praetorian polities, the absence of institutional means of societal participation in state affairs enhances the possibility of sudden eruptions of built-in political tensions from below. The state may be strong, but the broader foundations upon which it relies are at best tenuous and dependent on the unimpeded maintenance of coercive relations with society. Given the appropriate social and political conditions, such as unity and resolve among various social classes and the weakness and vulnerability of the state, revolutionary uprisings and other mass-based revolts are endemic possibilities with which praetorian regimes must contend.46 Pseudo-democracies, however, are for the most part immune from the possibility of revolutions and violent overthrows, for they not only enjoy a greater degree of societal legitimacy but, more importantly, provide safety valves for political aspirations through elections and other democratic rites. It is, in fact, not the state which has the potential of being considered as illegitimate but rather those political aspirants and groups who seek to employ extrainstitutional means in order to attain political objectives. Everyone may be aware of the elitism of the state and the corruption which often permeates its many echelons, but few would go so far as to endorse guerrilla warfare against the state. The polity as a whole and the state in particular rest on a cushion of popular consensus and legitimacy. In pseudo-democracies, democracy may not have much of a political meaning for society but it does, nevertheless, have deep emotional resonance among the populace. Pseudo-democracies may be immune from revolutionary overthrows, but they are, however, inherently susceptible to ideological and other populist movements. By definition, a pseudo-democracy, while embodying such institutional mechanisms of democracy as elections and legislatures, lacks viable, meaningful normative links with the citizenry. The system may be democratic in name but it remains elitist in nature. Within this type of a set-up, it is perfectly feasible for an individual or a political party with a populist platform to come to the political fore by mobilising a vast pool of the electorate that had hithertofore been largely ignored or taken for granted. Hitler’s rise through the Weimar Republic beginning in 1933 and Juan Peron’s election to the Argentine presidency in 1946 offer two extreme examples of populist movements arising within pseudo-democratic systems. In most existing pseudo-democratic


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polities, the political elite exercises enough control and discretion not to allow for the unchecked ascent of populist elements from within its own ranks or from the outside. Nevertheless, there is always the possibility of such a development, especially at times when the ostensibly democratic system fails to live up to its political and/or economic promises. In literally all pseudo-democratic political systems found around the world today—from Africa (Botswana, Kenya, and Tanzania) and Asia (Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh) to Latin America (Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica, and the Caribbean)—the difficult realities of political and economic life make the rise of institutionally based populist movements a real possibility. All that is needed is for a demagogic politico, armed with an absolutist, psychologically soothing ideology, to step into the political arena and address the politically alienated and economically depressed masses.

CONCLUSION Recent global transformations have necessitated the provision of a new classification of the international state system, one based not on economic accomplishments or ideological blueprints but rather on the nature and type of relationships between state and society. Within this new framework, this chapter has examined the various types of democratic states, some of which have far greater socio-cultural and historical resonance than the others do, some that are relatively recent creations, and a remaining few that are far more democratic in name and appearance than in substance and spirit. Democracies are not all of the same ilk. It would be stretching the limits of analysis beyond any degree of reasonableness to lump together such varied and yet “democratic” states as, for example, Germany, the Dominican Republic, and Argentina, each of which have their democratic states sustained by quite different systemic, historical, political, and socio-cultural dynamics. To better conceptualise such differences among democratic states, this chapter has proposed dividing them into viable, new and pseudodemocratic varieties, the crucial distinguishing factor between them being the nature and intricacies of their relationship with their respective societies. At the crux of every democracy, regardless of the national character of the state in which the phenomenon may appear, is a routine, regularised, and unadulterated process of political input from social actors into the state. There are, however, significant differences in the imperatives that compel social actors to ensure the maintenance of the system through their political inputs, the composition and agendas of the

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politically active social strata, and in the degree of social resonance that the democratic state has within society. The social forces that may impede or enhance the viability and prospects for democracy in various countries will be discussed in Part IV. The trichotomous division of democracies into First World, newly established, and “pseudo-” varieties is not the only method of differentiating between the different forms of democratic regimes. Democracies have frequently been divided into presidential and parliamentary, representative and direct, and consociational and consensus varieties.47 More recent studies have differentiated between “elite-” and “mass-dominated” forms of democratic rule in the Third World.48 Each of these forms of classification sheds significant light on the intricate dynamics that characterise the different varieties of democratic regimes. The classification devised here, however, attempts to go one step further by examining the “social basis of democracy”, to borrow a celebrated phrase from Barrington Moore.49 The social and cultural imperatives that cause state and society to establish links and connections with each other are of great significance. In fact, the social and cultural basis of the state-society nexus supersedes in importance such other political factors as elite consensus, political institutions, or the precise forms that citizen participation may take. Each of these factors is quite important in its own right, but even more significant are the underlying reasons why citizens decide to input into the democratic system. It is here that the crucial, society-based differences between viable and pseudo-democracies come to light. Not all states foster or are part of a coercion-free, consensual relationship with their societies. Whereas all democratic states, regardless of their subtle defining characteristics, are based on some sort of routinised electoral arrangement with their societies, there are a number of states that view almost all types of societal input into the political process as a potential threat to their survival. These are states that are in one way or another non-democratic, and, as in populist instances, may at best temporarily manipulate society into believing that it is operating within a democratic environment. Nevertheless, even such inclusionary regimes are reliant on popular manipulation and coercion rather than genuine consensus and acceptance. These non-democratic varieties of states are the focus of Chapter 6. NOTES 1

See, for example, James Bill and Robert Hardgrave. Comparative Politics: Quest for Theory. (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981);


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Jean Blondel. Comparing Political Systems. (New York, NY: Praeger, 1972); Roy Macridis and Steven Burg. Introduction to Comparative Politics: Regime sand Change. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1991); Roy Macridis. Modern Political Regimes: Patterns and Institutions. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1986); Geir Lundestad. East. West, North, South: Major Developments in International Politics. Gail Adams Kvam, trans. (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1986); Dirk Berg-Schlosser. “African Political Systems: Typology and Performance”. Comparative Political Studies. Vol. 17, No. 1, (April 1984), pp. 121–51; Hans Mouritzen. “Tensions Between the Strong, and the Strategies of the Weak”. Journal of Peace Research. Vol. 28, No. 2, (1991), pp. 217–30; and, Iliya Harik. “The Origins of the Arab State System”. Ghassan Salame (ed.). The Foundations of the Arab State. (London: Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 19–46. For a discussion of the role of leadership see, Stanley Hoffman. “The Case for Leadership”. Foreign Policy. No. 81, (Winter 1990–1), pp. 20–39; Lewis J.Eddinger. “Approaches to the Comparative Analysis of Political Leadership”. Review of Politics. Vol. 52, No. 4, (Fall 1990), pp. 509–23; James Schubert. “Age and ActivePassive Leadership Style”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 82, No. 3, (September 1988), pp. 763–72; H.G.Peter Wallach. “Political Leadership”. Journal of Politics. Vol 50, No. 4, (November 1988), pp. 1090–5. 2 Harry Redner. “Beyond Marx-Weber: A Diversified and International Approach to the State”. Political Studies. Vol 38, (1990), pp. 648–9. 3 Ibid., p. 648. 4 Ibid., p. 649. 5 Latin American countries, for example, are often dependent on, or at least extremely sensitive, to policies and initiatives by multinational (non-state) lending agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. 6 See, World Press Review. Vol. 39, No. 7, (July 1992), pp. 9–14. 7 Harry Redner. “Beyond Marx-Weber: A Diversified and International Approach to the State”, p. 649. 8 Michael Bratton. “Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment”. International Studies Quarterly. Vol. 26, No. 3, (September 1982), pp. 361– 2. Bratton concentrates on “patterns of (economic) development” of nonWestern countries. 9 Irving Louis Horowitz. Three Worlds of Development: The Theory and Practice of International Stratification. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 39. 10 Jean-Pierre Lehmann. “Dictatorship and Development in Pacific Asia: Wider Implications”. International Affairs. Vol. 61, No. 4, (Autumn 1985), p. 591. 11 Michael Bratton. “Patterns of Development and Underdevelopment”. p. 362. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., pp. 360–1. 14 In one form or another, states in Germany and Italy had records which were marred by spurts of militaristic-authoritarianism in the 1920s and the 1930s. The sovereign, democratic states of Austria, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, France, and Belgium were all subsumed under foreign occupation during World War II. Spain, Portugal, and Greece were all under military

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

State in comparative perspective rule up until the 1970s and are even more recent democracies. Japan’s democratic state also does not date past the end of World War II. See also, Dennis Kavanagh. “Western Europe”. Robert Wesson (ed.). Democracy: A Worldwide Survey. (New York, NY: Praeger, 1987), pp. 11–12. Alan Ball. Modern Politics and Government. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1988), p. 136. Gerhard Loewenberg and Samuel Patterson. “Legislatures and Political Systems”. Louis Cantori and Andrew Ziegler (eds). Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioralist Era. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988), p. 280. Michael Curtis. Introduction to Comparative Government. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1990), p. 21. For an interesting analysis of parliaments in Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, and Finland see, David Apter. The Nordic Parliament. (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 1984). Rod Hague and Martin Harrop. Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction. (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), p. 188. For a detailed and concise account of events in China in April and May 1989 see, John Copper and Ta-Ling. Failure of Democracy Movement: Human Rights in the People’s Republic of China, 1988/1989. (Baltimore, MD: University of Maryland School of Law, 1991), especially pp. 25–7 and 123– 6. Alan Ball. Modern Politics and Government, p. 194. Rod Hague and Martin Harrop. Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction, p. 179. Roy Macridis. Modern Political Regimes: Patterns and Institutions, p. 51. Alan Ball. Modern Politics and Government, pp. 150–1. Roy Macridis and Steven L.Burg. Introduction to Comparative Politics: Regimes and Change, p. 25. Alan Ball. Modern Politics and Government, p. 153. Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Political Dilemma. (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 131. John Creighton Campbell. “Democracy and Bureaucracy in Japan”. Takeshi Ishida and Ellis S.Krauss (eds). Democracy in Japan. (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), pp. 133–4. Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Political Dilemma, p. 133. Roy Macridis. Modern Political Regimes: Patterns and Institutions, p. 108. Mark Kesselman and Joel Krieger (eds). European Politics in Transition. (Lexington, MA: D.C.Heath, 1986), p. 8. There are, it is important to note, some scholars who disagrees with this assertion. Blondel, for example, argues that “there is indeed a correlation between liberal democracy and socio-economic development, in that the richest polities are most inclined to be stable liberal democracies, while Latin American polities and other Third World countries can be expected to shift periodically between liberal democracy and some other form of regime.” Jean Blondel. Comparing Political Systems, p. 169. Arend Lijphart and Markus M.L.Crepaz. “Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries: Conceptual and Empirical Linkages”. British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 21, (1991), p. 245. S.E.Finer. Five Constitutions: Contrasts and Comparisons. (New York, NY: Penguin, 1979), p. 15.

State classifications: democratic varieties 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45

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Rod Hague and Martin Harrop. Comparative Politics and Government: An Introduction, p. 163–4. S.E.Finer. Five Constitutions: Contrasts and Comparisons, p. 17. Leslie Lipson. The Democratic Civilization. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 406. W.W.Rostow. Politics and the Stages of Growth. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 269. J.Lloyd Mecham. “Latin American Constitutions: Nominal and Real.” Harvey Kebschull (ed.). Politics in Transitional Societies. (New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973), p. 224. W.W.Rostow. Politics and the Stages of Growth, p. 270. For breakdown of previous democracies, see Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (eds). The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). See, Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset (eds). Democracy in Developing Countries. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988). In subsequent years, three additional volumes dealing with Africa, Asia, and Latin America respectively were also published as part of a series. Larry Diamond, Juan J.Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990) p. 18–21. Juan J.Linz. “The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Elements of a Breakdown”. Juan J.Linz and Alfred Stepans (eds). The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, p. 40. Larry Diamond, Juan J.Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, p. 23 Juan J.Linz. “The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Elements of a Breakdown”, p. 41. Some of the more notable examples of pseudo-democracies in the Third World include the Philippines, India, Pakistan, and Turkey in Asia, Kenya and Tanzania in Africa, and Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras, Venezuela, and Ecuador in Latin America. Diamond, Linz, and Lipset use the same title of pseudo-democratic for a quite different type of regime. Such a political system, they argue, is a subset of authoritarian regimes…because the existence of formally democratic institutions, such as multiparty electoral competition, masks (often in part to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian domination. Central America has long lived under such regimes. While this regime type overlaps in some way with the hegemonic regime, it is less institutionalized and typically more personalized, coercive, and unstable.

46 47

Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset. “Introduction: Comparing Experiences with Democracy”. Larry Diamond, Juan Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset Politics in Developing Countries: Comparing Experiences with Democracy, p. 8. Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), p. 15. See, for example, Arend Lijphart (ed.). Parliamentary Versus Presidential Government. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). See also, Arend Lijphart. “Democratic Political Systems”. Anton Bebler and Jim Seroka

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48 49

State in comparative perspective (eds). Contemporary Political Systems: Classifications and Typologies. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1990), pp. 71–87. Georg Sorensen. Democracy and Democratization. (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993), pp. 80–5. Barrington Moore. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. (New York, NY: Penguin, 1966).

6 State classifications Non-democratic varieties

The fact that democracy seems to have appeared in historical “waves”, not all of which have had lasting resonance,1 is compelling testimony that democratic regimes are neither natural nor sustainable through purely political means alone. Most political systems, in fact, at least up until relatively recently, have been more prone to centralise power and seek to rule over society rather than to foster a consistent process of political give-and-take. That democracy as a political system is considered normatively “better” than others does not necessarily result in its appearance and endurance around the globe. In its most basic form, in fact, politics has often been defined as a contest over power.2 In a significant number of countries, this contest over power is far more likely to be praetorian, brutal, and even violent rather than consensual and democratic. Even if such extremes as brutality and violence do not mark the state’s relationship with society, a majority of political systems continue to be marked less by democratic premises and more by state attempts to either manipulate or repress society’s political yearnings. This chapter focuses on the two predominant types of non-democratic states that continue to exist in a number of countries, namely, inclusionary populist and bureaucratic-authoritarian ones, and examines the different institutions through which they govern and the patterns of relations they tend to establish with their societies. Neither variety, the chapter will conclude, can indefinitely sustain itself in power—as democracies can—as their bases of power frequently tend to be brittle and their normative legitimacy fragile. INCLUSIONARY POPULIST REGIMES Closely resembling democratic states but not quite democratic are those states that aim specifically to foster populist and inclusionary policies. In fact, populist regimes contain several characteristics that draw them far 101

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closer to authoritarian and indeed totalitarian regimes than to democratic ones. Due to their structural set-up and the specific ways in which their institutions maintain themselves, populist regimes endow society with an illusion, or at best an overly exaggerated perception of, democratic participation. These are states whose very sustenance calls for an inclusion of the popular masses into the political process. They espouse on populist policies and claim, often in the form of vitriolic rhetoric, to lead on behalf of not just “the people” but indeed the downtrodden and the disinherited, the “shirtless ones”, as Juan Peron called them. This catering to the masses is not necessarily democratic but is often manipulative, attained not by free choice but instead by a careful forging of circumstances in which participants are used as tools for particular political ends. Despite the inclusionary state’s banners and its dogmas, “the masses” are an end in themselves. As in authoritarian dictatorships, populist states often set specific and frequently intractable agendas for their society. Unlike authoritarian states, however, populist regimes seek to implement and to further their agendas not through sheer coercion but rather through cultivating mass-based support from within society. To do so, they develop highly penetrative infrastructures and institutions that allow them access to the various layers of society, and this, combined with the rigid dogmas which most embark on, means that they tend to adopt increasingly totalitarian policies. The distinction between inclusionary populist and totalitarian regimes, therefore, is often a matter of degree rather than being based on the nature of their institutions and functions. That is why the term “regime”, which conveys a certain measure of totality, more appropriately describes these types of states. It is almost exclusively in the Third World that both inclusionary populist regimes and authoritarian dictatorships crop up. These are invariably relatively young states, and thus need to be examined within the context of such processes as political development and institutionalisation. Their relative youth and lack of institutional heritage makes them comparatively weak, particularly when they seek to govern over older, fractious, and consequently stronger societies. When democratic and consensual interactions between state and society do not exist, the state, which has a monopoly over such means of coercion and manipulation as the armed forces and the media, is likely to opt for one of two courses of action: it can either force society into submissive compliance through force, or it may try to persuade (and manipulate) some if not a majority of the social classes into complying with its goals and agendas. Both the submissive compliance or the manipulated mobilisation of society require the existence of state institutions that are viable, solid, and penetrative. The quest to

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develop and to make operational a variety of institutions—be they old or new, pre-existing or newly concocted—thus becomes a central part of the political process in both populist and authoritarian regimes. Where populist, inclusionary regimes in particular are concerned, the significance of state institutions often seems to be overshadowed by the more dramatic effects of mass participation. It often appears as if it is not the various institutions of the state that are actually in control but, rather, that real influence lies with seemingly spontaneous masses and their charismatic leaders. In fact, the most crucial factor in sustaining a populist regime, especially in its most ideal type, is not the degree to which its institutions remain viable but instead something that is quite amorphous and intangible: the strength of its leader’s charisma. Reinforcing this are the particular political and social conditions that prevail in most parts of the Third World which, to varying degrees, encourage the rise of charismatically based polities.3 Politics of inclusion In populist inclusionary regimes, the masses find themselves immersed in the beliefs and the mission of their leader, believing, however miguidedly, in his promises and rhetoric. “The Cause”, the passion of the masses, becomes all-subsuming. The personality of the leader and prevailing social and cultural forces play especially pivotal roles in the emergence of charismatic rule.4 Charismatic leadership requires three elements: a devoted mass of followers; a leader able to fulfil a charismatic role; and conditions conducive to a leader-devotee relationship. The charismatic leader constructs a new political universe in which he himself stands in the middle, surrounded and supported by the masses. He destroys the old order and builds a new one.5 He becomes the object of much devotion, and the masses find solace in the ideals of the movement he comes to personify.6 His message is simple, his plans bold, and his mission popular. He speaks the language of the average citizen and does so plainly and directly.7 He understands the shared anxieties of the people and their feelings of personal inadequacy which arise from social and cultural turmoil.8 But not only does he understand them, he in fact alleviates such miseries through political inclusion. Collective political participation assumes soul-saving functions, few participants realising that they are, as one observer has commented, “little more than a cheap means to achieve political acquiescence”.9 Specific social and cultural factors are also necessary for the success of inclusionary political phenomena. Charismatic political leadership tends to appear in the context of undemocratic and unevolved political

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institutions, during times of extraordinary transition and social disquiet, and in cultures in which the concept of a cult of personality is not generally viewed with suspicion. During times of uncertainty and social and cultural unease, people are drawn to those who stand firmly and who claim to have all of the needed remedies. The charismatic leader becomes the most important symbol of unity, long-lost self-assertion, and consensus on national objectives. “For those confused by changing values, he is the link between the old and sanctions the new.”10 Hero-worshipping becomes the political order of the day, embodying an ironic appearance of democracy which, once its facade is removed, is anti-democratic to the core.11 People follow their hero, to whom they may go so far as to ascribe mythical qualities, not merely because of his promises of national salvation but, when in power, because he includes them into the political process. Just as they rush to his adoration, he empowers them by opening the previously closed doors of the body politic. Having previously been brutally prohibited from the exercise of politics, people in inclusionary systems find themselves an integral part of the political process, and in turn bestow their leader with unmitigated legitimacy and adoration. Symbolism becomes all-important. Goals must be constantly striven for, be they actual or contrived. Success in achieving these goals means bringing to an end the conditions that originally gave rise to charismatic rule and, as a result, an end to the charismatically based state itself. “Charismatic movements”, in the words of one observer, “must founder in the face of success. When the crisis has passed, for whatever reason, the followers regain their sense of control, their sense of personal efficacy, and the leader recedes into the psychic shadow.”12 What happens to the populist state then depends on the force of existing circumstances. Some conjure up perpetual crises, going so far as even to wage or to prolong wars in order to keep public fervour at a high pitch for as long as possible. Iran’s bloody war with Iraq lasted for eight years; Cuba’s war of words with the United States, like those of most other post-revolutionary states, shows few signs of letting up. 13 Other states, as Weber theorised, may turn instead to increasingly bureaucratic mechanisms to continue supporting themselves and eventually lose their populist and inclusionary garb.14 Still others, it is hypothetically possible, may see one charismatic leader replaced by another, although that would depend on an unlikely ability to maintain high levels of mass devotion over long periods of time. Charismatic leadership, and along with it inclusionary states, are, nevertheless, at best only transitory means of political control. They inevitably give way to routinised and more institutionalised forms of politics. While in power, however, inclusionary populist regimes thrive on


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the incorporation of politically significant social strata into the political process. One or more segments of society, often those who were particularly disenfranchised before the populist regime came into power, are especially targeted for mobilisation. They become, in essence, the most “included” segment of the politically active, the foot soldiers of the inclusionary state. However, despite appearances, this concerted and unbridled flow of mass input into the political process is not always spontaneous and uncoordinated nor, in fact, is it always voluntary and purely out of devotion. The populist state may, initially, not be terribly evolved in its level of institutionalisation, but, from the start, it has very clearly defined and pointed agendas. As a result, it cannot afford but to micro-manage politics. Its lofty ambitions include closing the once enormous state-society gap, fostering a new political culture, and, consequently, creating a “new man”. Politics becomes a form of religion: New political forms are developed that have the effect of providing for the continuity, meaning, and purpose of an individual’s action. The result is a doctrine that is in effect a political religion…The effects of political religion are such that they strengthen authority in the state and weaken the flexibility of society. Hence it becomes difficult to change from autocratic to more democratic or secular patterns of political organization and social belief.15 Within this context, even collective behaviour, seemingly spontaneous, becomes part of a carefully staged programme of mass political inclusion. The regime cannot fully trust the unpredictable impulse of the masses, and neither can it resist the temptation to impose subtle yet tight controls over their actions. Through the official party or through neighbourhood committees, the state orchestrates—or perhaps as its leaders would like to see it, “channels”—mass-based displays of support for the political establishment. As one observer has noted, Cuba’s postrevolutionary, inclusionary regime engages in precisely this type of machination of collective behaviour: What may appear to the untrained eye as an immense sea of anonymous faces of person temporarily detached from their customary social relations to participate in the jurnadas of the revolutionary calendar is instead a publicly acknowledged, carefully rehearsed, and studied choreographic exercise of group who are firmly attached to existing institutions and occupy specified and lasting niches.16 In instances where populist regimes do receive spontaneous and

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unsolicited public affection, it is difficult to assess how much of it is genuine and how much a product of fear of abstaining from political participation. Clearly, populist regimes, by virtue of opening previously shut political doors and including the masses within themselves, do cultivate a considerable measure of sincere support and inspire countless loyal followers. No one can deny that such groups as the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany, the “shirtless ones” (descamisados) in Peronist Argentina, the Youth Pioneers in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana, and the “disinherited” (mostazafan) followers of Khomeini in Iran genuinely believed in their leaders and in the political constellation that they had created for them. But there are those who fear the possibility of negative sanctions if they refuse to become a party to the state’s charades. If not necessarily fearing outright imprisonment or dismissal from the job, everyone is at least mindful of the need to stay on the regime’s positive side. This is, admittedly, much more of a factor in totalitarian as opposed to populist states, the former being far more coercive than the latter. Nevertheless, there is always a possibility that opportunism may be at least a marginal motivating factor. Even the most egalitarian of regimes, of whom post-revolutionary states are prime examples, more positively reward their active supporters as compared to the rest of society. Some observers have even gone so far as to argue that “loyalty may be hypocritically simulated by individuals or by whole groups on purely opportunistic grounds, or carried out in practice for reasons of selfinterest. Or people may submit from individual weakness and helplessness because there is no acceptable alternative.”17 Another element in perpetuating mass participation in populist regimes is the factor of imitation. Especially in a politically charged environment, where most members of society either are or pretend to be adherents to the day’s “political religion”, there are considerable psychological pressures to adopt the political values of the masses. Standing out as a non-participant among a sea of believers may be both materially unwise and psychologically troubling. As Eric Hoffer, a pioneer in the study of mass psychology, has written: The one-mindedness…prized by every mass movement [is] achieved as much by imitation as by obedience. Obedience itself consists as much in the imitation of an example and in the following of precept.18 Organs of mobilisation Clearly, the mobilisation of the masses, even with minimal interference from the state, necessitates the existence of an impressive array of


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organisational apparatuses and various institutions. It is true that in instances of charismatic rule, especially early in the life of a pluralist polity, much of the linkage between state and society is in the form of unspoken, emotional bonds that cannot be measured or quantified. But sooner or later such intangible bonds need to be made tangible and must be given institutional and organisational resonance. Devotion and loyalty may be essential to sustaining a political regime, but they are not sufficient. The inherent instability of a crowd only accentuates the need for a “guiding” force, a “vanguard” that can provide organisational cohesion to seemingly spontaneous manifestations of popular support for the state. Legislatures exist, and they do provide highly significant forums for grand oratory and the release of populist energies. But they do not in themselves generate and guide mass-based political enthusiasm. The bureaucracy does not suffice either, for it is a means of administration and not necessarily mobilisation. It has no overriding ideological agendas, at least ostensibly, and is designed for functions other than giving direction to mass movements. A more cohesive force is needed, one which can establish both ideological as well as institutional hegemony over the loyal masses and, in turn, help perpetuate the longevity of the state. Hence state-sponsored political parties are born. It is in these regimes that political parties form an integral part of the governing apparatuses of the state. The reader must have noticed a conspicuous absence of any discussion of political parties in the sections on democratic states. The reason should be now obvious: in democracies, political parties arise from and are institutional manifestations of social (rather than state) phenomena. It is in nondemocratic states that parties, if they exist at all, are part of the state. If not openly established and sponsored by those running the state, parties in non-democracies in one way or another still remain creatures of the political establishment. They are tools designed to further facilitate political control over society. But in democracies, their functions, nature, and, ultimately, direction are reversed; democratic parties are a means of access from society to state rather than representing the latter’s control of the former. Parties are institutions that not only express, but they also channel.19 Of course, they perform both of these functions in all states. What differs is for whom they express—state or society?—and what they channel—societal energies or state directives? The establishment of institutional networks by populist regimes is not as easy and uncomplicated as may at first appear. Contextually, inclusionary populism is antithetical to institutional organisation. The masses will not always be as easily swayed to join a party, and to become active when they do join, as when they first became believers

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in the promises of the regime. To begin with, turning haphazard activism into organised mobilisation is problematic at best. Moreover, as the goals of the populist state (and with it those of the charismatic leader) become altered or more realistic with changing cicumstances, the initially enormous mass of followers can dwindle in numbers.20 The social consensus regarding the state becomes increasingly narrow, though still sizable. Even if few in numbers, however, those who do remain loyal are die-hards and supply the regime with a vocal and active base of support. Their institutional forum is the official party; their ideology that of the government. The state-sponsored party serves four significant yet entwined functions: political institutionalisation, legitimisation, recruitment of state officials and future leaders, and the mobilisation of popular support. In one way or another, these are all functions which the state initiates for its own benefit and that are aimed at society. Moreover, designed as all-encompassing institutions, most state parties in populist regimes are organised along rigidly hierarchical lines akin to the “democratic centralism” of communist parties.21 This centrifugal characteristic is also meant to expedite a fusion of the state to societies that are torn by parochial ethnic and cultural tendencies.22 Totalitarian regimes Finally, a word needs to be said about totalitarian regimes, which, as earlier maintained, represent the more extreme forms of inclusionary populist states. The basic underpinnings of the two state types remain the same. Both rely on the incorporation of broad strata of society into the political process in order to sustain themselves; both espouse dogmatic ideologies that promise to right the wrongs of the past; both embody a rigidly organised, state-directed political party; both are often headed by leaders who are either charismatic or aspire to cultivate charisma; and both try to maintain a siege mentality, a perceived state of crisis, through which they justify their rhetoric and their policies.23 What varies between them is their intensity, and, consequently, their ensuing coercive nature. Totalitarian regimes are far more brutal and zealous in their pursuits than populist inclusionary regimes can ever afford or aspire to be. Significantly, totalitarian regimes strive to reshape the very fundamentals of life in their societies through massive dislocations of life, culture, property, and economy. They even seek to control the citizens’ thought processes. The totality of life under the auspices of the state’s ideology becomes so overwhelming that the average person loses his or her individual identity. The “mass man”, as Hannah Arendt


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poignantly reminds us, is stricken by homelessness and rootlessness.24 The crucial difference lies in the extent to which privacy is allowed by the government. Whereas inclusionary regimes seek to include and to infuse society within the political process, totalitarian regimes aim at nothing less than society’s complete obliteration and total reconstruction anew. Totalitarianism’s ideological agenda is, as a result, far more a crusade than anything else. A summary list of some of the two state types exemplifies their differences. The more notable totalitarian regimes that have appeared within the past few decades include, among others, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and, possibly, Khomeini’s Iran. Populist states have tended to be decidedly less belligerent in their domestic, diplomatic, and ideological pursuits. They are also far more prevalent than totalitarian states. Most postrevolutionary states belong in this category, as do some of the more populist-oriented ones that have come about as a result of military coups. Most Middle Eastern states with successful coups in the recent past (Iraq, Syria, and Libya), much of post-independence Africa in the 1960s and the early 1970s, and a few isolated states in Latin America in the 1950s and the 1960s (Peronist Argentina, Cuba, and to a lesser extent Chile) can all be classified as inclusionary populist regimes. In these states there is a “mass man”, but his individuality is not quite robbed, his identity reaffirmed not overwhelmed and stripped.

BUREAUCRATIC-AUTHORITARIAN DICTATORSHIPS Democratic, populist, and totalitarian states all in some way closely interact with societies over which they rule, albeit in radically different manners. In various ways, even if through blatant manipulation, these states aim to foster bonds of affinity and emotional identity with their respective societies. The functions, structural make-up, and institutions of bureaucratic-authoritarian states, in contrast, are specifically designed to regulate interactions between state and society and those within society itself. The relationship between these states and their society is completely different from those discussed previously. All bureaucraticauthoritarian states, for one reason or another, assume an extremely hostile posture vis-à-vis their societies. Not only does the state not strive for mass incorporation and inclusion, it rarely hesitates to resort to coercive means in order to compensate for its depleted legitimacy within society. The polity can be best described as an “exclusionary” one. Society’s inclusion in and identification with the state is replaced here with a violently enforced, highly authoritarian, exclusion from all

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political exercises. The state strives to create “a new situation of depoliticization, inertial, and atomization”.25 Except for those few dictatorial states whose policies are still being guided by the promises of communism, idealistic ideologies traditionally have not been a defining factor in the political configuration of bureaucratic-authoritarian states. Instead, the focus of these regimes frequently lies with the present and the immediate future, placing great emphasis on the prevention of impending crises, national defence, and economic advancement. This is not to suggest that dictatorial regimes are completely non-ideological, on the contrary, some espouse on extremely dogmatic and Utopian doctrines with which they seek to enhance their popular legitimacy. Important as it may be, however, the state’s creation of ideological strongholds within society takes a back seat to its economic performance. The viability and resilience of bureaucratic-authoritarian states depend not on the appeal of their dogmas but on their ability to deliver the goods and services which help keep society sufficiently politically complacent or obedient. Political underdevelopment Similar to totalitarian and populist regimes, exclusionary dictatorships need to be analysed within the broader context of political development and of attempts by unevolved state structures to attain institutionalisation. There is, in fact, a direct correlation between levels of political development, or lack thereof, and the degree to which a state freely interacts with society. Yet, equally important is the growth of state power and, specifically, an increased capacity by the state to develop and expand its sources of mutual access to society. A politically developed state is a strong state, but it is not necessarily a coercive one.26 Despite their dictatorial nature, and in fact because of it, bureaucraticauthoritarian regimes tend not to be highly politically developed. They thus remain inherently weak and unstable. Fraught with institutional “decay” and brittle structures, such states are frequent victims of forces which they themselves engender. Military coups and palace revolutions have long been endemic features of politically underdeveloped, dictatorial states.27 The lack of political efficacy and the underlying instability of politically underdeveloped states is compounded and reinforced, and often caused by, extensive social divisions and cultural anomy. In essence, lack of political development is principally a product of a state that remains weak in comparison to society.28 The state’s desperate search for stability and for greater institutionalisation prompts


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it adopt and to rely on institutions that can maximise its survival and minimise potential threats from both the domestic (society) and the international environments. Military establishments and state-sponsored parties are two of the institutions most frequently used for this purpose and have, as a result, come to symbolise authoritarian dictatorships. Internally, meanwhile, these states are characterised by what one scholar has called the “politics of survival”.29 Frequent personnel changes, appointments and promotions based on loyalty as opposed to merits, and the utilisation of a variety of “dirty tricks” predominate the internal workings of bureaucratic-authoritarian dictatorships, be they based on military juntas or civilian-controlled parties.30 The military Military-based dictatorships are less prevalent in the 1990s than before, although only a few years ago they appeared to be permanent political fixtures in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. The initial assumption of political power by the military establishment and the subsequent inauguration of an authoritarian state is dependent on a variety of factors, ranging from the nature of the military establishment itself to prevailing economic, political, and cultural circumstances. Broadly, there are three patterns of military involvement in politics. Some military establishments refrain from active participation in the political process but retain the right to exercise “veto power”, either through overt means or behind the scenes. Such establishments play essentially a moderator role in the government, particularly influencing its policies and agendas.31 The Turkish military, for example, politically intervened in 1980 in order to revamp the country’s government machinery and to redistribute political power. 32 Other military establishments assume the guardianship of the political system, viewing their intervention as temporarily necessary in order to remove corrupt and unfit politicians and to reverse their misguided policies.33 Such military regimes as inundated Latin America throughout the 1960s and 1970s were of this variety, driven by a belief that only they could rectify the numerous political and economic crises that entangled the region. Lastly, there are those armed forces which view themselves as the rightful and natural inheritors of political power, using their tenure in office not only to ensure their political permanence but also to fundamentally change the fabric of the country over which they rule.34 This has been the purpose of the Middle East’s many military-based regimes, long in power in Sudan, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Iraq.

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But even if military establishments have a determined desire to intervene and, in effect, to subsume the political process, however temporarily, they cannot do so without the widespread existence of particular social and political conditions. For a military coup d’état to succeed, both the state and society need to have become highly fragmented, weak, dysfunctional, and vulnerable to outside penetration. The paralysis of civilian institutions, of course, is a powerful motivating factor. 35 Within the context of unevolved and weak states, internal squabbles, constitutional impasses, and power vacuums following leadership successions can all have potentially serious consequences for the political process and can expose it to the threat of military takeover. Equally significant are prevailing social and economic anomalies. Military dictatorships are particularly likely to appear in countries threatened by sharp ethnic and regional cleavages that, if unchecked, could threaten national unity.36 Under these conditions, the military is often prompted to intervene out of a sense of duty to the “motherland”, because of its professional organisation and unique command structure, and its monopoly over weaponry. Economic conditions too are not without importance, particularly in poorer countries that are dependent on the export of raw materials.37 Military establishments seek not only to prevent a collapse of the national economy, but, more realistically, strive also to ensure that their own corporate interests are not en-dangered. Bureaucratic corporatism Despite a preponderance of conditions that give rise to the establishment of military-based authoritarian states, very few authoritarian states rely purely and solely on the armed forces to maintain power. It does not take long for generals-cum-presidents to appreciate the costs involved in ruling through sheer coercion and the need to complement the state’s military and bureaucratic institutions with other support mechanisms. It is precisely this realisation that has prompted most bureaucraticauthoritarian states to adopt corporatist practices and to cooperate with (though not coopt) those social groups whom they find economically and politically beneficial. These social groups differ according to specific economic and social conditions within each country, but they usually include members of the professional elite, industrialists, various non-political interest groups, and multinational corporations. Corporatism offers three particular advantages for bureaucraticauthoritarian regimes. First and foremost, it bestows the state with yet another instrument of social control without forcing it to compromise its dictatorial hold on power.38 This in turn lessens some of the burden


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placed on the regime because of its authoritarian policies and allows it to refocus its attention on other social groups, such as peasants and farmers, over whom it may not have such direct control. Third, and perhaps most important, since corporatisation often involves industrialists and other groups with greater access to capital, it greatly enhances the state’s economic performance. In fact, economic factors often provide a far more important impetus for corporatisation that do political ones.39 There are, however, limits to how far an authoritarian regime can pursue corporatist policies. Rapid modernisation and industrial growth, themselves products of corporatism, can upset the fragile working arrangements that have evolved between the state and its corporatist partners. Corporatist groups may gain enough autonomy to start voicing independent political opinions in the face of an inflexible political system. The state may also seek to impose a “purer” brand of corporatism and try to tighten its political domination, in the process unwittingly fostering oppositional alliances among previously divided groups. Former and present bureaucratic-authoritarian states in Iran, India, Egypt, and South Korea have all at one time or another experienced the ironies of corporatist arrangements.40 Communist regimes A brief mention must be made of communist political systems, which, although at present numbering no more than a handful, retain their somewhat unique institutional arrangements and ideological content. A discussion of the state in communist countries was left to the end because of its very particular characteristics. Communist states’ attempts to regulate all aspects of life invariably fall short of initial expectation— as made abundantly clear by the need for economic liberalisation in China and Vietnam—and they are thus characterised by what could be best described as aspirational totalitarianism. They embody several features that make them at once totalitarian, populist, and bureaucraticauthoritarian. The totalitarian feature of the communist state stems from its ceaseless efforts at directing even the most mundane aspects of the lives of its citizens, falling only a little short of mind control. Nothing less than total and unconditional surrender to the communist system and its top leadership is acceptable. Increasingly, however, both in the former Soviet-bloc countries as well as in the remaining communist states of China, Vietnam, and Cuba, total and utter devotion to the regime’s political religion and its cult of personality have been toned down and replaced by more institutional means of political control.41

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The Communist Party has in fact always been, both theoretically and practically, one of the main supporting pillars of the state and its principal forum for interaction with society.42 The legislature performs similar inclusionary functions, albeit to a somewhat lesser degree, and legitimises, recruits, and socialises the masses into the political process.43 But the system also tends to be highly authoritarian, often brutally so, and extremely elitist in its leadership. In China, with its population of more than a billion people, political power is concentrated in the hands of between twenty to thirty-five individuals.44 However, in China as elsewhere, the powers and the position of the leaders remains relatively uninstitutionalised.45 The degree of power the leader wields depends on such non-institutional factors as the relative strength of other top leaders, his age (since most communist leaders are relatively advanced in age), and even on the state of international affairs. A mammoth and highly penetrative bureaucracy, meanwhile, reaches into the innermost echelons of society in order to ensure compliance and the extraction of resources that the state requires.

CONCLUSION Different states interact differently with society. The exact dynamics that shape this interaction depend on the agendas, resources, capacities, and structures of both state and society. This section has identified five broad types of states, each with unique sets of characteristics and institutions: First World democracies; democratic states that are far more recent and thus not as solidly institutionalised; quasi-democratic states in which the mechanical manifestations of democracy—elections, parliaments, etc.— are not sufficient to foster a society-wide democratic spirit; inclusionary populist and totalitarian regimes; and bureaucratic-authoritarian states. States that are democratic contain institutions which facilitate a regularised and constant process of interaction with society through elections and other means of political participation. The legislative and judicial institutions of the democratic state are literally at the service of society, the former facilitating and the latter ensuring it. The democratic executive, meanwhile, come directly from within society and remains answerable to it. These arrangements are completely alien to nondemocratic states, at least in practice if not in theory, for they either manipulate society or merely coerce it. The lack of opportunity to be constantly “refined” by society robs non-democratic states of a much needed sharp edge. They become uncaring and unaware of the pressures within and the agendas that society wants to pursue. Society is subdued


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and its internal forces made subject to the wishes of the state. Even in populist regimes, in which the sentiments and desires of one or more segments of society are played up and ostensibly fulfilled, politically independent and self-generated pressures from society meet at best a muted and at worst a violent response from the state. The nondemocratic state itself is not highly developed and, as such, is susceptible to collapse. Its coercive arm, the military and the police forces, may have deadly efficiency and a fearsome reputation, but the state remains weak and vulnerable at its core, its immense political apparatuses crumbling under the weight of decay. Politics, of course, requires political interaction with society, and different societies are governed by their own internal dynamics and characteristics. The complexities concerning the nature and institutions of the state form only half of the political equation. Society, too, has its own features, its own institutions, and its own forces. Examining politics requires more than simply examining the state and its institutions, nor does merely adding an examination of society and its institutions give a complete picture. What is necessary is to examine the types and the consequences of interactions between particular state and societal formations. It is to this that the Part IV of the book turns.

NOTES 1 2

3

4 5 6 7

Samuel Huntington. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). For more on power and its relationship with the political system, especially in the international system see, John Rothgeb, Jr. Defining Power: Influence and Force in the Contemporary International System. (New York, NY: St. Martin, 1993), especially pp. 17–50. Lucian W.Pye. “The NonWestern Political Process”. Harvey G.Kebschull (ed.). Politics in Transitional Societies: The Challenge of Change in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. (New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973), p. 30. See Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), chapter 1. Ann Ruth Willner and Dorothy Willner. “The Rise and Role of Charismatic Leaders”. Harvey Kebschull (ed.). Politics in Transitional Societies. (New York, NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1973), p. 233. Douglas Madsen and Peter G.Snow. “Recruitment Contrasts in a Divided Charismatic Movement”. American Political Science Review. Vol. 81, No. 1, (March 1987), p. 233. Dankwart Rustow. “Ataturk’s Political Leadership.” R.Bayly Winder (ed.). Near Eastern Round Table, 1967–1968. (New York, NY: New York University, 1969), p. 145.

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E.B.Portis. “Charismatic Leadership and Cultural Democracy”. Review of Politics, Vol. 41, No. 2, (Spring 1987), p. 241. 9 Ibid., p. 237. 10 Ann Ruth Willner and Dorothy Willner. “The Rise and Role of Charismatic Leaders”, p. 235. 11 E.B.Portis. “Charismatic Leadership and Cultural Democracy”, pp. 230–1. 12 Douglas Madsen and Peter G.Snow. “Recruitment Contrasts in a Divided Charismatic Movement”, p. 238. 13 For more on the efforts of post-revolutionary regimes to keep the flames of revolution burning see, Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. chapter 2. 14 Douglas Madsen and Peter G.Snow. “Recruitment Contrasts in a Divided Charismatic Movement”, p. 238. 15 David Apter. “Political Religion in the New Nations”. Clifford Geertz (ed.). Old Societies and New States. (New York, NY: Free Press, 1963), p. 59. 16 Kenneth Lieberthal, and Michael Oksenburg. Policy Making in China: Leaders, Structures, Processes. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 58. 17 Jan Pakulski. “Legitimacy and Mass Compliancy: Reflections on Max Weber and Soviet-type Societies”. British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 16, (January, 1986), p. 36. 18 Eric Hoffer. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1951), p. 94. 19 Giovanni Sartori. “The Party as Part.” Louis Cantori and Andrew Ziegler (eds). Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioral Era. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1988), p. 254. 20 Jean Blondel. Comparing Political Systems. (New York, NY: Praeger, 1972), pp. 206–7. 21 Ibid., p. 207. 22 Samuel Huntington. “Social and Institutional Dynamics of One Party Systems”. Samuel Huntington and Clement Moore (eds). Authoritarian Politics and Modern Society. (London: Basic Books, 1970), p. 12. 23 Roy Macridis. Modern Political Regimes: Patterns and Institutions. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1986), pp. 126–7. 24 John L.Stanley. “Is Totalitarianism a New Phenomenon? Reflections on Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism”. Review of Politics. Vol. 49, (Spring 1987), p. 180–1. 25 Guillermo O’Donnell. “Corporatism and the Question of the State”. James Malloy (ed.). Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America. (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1977), p. 68. 26 Vernon W.Ruttan. “What Happened to Political Development?” EconomicDevelopment and Cultural Change. Vol. 39, No. 2, (January 1991), p. 277. 27 Samuel Huntington. “Political Development and Political Decay.” World Politics. Vol. 17, No. 3, (April 1965), p. 407. 28 Joel S.Migdal. Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 213. 29 Ibid., p. 214. State classifications: non-democratic varieties 117 30 Ibid., pp. 214–23. 31 Eric Nordlinger. Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), pp. 22–3.

State classifications: non-democratic varieties 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

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Frank Tachau and Metin Heper. “The State, Politics, and the Military in Turkey”. Comparative Politics. Vol. 16, No. 1, (October 1983), p. 28. Eric Nordlinger. Soldiers in Politics, p. 25. Ibid., pp. 26–7. Samuel Decalo. “Modalities of Civil-Military Stability in Africa”. Journal of Modern African Studies. Vol. 27, No. 4, (1989), p. 548. Edward Feit. The Armed Bureaucrats: Military Administrative Regimes and Political Development. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973), p. 164. Rosemary O’Kane. “A Probabilistic Approach to the Causes of Coups d’Etat”. British Journal of Political Science. Vol. 11, (1981), p. 293. Robert Bianchi. “Interest Group Politics in the Third World”. Louis Cantori and Andrew Ziegler (eds). Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioral Era. p. 205. Guillermo O’Donnell. “Corporatism and the Question of the State”. James Malloy, ed. Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America, p. 48. Robert Bianchi. “Interest Group Politics in the Third World”. Louis Cantori and Andrew Ziegler, eds. Comparative Politics in the Post-Behavioral Era. pp. 207–8. North Korea remains an exception, where the cult of personality of the late Kim Ill Sung, officially referred to as the “Great Leader”, and of his son, the “Dear Leader”, remain in full force. Leslie Holmes. Politics in the Communist World. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 130. Stephen White, John Gardner, and George Schopflin. Communist Political Systems: An Introduction. (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 1987), p. 84. Kenneth Lieberthal and Michael Oksenburg. Policy Making in China, p. 35. Leslie Holmes. Politics in the Communist World. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), p. 203.

Part IV Society in comparative perspective

7 Society classifications Democratic varieties

As the previous chapters have argued, besides examining state institutions comparative political analysis necessitates attention to two additional phenomena which in themselves are not strictly political. First, the comparativist needs to examine the various social institutions that exist within a given society, the roles they play in bestowing upon social classes their particular identities, and the reasons and the ways in which they interact with political institutions. Second, the political culture of society needs to be analysed in order to more fully understand the underlying reasons for the political behaviour of social institutions collectively or of particular groups individually. As already demonstrated, there are groups of countries which, despite their unique cultural and political characteristics, share certain underlying currents in historical experience, social and cultural make-up, and political evolution. Three broad categories of societies can be distinguished: those in the industrialised democracies of the West; societies found in the newly democratised countries; and societies in remaining nondemocratic countries of the Third World. Each of these groups of societies shares broad characteristics in their constituent social institutions, their overall political values and orientations, and their general approach to and dealings with the state. The present chapter focuses on society in industrialised democracies while Chapters 8 and 9 examine commonalities in the two other varieties of societies. Compared to societies in newly democratised countries and in the non-democratic nations of the Third World, societies in developed, industrialised democracies have in common certain distinct characteristics which set them apart from others. These are societies found predominantly in Western Europe, Scandinavia, and North America, all of which happen to have a comparatively longer historical experience with continuous political rule.1 Broadly, these societies enjoy a greater degree of social cohesion, despite numerous ethnic and 121

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linguistic cleavages which may divide them (as in Belgium, Spain, and Canada), and, almost uniformly, have unified political cultures. High levels of industrial and technological development have resulted in considerable material enrichment and affluence, thus casting a gloss over various fault-lines which could otherwise divide seemingly cohesive societies.2 Combined with long periods of experience with the political order, economic and financial wealth have resulted in the predominance of “post-materialist” values and social attitudes, thus in turn fostering, among other things, general disinterest with traditional forms of political exercise. In most industrialised democracies, the politically active engage in non-political politics.3 Forms of political participation have changed in such societies, but, more importantly, so has the nature of political demands and their focus. Demands for political emancipation and liberty, what the sociologist Anthony Giddens calls “emancipatory politics”, have been replaced by quests for greater autonomy of choice and life-enhancement, “life politics”.4 It is within these contexts that the political cultures of contemporary industrialised democracies have evolved and in which their social institutions operate. As foregoing discussion makes clear, the very nature and definition of the political has changed in Western democracies. In addition to encompassing those events and phenomena that are conventionally concidered as “political”—the initiatives and policies of the state, the macro- and micro-effects of the societal and economic ramifications of the state’s agendas, and the like—politics in the West has also come to include those issues that get raised in and through civil society. Postmaterialism has resulted in a very intimate and highly entwined fusion of state and society, turning the otherwise non-political, especially matters dealing with the self and the larger society, into hotly debated political issues. In looking at the politics of Western societies, therefore, the comparativist must significantly broaden his or her analytical lenses, mindful as much of social and cultural forces as of those traditionally viewed as political. It is within this inherently political as well as social context that societies in industrialised democracies, as well as the cultural milieux within which they operate, must be analysed.

DEVELOPMENTS IN CULTURE Before examining the political cultures of industrialised democracies, some observations regarding the nature of their general cultures are in order, for the general culture and political culture, as argued before, are intricately intertwined and directly influence one another. Three


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particular features of culture in industrialised democracies bear special significance for their political cultures. They include the growing predominance of American culture throughout the globe and in the West in particular; an intense pursuit of individualistic values and priorities; and, as mentioned earlier, the prevalence of post-materialist values, not only in relation to politics but in the social and cultural realms as well. Cultural Americanisation The first of these features, the globalisation of American culture, has had a particularly pronounced effect on the industrialised democracies of Western Europe. Unparalleled economic affluence, coupled with the penetrative reaches of the American movie industry and electronic media, have introduced (if not actually instilled) distorted representations of American life as promoted by Hollywood. Fads come and go, but the Americanisation of cultural values around the world is more than just a fad. It has affected the core values of diverse peoples with equally unique cultures, and has done so in terms of their social relations, their self-perception, their religions, their language, their art and entertainment, and in a variety of other fundamental and seemingly permanent ways. This globalisation of American culture is indeed global in scope, afflicting remote corners from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, resulting in what one scholar has called the “Coca-Colaization” of indigenous cultural values.5 Ensuring American global hegemony no longer requires overt military or diplomatic conquests. Television sets and VCRs are far more effective means of penetration and conversion. Political propaganda and foreign assistance could never dream of accomplishing what soap operas have done in terms of inculcating certain values, distorted and misplaced as they may be, and in turning even the most sceptical into believers. In Europe, despite the continent’s own deeply rich cultural tradition, this penetration of American values has been even more pronounced. The reasons for the increasing Americanisation of European values and of European life are historical as well as cultural. Notwithstanding what at times amount to significant differences, the industrialised democracies of Europe and the United States share several similar valuative underpinnings rooted in both their histories and their cultures. Both have long been democracies, and the US has been the more successful of the two, both economically and politically (Britain’s long and stable democratic heritage notwithstanding). Ever since World War II and its aftermath, particularly in the context of the cold war of the 1950s to the 1980s, for Europeans the values and ways of the United States have

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meant the values of the victor, the protector, and the affluent. The virulent anti-Americanism of European youth in the 1980s was directed more at the Reagan phenomenon than at things intrinsically American.6 The love-hate relationship that the rest of the world has with the United States has been all the stronger in Europe. Yet there, for a variety of reasons ranging from unparalleled social freedom to closer political and cultural ties, love for the positive aspects of American life has outweighed envy or even distaste for US foreign policy. Proud as Europe may be of its own past, its present accomplishments, and its own distinctive cultural offerings (the Louvre, the Munich beer festival, the European Cup, and the like), many of its youth have not withstood the allures of the symbolic representations of American life—the life of comfort, affluence, fun, glitz, and glory.7 That real life is not all that Hollywood makes it out to be seems to matter little to the outside observer. Individualism Closely linked with the globalisation of American culture has been the growing prevalence of the credo of individualism throughout industrialised democracies. Individualism is by no means an American preserve, although it has, nevertheless, had a long and cherished tradition there.8 The classic debate between the rights of the community versus the individual, and ultimately between the state versus the individual, has been a central concern of democratic thinking, tracing its heritage as far back as Hobbes and Locke and, of course, Adam Smith. Democracy, by definition, necessitates the protection of the rights of the individual. But the 1980s gave the pursuit of individualism a renewed vigour and a new mandate, rolling back the penetrative reaches of the democratic state. Thus came to life the so-called New Right, headed by such philosophical pundits as Milton Friedman, Roger Scruton, William F.Buckley, and Francis Fukuyama,9 and put into practice by the likes of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. “Big government” was seen as responsible for the plague of stagnation, and remedy was sought in consecutive waves of deregulation, privatisation, and buy-outs.10 Some political establishments zealously pursued “anti-state” policies aimed at curtailing the reaches of the state, arguing that a large state apparatus was inimical to the very idea of democracy.11 Yet while the New Right was political in genesis, it also targeted society and social relations. The new prophets and believers of individualism wanted to take social libertarianism to its practical limits and to apply it to their own as well as to other societies. “Each person”, their argument went, “has an


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identity and character entirely independent of social formations. It is possible to fully comprehend the nature of a person without reference to society.”12 If this in turn meant greater inequality within the same society, trickle-down economics would hopefully lessen the “misery index” by setting into motion uniform processes of upward economic mobility for all social classes across the board. Egalitarianism was, at any rate, not something that the state could or should actively promote.13 Understanding the New Right phenomenon and its natural corollary of social individualism is important in gaining insight into the political cultures of industrialised democracies since the 1980s. Social divisions became wider and political and cultural values strayed in different (though not necessarily opposing) directions. Some benefited greatly from the credo of individualism and, in fact, became its most vocal and conspicuous standardbearers. These were the yuppies, members of the “me generation” who were successful at grabbing ever-larger chunks of the social and economic pie. 14 They were by nature politically conservative and supportive of the political establishment. Not surprisingly, conservative parties rode high in electoral victories throughout the 1980s in North America and Western Europe, save for France. It is important to note, however, that the yuppies and their like largely supported conservative politics not because of deep ideological convictions but rather out of practical convenience and a convergence of interests. But on the other side of the spectrum were those who were left out of the rat-race, those for whom trickle-down economics meant little in real terms. The new religion of the state had few dividends for them, mostly leaving them alone to find their place within the capitalist market. Political apathy was their refuge; economic survival their main concern. In the 1980s, the United States was busy overcoming its inferiority complex, having in recent years suffered successive blows to its ego and self-image while not having fully recovered from the shock of the Vietnam war.15 Hand in hand, Bruce Springsteen, Rocky, Rambo, and Ronald Reagan were meticulously restoring pride to the American psyche, and thus the potential disillusionment of the population was masked under a gloss of patriotism and self-rediscovery. Europe, however, was less fortunate, for not having had a Vietnam or a hostage crisis it could not seek shelter in the secure confines of jingoism. Here, disillusionment was rampant. Small and unrepresentative of the rest of society as they may be, it is more than merely coincidental that punks, skinheads, neo-Nazis, and other “social misfits” are more conspicuous in Europe than in other parts of the world. While such extreme positions, which entail a total divorce from society, have not been adopted by large

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numbers of Europeans, disillusionment with the self does, none the less, run deep. For the average European, repressed existential issues, related not just to nature but to the moral parameters of existence as such, press themselves back on the agenda…The specific moral arena of such debates concerns, not just what needs to be done for human beings to survive in nature, but how existence itself should be grasped and ‘lived’.’16 While the Americans have been busy waving flags to celebrate victories over Grenada, Nicaragua, Libya, Iran, and Iraq, the Europeans have been carrying banners and placards protesting against the status quo. Nuclear disarmament, South Africa, North-South relations, the environment, and a host of other issues have become the rallying cry of much of Europe. Post-materialism has thus been born, not out of some magical socio-cultural evolution but rather out of political apathy and widespread disillusionment. Post-materialism European post-materialism is diametrically opposed to American yuppiedom’s addiction to its own adrenaline and to self-indulgence.17 Not having found the Americans’ remedy of material and financial selfactualisation, most Europeans, particularly the youth, continue to search for more satisfactory meanings and purposes to life and to being. The central question is that of self-identity. In Giddens’s words, “debates and contestations deriving from the reflexive project of the self”18 have become the dominant idiom of social and indeed political discourse throughout Europe, particularly starting in the late 1960s and the 1970s. In this sense, the popular culture and the political culture have become intrinsically intertwined. The quest for the meaning of life—to put it crudely—has taken on a decidedly political tone. Politics has become the “politics of life choice”, revolving around questions of both the self and the larger universe.19 Such matters of personal choice as abortion rights, feminism, and the limits of free speech joined the growing list of otherwise non-political issues that had already become increasingly matters of political concern (environment, etc.). In the United States, where since the 1980s the question of abortion rights has become an especially intense one, it is not post-materialism but rather the pushes and pulls of political conservatism and social individualism which have fuelled that particular debate. European societies, however, have on the whole been experiencing what amounts to nothing less than a collective


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moral and valuative restlessness. This is not a restlessness of extremist dimensions, nor is it one that is pushing societies to the brink of moral paralysis and crisis. It is, rather, a restlessness over aesthetic priorities and concerns, a restlessness over practical ideals. The concern is not with what is but with what ideally ought to be. Post-materialism makes political what may in a different context be almost entirely social and/or personal. It has been the students who have mostly, though not exclusively, spearheaded what has come to be known as the era of post-materialism. Having grown up in the affluent years of the 1960s and the 1970s, this generation of Europeans has been able to afford to concern itself with economic and political values other than the “bread-and-butter issues” of jobs, economic growth, and inflation. Thus, such matters as the protection of the environment, peace, and greater social and economic equity have emerged as issues of significant concern.20 These and other intangible ideals make up the core elements of post-modernism. Despite its prevalence, however, post-materialism has not by any means been uniformly dominant throughout the European continent, nor has it steadily evolved and grown in terms of its values and the number of people influenced by it. According to various surveys, postmaterialism generally tends to be strongest in those European countries that are relatively small and wealthy, that suffered considerable devastation in World War II, and that historically have been deeply divided along such non-economic lines as language and religion. 21 Examples include the Scandinavian countries, Belgium, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and to a certain extent former West Germany. Compared to larger and less wealthy countries such as Britain, Italy, and Spain (and the smaller Ireland), citizens in the countries mentioned tend to be more affluent. Most prefer to find idealistic and peaceful solutions as a means of conflict resolution, a tendency reinforced by their countries’ relative lack of military power (compared to other European nations), which makes bellicose solutions impractical. Religious and linguistic divisions have also made people aware that economics is not the root of all problems and that not all conflicts and difficulties can be solved solely by applying money.22 Within the last decade or so, the scope and acceptability of postmaterialism has changed. Post-materialism has experienced significant fluctuations, on the one hand being strengthened in some instances while, on the other hand, finding itself submerged under prevailing economic and political realities. In some European countries and under certain circumstances, a series of economic, political, and demographic developments have helped strengthen post-materialist values and

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convictions. In fact, in some instances and in relation to certain issues post-materialism has been transformed from an amorphous cultural phenomenon into an actual political and policy-making force. A number of developments underlie this strengthening of post-materialism. Continued economic advancement among certain segments of the population is a major contributor, enabling the relatively comfortable to devote attention to non-material concerns. The boom in the educational system and its greater accessibility to wider segments of society has been equally instrumental. This has in turn been strengthened by the fact that some of the youth of the 1960s and the 1970s, especially those with a stronger sense of civic responsibility, have now grown to assume active roles within the political system and have in some cases even attained positions of leadership and prominence. Of equal significance have been a number of environmental catastrophes, such as the Chernobyl disaster and destruction of the rainforest, which have enhanced the legitimacy of Europe’s various environmental groups and added political teeth to their cause.23 But the growth of post-materialist values has not been without impediments either. As dramatically illustrated in the former West Germany after its reunification with East Germany, post-materialism may be crushed or at best pushed into the background under the weight of economic discomfort and social dislocation. Whereas, in West Germany, post-materialism had a high degree of acceptance and popular purchase, in the new, reunified Germany idealist hopes and values have taken a back seat to the economic realities and discomforts of national reintegration and reconstruction.24 Less dramatic economic and political concerns continue to hamper post-materialism in other European countries, ranging from Ireland in the north (which is preoccupied with the Northern Ireland question) to Italy, Spain, and Portugal in the south (for whom economic concerns outweigh others). More notable examples include Britain and France. Britain’s steady decline as an industrial power in recent decades has consistently undermined British post-materialism in favour of national and economic regeneration.25 Due to progressively degenerating economic conditions, most Britons are more concerned with saving their own jobs or bank accounts than with protecting the environment or saving whales. Concern with economic mobility (rather than survival) has also predominated in France since the mid-1980s, when the country started experiencing economic set-backs, though to a considerably lesser degree than Britain. This has in turn resulted in a polarisation of racial views and the growing popularity of right-wing politicians such as Jean-Marie Le Pen.26


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DEMOCRATIC POLITICAL CULTURES Individualism, cultural Americanisation, and post-materialism (or lack thereof) in combination and each individually have influenced the political cultures of industrialised democracies. Although they are by no means uninfluenced by specific indigenous factors, four broad and interrelated characteristics predominate the political cultures of industrialised democracies. Each of these characteristics in turn reinforces the others. They are regularised political participation, concern with “non-political politics”, political trust, and cohesive political cultures. Throughout industrialised democracies, political cultures embody views and values that are conducive to and supportive of regular and routinised political participation. This in turn inspires a good deal of political trust between society and the state, with those in control of state institutions expected to follow and to obey the wishes of various social groups and classes. Regular interaction with the state and a general consensus towards its legitimacy bring about broad agreements concerning the parameters of political action and principles and result in the development of a cohesive and unified political culture. With political parameters (which in industrialised democracies are democratic) fully established and agreed upon, and with a fair measure of political trust which is regularly reinforced by elections and other forms of political participation, the nature of “politics” itself changes. Politics in a sense becomes non-political, its central concern no longer being the nature and dynamics of the interaction between state and society, for that has already been decided upon and hallowed by tradition and practice. With post-materialism in the psychic shadows, politics shifts its classical focus away from the allocation of sources of power and control and instead develops a new arena of concern. The politics of social obligation The depoliticisation of politics in industrialised democracies is rooted in the very nature of democratic polities themselves. One of the strongest elements of political culture in industrialised democracies is the deeply held belief of the citizenry concerning not just the desirability of political participation but indeed the obligation to participate in the political process. 27 Democracy by nature entails constant and institutionalised interaction between state and society. It cannot, exist otherwise. That a democratic political culture necessitates an understanding of and a commitment to political participation by the general population is best illustrated by the example of pseudo-

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democratic systems in some parts of the Third World. It is quite possible (and indeed increasingly more common) to have ostensibly political institutions and procedures without having a viably democratic political system. The multi-party and seemingly democratic polities found in most parts of Latin America and the Caribbean (with the exception of Brazil), and southeast Asia (with the exception of Japan), do not preside over societies with genuinely democratic political cultures. Democracy may exist in name but not in spirit. In such instances, democratic politics is at best an elitist venture, and the participation of the masses in the political process, in the form of voting for members of the national elite, is essentially perfunctory. In industrialised democracies, however, mass participation not only counts but, more importantly, is popularly viewed as an essential aspect of one’s civic responsibility. It will shortly be argued that in recent years there has been an increasing sense of political apathy throughout industrialised democracies. This may at first appear contradictory to the assertion presently being made. There is, nevertheless, a direct relationship between these two seemingly contradictory developments. Precisely because political participation is so widespread and such an integral part of the political process, in recent decades citizens of industrial democracies have in most cases begun taking it for granted. This has particularly been the case in those countries with more routine and relatively mundane politics, such as Britain and the United States, where voter turn-out in local and even national elections has consistently been on the decline.28 Had the ability to partake freely in the political process not been such an ingrained part of their citizens’ thoughts, political participation might very well have been more extensive. There is a direct relationship between regular and routinised processes of political participation and the depoliticisation of politics. Politics in industrialised democracies has become depoliticised in two aspects. On one level, under the rubric of post-materialism, the very notion of “politics” and what it stands for have changed. On another level, there is a decline in the general desirability of engaging in those traditional types of activities that have historically been considered to belong to the realm of “politics”. The decline in the popularity of traditional forms of political participation is well indicated by recent trends in electoral behaviour in Western democracies. Though it is not the only means of participating in the political process in industrialised democracies, voting in local and national elections is the ultimate example of popular political participation—‘’the supreme event in which the people speaks for itself”.29 On the whole, Europeans tend to vote more readily than Americans, and Scandinavians are generally


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more active in interest-group activities than both other Europeans and Americans.30 Beyond voting, most Europeans and Americans view political activity with a measure of suspicion and indeed, particularly in the context of the “anti-state” mood of the 1980s, as not highly socially desirable.31 This is symptomatic of the relative political apathy which was mentioned earlier. With certain exceptions, of which Italy is a notable example, the populations of industrialised democracies tend to become actively involved in the political process almost only during cases of national emergency or other extraordinary events. The contrast is particularly stark in relation to newly democratised countries, where popular eagerness for maintaining the new and fragile democracy results in high degrees of political participation by the masses. In industrialised democracies, however, political participation means, at best, voting in the next election, and even that is not a certainty. Democracy is securely in power and an apathetic sense of political complacency does not place too great a burden of guilt on the collective conscious of the citizenry. The average citizen takes note of politics most keenly when there is something worthy of observing, when something is out of the ordinary—a scandal of some import, a major summit, or a major international event with direct domestic consequences. At any rate, politics in the form of “business as usual” is not something in which the general population is greatly interested. The very focus and definition of politics in industrialised democracies, it must be remembered, has changed. Political trust Another notable feature of political cultures in industrialised democracies is the high degree of political trust which they embody. In this sense, political trust operates on two levels. First and foremost, it characterises the relationships that prevail between social classes and the state. Second, it refers to a mutual understanding and a sense of agreement among the social classes themselves regarding the broad parameters of politics. A sense of trust towards the political establishment is an inherent feature of democratic systems. If citizens do not trust their government or their fellow citizens, they are more apt to develop politically cynical ideas and less likely to participate in the political process.32 In democracies, the citizenry tends to have very positive perceptions of its own political abilities and a strong sense of political competence.33 This is rooted in the belief that if the average citizen so desires, he or she can knowledgeably participate in the political process in a meaningful and consequential manner. That

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traditional forms of political participation have been on the decline in industrialised democracies must not be misconstrued as political cynicism, for cynicism and apathy are not, in this case at least, necessarily synonymous. Apathy is itself testimony to the widespread belief that the political system is democratic and will remain so without extensive tampering from the popular masses. In this sense, citizens in industrialised democracies tend to have a comparatively high degree of trust for the political establishment and its principal leaders; indeed, so much so that in some cases they become politically apathetic. But trust also exists at the societal level, among the masses themselves, thus making possible the necessary popular cooperation which democracy necessitates. 34 Democracy cannot be possible without a widespread recognition by the masses of the rules and limits of politics. A selfimposed sense of restraint, coupled with a constant ability and willingness to compromise, are key to giving democracy social and cultural resonance. This both requires and in turn fosters a measure of trust by the popular classes, believing that they can count on one another to recognise the broad limits and constraints of politics. Political trust, a recognition of the ability to meaningfully participate in the political process, and the subsequent development of non-political politics have all combined to bring about democratic political cultures which, for the most part, are cohesive and not fractious and divided. In other polities, political cultures are far less settled, at times deeply divided internally, and in some cases have yet to foster broad social agreement concerning fundamental political values and principles. Due to a variety of factors, however, political cultures in industrialised democracies enjoy greater cohesion and consistency. The key here is the perception by large segments of the population that the political system is legitimate and is justified in its policies and actions. The participatory nature of democratic politics, coupled with the relatively long history of continuous rule by democratic states as opposed to others, combine to result in the prevalence of popular perceptions of a legitimate political order. Most citizens agree on the meaning of politics and on forms of political participation, which take place through solid and wellestablished political institutions. Since the democratic states found in the West are older, especially compared to those in the Third World and in Eastern Europe, they are part of a longer political heritage and enjoy the benefits of a longer history of socialisation to political values and orientations. The political system has, in essence, proven itself over time and there is broad popular consensus concerning its legitimacy. Moreover, the democratic political culture is “participatory” rather than “parochial” or “subject”, encompassing, in theory at least, broad


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strata of society. Participatory politics is inherently more legitimate than non-participatory politics, regardless of whether or not they espouse on democratic ideals.35 The emerging consensus is deep in breadth and wide in scope. Core political values are similarly defined and upheld or rejected. The population believes in the democratic system as such and strives to maintain it, even though at times, as is frequently the case in Italy, it may not be able to agree upon the specific individuals or policies which it thinks ought to become more dominant. Italians may frequently change their minds about their prime minister and his cabinet, but they all agree on the desirability of maintaining the democratic nature of their political system.36

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Political culture serves as the idiom in which social institutions interact with state institutions. In industrialised democracies, especially those found in the West, the social institutions which are politically relevant include religion and the church, the educational system, political parties and other socially based movements, the press, and ethnicity. Another social institution, the family, has in these societies lost its political significance in terms of providing viable blueprints for and means of interaction with the institutions of the state. Earlier studies of Western political cultures had suggested that, as an institution, the family plays an important socialising role in the formation of political views and opinions.37 This assertion has since been challenged, however, by those who argue that adult political socialisation is more important, especially for young adults, since it is during adulthood rather that childhood that the individual is exposed to a multitude of formal and informal political views and experiences.38 What is important is to realise the comparative insignificance of the family as a viable, functioning political institution in industrialised democracies, particularly in the light of its inseparability from the patrimonial polities that are found in certain parts of the Third World. Religion Perhaps one of the most politically resilient social institutions anywhere is that of religion. This is not unique to industrialised democracies, as, in certain cases, religious institutions are of far greater significance outside the West. The reasons for this intimate relationship between religion and politics are many and varied. The fact that most religions originally

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started as overtly political movements has not been lost on many contemporary practitioners, who see the two fields as intricately intertwined. Religion has historically played a central political role in Western societies, often oscillating from being a supporting pillar of the regime into becoming its adversary. This political centrality is due to a variety of factors. Religion is, by nature, made up of a cohesive body of thoughts and values which are bound to come into contact with the values of the political establishment, whether in a supportive or an adversarial manner. Unavoidably, religion provides a blueprint for thought and action, and that blueprint may or may not be in accord with the policies and the overall functions of the state. Religion can, at any rate, be a potentially powerful language for political discourse, regardless of whether it is popularly perceived as such at a given historical juncture. Moreover, religion often provides an organisational hierarchy and a cadre of leaders who can, if need be, not only articulate political values but also give them direction and popular legitimacy. This, in turn, is reinforced by the emotive nature of religion and its appeal to the sentiments of its believers. Even in the most secularised of states, religion often retains a seminal position in its adherents’ psyches and may still come to the socio-cultural forefront if agitated. In most industrialised democracies, especially those in Western Europe, the relationship between religious and state institutions has been a historically rich and intimate one. Even in the United States, where Americans have proudly celebrated the separation of church and state throughout their heritage, the New Right phenomenon of the 1980s had a decidedly religious tilt. The presidential candidacy of Reverend Pat Robertson in 1984, backed by the political muscle of the Moral Majority, was more than a lonely crusade by a whimsical televangelist. It was, rather, symptomatic of a broader politicisation of the more conservative flanks of American Christianity. In continental Europe this tradition of politicised religion has had a richer history, and, as a result, the intermarriage of politics and religion has become an established part of the political routine. Whereas the relationship between religion and politics in certain parts of the Third World and in the United States has been volatile and subject to change with the passage of time, it has become a mundane part of the ordinary practice of politics in most West European countries. The name “Christian” in political parties across the continent is more than a tool for enhancing popular legitimacy;39 it symbolises the pivotal role that religion has played in European politics both as a social force and as a blueprint for political action. The fact that churches and other religious gathering places were historically


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constructed in the geographic centre of European towns and villages attests to the political and social significance that was attached to religion. 40 With the birth of modern nation-states in Europe in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, secular states extended their control over religious institutions, especially in predominantly Protestant countries. This added a religious axiom to the legitimacy of the state and, in turn, gave the churches the advantage of state protection and financing. Thus, “state churches” were born, adding considerable political weight to the social role played by the religious authorities.41 For the most part, religion retained its centrality to Europe’s domestic politics up until the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Both in predominantly Protestant countries in the northern reaches of the continent as well as in the Catholic south, the relationship between the church and the state remained an intimate one. The unofficial, working arrangement that had evolved over the centuries was highly convenient to both sides: the state protected and financed the church, while the church legitimised the state. Because of its vast influence throughout society and among multitudes of social classes, the church remained an important social institution with which the state certainly had to be concerned, if not necessarily to contend with. But this influence over society began to fade with the rapid advancement of industrialisation and urbanisation in the twentieth century, particularly during the prosperous decades which followed World War II. Secularisation and the growing trend away from religion have been especially intense in the last thirty to twenty years, coinciding with the attainment of new economic and industrial heights and the concurrent birth of postmaterialist values. Advances in industry and in the economy have accentuated social change and resulted in fundamental shifts in people’s traditional values and beliefs, religious ones included. Reinforcing this has been the progressive prevalence of post-material values concerning religion in general and religious orthodoxy in particular. If Europeans had forgotten the history of the bloody, religious conflicts which had long torn their continent apart, the Irish and later the Iranians did their best to make them remember. The ongoing battle in Northern Ireland, non-religious in its genesis, has long raged on along religious lines between Catholics and Protestants. In recent decades, concurrent with the continuing religious strife in Northern Ireland, negative sentiments towards religion were further reinforced by the events that began in the Middle East. As if on a deliberate mission to discredit religion, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini often justified his country’s zealous pursuit of revolutionary, and at times seemingly irrational, policies on religious grounds. Khomeini knew that leading a

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revolution is like riding a bicycle and that he had to peddle hard in order to avoid a nasty fall. With Islam as his bicycle, Khomeini pushed on, not even sparing a distant author on his path. With religion seemingly the source of so many conflicts, Europeans began turning their backs on it in greater and greater numbers, treating it more as a rite than as a source of emotional salvation or political action. According to surveys conducted in the mid-1980s, church attendance by the young in some European countries had dropped to less than 5 per cent. In France, only 2.5 per cent of people under twenty-five regularly attended church. 42 Some 22 per cent of all Germans are believed to have severed their ties with organised religious churches.43 In Italy, where Catholicism was aggressively involved in politics through the 1940s and the 1950s, the importance of religion has been similarly on the decline, with most Italians agreeing on the need to revise and rethink some of the fundamental tenets of religious orthodoxy.44 Concurrent with the social secularisation of most West Europeans are changes in the political role that religion has historically played in their societies. More so than even the Catholic Latin America or the Muslim Middle East, the pulpit of religion has in Western Europe become increasingly depoliticised in recent decades. The marriage of church and state is now one of name rather than substance, more than ever before a convenient arrangement for both as opposed to a deliberate alliance to instill mass piety. While religion maintains its seminal importance in some countries, secularisation is for the most part the order of the day. As a social institution, the importance and the role of religion has changed accordingly. In almost all industrialised democracies, religion has largely left the public domain and has become increasingly a private matter. Even if retaining its role in the public sphere, the nature of that role has changed. In the 1980s, some churches, especially Protestant ones, became politically active once again, this time not in collaboration with the state but in support of the peace and environmental movements. 45 Whether this concern of religion with post-materialist values is permanent or temporary remains to be seen. What is clear is that, for now at least, the significance and focus of the institution of the church are no longer predominantly social but rather more individual. Neither in the predominantly Catholic south nor in the northern Protestant reaches of the continent is religion the overwhelming medium of social interaction and political rule that it once was. That religion has persevered in Irish politics and continues to dominate Irish society and culture is more a result of ethnic rivalries and cleavages than strictly religious ones. While the religious dimensions of the Northern Ireland


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problem are not totally irrelevant, the struggle there is essentially between two cultures unwilling to share the same land.46 Since the two sides happen to belong to two different religions, religion has in turn maintained its resilience as a social and political force. Over all, however, in most industrialised democracies, the social significance of organised religion and religious activity has markedly declined, despite sporadic spurts of political activism in the 1980s. Instead, an increasing number of people have resorted to more secular institutions as means through which to formulate and express their values, attain mobility, and advance their agendas. Three such institutions stand out: the educational system, political parties, and the media. The educational system Regardless of political system, schools and universities are among the most significant institutions within any society, not just in terms of their mission of educating the popular masses but, more importantly in the context of the present discussion, in their role as a source of political socialisation and social mobility. Educational establishments, needless to say, perform quite different functions and roles in non-democratic polities compared to democracies. In democracies, particularly in the industrialised democracies of the West, educational establishments function as social instutions. This is not always the case in non-democratic polities, where schools and universities, particularly the latter, are either heavily controlled by the political establishment or are an integral part of it. In these cases, the educational establishment is as much a means of inculcating values supportive of the regime’s as it is a venue for higher knowledge and enlightenment. Especially in its higher echelons, education in nondemocracies often assumes an awkward political character. Depending on the agendas and the sources of legitimacy for the regime, education becomes highly politicised in some fields and deliberately depoliticised in others. By means of scholarships and grants, most students are encouraged to study the natural and physical sciences or, alternatively, the humanities. The social sciences, and even such disciplines as history and philosophy, are often extensively “refined” by government authorities in order to ensure their congruence with the values espoused by the political establishment.47 Such overt controls over the functions of educational establishments and political tampering with the contents of the disciplines taught at schools and universities are rarely found in industrialised democracies. In the 1940s and the 1950s there were some instances of government intervention in the educational curriculum of

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schools, as exemplified by the de-Nazification of the German educational system after World War II and the controversy over creationism or evolutionism in the United States.48 The teacher’s oath controversy in California was an equally obtrusive attempt by the government to influence classroom instruction.49 These efforts aimed at ensuring political purity have for the most part subsided in industrialised democracies, and the influence of the state no longer actively determines the focus and direction of the educational process. Instead, the educational establishment has become a forum for social mobility, cultural expression, and even the exertion of political influence. In what they do, in what they stand for, and in what they produce, educational establishments in industrialised democracies have become one of the most significant social institutions. An absence of government interference has not automatically resulted in educational bliss in industrialised democracies. Ironically, education in industrialised democracies has in some ways become a victim of its own success. Education is more readily available to citizens in industrialised democracies than to people almost anywhere else in the world. Prior to the 1950s and 1960s, educational opportunities in industrialised democracies were mostly available to only an elite minority. Higher education was particularly elitist in Europe.50 In countries like France, former West Germany, and Italy, which did not have comprehensive, one-track school systems until recently (unlike Britain and Sweden), even junior and high-school education was to some extent elitist.51 But there has been an education explosion across Western Europe and the United States in recent decades, greatly multiplying both government expenditure on public education as well as the numbers of secondary school and university graduates. 52 In Western Europe as well as in the United States, the university student population has grown to unprecedented proportions and secondary and primary school education has become available to almost all social groups and classes. Having benefited from at least some sort of formal schooling is an almost universal phenomenon in these countries. This mass-based education has not been without its drawbacks. To benefit and to accommodate large segments of the population, educational standards have in most industrialised democracies been lowered, either by design or inadvertently, and as a result the educational system as a whole does not operate at its full potential. A more pressing dilemma is that of over-growth, particularly at the university level, with industrialised democracies having more graduates than their economies can absorb and accommodate. German and French university graduates


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often find themselves employed at clerical positions far below their expectations or abilities.53 For Italians, because of the open admission policy of universities, higher education can be extremely impersonal and, indeed, fruitless. According to the rector at the University of Rome’s La Sapienza campus, which has some 180,000 students, the university would have been completely dysfunctional had it not been for the fact that only less than 30 per cent of all students regularly attend classes.54 Even in the United States, whose vast economy has a greater ability to absorb skilled manpower, graduates from even Ivy League and other prestigious universities have in recent years not been able to find the golden opportunities which they thought were awaiting them upon graduation.55 Given its specific characteristics, as a social institution, the educational establishment in industrialised democracies has assumed particular features and functions. Two notable features stand out. To begin with, unlike educational establishments in non-democratic countries, the institution of education in industrialised democracies is not as vitally important to social, economic, and political mobility. In most non-democratic polities, the educational system serves as one of the few sources of political recruitment and is one of those rare mechanisms that enable hopeful aspirants to join the political elite. At times, certain promising and “politically correct” students are chosen by the political establishment and, through special scholarships and studyabroad grants, are groomed for recruitment into the ranks of the political elite as technocrats and civil servants. Although in industrialised democracies a number of high-ranking political figures may come from certain educational establishments (e.g. British parliamentarians from Oxbridge colleges and French politicos from the Ecole nationale d’administration), the state in these polities does not actively seek to draw fresh recruits from society. Moreover, although education invariably carries with it prestige, in industrialised democracies it is not as pivotal to the attainment of elite status as it is in non-democracies. In industrialised democracies, upward mobility is facilitated by a plethora of means and opportunities, and, especially in recent decades, the beneficiaries of the educational system are no longer part of an exclusive elite minority in society. Second, by virtue of their role as a means of teaching and inculcating new values and ideals, the educational institutions which operate within the free environment of industrialised democracies can potentially (but not necessarily) become hotbeds of political protest and other forms of anti-state or even antisocial activities. This potential for activism is not limited to but often occurs almost exclusively at the

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university and college level rather than at secondary schools. As the 1968 student rebellions in France demonstrated, however, high school students can also become deeply involved in social and political movements.56 What is important is that both at the secondary school and at college level, students in industrialised democracies may, if they so desire and if the situational opportunities are there, through the educational establishment freely voice and press their social and political concerns. Students in non-democracies often do the same, but without the luxury of freedom and the right to do so. In industrialised democracies, there is a measure of social legitimacy attached to the potential possibility of activism by students, especially if they are university students. As a social institution, the educational establishment in industrialised democracies can, if it so desires, act politically. In fact, in times of crisis or unease, the educational establishment is one of the first institutions to become politically active. In non-democratic systems, however, schools and universities may not become politicised unless in open support for the regime and its tenets (more of which below). Parties and social groups Even more direct links between society and state in industrialised democracies are established by those groups of social institutions which specifically aim at exerting political influence and engaging in the exercise of politics. These are such socially based institutions as political parties, trade unions, and other citizen-based political action groups. Political parties merit particular attention, for in non-democracies their focus of attention and their functions are not directed from society to state, bottom-up, but rather from state to society, top-down. In nondemocratic polities, political parties, if they do exist, are often an integral part of the state and function as yet another one of its institutions. “Official parties”, as discussed in Chapter 6, not only constitute the state in non-democratic systems but often serve as one of the primary institutions through which society is manipulated and its complacency encouraged. In democracies, especially in the industrialised democracies of the West, political parties may at certain times come to constitute the state, or at least dominate one or more of its institutions, notably the executive and the legislature. Their role, however, is not one of ensuring societal complacency but rather of facilitating means of political expression and participation. Political parties in industrialised democracies are socially based institutions, having originated and evolved from attempts by specific segments


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within society to engage in politics. In this sense, political parties are one of the most important and direct means of linkage between state and society in industrialised democracies. As a result, it is through the institutional medium of political parties that society has traditionally engaged in politics. Specific historical experiences notwithstanding, political parties in industrial democracies were born out of specific societal concerns which existed at the time of their genesis. Political parties may have naturally changed in focus and in rhetoric since their initial establishment, but their doctrines can be traced back to certain core issues. In most European countries, one of the central issues which concerned the popular masses and in turn gave rise to organised political parties was the question of the exact role of religion in society and politics. Numerous parties therefore evolved around that core issue, some supporting and others opposing greater religious interference in social and political matters. In the New World, in contrast, where, by the time of independence the burning questions revolved around the nature of the relationship between the individual and the state, political parties emerged either in support of greater protection of the rights of the individual versus intervention from the state, or, alternatively, in support of the responsibility of the state to provide for the protection of the whole. 57 It is not surprising that in Europe those parties that are considered “conservative” usually have Christian labels attached to them while in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, conservatism means emphasising the rights of the individual as opposed to the good of the whole. Variations do, nevertheless, exist, and religious-secular divides are by no means the only source of differentiation between the various political parties found in industrialised democracies. British political parties, for example, owe their genesis not to religious concerns but rather to the debate over protecting the welfare of the working classes as opposed to the need for rapid industrialisation.58 Also, in the United States as in elsewhere, political conservatives have increasingly found themselves in the same camp as religious activists, with the social and political agendas of the two camps converging on a number of fronts.59 Despite these individual variations, certain broad delineations may be discerned in the nature of political parties in Western democracies. A variety of different types of parties can be found in the West.60 Among the ones already mentioned are religious parties. Found particularly in Western Europe, these parties retain religious references in their names and in their programmes, although they are not as intimately tied to religious establishments as they might have been at some point in the

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past. There are also ethnically based parties, also found in Europe, whose specific aim it is to promote the interests of their native constituents. There are other parties that may be labelled as “agrarian” or “rural”, not necessarily because of the composition of their membership but rather because they are heirs to agrarian or rural political traditions. 61 Then there are a host of ideological parties, espousing ideologies that range from communism to socialism, liberalism, conservatism, and ultra-rightist nationalism. These are political parties whose membership composition, agendas, and programmes are determined mostly by their position within the ideological spectrum. Thus, the distinction between the communist, leftsocialist, and liberal parties on the one hand and the conservative and ultra-rightist parties on the other hand is a matter of ideological inclination and zeal.62 In industrialised democracies, political parties are not the only social institutions which arise from within the reaches of society for the purposes of achieving political ends. There are other, less formal and more amorphous movements that perform the functions of political parties but do not necessarily have their rigid and hierarchical organisational set-ups. These are socially inspired movements that revolve around specific issues, the majority of which are, in one way or another, influenced by post-materialism. Instead of the more comprehensive worldviews that political parties have, these movements initially evolve out of concern by a sizeable segment of the population with very specific issues. How sizeable the social group is depends on the particular characteristics of the society under study, but it at least needs to be large enough to be of social relevance and, in the greater scheme of things, to matter politically. Given the political and cultural milieux of industrialised democracies, the mobilising issues which bring such movements and groups together often include such post-materialist values as environmental conservation, animal protection, gay and lesbian rights, veterans’ rights, famine relief, nuclear disarmament, abortion, and women’s rights. Nevertheless, post-materialist values only a percentage (albeit it a large one) of the rallying cries of these movements. Other issues may also give rise to such social institutions. Groups on different sides of the abortion debate, the Moral Majority, and the “Ross Perot phenomenon” in the United States all exemplify various types of social institutions whose inspiration lay in issues other than post-materialist values. What seems to be more elemental is the existence of “visionary leadership”, capable not only of formulating alternative values and means of redress to specific ills but also of providing the actual leadership of the


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movement without the benefits of elaborate organisational apparatuses which most political parties have.63 The social movements found in Western societies embody three prominent characteristics. First and foremost, they are primarily social or cultural and only secondarily political, as for example with socialist and/or workers’ movements in the past. Related to this is their focus on fostering change through changing values and developing alternative lifestyles, leading in turn to their third feature of being located within civil society.64 Nevertheless, furthering their predominantly social and cultural agendas requires them to embark on political activities and at times to become closely involved in the political process. Social movements are, therefore, the ultimate social phenomena in industrialised democracies that serve as the crucial fusing agent between state and society. It is precisely because of social movements—their existence and functions—that Western politics has assumed dimensions that are as much sociological as political. They give expression to those popular sentiments and concerns that are largely outside the purview of traditional political parties (e.g. environmental issues or women’s rights), and provide a semi-institutionalised or even fully institutionalised forum for grassroots political participation.65 They are, in short, one if not the primary catalyst for the socialisation of politics in the West. These informal, visionary, and issue-specific movements, which may at best assume proto-organisational characteristics, act as and perform the functions of social institutions. Like other social institutions, they offer a collective sense of identity to their members, which, in turn, prompts them to pursue specific political demands. As a result, these specific types of social institutions are often impermanent and are found only in democratic polities. Social and political freedom is necessary for people to be able to freely rally in support of or opposition to a specific subject. Thus, the mechanisms which support freedom of action, assembly, and expression are essential prerequisites, not simply in terms of constitutional guarantees but, equally significantly, in terms of a socio-cultural environment conducive to popular initiative. Moreover, these types of social institutions are often inherently impermanent, their lives or degree of activism directly depending upon the existence of specific nuances in the social and political environments. The popular mandates of these institutions are terminated as soon as the central issue around which they revolve is no longer pertinent or even in existence. They are, consequently, bound to disband or to at least to lose much of their significance once their central rallying cry is no longer at the forefront of society’s conscience.

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The media Another politically significant social institution found in industrialised democracies is that of the media. While in other polities the media may also play a crucial role in society and in politics, only in democracies is it a product of and a means through which the masses express themselves, both politically and otherwise. Non-democratic systems frequently use the media, which they often themselves establish and control, as yet another arm of the state through which political values are propagated and legitimised. In democracies, the very nature of the media is different, having emerged not out of state initiatives but rather out of social expressions and dynamics. The focus of the media is, of course, not always political, often aiming to merely provide entertainment or non-political types of information. In democratic polities, however, the political role of the media as a crucial and free link between state and society is particularly significant. That in recent decades forums of popular expression have in the West become increasingly the preserve of larger-than-life corporations does not lessen the essential role of the media as a social institution with great political significance. 66 With roots within society and with social groups and actors as their principal audience, the printed and electronic media are by far the most potent mechanisms through which society interacts with the democratic state, both directly and indirectly. This interaction may occur at different levels and in a variety of forms, ranging from scrutiny and investigation to the provision of information and, at times, to commentary on specific political issues. In itself and by itself, the media may not necessarily foster a common identity, and it is surely not made up of communities or groups of people. It does, nevertheless, serve as a very effective and relatively easily accessible forum through which the popular classes or distinct groups within them can formulate their political thoughts, present them to the larger population, influence the prevailing political culture in one form or another, and interact with the state. The media, which in industrialised democracies is likely to be only minimally regulated by the state, is, in fact, one of the most important sources through which society keeps abreast of and influences developments within the state. The inseparable relationship between a free press and a democratic polity is more than merely tautological.67 It signifies the pivotal role of the press as a channel of information about, communication with, and influence over the political establishment by groups and institutions within society. More specifically, the printed and the electronic media in industrialised democracies perform a number of social and political


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functions which are essential to the maintenance of a democratic polity. They include, most notably, 1 surveillance of the socio-political environment, and the reporting of all politically relevant events and issues; 2 meaningful agenda-setting by identifying key issues of the day; 3 dialogue across a diverse range of views, including between those in positions of power and those subject to it; 4 mechanisms for holding political figures and other officials accountable for their behaviour; 5 maintaining their own integrity, lack of bias, and independence from possible influence-wielding; and, 6 a sense of respect for the audience.68 Class and ethnicity Two additional social institutions deserve mentioning. Both economic class position and ethnicity potentially can serve as highly significant social institutions through which common bonds of identity may emerge and motives and demands for political activity arise. Nevertheless, in the social and political contexts of industrialised democracies in recent decades neither institution has been tremendously consequential in influencing politics. Even in the most heterogeneous of Western societies (Britain, Belgium, Switzerland, and the United States, for example), ethnic and class cleavages have for the most part failed to act as viable social institutions which could affect and alter the behaviour of the state. Ethnic politics has, admittedly, been making somewhat of a comeback in such European countries as Italy, France, and Germany, although it is still too early to determine whether this is a temporary backlash to prevailing political and economic issues—particularly those related to the issue of immigration—or part of a larger, more lasting trend. It is only in relatively recent years, particularly since the global recession of the 1980s, that the once moot issue of immigration has been catapulted into the political spotlight in a number of Western countries. The reasons for the muted political significance of the two social institutions of class and ethnicity, at least up until relatively recently, are many and varied. Widespread economic affluence, large-scale urbanisation, rapid industrialisation, and the growth of the welfare state have all greatly blunted class-based political activism in Western democracies. Class differences do exist, in some instances as sharp (if not more accentuated) than at any time in the past.69 Due to the manner of political evolution and the nature of state institutions, however,

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economic grievances no longer pose a potential threat to the stability of the state. Like most other social institutions, as a result, class has ceased to be politically relevant; now more than ever before it is a means of social stratification rather than an indicator of political behaviour and orientation. To a somewhat lesser degree, ethnicity has experienced a similar decline as a political index, having far greater bearing on one’s accent and linguistic preferences rather than on political allegiances and loyalties.70 Social cohesion has effectively put a gloss over the potential divisiveness of ethnic cleavages and has led to a general transformation of parochial ethnic identities into less exclusive, national ones.

CONCLUSION As the foregoing discussion demonstrates, society’s interaction with the state in industrialised democracies has come to assume specific and rather unique characteristics. The political focus of political culture has changed in nature and in direction, no longer preoccupied with political liberties as such, which were mostly attained long ago, but rather with the enhancement of the quality of life and the choices available. The very definition of the “political” has changed. To this end, those social institutions which have historically been the media of political influence and interaction have become depoliticised, or, more accurately, the nature of their political activity has changed. Kinship lost its political significance in Western Europe (as well as in the United States and Japan) long ago, and, as an institution, its transformation from extended families into nuclear ones is now a universal phenomenon throughout industrialised democracies. The institution of religion, and along with it its most noticeable organisation, the church, have also lost much of the political resonance they once had, no longer so intimately tied to and protective of the state but now increasingly personal and private. Educational establishments, which only a few decades ago were hotbeds of political protest, have also lost much of their political fervour, preoccupied instead with a host of fundamental problems ranging from budgetary shortfalls to over-growth and declining academic standards. The institutions of class and ethnicity have similarly become nonpolitical, or, at least, have lost the political edge they once might have had. Only the social institutions of political parties and the media still retain their explicitly political focus. Even then, at least in so far as the media is concerned, its growing corporatisation has widened the gap between it and various echelons of society.71 To varying degrees, the role and effectiveness of established political parties have also been


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undermined through the emergence of issue-specific political movements, whose informal structures and focus on a particular issue allows them to attract a more active and dedicated brand of supporter. The social actor participating in a movement of this type is not merely a party loyalist or a sympathiser but rather a believer in the Cause. On the whole, nevertheless, the nature of political activity in industrialised democracies has over the past decades dramatically changed, its shift of focus from traditional politics to new political forms being in the process accentuated by the prevailing political culture. This relative tranquillity in political values and the exercise of politics is not unique to industrialised democracies. It is, none the less, a more integral part of the normal political process as compared to the predicaments found in other polities. In the newly established democratic systems that have recently sprung up in Latin America and in Eastern Europe, there is far less uniformity in social cohesion and an even more conspicuous absence of a comprehensive political culture. In comparison to nondemocratic polities, however, these newly democratising polities have an enviable degree of social cohesion and unity of political cultures. It is to the examination of the new democracies that the book now turns. NOTES 1 2 3

4 5

6

7

This categorisation is not in any sense complete. Japan, Australia, and New Zealand also belong to this category, and most nations of the former Soviet bloc are striving to identify themselves with the “West”. Jan-Erik Lane and Svante O.Ersson. Politics and Society in Western Europe. (London: Sage, 1987), p. 55. This is not to be confused with the “anti-political” politics in which the politically active used to engage in the former Soviet-bloc countries. See, Vaclav Havel. “Anti-Political Politics”. John Keane, et al. Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives. (New York, NY: Verso, 1988), pp. 381–98. Anthony Giddens. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and the Society in the Late Modern Age. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 209–10. This term was coined by Ali Mazrui in his video series The Africans. (London: BBC TV, 1986). Jalal Al-e Ahmad, an Iranian intellectual writing in the 1960s and the 1970s, also decried what he termed as the “Westoxication” of Iranian and other Third World cultures. See his Gharbzadeghi [Westoxication]. (Tehran: Ravvaq, 1341/1962). H.J.Shapiro. “Anti-Americanism in Western Europe”. American Academy of Political and Social Sciences. No. 497, (May 1988), pp. 120–32. See also, M.Howard. “A European Perspective on the Reagan Years”. Foreign Affairs. Vol. 66, No. 3, (1988), pp. 478–93. As one European columnist begrudgingly wrote in a recent article,

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The opening of Euro Disneyland outside Paris was a cheering note for Americans in a time of somber self-examination. Even the snobbish French, the epitome of good taste in American eyes, had fallen for American pop culture. The streams of families visiting the park saw no “cultural Chernobyl” but rather colorful, noisy fireworks and smiling animal faces. “Not so long ago,” American columnist George Will wrote, “many Europeans’ idea of fun was to attend Nuremburg rallies, or participate in pogroms, or stand in Rome’s Piazza Venezia beneath the balcony from which Mussolini harangued the masses. For modern Europe, Mickey Mouse is a giant’s step up. For America, there has been nothing but good news on the cultural front. In France, cafes are being replaced by McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets. The aroma of black coffee has been overwhelmed by the smell of French fries. French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, who in February awarded his country’s Order of Arts and Letters to that “passionate artist” Sylvester “Rambo” Stallone, is at work on a plan to save what is left of the country’s culture. But French teenagers prefer eating hamburgers while watching TV to sipping wine at cafes. (Quoted in, World Press Review. Vol. 39, No. 11, (November 1992), p. 28.) 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20

John Kingdom. No Such Thing as Society? Individualism and Community. (London: Open University Press, 1992), p. 93. See, for example, William Buckley. Up From Liberalism. (New York, NY: Madison Books, 1988); William Buckley and Charles Kesler (eds). Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought. (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1988); Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman. Free to Choose: A Personal Statement. (New York, NY: Avon, 1981); and, Francis Fukuyama. The End of History and the Last Man. (New York, NY: Free Press, 1992). John Kingdom. No Such Thing as Society? p. 47. Eva Etzioni-Halevy. Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Political Dilemma. (London: Routledge, 1983), p. 131. This was especially true in the United States, Britain, and Australia. John Kingdom, No Such Thing as Society? p. 6. Ibid., p. 104. See, Jerry Savells. “Who are the ‘Yuppies’? A Popular View”. International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Vol. 27, Nos. 3–4. (1989), pp. 234–41, especially p. 235. For America’s reassertion of strength in the international arena in the 1980s see, James Dougherty and Robert Pfaltzgraff. American Foreign Policy: FOR to Reagan. (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1986), chapter 9. Anthony Giddens. Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 224. Jerry Savells. “Who are the ‘Yuppies’? A Popular View”, p. 235. In the United States, the “rat-race” of the 1980s seems to have petered out somewhat in the 1990s, although comparatively at least, there is still greater concern with upward economic mobility in the US as compared to Europe. Anthony Giddens. Modernity and Self-Identity, p. 215. Ibid. Guy B.Peters. European Politics Reconsidered. (New York, NY: Holmes & Meier, 1991), p. 106.

Society in comparative perspective 21 22 23 24 25

26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

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Ibid., pp. 109–11. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., pp. 113–15 S.Utiz. “Economic Policy Challenges in the United Germany”. World Today. Vol. 47, (December 1991), pp. 207–11. See, for example, a two-part article on economic and technological changes in England in the 1980s in, W.Walker and M.Sharp. “Thatcherism and Technical Advance: Reform Without Progress”. Political Quarterly. Vol. 62, (April/June 1991), pp. 262–72, and Vol. 62, (July/September 1991), pp. 318–37. D.Singer. “The Resistible Rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen”. Ethnic and Racial Studies. Vol. 14, (July 1991), pp. 368–81. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 176. In the US, for example, in the 1980 presidential election voter turn-out was down for the fifth consecutive time. Paul David. “The Election of 1980 and its Consequences”. Paul David and David Everson (eds). The Presidential Election and Transition 1980–81. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), p. 158. Leslie Lipson. The Democratic Civilization. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 293. Guy Peters. European Politics Reconsidered, p. 100. Ibid. Ibid., p. 102. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture, p. 181. Ibid., p. 196. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 12. For an interesting though by now outdated analysis of the Italian political culture see, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture. Chapter 8. Ibid., p. 330. Carole Pateman. “The Civic Culture: A Philosophical Critique”. Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba (eds). The Civic Culture Revisited. (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1980), p. 72. Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson. Politics and Society in Western Europe. p. 135, Jurg Steiner. European Democracies. 2nd edition. (New York, NY: Longman, 1991), p. 195. Ibid. Ibid., p. 197. M.Donald Hancock, David P.Conradt, Guy B.Peters, William Safran, and Raphael Zariski. Politics In Western Europe: France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1993), p. 204. Ibid., pp. 304–5. Jurg Steiner. European Democracies, p. 213. Ibid., p. 202. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, pp. 159–61.

150 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55

56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68

Society in comparative perspective See, Ray Ginger. Six Days or Forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958). See, David Gardner. The California Oath Controversy. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967). Jurg Steiner. European Democracies, p. 219. M.Donald Hancock, David Conradt, Guy Peters, William Safran, and Raphael Zariski. Politics in Western Europe, p. 306 for Italy, p. 99 for France, and pp. 207–8 for West Germany. According to statistics cited in Politics in Western Europe, in 1991 the percentage of gross domestic product spent on public education was 5.6 in France, 4.2 in Germany, 5.0 in Italy, 7.2 in Sweden, 5.0 in Britain, and 4.8 in the United States. Ibid., p. 100. Quoted in Jurg Steiner. European Democracies, p. 226. Because of the growing scarcity of employment and career opportunities, more American students are pursuing graduate studies. See also, Nabeel Alsalam. “Interpreting Conditions in the Job Market for College Graduates.” Monthly Labor Review. Vol. 116, No. 8, (February 1993), p. 54. For an interesting and concise discussion of students in Europe see, Jurg Steiner. European Democracies, pp. 219–27. Rod Hague and Martin Harrop. Comparative Government and Politics: An Introduction. (Atlantic Heights, NJ: Humanities Press, 1989), p. 145. Ibid., p. 142. Walter Capps. The New Religious Right: Piety, Patriotism, and Politics. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1990). See also, George Gallup, Jr. and Jim Castelli. The People’s Religion: America’s Faith in the 90’s. (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1989), especially chapter 7. Jane-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson. Politics and Society in Western Europe. pp. 97–104. Ibid., p. 99. For a comprehensive list of the various political parties in Europe see, ibid., p. 98. For a discussion of “visionary leadership” and an example of such a movement see, Frances Westley. “Bob Geldof and Live Aid: The Affective Side of Global Social Innovation”. Human Relations. Vol. 44, No. 10, (1991), pp. 1011–36. Alan Scott. Ideology and the New Social Movements. (London: Unwin Hyman, 1990), pp. 16–17. Carl Boggs. Social Movements and Political Power: Emerging Forms of Radicalism in the West. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1986), p. 153. See, Herbert I.Schiller. Culture, Inc.: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), especially pp. 157– 74. Sanford J.Ungar. “The Role of a Free Press in Strengthening Democracy”. Judith Lichtenberg (ed.). Democracy and Mass Media. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 372–3. Michael Gurevitch and Jay G.Blumler. “Political Communication Systems and Democratic Values”. Judith Lichtenberg (ed.). Democracy and Mass Media (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). p. 273.

Society in comparative perspective 69 70 71

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George Packer. “Class Interest, Liberal Style”. Dissent. Vol. 39, No. 1, (Winter 1992), p. 55. Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson. Politics and Society in Western Europe. p. 78. Herbert Schiller. Culture, Inc. p. 3.

8 Society classifications Newly democratising polities

Since the mid- to late 1980s, a new category of polities have come into being in various parts of the world which are the products of very deliberate processes of constitutional and political engineering. These are systems that have been born out of the collapse of previous political institutions and arrangements, all products of concerted efforts to not only construct new political orders but indeed to usher in an entirely new and radically different political era for each of the nations concerned. These are, in their own unique way, brand new democracies constructed out of the ashes of formerly non-democratic political systems. They are political systems that aim specifically to emulate the experience of the industrialised democracies of the First World, trying ceaselessly to draw themselves closer to Western Europe’s democratic tradition as well as its industrial and technological advances. In one way or another, these states have not benefited so extensively from the processes of economic advancement or political development as Western European nations have. Their attempts at attaining industrial and economic parity with the more fortunate countries have been long and intense. What sets them apart this time are efforts aimed at instituting a viable democratic system. Examples of democratic constitution building may be found throughout world history, especially in contemporary times, when liberation from the shackles of colonialism resulted in a proliferation of poor imitations of democratic constitutions in the new sovereign states of Asia and Africa. But the wave of democratisation of the 1970s and the 1980s differs from such failed experiments of the past, some of which still continue to this day. The recent wave of democratisation is much more fundamental in scope and in nature than the mere provision of constitutional procedures on paper. It is not simply political but is social and cultural as well: it involves the democratisation of social relations, cultural values, and political culture on top of democratic political institutions and practices. Whereas attempts at constitutional 152

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engineering alone will not suffice to change the established social and political norms and mores, what has occurred in some countries since the 1980s has been a more searching re-evaluation of the basic premises on which politics have traditionally been based. This process of democratisation, which is by nature regional in scope, originally started in the southern flanks of Europe in the 1970s, with Greece heading the trend in 1974 and Portugal and Spain following in 1975.1 The political demise of the Mediterranean generals, of whom Franco was the most colourful and long lasting, was followed in turn by a return to barracks by military juntas in a number of Latin American countries.2 Discerning the viability and the social and cultural resonance of the democratic political institutions which have appeared in Latin America since the 1980s is made difficult by the continent’s tradition of pseudo-democratic rule. Multi-party states have long existed in a number of Latin American countries, but most have operated in a social vacuum and without the meaningful participation of the masses. Democracy has, in fact, been in existence in a number of Latin American nations, ranging from Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Colombia, but more often in form than in substance.3 A new wave of democracies appeared in the 1980s, with the Peruvian military being the first to hand over the reins of power to elected civilians in 1980, and Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Guatemala following suit in the succeeding years. Democracy has also made a shy appearance in such other Latin American countries as El Salvador and Nicaragua. The dilemma of separating the democracies in form only from the genuine ones, the merely political from the socially and culturally meaningful ones, persist and is now compounded by the added weight of political dogma and rhetoric. The mechanisms of democracy may be there, and its rituals of voting and participation may even be meticulously observed by large segments of the population. What is important is to measure or to at least grasp the unquantifiable adherence to democratic principles and institutions by the people, not just as reflected in their voting behaviour but also through their deep personal feelings, emotions, and loyalties. Most intellectually balanced individuals agree on the desirability of democracy and on the benefits accrued through free voting. But rhetorical adherence to democracy and genuine commitment to it are two different things. Social analysis must determine the social and cultural prevalence and resonance of democratic beliefs and the degree of popular commitments to them in comparison to other values and sentiments. How truly democratic Latin America has become in recent years cannot yet be determined with any measure of certainty. What is clear is that democracy has gained a

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foothold there now more than ever before, and that there are some societies, notably the Brazilian and the Argentine ones, whose constituent members have and continue to become more and more democratised. A similar process has occurred in Eastern Europe since the late 1980s and the early 1990s, with the former Communist-bloc nations tearing down the Iron Curtain and attempting to institute democracies instead. Poland led the way, its Solidarity movement eventually bringing the country’s communist regime to its knees in the parliamentary elections of April 1989. East Germany withered away and was absorbed into what was West Germany in 1990, and, incredibly, communism collapsed in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Albania, and eventually in the former Soviet Union. In some countries, the incoming system is hardly democratic, as in Albania, while in others the ultimate nature of the polity is yet to be formed.4 Nevertheless, concerted efforts towards the establishment of a democratic polity are underway in such countries as Hungary and Poland. Similar to examples in Latin America, the resilience of democracy in Eastern Europe remains to be seen; its social and cultural resonance will be proven only through the test of time. There is a crucial difference between the newly emerging democracies and those which have long existed in Japan, North America, and Western Europe. In industrialised democracies, the political system has the advantage of historical experience, the mighty force of a securely formed political culture, and the deeply embedded support or at least the working cooperation of various social institutions. Through a multitude of reinforcing values and experiences, traditions and guarantees, societies in industrialised democracies know exactly what are the contours of the body politic, the limits of state action, and the rules of the game of politics. Society knows what politics is. In newly established democracies, however, such a clear understanding and perception of politics by society is lacking. Democracy is a highly artificial type of political arrangement, one which in these new terrains has little or no history or tradition. Even in the parts of Latin America where there were abortive democratic experiments in the 1940s and the 1950s, democracy acquired little popular purchase and even less congruence with the people’s understandings and their beliefs. In the regions where it has just appeared, even in Southern Europe where it is approaching its twentieth birthday, democracy is still a new phenomenon. Society is still learning about democracy (or more accurately, as will be seen, is compelling itself to learn). It continues to develop those values and principles which, in conjunction with one another, help reinforce the social and cultural resonance of a democratic


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polity and ensure its sustenance. Society may know what type of a political system it wants—a democratic one—but it is not quite certain what a democratic polity means or what it entails. The political system is too young and recent, its principles and values too alien and foreign. That the democratic system asks for compromises and places other taxing demands on human instincts makes its social acceptance all the more dependent on deliberate tutelage by careful and willing political architects. In the new democracies, as a result, society is, both consciously and unconsciously, trying to develop a feel for democracy. It is not yet quite democratised; it is democratising. The political system is itself one that is still emerging, its ultimate shape and final characteristics, under the broad rubric of democracy, not yet fully determined. Consequently, society’s exact relationships with it are also not quite clear yet. This social and political fluidity has in turn directly influenced political culture within these newly democratising polities.

POLITICAL CULTURE Generally, political cultures in the newly emerging democratic polities embody a number of broad characteristics. Most notably, there is overall consensus over the desirability of democracy and the need to maintain and preserve, no matter how deliberately, the democratic parameters of the new polity. This in turn results in a high degree of politicisation of the population and the predominance of political matters in otherwise personal and individual domains. In the newly democratising polities, political culture tends to be highly politicised, particularly in comparison to the increasingly non-political political cultures that are found in industrialised democracies. This politicisation of preserving democracy has a decidedly negative impetus: all political values are formulated and political deeds are conducted with the negative effects of recent history looming large in the minds of political participants and aspirants alike. Consciously or unconsciously, society is negating the values that were attached to the previous political order and glorifying democratic ones in their stead. What is at stake is a reversion back to old, authoritarian modes of thought and political practice, a slide back to an era in history, not long ago, when politics meant confinement, and demands for liberty treason. Most Germans constantly remind themselves not to repeat the mistakes that led to the birth of Nazism. There is widespread apprehensiveness in Greece, Portugal, and Spain that fascism may once again rear its head. In Latin America’s new democracies, political liberties are jealously guarded against possible

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encroachment by generals or unscrupulous civilian politicians.5 And in Eastern Europe, people are careful not to inadvertently foster a return to what they perceive as the plague of communism. There are, of course, notable exceptions, such the March 1994 electoral victory of the rightist Alliance for Freedom in Italy and, benefiting from name-recognition, some former communists have enjoyed electoral success in parts of Eastern Europe. But the general thrust of preventing a complete reversion to the past remains an important feature of many of these societies. Combined, all of these characteristics have resulted in the birth of a nascent civil society. Nevertheless, how mass-based or elitist these new and continually emerging political cultures are remains at best a matter of conjecture. Despite the imperatives attached to maintaining them, these new democracies have not been hallowed yet by the test of time, and whether adherence to them remains isolated to the narrow confines of elite political culture or gains a hold among the masses remains to be seen. One of the most apparent characteristics of political cultures in newly democratising polities is their very pointed determination to be democratic. By virtue of their transformative and transitory nature, these are polities in flux, engaged in searching processes of reformulating new values and norms for both political as well as social and cultural conduct. There is both a deliberate and a self-perpetuating move towards the creation of an “alternative culture”. 6 The exact parameters of this alternative culture—specifically, the nature of the new values and the degree of their continuity or discontinuity with previous ones—can only be determined with certainty over a number of generations. None the less, ephemeral as they may be, the new normative and cultural frames of reference are held to be democratic, with society, or specific segments of it, upholding and espousing values that safeguard previously non-existent liberties and freedoms. The eventual consolidation of political democracy, regardless of its specific formats, is seen as a generally desired goal.7 What has occurred is nothing less than a revolutionary transformation, not just of political institutions and arrangements but also of political values and perceptions. Whether through classic, mass-based revolutions or the internal disintegration of authoritarian states, at least in the immediate period following the great transformation, the values most zealously upheld are those which the former regime brutally suppressed. Wrapped in dogma and rhetoric are values which heavily rely on the legitimising powers of democracy. There is a general desire on the part of the population to see the political franchise extended to previously excluded groups, the obtrusive arms of the state rolled back, and the ability to partake in politics a regular feature of the system. The depth and degree of


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commitment to such values at all levels of the political culture among both the general masses and the emerging victors of the transformation serves as one of the main sustaining forces for the newly emerging democracies. Otherwise, in cases where such commitments cannot readily be found either among the masses or among their new cadre of leaders (their invariably democratic rhetoric notwithstanding), the transition from one non-democratic polity will only result in the birth of another nondemocratic polity. This is best illustrated through the varied outcomes of revolutions in Russia, China, Cuba, and Iran on the one hand as opposed to those in Eastern Europe at the close of the 1980s on the other. In the former, for a variety of reasons, commitments revolved around the upholding of values other than those of democracy, whereas in the latter the establishment of democracy became the main mandate of both social as well as political actors.8 There are, naturally, significant differences between the values held by specific political actors and those of the larger society, or, more specifically, between elite and mass political cultures. The distinction between elite and mass political culture assumes particular importance in newly democratising polities, not just analytically but, more importantly, in terms of giving tangible direction to the newly evolving body of political orientations and values. Emerging democracies have so far remained democratic primarily because their elites—social, cultural, and political—have remained committed to upholding democracy and the values attached to it. It is, in essence, the elite political culture that has become democratised and which is in turn safeguarding democratic institutions and fostering democratic attitudes among the people. This is reinforced by the fact that of the democratising polities under discussion, practically all have evolved out of highly choreographed and negotiated transfers of power, negotiations which have taken place between departing office-holders on the one side and specific groups of individuals and social actors on the other. In one way or another, these power transfers have all been elite-based “negotiated revolutions” which owe their victory to the success of a series of “pacts”.9 “At the core of a pact”, observers have noted, lie a negotiated compromise under which actors agree to forego or underutilize their capacity to harm each other by extending guarantees not to threaten each other’s corporate autonomies or vital interests. This typically involved clauses stipulating abstention from violence, a prohibition on appeals to outsiders (the military or the masses), and often a commitment to use pact-making again as the means of resolving future disputes.10

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This process of compromise and negotiation, through which the polity moves towards democracy, is itself highly undemocratic, for it involves not the general masses and their popular input but rather the initiatives of certain elites. In order to ensure a smooth transfer of power, pacts and their negotiators tend to reduce competitiveness and conflict, limit accountability to the wider public, and set the social and political agenda.11 Nevertheless, the overall aim is to bring about a democratic polity, one whose intricacies the popular masses may not at first appreciate or have the patience and understanding to bear. At the time of writing, the only negotiated revolution which has degenerated into chaos and warfare is that of former Yugoslavia. Although at points under great duress, most of the newly democratising polities whose genesis lie in negotiated pacts have so far proven resilient. Essentially, the successful negotiation of these pacts and the eventual establishment of a democratic political system entails the institutionalisation of the political culture of the elites, elites who, for one reason or another, have come to develop a deep and genuine sense of commitment to the ideals of democracy. The democratic political culture of the elite must somehow become popularised among all levels and strata of society. To a certain extent, this popularisation of the elite’s ideals and values occurs effortlessly and without deliberate initiatives. Even in instances of negotiated revolutions, the transfer of political power does not occur in a social and political vacuum. The very same systemic and structural difficulties that have forced political incumbents to the negotiating table have also brought about a loosening of political control over popular culture and expression. The cultural and literary elites who were once chastised and subject to severe reprimand and punishment can now be heard rather openly. Intellectualdom, once punished, stifled, or at best controlled, is now celebrated, attracting a mass audience to itself, drawn to it by curiosity as well as belief. Negotiated revolutions may be muted in their political aspects in so far as they may not involve large-scale mass mobilisation, violence and bloodshed, and other elements of “street theatre”. Nevertheless, they are nothing less than revolutionary in nature, altering the role of most social institutions and, more importantly, the values which they espouse. Society is indeed revolutionised, its values and cultural orientations rejecting those of the authoritarian system and searching for new, democratic ones instead, amorphous and undefined as they may be. After the successful transition of power, society finds itself closer to the political establishment, having through the process of power transfer evolved values that are in greater synch with those of the victorious democratic elite. In fact, a nascent civil society has been born, replacing


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what previously was in reality not a society in the true sense but rather a depoliticised, culturally controlled, and atomised gathering of individuals. Civil society The concept of civil society has gained considerable currency in recent years, particularly among students of the societal causes and consequences of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.12 The concept has also been used in reference to the social and cultural dispositions of other newly democratising polities, especially in studies of Southern Europe and Latin America.13 Within each specific national context, civil society has a particular meaning and significance. Nevertheless, it broadly refers to the politicisation of society and a socially originated closure of the gap between state and society. However, this is not a politicisation of society in just any direction, but, rather, one which has broad and vague taints of democracy. Civil society is on one level explicitly political and on another explicitly cultural. Politically, it entails the democratisation of society and the growing prevalence of demands by an expanding cross-section of social groups for political democracy. In its simplest form, civil society refers to the pursuit of democracy from below. In a sense, it results in the birth of what some have conveniently called the “democratic opposition” from within society.14 Socially based, broadly democratic movements such as the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina,15 the Solidarity movement in Poland, 16 the New Forum in the former German Democratic Republic,17 and those spearheaded on an ad-hoc basis by the Catholic Church in most other formerly communist countries of Eastern Europe18 are all manifest examples of the politicisation of ordinary citizens in a cohesive and programmatic manner. At the core of civil society is “social self-management” for the specific purpose of bringing about a democratic polity.19 As in former East Germany and other Soviet-bloc countries, civil society gives birth to political groups and movements which advocate “the democratization of the body politic and the transformation of society into a real partner of the government in the exercise of power.”20 While the political aspects and ramifications of civil society may be most manifest, the phenomenon does entail a social and cultural axiom as well. By its very roots within the reaches of society, because its very genesis is due to a selfgenerated social awakening, civil society involves an unparalleled degree of social and cultural participation within politics. It is, in a sense, politics in its utter purity, transcending the plain

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of the merely institutional and into the deep-seated values and norms of the larger society. Civil society is society’s pursuit of the political culture that it deems appropriate. In involves attempts at bestowing institutional resonance to those political orientations which the government has long held in check and suppressed. For a long time, before the actual wheels of democratisation are set in motion, civil society is detached from the institutional domain of politics and is, in essence, exiled to the politically disenfranchised worlds of culture and society. Prior to the collapse of the stifling political system, civil society, unable to express itself politically and to press its political agendas, thrives in the depths of society. It tries to use cultural values and norms, as best as it can and as safely as it can, as muted and disguised weapons with which it readies itself for the eventual assault against the state. Poets compose poems, essayists write essays, artists create, and commoners think, but now all with a political edge, all in their own way testing the limits of official tolerance. Society may be detached from the dictatorial state, but it acquires dynamics of its own. In fact, there is a direct relationship between civil society in the post-authoritarian era and what some have called the “parallel society” that evolves while dictatorship is still intact.21 Parallel society is the unofficial counterpart of the “official society” the political establishment promotes and upholds.22 Under most authoritarian states, not only are there strict guidelines for political behaviour but also rigid restrictions on the permissible limits of independent thought and conceptualisation. In response to such a strictly defined official culture, a pointedly political, unofficial parallel culture evolves.23 In countries with long and painful experiences of dictatorial rule, this is the culture not just of defiance but also of democracy, hoping not just to erode the official structures of power but, more importantly, to create a democratic polity from below.24 Political activists and aspirants operating under dictatorial circumstances, especially in communist Eastern Europe, had long engaged in “anti-political politics”.25 But, through parallel society, these same aspirants went about making politics from scratch, at the fundamentals, bringing about a civil society which undermined the dictatorship before its demise and, now, underwrites the new and democratising systems of the region. It is these very social and cultural forces which initially give birth to civil society and later help it to sustain a democratic polity once in power. The countries in which civil society is now at its height and in which the ideal—if not necessarily the true practice—of democracy is held dearest are those that experienced the severest forms of dictatorial rule. Throughout Eastern Europe, the political systems that existed before their


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collapse were totalitarian or at best “post-totalitarian”,26 encompassing the various aspects of life in totality and leaving little or no room for acts and initiatives which were not approved by the appropriate officials. Even in authoritarian Latin America, life had—and in some corners still does—a suffocating totalitarian air about it.27 Within such a context, life, thought, culture, and all other facets of humanity are dehumanised. The purpose of the regime is not simply to ensure political compliance but indeed to make the political reality appear as logically pleasant and valid. To this end, reality is distorted, lies made into truths, and political diktats treated as divine ordinances. In Havel’s words, “it is a world of appearances trying to pass for reality.” The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his or her ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.28 Aware of the world of deceits, the social actor, particularly the intellectual, is disillusioned, unnerved by his or her constant dehumanisation. At stake is one’s very concept of self-identity in a world where “each person somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his or her inherent humanity, and to utilitarianism.”29 “The profound crisis of human identity”, Havel continues, brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well: it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society.30

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Thus, the construction of an alternative society and, along with it, an alternative polity becomes not just a matter of political expedience but rather one of social and cultural self-assertion. It is a “return to the self”, to borrow Franz Fanon’s phrase, for it now has a personal and humanising imperative. A parallel society is the outlet through which the paralysing, existential dilemmas posed by the dehumanising policies of the regime are ameliorated and remedied. Before it has gained political power, parallel society is just that: a society operating in the shadows of the official culture of the state. Once political power has been captured and a successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy made, the nature of parallel society changes drastically. The parallel society of the democratic polity is no longer a refuge for the politically disenfranchised but rather that of the social outcasts, the misfits, the criminals, and the disciples of whatever waves happen to govern the cosmic world of counterculture.31 In its metamorphosis, parallel society has also given rise to civil society, bringing state and society ever closer to one another and bridging the gaps between them. Society has not simply been politicised. It has come to embrace, both in its values and its institutions, many of the same values and institutions which also comprise the state. Not only have political orientations and regime orientations come into greater harmony, but the institutions of the state too have assumed greater synchronisation with those of society.

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Clearly, the birth of civil society and the move towards democratisation entail fundamental transformations in the very nature of various social institutions, particularly those with the greatest degree of political relevance. This transformation of social institutions often starts long before democracy is officially established. It is within the values attached to these social institutions, and through the values formulated within them, that democracy is legitimised among the various social groups and classes. As a result, social institutions must either already have become receptive to the ideals and premises of democracy, or, at least, they must somehow come to assume a measure of adaptability to such ideals. In newly democratising societies, the social institutions with the greatest degree of political significance are those of religion, the educational system (or, more accurately, its products, namely the intelligentsia), and socially based political groups. The family, though a very important social institution, has neither the political significance nor even the relevance to


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democratising polities that it may have in other types of political systems and arrangements, such as those based on patrimonial principles and networks. Notwithstanding the crucial role that the family plays in political socialisation, in democratising polities, in which the political environment and the values underwriting its legitimacy change with great rapidity, popular values towards politics often change considerably faster than both kinship ties and their political significance. For instance, the head of a family, who is most often the father, may be quite authoritarian in dealing with his children and spouse while upholding the principles of political democracy in relation to the state. This holds particularly true in the new democracies of Latin America, where the long-cherished principles of male machismo now coexist with such values as political liberty and equality. 32 In democratising polities, as a result, it is the three institutions of religion, education, and independently active groups which, each in their own way, sustain and carry forward the process of democratisation. Religion and intellectualdom The two institutions of intellectualdom and religion have had the longest heritage of historical resilience and activism in most democratising polities, with religion being the more salient of the two. That the institution of religion has long had resonance within the depths of society must not be mistaken for a heritage of political activism, and even less so an oppositional one. Religion as a whole and the church hierarchy in particular, have been especially important, since through their organisational facilities and their grassroots support they have long served as crucial forums for political socialisation and expression. The church has frequently filled the valuative and organisational vacuum in society created by the authoritarian state. Moreover, the institutional and functional characteristics of the church itself serve to solidify its role as a potentially significant political actor independent of the state. The church commands an independently recruited cadre, has the loyalty of large segments of society, and has considerable financial and psychological resources of its own. In short, the political power of the pulpit can be potentially compelling.33 Nevertheless, the church has not always acted in a political capacity, and at times when it has been politically active it has not always been in opposition to the state. As with most other social institutions, religion and the organisational hierarchies attached to it are sensitive to the political nuances emanating from the state. Not just in democratising polities but in dictatorships and

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other non-democratic systems, religion has at times been politically as conservative as it has been oppositional at other times.34 The political stance of Liberation Theology and oppositional activism in Latin America and in Eastern Europe have historical parallels in which religion in both regions has been squarely supportive of the political status quo.35 Nevertheless, during processes of democratisation religion as an institution has almost always been on the forefront of political opposition to dictatorship and has been one of the main pillars of civil society. This is due to the inherently emancipatory nature of democratisation, permitting social actors and institutions to freely express their political demands and pursue their agendas. Once the institution of religion no longer feels compelled to pay homage to the authoritarian state, it can freely press its own political agendas. Compared to the institution of religion, intellectualdom and the institution of education have not had a terribly long and rich tradition of mass following and support. Intellectualdom is both a relatively recent social institution and also an isolated one, one which most other members of society can neither relate to nor adequately communicate with. Nevertheless, by virtue of being intellectuals, these social actors are placed in a unique position in relation to the state. In non-Western societies, members of the intelligentsia are part of an elite minority who are in a position to conceptualise about politics and, given the opportunity, to press political demands on the state. Moreover, intellectuals have, theoretically at least, always been on the forefront of political opposition because of their ability to analyse the status quo critically.36 Intellectuals are the human agents of social change and of normative socialisation. They are, along with other social institutions, one of the main architects of popular perceptions, not just of the political establishment but of other social and political values as well. As a result, intellectuals form an extremely crucial social institution, one whose role is even more important in the ever-changing social and cultural milieu of non-Western societies.37 This importance becomes paramount during processes of democratisation, when intellectualdom comes to full bloom in civil society. It is during the transition to democracy that both old and new political values are most fragile, when a new political culture is being constructed. Thus, the intellectual is busily at work, constructing an entirely new political environment and legitimising new political principles and new guidelines for society’s relations with the state. Meanwhile, the relaxing of the once authoritarian political atmosphere reinforces the inherent activism of intellectuals, allowing them freely to spearhead the movement for the reconstruction of polity. In democratising polities, in short, intellectualdom is one of the most


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significant social institutions in relation to the state. As a social institution, the educational establishment in general and intellectuals in particular are pivotal in shaping the values and furthering the legitimacy of the new political order. This is not, of course, to imply that politicised educational establishments, or their products, are only to be found in non-democratic or at best democratising societies. One needs only to refer back to Western political history in the 1960s, especially in the United States and France, to appreciate the near-universality of student political activism in almost all types of political setting. There are, nevertheless, fundamentally different underlying premises that account for student, and by inference intellectual, political activism in democracies and in democratising or non-democratic polities. There have been both legal and extra-legal student and intellectual political activists in practically all industrialised democracies, with the students movements’ calls for disinvestment in South Africa in the 1980s, especially in American and British universities, being a prime example. Such protest movements are not, however, so much an inherent feature of Western schools and universities as they are a by-product of the liberal and largely free political environment within which they operate. Instances of politicisation develop, therefore, in response to specific circumstances and particular issues. The situation is quite different in non-democratic and democratising polities, in which the educational establishment is by its very nature and functions a political agent. It is, depending on the polity, either a principal forum through which an educated and politically minded minority expresses itself, given the likely absence of meaningful political parties, or yet another means through which the government inculcates its own political virtues among the people. In either case, the educational establishment is almost always political and/ or politicised. This, in large measure, accounts for the seemingly limitless spirit of protest that characterises South Korean university students, as well as for the fact that virtually all revolutions initially start out as acts of intellectual disquiet by members of the intelligentsia.38 Social groups Independent, socially based groups form yet another significant social institution in democratising polities. Unlike the institutions of religion and the products of the educational system, social movements are the most recent and the politically most significant of social institutions in newly democratising polities. It is within these organisations and movements that the seeds of overt political activism and the yearning for

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democracy are often planted. It is, moreover, also through these groups that the political manifestations of civil society are most readily apparent. If civil society is the prerequisite of a viable democratic polity, independent, socially based groups and movements are the pivotal loci of both. These groups offer an alternative forum for giving expression to the falseness of the reality created by the dictatorial state. They are the actual engineers which seek to reconstruct society from below and, gradually and at first timidly, redefine its relationship with the state. Often, these groups are highly amorphous in nature and lack clearly defined institutional arrangement, especially prior to the actual process of democratisation, when the coercive arms of the state have not been completely dismantled. The most amorphous of these groups included the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the New Forum in former East Germany.39 Nevertheless, as the process of democratisation progresses and the coercive nature of the state begins to be transformed, the amorphous and structureless features of these movements change as well. As with the Solidarity movement in Poland, what was once a haphazard and largely unorganised collection of intellectuals with converging interests turns into an increasingly organised and vocal organisation more akin to a political party.40 Given the right political environment and self-generated strategies, the social base of the movement comes increasingly to bestow on it a political character which, in turn, solidifies the prospects for the movement’s success. The metamorphosis of these socially based movements from what they are prior to the start of the process of democratisation to what they end up as after the process has got under way is both gradual and subtle and yet highly significant. The persistence of dictatorial traits within the state forces many such movements to retain many of their underground characteristics, such as clandestine meetings, underground publications, isolated demonstrations of political defiance, and the like. Nevertheless, once democratisation is under way and society actively draws itself closer and closer to the state, these very organisations, who by virtue of their brief history of political opposition have gained much popularity among the masses, are suddenly perceived as one of the most legitimate and viable alternatives to the old institutions of the state. Initially, these social movements do not find much political space in which to formulate their agendas or even the social acceptance to attract supporters. As the so-called “dissident movements” in Hungary and Czechoslovakia discovered in the 1910s and the 1960s, authoritarian regimes are often willing to take extreme measures to suppress the activities or even the very formation of independent, politically oppositional groups. As a result, many of the socially based movements which re-emerged in


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Eastern European countries in the 1980s—as well as in other regions prior to democratisation—were at first extremely timid and thus parochial in their respective political demands and agendas. Ensuring their own longevity meant self-restraint and limitations in both objectives and activities.41 The most pressing task was not necessarily to overthrow the state, which, at least initially, was quite impossible, but rather to come out of the “safety of the mousehole” and to start “living in the truth”.42 Thus, in Eastern Europe at least, each of the movements at first became issue-specific and somewhat muted in its political pursuits. The East German “peace movement” began as a form of unofficial activity concerned with the growing militarisation of public life 43 and sought to obtain alternative service for conscientious objectors.44 In East Germany, as one observer wrote in the late 1980s, “what started as a moral initiative for demilitarization of society has now turned into a rapidly growing political movement.”45 Other groups in East Germany and in other countries, particularly those found in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, concerned themselves with the protection of the environment, while in Poland and Romania price hikes and social benefits became the rallying cry of emergent social movements.46 It was only later on, once the foundations of the state had already begun shaking due to distinctively political tremors, that the demands of the movements became increasingly bold and pointed. The East Germans began demanding reunification with the West; the Hungarians and Czechoslovaks demanded a repluralisation of the polity; and the Solidarity movement in Poland organised progressively bolder strikes and work stoppages.47 These movements in turn form the nuclei of emergent political parties. Democracies cannot function viably without the existence of political parties whose roots and legitimacy extend to the depths of society. Whereas initially these groups press for the opening of some sort of dialogue with the government and couch their agendas in language acceptable to the regime, once the process of democratisation is under way they themselves become part of the institutions which constitute the state. No longer a mere outgrowth of social demands, they now become actual bridges between state and society, nexuses without which democracy cannot have social meaning and relevance. Even if after the demise of the dictatorial system these movements do not become transformed into organised political parties, the dynamics that they have set in motion become an important source of legitimacy and sustenance for the new political order. For a relatively long time, while dictatorship was still fully intact, these social movements demanded democratisation and “self-determined social emancipation”. 48 Their

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leaders, whose political demands were at first voiced only gently, nevertheless took great risks by calling for the freedoms of assembly, political expression, and collective action.49 This gradual and carefully crafted process of political ascent has a double effect. On the one hand it bestows immense legitimacy on those who appear to the popular masses to be the champions of democracy and who personify hopes for a better future. What Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa did or said in Czechoslovakia and in Poland in the 1980s was extremely important, but what they stood for and represented was even more crucial in strengthening their popular standing throughout their respective countries. Not surprisingly, each of these personalities and the movements that they spearheaded prior to the start of democratisation became central players in the post-authoritarian histories of Poland and Czechoslovakia. But the activities of Havel or Walesa and their respective movements, or anyone else in similar predicaments for that matter, do more than merely legitimise political opposition or demonstrate the vulnerabilities of the state. Such phenomena have a domino effect and a self-sustaining nature. Once the reality of the state has been exposed as false, once the myth of political invulnerability of the state has been shattered, and once society feels “emancipated” (as most East Europeans like to consider themselves), the reversal of the trend becomes almost impossible without massive and brutal use of force. Democracy is not only selfregulating but is also self-perpetuating. Once the genie of democratisation is out of its bottle, squeezing it back in cannot be possible without a tremendous commitment to coercion on the part of the state, a commitment which most states on the brink of democratisation are either unwilling or unable to make.

CONCLUSION Crafting democracies is no easy task, and democratisation involves more than just the establishment of democratic political institutions and arrangements. An entirely new political culture needs to be crafted, with deep roots in certain politically significant segments of society and a measure of cultural and normative resonance. Democratisation is, after all, an ongoing process, its success is by no means either certain or predetermined. Democratising polities are, by the same token, at best products of determined social and political attempts to establish a lasting democratic order, and thus continue to evolve and mature in that direction. Such democracies may not be easily overthrown, but their


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resilience and survivability is far from certain. Political forces both within and outside of the polity may severely undermine the fragile system, individuals uncommitted to democracy may divert the polity’s political direction, and, more so than any other factor, a new and democratic political culture may not easily gain popular hold. Old habits die hard, and social habits with a heritage behind them die even harder. Nevertheless, the democratising polities discussed here are more than flimsy social and political experiments and have been brought about through an actual fusion of state and society in the long term. For democracy to function viably, there needs to be an actual nexus between state and society in terms of institutions, values, and mutual interaction. In other non-democratic polities of the Third World, state and society are neither fused together nor do they regularly interact in a consensual manner. Even if there are occasional bursts of democracy, that democracy remains socially, culturally, and politically irrelevant or at best impermanent. Segments within society or isolated actors within the state may press for democracy but tend to do so in isolation from one another. Thus, in such cases democracy is but an artificial political arrangement. Moreover, the birth of civil society by itself does not always result in the establishment of a viable democracy. State vulnerability and other complementary political dynamics need to occur concomitantly as well. As a result, unsuccessful moves by society to establish political democracy abound in recent global political history. Most notably, after most revolutions, society yearns for democracy, but the uncompromising political dynamics of the post-revolutionary state (as well as those of the broader polity) make such a carefully engineered order, one based on compromise and self-restraint, all but impossible.50 What prevails through much of the Third World are non-democratic polities, their underlying dynamics and inner workings based on arrangements and principles quite different from those in both industrialised democracies and in newly democratising polities. These specific characteristics are the subject of the next chapter.

NOTES 1 2

See, Guillermo O’Donnell, Phillippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Southern Europe. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), especially chapter 1. See, Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead (eds). Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), especially chapter 1; and, Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter (eds). Transitions from Authoritarian

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3

4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

Society in comparative perspective Rule: Comparative Perspectives. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), chapter 5. For a discussion of democracy in these three specific countries see, John Peeler. Latin American Democracies: Colombia, Costa Rica, Venezuela. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), especially chapter 3. At the time of writing, the former Yugoslavia was in the throes of bloody and violent civil war, Czechoslovakia separated into the Republics of Czech and Slovakia, and the regimes in power in Albania and Romania are far from democratic. A striking example of this type of emotional commitment to the new-found political democracy was the impeachment proceedings and the eventual resignation of Brazilian president Fernando Collar de Mallo in September 1992. For accounts of the various student-led, anti-corruption demonstrations against President Collar see, The New York Times. (21 August 1992), p. 7; The New York Times. (26 August 1992), p. 9; The New York Times. (20 September 1992), p. 16; and, especially, The New York Times. (30 September 1992), p. 8, which presents an overall account of the bribery charges and the subsequent impeachment. Ladislav Hedjanek. “Prospects for Democracy and Socialism in Eastern Europe”. Vaclav Havel, et al. The Power of the Powerless. (Amrok, NY: M.E.Sharp, 1985), p. 146. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), p. 3. For more on negotiated revolutions see, Giuseppe Di Palma. To Craft Democracies: An Essay on Democratic Transitions. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), chapters 2 and 3. For a discussion of “negotiated revolutions” see, Laszlo Bruszt. “1989: The Negotiated Revolution in Hungary.” Social Research. Vol. 57, No. 2, (Summer 1990), pp. 365–87. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, p. 38. Ibid. Of the negotiated democratic transitions in Latin America, Argentina’s was the least negotiated, having in essence been necessitated by the military’s humiliating defeat in the Falklands conflict. See, for example, John Keane, et al. Civil Society and State: New European Perspectives. (New York, NY: Verso, 1988); Vaclav Havel. The Power of the Powerless; Andrew Arato. “Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980– 81”. Telos. Vol. 47, (1981), pp. 23–47; Andrew Arato. “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. Telos. Vol. 51, (1982), pp. 19–48; Tomaz Mastnak. “The Powerless in Power: Political Identity in the PostCommunist Eastern Europe”. Media, Culture and Society. Vol. 13, No. 3, (July 1991), pp. 399–405; and, Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society jn the German Democratic Republic”. Problems of Communism. Vol. 38, No. 2, (March-June 1989), pp. 99–111. Guillermo O’Donnell and Philippe Schmitter. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies, p. 48.

Society classifications: newly democratising polities 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

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Andrew Arato. “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. p. 23. Daniel Poneman. Argentina: Democracy on Trial. (New York, NY: Paragon House, 1987), pp. 49–50. Andrew Arato. “Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980–81”; Andrew Arato. “Empire vs Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”. See, Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe: The Sources and Meaning of the Great Transformation. (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), pp. 42, 108, and chapter 7. Andrew Arato. “Civil Society Against the State: Poland 1980–81”. p. 29. Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”, p. 105. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 64. Parallel society is not unique to dictatorial polities alone. As Ramet writes, parallel society…is a living part of any living society. Its breadth varies in inverse proportion to the breadth of allowable open activity: where political authorities let society organize itself, parallel society inhabit the narrow ravines of subculture, deviance, and crime; where political authorities seek to impede society’s self-organization, parallel society encompasses a much wider array of socially organic processes. (Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 64)

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

Ibid., pp. 64–5. Ibid., p. 65. Vaclav Havel. “Anti-Political Politics”. John Keane et al. Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (New York, NY: Verso, 1988), pp. 381–98. Giuseppe Di Palma. To Craft Democracies, pp. 172–3. Guillermo O’Donnell. Modernization and Bureaucratic-Authoritarianism: Studies in South American Politics. (Berkeley, C A: Institute of International Studies, 1979), p. 93. Vaclav Havel. “The Power of the Powerless”, pp. 30–1. Ibid., p. 38. Original emphasis. Ibid., p. 45. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 64. For a discussion of machismo in Latin culture see, Evelyn Stevens. “Mexican Machismo: Politics and Value Orientations”. Paul Kramer, and Robert McNicoll (eds). Latin American Panorama. (New York, NY: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), pp. 388–402, especially pp. 388–93. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 155. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 148. Ibid., pp. 148–9. Mehran Kamrava. “Intellectuals and Democracy in the Third World”. The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies. Vol. 14, No. 2, (Summer 1989), p. 229–30. Ibid., For more on this point see also, Syed Hussein Alatas. Intellectuals in Developing Societies. (London: Frank Cass, 1977).

172 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

Society in comparative perspective For more on the role of intellectuals in revolutions see, Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 17–19. For the New Forum in GDR see, Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”. For Mothers of Plaza de Mayo see, Daniel Poneman. Argentina: Democracy on Trial. Andrew Arato. “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. p. 23. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 99. John Keane, et al. Civil Society and the State, p. 5. Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”, p. 110. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 99. Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”, p. 109. Sabrina Ramet. Social Currents in Eastern Europe, p. 99. Andrew Arato. “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. p. 23. Vladimir Tismaneanu. “Nascent Civil Society in the German Democratic Republic”, p. 111. Andrew Arato. “Empire vs. Civil Society: Poland 1981–82”. p. 23. Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics, pp. 104–5.

9 Society classifications Non-democratic varieties

Chapter 6 described Third World polities in terms of “strong societies” and “weak states”.1 Whereas in industrially advanced democracies state and society are so entwined as to be almost fused together, and while in newly democratising polities the society’s self-discovery draws it closer and closer to the state, the relationship between state and society in the non-democratic countries of the Third World is characterised by irregular and unequal spurts of power and influence by one over the other. The most frequent scenario in such countries is that of an expansive, authoritarian state governing over a society factionalised along a multitude of ethnic, linguistic, and socio-cultural lines. There is a one-way flow of influence from state to society, buttressed by a plethora of coercive institutions each specialising in maintaining “order” (which means ensuring political obedience), gathering intelligence, legitimising the regime’s carefully tailored political culture, and glorifying the person of the leader or, as the case may be, the ruling party. Politics is raw, brutal, coercive, and conflictual. To be “political” means to either be a complete servant of the system or to demagogically oppose it through rhetoric or other heroic acts of defiance. To every group in society politics has a different meaning. Some see it as defiance, others as compliance, and still others see it as a means for the rich to get richer. Few people see politics as a normal part of everyday life, and still fewer see it as routine and mundane. The vast majority of people see politics as something contrived, a domain for the greedy, the playground of the few; something to either avoid completely or to bitterly oppose, or, alternatively, to take advantage of. Praetorianism prevails, supplanting any and all rules of the game which may have once governed political behaviour. “Each group employs means which reflects its peculiar nature and capabilities. The wealthy bribe; students riot; workers strike; mobs demonstrate; and the military coup. In the absence of accepted procedures, all these forms of direct action are 173

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found on the political scene.”2 Civil society, the democratic political self-organisation of society, is but a distant ideal of a handful of intellectuals, and post-materialism is even further away, having to first contend with the ordeals of economic and industrial underdevelopment. The non-democratic state, authoritarian as it often is in these polities, is not always fully capable of pressing its agendas on society and of effectively ensuring its full compliance with all of the regime’s agendas. Whether due to the predominance of non-state, parochial loyalties or to the strength of values and ideologies other than those propagated by the political establishment, or a result of any other features inherent to society, the state at times finds itself unable to fully control the various nuances within society or to even prevent it from mounting a coordinated assault on the political establishment. Weak states thus preside over comparatively strong societies, albeit languidly. On rare and historic occasions, when the state is exceptionally weak, society acquires certain qualities that may even enable it to overthrow the state and to re-constitute a new one, but the fundamental nature of the relationship between state and society remains basically unchanged. Revolutions occur with great fanfare and melodrama. Sacrifices are made; heroes are born; hopes are raised; certainty prevails; the old is damned and the new worshipped; speeches made; rallies attended by millions; bullets fired and braved. History’s umbilical chord is broken and a new one started. A new era in the revolutionary country’s political history is begun. However, despite all the wrenching changes which revolutions bring about, the essence of the polity remains the same. The new state, after a brief honeymoon period, comes to eventually dominate society in much the same undemocratic manner as before. The entire auspices under which politics is shaped and conducted may be different, but, due to a variety of factors inherent to the nature of revolution, the relationship between state and society remains undemocratic. The language and colour of politics may be different, but its fundamental nature is basically the same as before. Democracy remains an elusive ideal. Nevertheless, the state-society relationship in non-democracies involves dynamics that are much more complex than that depicted in the two preceding paragraphs. The one-way flow of influence from state to society is not always a coercive one. In the real world of politics, there are almost no states which rely on coercion alone in order to maintain themselves in power. The exact nature of various non-institutional tools utilised by states to remain in power differ according to prevailing social and political circumstances. Often a host of social and cultural features bestow a genuine measure of legitimacy on the state’s approach to

Society classifications: non-democratic varieties

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politics. The state itself may also forge links with certain strata of society in order to ensure their political loyalty or, at least, passivity. Thus, in addition to formal state institutions, the regime may rely on a variety of informal networks, most of which have deep roots within society itself, in order to solidify its links with the society at large. At the same time, society’s internal fragmentation may make it extremely difficult for the state to effectively penetrate its depths. In fact, in certain extreme cases, there are multiple centres of political authority within the same polity, only one of which happens to be the state.

POLITICAL CULTURE It is within this complex, multi-dimensional context that the political cultures of non-democracies are formulated and their social institutions operate. The dichotomy of non-democratic political cultures into regime and political orientations was alluded to earlier. Within this dichotomy, these political cultures are influenced by such diverse phenomena as political incapacitation on the part of the state, poverty and other social ailments, regionalism, modernisation, and religion. These forces work on and influence such social institutions as the family, tribe, ethnicity, religion, and in certain instances race. If political culture is defined as the sum total of all popular perceptions towards the body politic, then it is reasonably safe to assume that in almost all non-democratic polities, all of which in the post-cold war world are found in the Third World, there are very few cohesive and unified “political cultures” as such. In praetorian polities politics is torn, disjointed, contrived. The “political” is glued together by the coercive and brutal weight of a state ceaselessly striving to ensure society’s compliance. Within such an environment, how can a uniformly agreed upon body of values towards the political arena emerge? In each nondemocratic, Third World country, a plethora of multifaceted and tremendously varied phenomena and developments pull and push popular political attitudes in what at times may be contradictory directions. In the changing and evolving polities of the Third World— polities in which social, political, and economic change and development are an inherent and inseparable feature of the state—not every actor shares the same attitudes and concerns towards politics or shares them equally. The entire political milieu—not just in terms of structures and functions but also in terms of normative legitimacy, expansive reach, and ideals and goals—is changing. What is occurring are processes of change and development, often just socially and economically but at

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times politically as well. Each sphere is changing, often developing agendas, directions, and self-perpetuating dynamics of its own. Societies, and along with them entire countries, never cease to undergo transformation and are by nature in constant processes of change. Nevertheless, the fundamental change that separates the evolving polities of the Third World from other types of political systems is the change in the political arena. Whereas the norms and values, priorities and agendas, and functions and structures of political institutions in the non-democratic countries of the Third World continue to undergo fundamental transformations, those in democratic polities remain basically the same. Within democracies, intricate nuances and specific manners of political conduct may change from time to time, but the basic rules of the political game and the overall political environment remain basically the same. There is, as a result, a considerable measure of cohesiveness and uniformity in the political culture. In nondemocracies, however, the development of a unified political culture is hampered by ever-changing political values, the existence of multiple centres of authority, the prevalence of concerns whose importance far outweigh politics, and a fragmented and disjointed body of social and cultural values. Divided political culture Two broad categories of developments may be identified as responsible for lack of a unified and cohesive political culture in the remaining nondemocratic polities of the Third World. On the one hand, the state frequently has neither the adequate resources nor the popular mandate, nor often the necessary wherewithal, to successfully foster uniformly similar political attitudes among the population at large or even among sizeable segments of it. Coupled with this political incapacity of the state are a number of social and cultural characteristics which may stand in contradiction to the values and agendas that the regime is trying to promote. To begin with, as mentioned earlier, Third World societies and the body of values and beliefs attached to them, namely their cultures, are in a state of almost constant change due to the ongoing processes of social change. There is thus a certain amount of fluidity built into the cultures of the Third World, an inherent valuative changeableness which makes the permanence of a political culture similarly difficult. Moreover, since political culture is essentially the normative link between state and society, the type of relationship which exists between states and societies in non-democratic polities also significantly influences the nature of their political cultures. The analogy of “strong


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societies” and “weak states” once again comes in handy. The strong society may, as mentioned before, prove too much of an obstacle for the weak state to penetrate and bring into compliance. Although separate, these two developments are nevertheless interrelated, for the nondemocratic states of the Third World are weak in relation to their respective societies. This weakness stems from the state’s inability to effectively subdue or supplant other, non-state institutions which also exert social control. As an observer of Third World politics has noted, all states have existed in a potpourri of other organizations in their societies. Where societies have been weblike and where social control has been fragmented among numerous organizations, states have faced formidable barriers in seeing their policies through. Skillful state rulers, managerial prowess in the ministries, complex machinery and resources are in themselves insufficient bases for the state to make social policies that stick. An exclusive focus on these factors, on centerstage, without understanding other peripheral social organizations’ influence on the state and its capabilities can be grossly misleading. Our signpost directs us to look beyond the capital city at how social control is actually distributed through the society.3 Exactly why state institutions are unable to overcome the influence of other centres of social power depends on specific circumstances within each country. Nevertheless, three broad areas of political.exigency on the part of the state can be identified. In one way or another and to varying degrees, the non-democratic states of the Third World are unable to bring about social compliance, foster meaningful and sustained political participation, and maintain their legitimacy.4 The structural limitations of the state which confront it with such instances of political incapacitation are many and varied, not the least of which include stunted processes of political institutionalisation, false and doctored means of legitimacy, and an inherent distaste for allowing popular political participation and relinquishing control. 5 Such structural shortcomings on the part of the state are, however, only part of the reason for the state’s inability to inculcate its values among the populace. The intricacies inherent in society are equally important. Of the social and cultural factors that impede the development of a uniform political culture, one of the most important is the continuing persistence of concerns other than the political. Parochial and other local loyalties do divert attention from the broader, more encompassing concerns of national policy-makers. And the fragmentation of political cultures into smaller, parochially centred loyalties is a frequent

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development in many socially fractured polities in the Third World.6 In most of these societies, the delivery of goods and services has historically been performed by such traditional centres of power as tribal and clan leaders, dominant families, religious leaders, and other individuals or non-state institutions on which most social members have relied for security, protection, and mobility. In fact, the continued significance of social institutions over the various aspects of one’s life in place of state institutions directly hinders the development of a statesponsored set of political values and principles. Again, the comparative weakness of the state and the strength of society comes into play: social institutions continue to perform those functions which the modern state seeks to take over. Even when the state does succeed and either replaces or supplants the functions of certain social institutions, it has to try hard to win the full compliance or allegiance of those social groups it has affected. The fact that tribes may not officially exert power does not necessarily mean that tribalism has completely vanished; secular courts may exist but traditional clerics may continue to exert considerable judicial authority; and certain social practices may be officially banned but still be closely observed by large segments of the population. Along with the continued importance of non-state institutions comes the persistence of the values attached to them, values which often stand in contradiction to those espoused by the modern state. Parochial, non-state loyalties, therefore, frequently impede the growth and strength of the state-sponsored, “national” political culture espoused by those in control of the state. Of the various social institutions found in the non-democracies of the Third World, three are particularly instrumental in undermining the growth and prevalence of a unified political culture. They are the institutions of religion, kinship, and tribe, all of which in highly significant ways serve as strong sources of identity, tutelage, and protection for their respective members. It is these institutions, often individually and often in conjunction with one another, which in most Third World societies have proven to be especially resistent to encroachments by the state and have at best only grudgingly relinquished their powers and functions to various state institutions. In their own way, the values attached to kinship and the family, to tribe, and to religion, which in most Third World societies continue to be the prime focus of social interaction and cultural expression, frequently stand in contradiction to those values and principles that the modern state is trying to promote and base its functions and its legitimacy on. The state is thus frequently forced to modify its plans for the provision of a political culture in order for it to fit existing social realities and cultural


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priorities. In Lebanon for instance, to use an extreme example, the family has historically been the pivotal social institution around which cultural values have been formulated and within which most political power has been concentrated.7 A similar role is played by the institution of the tribe in most African societies.8 In most Middle Eastern societies, meanwhile, a “yearning for faith” continues to ensure the subtle strength and dominance of religion over much of the secular values that the state may propagate.9 In each of these cases, the underlying values attached to the dominant social institutions, whatever those dominant social institutions in a given non-democratic polity may be, make the development and growing social acceptance of a nationwide political culture more difficult than would be the case in their absence. It is important to realise, nevertheless, that in most non-democratic polities impediments to the prevalence of a unified political culture go deeper than the mere existence of parochial political values and priorities. The socio-economic predicaments of the masses in the Third World and their actual living conditions also greatly influence their perceptions of and attitudes towards politics in general and the state in specific. Many in the Third World live in abject poverty. Remedying pains brought on by a hungry stomach or an empty pocket always takes priority over the pursuit of political agendas and interests. Contrary to what Karl Marx believed, misery breeds not revolt but rather preoccupation with survival and with making ends meet.10 For many in the Third World, even for those in such rare Third World democracies as Argentina and Brazil, politics remains but a luxury, one they can ill afford in the face of more immediate and pressing economic concerns. But even among the burgeoning urban middle classes, particularly in the non-democratic polities of the Third World, there is a fairly widespread sense of political apathy, their political consciousness either deliberately placated by the regime or having been submerged under struggles for economic survival and mobility. State-sponsored coercion, coupled with attempts at securing pieces of the economic pie, do much to keep the average citizen out of the political arena, an arena whose very integrity is already stained and questionable before the popular eye. The politically aware, whether supportive of or against the state, are part of a distinct and highly distinguishable minority, often comprised of members of such elite groups as university students, writers and essayists, and artists and other notables. The ordinary masses, however, remain mostly aloof from politics and, in ordinary times at least, tend to prefer staying “on the right side” of those in power: i.e. staying out of politics altogether. This political aloofness, voluntary or compelled, at best makes the popular acceptance of a political culture a matter of

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expedience rather than genuine belief. The popular classes may eventually come to adopt a political culture grudgingly and out of necessity, and even then only certain tenets of it. In essence, what the masses come to adopt is not necessarily a genuine set of political orientations but are rather carefully calculated and rehearsed regime orientations.

SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS Regardless of whatever form popular perceptions towards politics eventually come to assume, the most important social institutions through which society interacts with the state in non-democratic polities include those of the family, tribe, ethnicity, and religion. In their unique ways, each of these institutions, either in combination with one another or separately, often forms the most solid and impenetrable institutions within a non-democratic polity, even compared to the highly coercive institutions of the state such as the army and the police force. Not only are these social institutions often immune from the full reaches of the state, but, more importantly, they frequently serve as the most viable means of social mobilisation and interaction. In non-democratic polities, state institutions tend to operate in a social vacuum, void of cultural resonance, social acceptance, and political heritage. The state’s legitimacy is contrived and artificial rather than natural and historic. The primary purpose of state institutions is not to enhance the interests of society or to further social agendas but rather to solidify the state’s powers and its ability to rule and maintain control. Within such a context, social institutions retain a remarkable degree of their resilience. Consciously or unconsciously, social institutions in non-democratic polities are often perceived as safe havens and unadulterated refuges against the contrived schemes of the regime and its adulterated institutions. Instead of wholeheartedly supporting the state-sponsored political party—whose hidden (and often blatant) agendas make participation in it more proforma than inspired—refuge is sought in such social institutions as the family, the community, the tribe, or others. A regime’s ideology may be accepted on the surface, but in reality it may not be able to compete with other, non-state ideologies based on religion, ethnicity, or nationalism. In one way or another, allegiance to and participation in state institutions takes on a hollow meaning when compared to the substantive functions which social institutions continue to perform despite political efforts to the contrary. Non-democratic societies, therefore, frequently retain much of their autonomy from the


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state and, depending on the diversity of their social institutions, often remain internally discordant and fractionalised. “Weblike societies”, which in the words of one observer inundate the non-democratic polities of the Third World, “host a melange of fairly autonomous social institutions—Well over half the Third World countries are either ‘very high’ or ‘high’ in ethnic and linguistic fractionalization, while less than a third of other countries fall into these categories.”11 Some social institutions are in fact so autonomous that, both in function and in structure, they may even come to assume some of the characteristics of a state themselves. As discussed below, some social institutions may even eventually supplant the various political institutions and become the state themselves. Education One of the social institutions which deserves particular mention is that of education. Particularly in societies in which other means of political and social enhancement are heavily restrained, education offers one of the viable means of attaining higher social, economic, and even political mobility. This is especially true at the post-secondary and university level, where the students form a highly visible and prestigious social and cultural elite. Added to this socio-cultural significance is the political weight attached to the educational establishment in almost all nondemocratic polities. The non-democratic state frequently maintains very close and careful control over schools and universities for two primary reasons. On the one hand, the educational system offers by far the most viable tool for the inculcation of specific political values among a segment of the population which, in the early years at least, is most impressionable and likely to be manipulated. Through the educational system, nondemocratic governments try to socialise children and students into the official political culture and to familiarise them with the political norms and values espoused on by political leaders. What children are taught is often a highly warped version of officially approved history as authorised by the regime.12 Yet at the same time, especially at the high school and university level, students are far less likely to be easily manipulated by the regime and, not surprisingly, most Third World universities and colleges have often served as hotbeds of protests and political violence. Nevertheless, attempts to control what university students read and think continue to take place, often quite blatantly, in most non-democratic polities.13 What this political manipulation and control of the educational system in turn results in is the inability of this particular social institution to serve as any meaningful mechanism for the regular and unadulterated

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formulation of political sentiments or demands. Acquiring at best a skewed education, particularly in the social sciences, neither students nor even intellectuals in non-democracies have an adequate understanding of their social and political environments, of ways and means of rectifying them, and of even of their own predicaments. Simply put, many of the mechanical and the normative requisites for the attainment of civil society are absent.

STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS The relationship between the state and the various social institutions is not always adversarial and, in fact, in most instances regimes go through great pains to forge highly accommodative arrangements with particular social institutions. Depending on a regime’s agendas, its leadership, and ideology, political leaders often deliberately cultivate close ties with one or more of the prevailing social institutions. As the previous chapters demonstrated, some regimes in fact exist precisely because they embark on inclusionary policies. Since in the real world of politics few regimes are based purely on the application of coercion, most political establishments simply cannot function without taking into account the massive weight of dominant social institutions and somehow accommodating them. No regime in the Middle East, for example, regardless of how secular in orientation and policies it may be, can afford to ignore the overwhelming role that religion plays within Middle Eastern societies.14 The institution of the family needs similar attention by the Lebanese state,15 as does that of the tribe in various African polities.16 In so far as ethnicity is concerned, some scholars have even gone so far as to suggest that the “growth of hegemonic ethnic politics” is one of the “major themes” of Third World politics.17 Not all of these instances of close interaction between state and various social institutions are, however, the product of manipulative efforts by the state. It only makes sense for non-democratic states to attempt to forge social links in order to enhance their legitimacy and to solidify their social and cultural base of support. There are, nevertheless, instances in which segments or individuals belonging to certain social institutions, operating under the auspices of that social institution, assume dominant positions of political power and, depending on the circumstances, ultimately become the state. There are few norms to the pattern and overall nature of the state-society relationship in nondemocratic polities. At particular historical junctures in the life of such a polity, the state may become so weak and society so strong that one or


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more of the strategically located social institutions may actually subsume the state and itself assume the political function of the state. It is quite conceivable for a political leader to hold on to power in an African country through appeals to tribal heritage and networks (as Kenyatta often did in Kenya); for a religious leader to attain political power in the Middle East using the institution of religion and in turn promising to further its interests (Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran); for a family to come to power in Lebanon through extensive reliance on the institution of kinship (the Jamayels); and for a dominant ethnic group to assume control of state institutions through reliance on the bonds and networks provided by ethnicity.

CONCLUSION It is hard to imagine how a thorough understanding of politics can be acquired without careful attention to the underlying forces and currents found in any given society. Specifically, two particular social phenomena are of crucial significance in shaping and influencing the conduct and pattern of politics. They include political culture, which provides the normative links between state and society, and social institutions, which are essentially the constituent parts of the collectivity known as society. In their unique but often interrelated ways, both political culture and social institutions are often significant determinants of the precise nature of politics. While these two phenomena retain much of their unique nature within each nation, certain broad underlying similarities can be detected among various clusters of societies. This section has distinguished among three general types of societies, which, their individual differences notwithstanding, share broad similarities. The first group are those societies found in industrialised democracies, conventionally associated with the older, so-called “developed” polities of the West. The main distinguishing characteristic of these societies is their close and regularised interaction with various state institutions, so much so that there is at times considerable overlap between the two. It is here that the distinction between state and society, not just analytically but also practically, comes as close to withering away as possible. The two plains fuse together in concert, their respective institutions performing interrelated and complementary functions. This fusion and overlapping of functions is in turn cemented through the political culture which, through generations of experience and evolution, has come to form solid valuative and emotional bonds between the average citizen and the state.

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Similar undercurrents are found in a second group of societies, those in which, due to a variety of factors, society has just begun controlling the nuances within politics. The crucial difference between these newly democratising polities and the already democratised ones in the West is the relatively short period of time in which the former has been able to dictate the politics of the state. Simply put, whereas in industrialised democracies consensual state-society interaction has had a relatively long and evolutionary political heritage, that historical experience is absent in the newly democratising societies. Democracy has only just emerged in these cases, indeed in some instances it is still taking shape (hence democratising), and as a result society is still feeling its way into the new form of polity. Society has only recently begun to familiarise itself with and to engage in the form of politics known as democracy, not having in the recent past been able to shape and determine the format and the policies of the state through institutionalised means of interaction (namely elections). Within these societies thus, both the various social institutions and their values and agendas are in a process of transformation towards democracy, the ultimate success of democracy depending on the strength of civil society and the wilful agendas of those in positions of power. Lastly, there are a number of societies in which, for a variety of reasons, there have been no moves towards bringing about a regular process of interaction between politics and society, and if such moves have existed, they have as the whole failed to produce any tangible longterm results. For the most part, in these non-democratic polities both the state and society operate in a vacuum. The flow of influence from one to the other tends to be monolithic, irregular, and massive. Due to its control over the various sources through which coercion can be enforced and compliance obtained, this flow of influence has generally been from the state to society. Nevertheless, the internal divisions in and the autonomous strength of various social institutions do not always ease the state’s penetrative and transformative tasks, so that at times certain state institutions overturn and themselves replace the state. Within these polities, in which states generally remain weak in relation to factionalised and older societies, a uniform political culture is almost always non-existent. Even if on the surface the masses uphold and cherish certain political principles, their genuine sentiments towards the political establishment and the broader field of politics tend to be different. Thus, even the intangible, normative links between state and society are absent. The one certainty in these types of polities is their uncertainty.


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NOTES 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

The concept of “strong societies and weak states” was greatly elaborated on by Joel Migdal in Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988). Samuel Huntington. Political Order in Changing Societies. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 196. Joel Migdal. Strong Societies and Weak States, pp. 139–140. Ibid., pp. 32–33. For more on this point see Chapter 6. See also, Mehran Kamrava, Politics and Society in the Third World. (London: Routledge, 1993), chapter 1. Ibid., p. 139. Caroline Knight. “Traditional Influences Upon Lebanese Politics”. The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies. Vol. 17, Nos. 3–4, (Fall/ Winter 1992), p. 327. William Tordoff. Government and Politics in Africa. (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 79–82. Ernest Gellner. “Islam and Marxism: Some Comparisons”. International Affairs. Vol. 67, No. 1, (1991), pp. 1–6. Mehran Kamrava. Revolutionary Politics. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 11–13. Joel Migdal. Strong Societies and Weak States, p. 37. Mehran Kamrava. Politics and Society in the Third World, pp. 157–158. Ibid., p. 159. See, for example, Roger Owen. State, Power, and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East. (London: Routledge, 1992), chapter 7. Caroline Knight. “Traditional Influences Upon Lebanese Politics”. William Tordoff. Government and Politics in Africa, pp. 79–82. Myron Weiner. “Political Change: Asia, Africa, and the Middle East”. Myron Weiner and Samuel P.Huntington (eds). Understanding Political Development. (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1987), p. 33.

Conclusion

The study of comparative politics has come a long way since its inception more than a century ago. The initial focus on the nature and characteristics of the state and its constituent institutions remained resilient for a number of decades and has never been fully cast aside, its latter-day theoretical refurbishing and resurrection the subject of much scholarly excitement and debate since the 1980s. The “behaviouralists” and other proponents of the systems theory have lost much ground since the 1960s and 1970s, when their theories of social input and political output closely resembled the revolutionary air of most Western societies at the time. To this day, nevertheless, such ardent proponents of the functionalist perspective as Gabriel Almond remain convinced of the paradigm’s superior merits. Drawing from some of the insights and the contributions of each of these differing paradigms, in the preceding chapters I have sought to bring into sharper focus a recurring theme in much of the recent literature in the discipline, namely attention to the separate phenomena of state and society as well as their interactions. Comparative analysis must begin with highlighting the crucial systemic and functional differences between state and society as separate phenomena. Even in democratic polities, where state-society gaps are frequently bridged through electoral and other institutional means, there are still distinct groups who hold “official” state power and those who do not. But the distinction between state and society does not mean the two operate in isolation from one another. For, in fact, while politics does entail the “goings-on” within the state, it also involves, especially at the national level, the exchange of power and influence between the state and society. This exchange occurs through the institutions that both states and societies have, institutions which, depending on national context, are bound to have different names or even different levels of significance but function as conveyor belts of influence in either direction. The comparativist must thus go beyond 186

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concentrating on the comparative exercise of power within and by states. The degree and effectiveness of political institutionalisation in enabling the state to penetrate and influence society, the strength and political potential of various existing social institutions, and the political culture which provides the formulating context for the whole set of state-society interactions must all be taken into account. Only then can an adequately thorough understanding of politics be attained. It may be worth repeating that emphasis on state and society is not a new paradigm and that it has been implicit in many analyses of comparative phenomena. What this work has done is to give cohesion and consistency to a trend that can be found in much of the recent literature of the discipline. It has presented an abstract framework for many of the emprirical studies in the discipline and sketched the broad outlines of an emerging comparative paradigm. Through a dual focus on state and society, a host of previous and contemporary political phenomena may be explained, and even future projections may be derived at with a degree of certainty. Revolutionary eruptions around the world, for example, may be conceptualised as successful societal movements that overthrow and reconstitute the state and which, in turn, establish a new pattern of relationship between state and society. The waves of democratisation across Southern Europe in the 1970s or Eastern Europe in the 1980s may be similarly explained. Can the dramatic events surrounding the collapse of communism be attributed to anything else but a radical restructuring of state-society relations and their normative contexts (i.e. political culture)? The exclusionary, communist states proved incapable of effectively weakening societal pressures for political participation, especially as exerted by such outgrowths of civil society as the Solidarity movement in Poland, the New Forum in East Germany, the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia, and others. Again, the new states that emerged out of the transformations of the 1980s re-established their links to society under different, this time democratic, auspices. It was the political culture of the region, itself radically transformed under the crushing weight of communist authoritarianism, that accounted for much of the success of democracy there. But the same series of analytical concepts may also be used to explain the failures of democracy or the strains it experiences, the perseverance of authoritarianism, or the near complete internal disintegration of entire national entities. Authoritarian states may remain in power indefinitely so long as the institutional mechanisms through which the masses are kept at bay and prevented from political participation continue to function effectively and properly. For such regimes, the bureaucracy, the

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military, the police, and even the judiciary serve as tools that ensure the exclusion of the masses from the political process. The exact reasons that underlie the longevity of dictatorships vary from one case to another. Some authoritarian regimes may rely on the economic preoccupations of the population in order to maintain themselves in power, while others may lengthen their tenure by successfully cultivating the less democratic aspects of the popular culture. But there is always an imbalance in the powers of state and society in favour of the former, making it a relationship between socially impenetrable states and politically incapacitated societies. This is the type of state-society relationship that—with such exceptions as South Africa, Turkey, and Israel—marks the political landscapes of the Middle East and much of Africa. There are also instances where neither the state nor society can effectively penetrate the other, nor can they decide on a regularised pattern of interaction within and between themselves. Dysfunctionality and paralysis mark both the state as well as society, as was the unhappy predicament first of Ethiopia and later Somalia in recent years, of Lebanon in the 1970s, and of former Yugoslavia since the late 1980s. A viable state-society relationship cannot re-emerge until one has established its dominance over the other. Throughout this work, I have taken great care to avoid the trap of ethnocentricity, which, as a recent book has pointed out, is almost second nature to the comparativist. “Every researcher”, the book’s authors caution, “even a comparativist researcher, belongs to a culture, and that can limit his or her capacity to perceive. These blinkers have not been easily recognized.”1 This tendency has been reinforced by the overwhelmingly Western and specifically American character of comparative politics. From the very beginnings, comparative politics has been a product of Western rationalists’ efforts to conceptualise the politics of other nations. Under these broad auspices, the influence of American scholars and of American views towards comparative politics has been particularly dominant, as represented, for example, by the preponderance of scholarly American journals and other publications focusing on the subject.2 It is more than simply coincidental that the cautionary statement above comes from two French comparativists, Dogan and Pelassy. With their warning in mind, I have tried to formulate an approach that accounts for differing national, institutional, cultural, and social contexts. Viewing states and societies in terms of their constituent institutions, and pointing to their varying interactions as the key to political analysis does not smack of ethnocentrism. After all the time and effort that went into the writing of this book, it is with a measure of irony that I must admit to the transitory and

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impermanent nature of the approach I have surmised out of recent trends in the scholarship. However we define and perceive politics, it remains by nature a changeable phenomenon, its norms continually moulded to our time-specific interests, its parameters altered by the scope of institutional and technological forces that continually challenge and reshape the face of human existence. However analytically sound, the details of an approach to the study of comparative politics that is put forward in the late twentieth century may be no more valid a hundred years from now than are the late nineteenth-century approaches valid today. If past historical trends are any indicator of the changes to come in the future, then national and international political arenas around the globe are bound to undergo fundamental changes in both substance and direction. Even within the past decade, awesome political revolutions around the world have shattered some of the basic premises that were once accepted as given within the discipline of comparative politics. Where national and global trends will take politics in the future cannot be predicted with any measure of certainty. What is certain, however, is that our present perceptions of politics will most definitely need to be changed accordingly. Only an unrealistic idealist would strive to put forward an approach to comparative politics with supposed eternal validity. I have no such pretensions. Instead, I am counting on the hope that neither states, nor societies, nor their mutual interactions will become obsolete any time in the near future and that at least the broad outlines of this emerging approach will withstand the inevitable political, institutional, and technological changes of the coming generations.

NOTES 1 2

Mattei Dogan and Dominique Pelassy. How to Compare Nations: Strategies in Comparative Politics. 2nd edition. (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1990), p. 9. Research on earlier journal articles in non-American publications in comparative politics is especially difficult. As a case in point, whereas the American Political Science Review was first published in 1903, the Revue française de science politique was not published until 1964 and the British Journal of Political Science started only in 1971.

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Index

Afghanistan 123 Africa 11, 52, 61, 66, 80, 88, 89, 90, 95, 99, 152, 179 Ahmad, Jalal Al-e 147 Alatas, Syed Hussein 171 Albania 154, 170 Almond, Gabriel 13, 15–16, 21, 24, 26, 27, 186; and Coleman, James 41; and Powell, G.Bingham 24, 41, 73; and Verba, Sidney 25, 58, 65, 72, 73, 149 Alsalam, Nabeel 150 American Political Science Association 9 Americanisation 123–4, 129, 148 Apter, David 98, 116 Aquino, President 89 Arato, Andrew 170, 171, 172 Arendt, Hannah 109 Argentina 89, 94, 95, 106, 109, 153, 154, 159, 166, 170, 179 Asia 11, 88, 90, 95, 99, 130, 152 Association of South East Asia Nations (ASEAN) 79 Australia 83, 141, 147 Austria 78, 97 authoritarianism 69, 77, 78, 187 Azerbaijan 78

behaviouralists 31 Belgium 97, 122, 127, 145 Berg-Schlosser, Dirk 97 Bianchi, Robert 117 Bill, James A. and Hardgrave, Robert L. 23, 24, 96 Binder, Leonard 15, 25, 46, 56 Blau, Peter 57 Blondel), Jean 97, 98, 116 Boggs, Carl 150 Bolivia 153 Botswana 95 Bratton, Michael 26, 41, 97 Brazil 89, 130, 153, 154, 170, 179 Britain 16, 82, 83, 86, 87, 123, 127, 128, 130, 138, 139, 145, 150; Conservative Party 68; Labour Party 68; political system in 8 Bruszt, Laszlo 170 Bryce, James 10, 22 Buckley, William F. 124, 148; and Kesler, Charles 148 Bulgaria 89 bureaucratic-authoritarian dictatorships 80, 88, 109–10; and bureaucratic corporatism 112–13; and communist regimes 113–14; and the military 111–12; political underdevelopment of 110–11

Bahrain 48, 66 Balkanisation process 17 Ball, Alan 98 Baltic Republics 89 Bangladesh 95 Bebler, Anton and Seroka, Jim 99

Campbell, John Creighton 98 Canada 83, 122, 141 Cantori, Louis and Ziegler, Andrew 98, 117 capitalist world-system 18 216

Index Capps, Walter 150 Cardoso, F. 18 Caribbean 80, 93, 95, 130 causality 11 Central America 80, 93 Central Europe 88, 89, 92 centre/peripheral states 18 Chad 80 charismatic movements 104 Chernobyl 128 Chilcote, Ronald 24, 25 Chile 109 Chilton, Stephen 42, 56 China 78, 84, 98, 109, 113, 114, 157 Civic Forum 187 civil society 47, 90, 92, 174; birth of 169; concept of 159; construction of alternative 162; political aspects and ramifications of 159–61 Clark, Candace and Robboy, Howard 57 Coca-Cola-ization 123 Coleman, James S. 24, 46, 56 Collar de Mallo, Fernando 170 Colombia 89, 99, 153 communism 77, 89, 91, 113–14, 154, 156, 187 comparative politics, behavioural revolution within 11–12; changes in 1–2, 7–8, 11, 22; limitations of analyses 10; past and present 70– 2; as product of Western rationalists 188 constitutions 87 Conway, M.Margaret 72 Copper, John and Ta-Ling 98 corporatism 86–7; bureaucratic 112–13 Costa Rica 80, 95, 99, 153 crises 15 Cuba 104, 105, 109, 113, 157 cultural values 62 culture, alternative 156; Americanisation of 123–4; developments in 122–8; and individualism 124–6; and postmaterialism 126–8 Curtis, Michael 98 Czechoslavakia 154, 166, 167, 168, 170, 187

217

David, Paul and Everson, David 149 Dealey, James Quayle 9 Dearlove, John 22, 25, 26 Decalo, Samuel 117 democracy/ies 47, 48, 65, 77; desirability of 153; differences in 95–6, 154; elite and mass 96; failures of 187; and political system 68, 101; process of 153, 168–9; proto- or quasi- 77, 78; as self-regulating and selfperpetuating 168 Denmark 97, 98 dependency theory 18–19, 31, 78–9 Di Palma, Giuseppe 170, 171 Diamond, Larry et al. 99 Dickinson, John 23 dissident movements 166–8 Dogan, Mattei and Pelassy, Dominique 188 Dominican Republic 95, 99 Dougherty, James and Pfaltzgraff, Robert 148 Dunn, John 25 East Germany 128, 154, 166, 167, 187 Eastern Europe 49, 69, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 157, 164, 167, 187 Easton, David 4, 12, 15, 24 Eckstein, Harry 72, 73 economic resources 33 Ecuador 99 Eddinger, Lewis J. 97 Egypt 111, 113 Eisenstadt, S.N. 57 El Salvador 153 environment, social and cultural 59 ethical evaluation 11 Ethiopia 188 ethnocentrism 16, 188 Etzioni-Halevy, Eva 98, 148 European Community (EO) 78 Evans, Peter et al. 25 Fabbrini, Sergio 25, 26, 27 Fanon, Franz 162 fascism 16, 70, 82, 109 Feit, Edward 117 Finer, S.E. 87, 98

218

Index

Finland 98 First World 77, 80, 81–2, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 96, 114, 152 First World democracies 81–3, 91; bureaucratic and administrative networks/agencies 85–8; executives in 84–5; judiciary in 84; legislatures in 83 formal-legalism 9–10 France 10, 97, 125, 128, 136, 138, 139, 145, 150, 165; Centrist Party 68; Gaullist Party 68; Socialist Party 68 Frank, Andre Gunder 25 Friedman, Milton and Friedman, Rose 148 Fukuyama, Francis 148 functionalism 186 Gallup, George Jr. 150 Gardner, David 150 Gellner, Ernest 185 German Democratic Republic (GDR) 159 Germany 10, 95, 97, 109, 138, 145, 150; Christian Democrats 68; Social Democrats 68 Gettell, Raymond G. 23 Ghana 80, 106 Gibbs, Jack P. 57 Giddens, Anthony 41, 49, 56–7, 122, 126, 147, 148 Ginger, Ray 150 Gottlieb, S.E. 73 governmental agencies 59 Great Depression 11 Greece 98, 153, 155 Greenstein, Fred 72, 73 Grenada 126 Guatemala 153 Gurevitch, Michael and Blumler, Jay G. 150 Hague, Rod and Harrop, Martin 98, 99, 150 Hancock, M.Donald et al. 149, 150 Harik, Iliya 56, 97 Havel, Vaclav 147, 161, 168, 170, 171 Hedjanek, Ladislav 170

Herz, John H. 23, 24 history 60–1, 64 Hitler, Adolf 94 Hitler Youth 106 Hobbes, Thomas 124 Hoffer, Eric 106, 116 Hoffman, Stanley 97 Holmes, Leslie 117 Honduras 95, 99 Horowitz, Irving Louis 97 Houphouet-Boigny, Felix 63 Howard, M. 147 Hungary 89, 154, 166, 167 Huntington, Samuel 24, 25, 46, 56, 115, 116, 185 Iceland 98 inclusionary populist regimes 78, 101–3, 114; and charismatic leaders 69, 103–4, 107; and establishment of institutional networks 107–8; and the masses 103–6; and organs of mobilisation 106–8; and politics of inclusion 103–6; and statesponsored political parties 107 India 78, 80, 89, 93, 95, 99, 113 individualism 124–6, 129 industrialised democracies 121–47; and developments in culture 122– 8; and political cultures 129–33; and social institutions 133–46 Inglehart, Ronald 72, 73 inputs/outputs 13, 16, 70 institutional spheres 57 institutionalisation see political institutionalisation Iran 78, 104, 106, 113, 126, 135, 157 Iraq 104, 109, 111, 126 Ireland 127, 128 Iron Curtain 154 Islam 54 Israel 87 Italy 16, 97, 109, 127, 128, 136, 138, 139, 145, 150; Alliance for Freedom Party 68, 156; Communist Party 68; Popular Party 68; Socialist Party 68 Ivory Coast 63

Index Ivy League 139 Jamaica 99 Jamayels family 183 Japan 78, 80, 86, 90, 93, 98, 130, 147, 154 Jordan 66 Kampuchea 80 Kamrava, Mehran 25, 42, 56, 72, 73, 99, 115, 149, 171, 172, 185 Kavanagh, Dennis 72, 73, 98 Kazakhstan 78 Keane, John et at. 147, 170 Kebschull, Harvey G. 115 Kenya 93, 95, 99, 183 Kenyatta, Jomo 183 Kesselman, Mark and Krieger, Joel 98 Khomeini, Ayatollah 106, 109, 135– 6, 183 Kim Ill Sung 117 Kingdom, John 148 Knight, Caroline 185 Kramer, Paul and McNicoll, Robert 171 Kuwait 48, 66 Kvam, Gail Adams 97 Kyrgystan 78 La Sapienza University (Rome) 139 Lane, Jan-Erik and Ersson, Svante O. 147, 149, 150, 151 LaPalombra, Joseph and Weiner, Myron 24 Laszlo, Ervin 12, 24 Latin America 11, 17, 49, 54, 55, 78, 88, 89, 91, 92, 95, 97, 109, 130, 153, 154, 155, 159, 163, 164, 170 Le Pen, Jean Marie 128 Lebanon 78, 182, 188 Lehmann, Jean-Pierre 97 Lesotho 78 liberation 11 Libya 109, 111, 126 Lieberthal, Kenneth 116; and Oksenburg, Michael 117 Lijphart, Arend 99; and Crepaz, Markus M.L. 98

219

Linz, Juan and Stepan, Alfred 99 Lipson, Leslie 23, 99, 149 Locke, John 124 Loewenberg, Gerhard and Patterson, Samuel 98 Lowenstein, Karl 23 Lowi, Theodore J. 25, 26, 27 Lundestad, Geir 97 Macridis, Roy 98, 116; and Burg, Steven 97 Madsden, Douglas and Snow, Peter G. 115, 116 Mao Tse-Tung 109 Marx, Karl 179 Marxism 33 mass media 59 mass movements 105–6 Mastnak, Tomaz 170 Mazrui, Ali 147 Mecham, J.Lloyd 99 media 144–5 Merton, Robert 57 Mexico 16, 80 Middle East 52, 54, 55, 66, 88, 89, 109, 111, 136, 179, 182 Migdal, Joel S. 116, 185 military-based dictatorships 91, 97– 8, 111–12 Mitchell, Timothy 73 modernisation theory 11, 31 Moore, Barrington 96, 100 Moral Majority 134, 142 Morocco 66 Mothers of Plaza de Mayo 159, 166 Mouritzen, Hans 97 Muslims 136 nation-state 33, 87 NATO 11 Nazis 109, 155 neo-Nazis 125 neo-statist approach 17–22; and little black box 16, 71 Netherlands 97, 127 Neumann, Sigmund 23, 24, 25 new democracies 12, 88, 96, 147, 173, 184; and challenge of survival 88–92; emergent 152–5, 168–9; importance of

220

Index

international and economic factors 91–2; leaders in 90–1; and need for societal support 89; political culture of 155–62; social institutions of 162–8 New Forum 159, 166, 187 New Right 68, 86, 124, 124–5, 134 New World 141 New World Order 77, 92 New Zealand 83, 141, 147 Nicaragua 95, 126 Nigeria 89 Nkrumah, Kwame 106 non-democracies 48, 77–8, 86, 96, 173–5, 183–4; as authoritarian 174; and education 140, 164–5, 181–2; executives in 85; judiciary in 84; political aloofness in 179– 80; political culture of 175–80; political participation in 64–5; political parties in 107, 140; social institutions of 180–2; statesociety relations in 182–3; varieties of 101–15 Nordlinger, Eric 18, 19–20, 21, 25, 26, 117 North Korea 117 Northern Ireland 135, 137 Norway 97, 98 occupation 59 O’Donnell, Guillermo 116, 117, 171; et al. 169; and Schmitter, Philippe 26, 169, 170 O’Kane, Rosemary 117 Oman 48, 66 Owen, Roger 185 Packer, George 151 Pakistan 89, 95, 99 Pakulski, Jan 116 parallel society 160, 162, 171 parastatals 72 Parsons, Talcott 49, 50, 51, 56 Pateman, Carole 149 Peeler, John 170 peer groups 59 Peron, Juan 94, 106, 109 Persian Gulf 48 Peru 89, 153

Peters, Guy B. 148 Philippines 89, 99 philosophy 64 Poland 89, 154, 159, 167, 168, 187 political culture 12, 40, 55, 187; alternative 156; and cultural values 62; defined 13, 58–9, 175; divided 176–80; and historical experience 60–1; influences on 129; as link between state and society 71, 184; mass and elite 66, 67–8, 156–9; as multi-faceted 70; as parochial, subject or participant 65, 66–7; and political trust 131–3; and politicisation of the population 155–6; and politics of social obligation 129–31; progenitors of 59–65; as regime and political orientations 66, 68– 70, 180; role of 47; and social conditions 61–2; and state initiatives 62–5; transformation in 175–6; varieties of 65–70 political development 11, 46–9; defined 48–9; and democracy 47; and distribution of power 47; and support for 48; as syndrome 46 political institutionalisation 44–6, 47 political science 1 political socialisation, defined 59–60; two stages 59 political system, changing approach to 11–17; characteristics of 14; crises in 15; development of 14, 15; modernisation of 14–15; order and stability in 14; parties 52, 59, 68, 93, 107, 140–3, 146–7, 167–8; resources of 33; voting 64–5 politics 43, 173; defined 2–3, 101; as neither political nor social 32; perception of 189; and social interaction 115 Poneman, Daniel 170 Portis, E.B. 116 Portugal 98, 128, 153, 155 post-materialism 126–8, 129, 142 post-modernism 127 post-totalitarian 161 Powell, G.B. Jr. 13, 15 protest movements 165

Index pseudo-democracies 99, 153; distinguishing features 92–3; empty democracy 93–5 public officials 19 public-private sphere 17 punks 125 Pye, Lucian 24, 67, 68, 72, 73, 115; and Verba, Sidney 24, 25 Qatar 48, 66 Ramet, Sabrina 171, 172 Reagan, Ronald 86, 124, 125 realism 10–11 Redner, Harry 78, 97 Reeves, Jesse S. 22 regime, use of term 102 regime orientations 68–70 religion 69; Catholic 135–6, 159; Dutch Reform Church 54; organisations of 59; Protestant 135, 136, see also social institutions revolutions 156–8, 169, 174, 187 Robertson, Pat 134 Romania 154, 167, 170 Rose, Jerry D. 57 Rosenbaum, Walter 73 Ross Perot phenomenon 142 Rostow, W.W. 99 Rothgeb, John Jr. 115 Rueschemeyer, Dietrich and Evans, Peter 41 Russia 157 Rustow, Dankwart 115 Ruttan, Vernon W. 56, 116 Sabine, George H. 23 Salame, Ghassan 56, 97 Sartori, Giovanni 116 Saudi Arabia 56, 66 Savells, Jerry 148 Scandinavia 121, 127, 130 Schiller, Herbert I. 150, 151 Schubert, James 97 Scott, Alan 150 Scott, W.Richard 57 Scruton, Roger 124 Second World 77

221

Senegal 89 Shapiro, H.J. 147 Sills, David 56, 72 Singer, D. 149 Sioussat, George 22 skinheads 125 Skocpol, Theda 18, 20–1, 25, 26 Smith, Adam 124 Smith, Munroe 23 social conflict 15 social forces 61–2 social group/s 51; independently based 165–8; political relevance of 48, 56 social institutions 33–4, 41, 49–55, 122, 133, 184; clusters of 51; collective and organisational 50; defined 49–50; development and evolution of 52–3; deviances from 54; dissident movements 166–7; economic class position 145–6; educational 52, 59, 64, 137–40, 146, 150, 164, 181–2; ethnic 39, 52, 53–4, 141–2, 145–6, 180, 183; family 39, 52, 53, 55, 59, 62, 69, 133, 146, 178, 180, 183; influence of 50, 53–4; informal and visonary 142–3; as intangible phenomena 38; intellectual 164– 5; issue-specific movements 142– 3, 167; kinship 39, 52, 146, 163, 183; and the media 144–5; nature of 51; normative 51; political parties 52, 59, 68, 107, 140–3, 146–7, 167–8; racial 39, 52; religious 39, 52, 53, 54–5, 133–7, 141, 163–4, 178, 179, 183; role and importance of 43, 54; secular 39; as self-regulating 55; and time-space stretch 53; transformation of 162–3; tribal 39, 52, 178–9, 180, 183; universal 52 social obligation 129–31 social resources 33 Social Science Research Council (SSRC) 17, 20 society 2–3; defined 32; democratic varieties 122–47; and ongoing process of change 69; and

222

Index

political interaction 115; strong/ weak 21 sociology 64 Solidarity 154, 159, 166, 167, 187 Somalia 188 Sorenson, Georg 100 South Africa 54, 89, 126, 165 South Korea 113, 165 Southern Europe 88, 154, 159, 187 Soviet Union 10, 52, 78, 109, 147 Spain 98, 122, 127, 128, 153, 155 Sri Lanka 89 Stanley, John L. 116 state 2–3; as autonomous 19–20, 21, 79; bureaucratic-authoritarian 80; capacities of 20; classifications of 78–81; client 78, 79; community 79; concept of 8, 71; conservative 78; defined 32; dependent 80; developed 78; developing 78; how viewed 9–10; independent 79; interactions 80–1; legalinstitutional facets of 9; militaristic-authoritarianism 97–8; modern 78; nationalist 80; nondemocratic 77–8, 86, 96, 101–15; patron 78; as pluralistic or monistic 10; post-revolutionary 48, 105–6; quasi-democratic 114; radical 78; role and significance of 20; satellite 79; strong/weak 21, 78, 173; structures, activities and strategies of 20–1; traditional 78; vulnerability of 169 state institutions 33, 41; causes of collapse and overthrow of 38; defined 43–4; effectiveness of 37; enforcement 36–7; extraction of goods and services 35–6, 71; primary purpose 180; regulation 35, 71; role of 43; setting/ implementation of agendas 36–7, 71; shortcomings in 177; in social vacuum 180, 184; typical 55 state-society relationship 2–3, 44, 78, 184, 186, 188, 189; emotional fusion of 48; interaction 33–4, 70, 71, 184; nexus 40–1, 45, 71– 2, 169; in non-democracies 174– 6, 182–3

state-sponsored political acculturation 63–4 statist approach 9, 10–11, 19–20, 21, 31 Steiner, Jurg 149, 150 Stepan, Alfred 25 Stevens, Evelyn 171 street theatre 158 structural functionalism 13–15, 19, 21, 51; environment 13; inputs/ outputs 13, 16, 70; mass mobilisation 14, 16; problems with 15–17 Sudan 111 Swaziland 78 Sweden 98, 138, 150 Switzerland 82, 127, 145 Syria 78, 109, 111 systems approach 2, 8, 12–13, 21, 71, 186 Tachau, Eric and Heper, Metin 117 Taiwan 93 Tajikistan 78 Tanzania 95, 99 territorial state 11 Thatcher, Margaret 86, 124 Third World 16, 18, 49, 63, 67, 68, 92, 96, 99, 102, 121, 130, 169, 175–9, 181–2; characteristics of 173 Tismaneanu, Vladimir 170, 171, 172 Tordoff, William 185 totalitarian regimes 108–9, 161 Turkey 78, 89, 93, 99, 111 Turkmenistan 78 Uganda 80 United Arab Emirates 48 United Nations 14 United States 16, 70, 78, 82, 84, 104, 121, 123–4, 123–6, 130–1, 139, 141, 145, 148, 150, 154, 165; Civil War 8; Democratic Party 68; Republican Party 68 Uruguay 153 Utiz, S. 149 Uzbekistan 78 Venezuela 80, 89, 99, 153

Index Vietnam 113, 125 Walesa, Lech 168 Walker, W. and Sharp, M. 149 Wallach, H.G.Peter 97 Wallerstein, Immanuel 18, 19, 26 Weber, Max 10, 104 Weblike societies 181 Weimar Republic 94 Weiner, Myron 185 welfare state 17 West Germany 16, 127, 128, 138 Western Europe 80, 121, 141, 152 Westley, Frances 150 White, Stephen et al. 117

223

Willner, Ann Ruth and Willner, Dorothy 115, 116 Willoughby, W.W. 9, 23 Winder, R.Bayly 115 World Press Review 148 World War I 9 World War II 10, 11, 17, 97–8, 123, 135, 138 Youth Pioneers 106 Yugoslavia 154, 158, 170, 188 Zaire 80 Zimbabwe 123

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