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Government and Opposition in the New States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Hans Daalder
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Extract

By definition, political opposition by mass parties calling freely for votes against an established government, in parliaments and in regular, open elections, is a comparatively recent phenomenon. It could originate only when governments became effectively accountable to an ever-expanding electorate and is therefore intimately tied to the complex processes of democratization, which even in the more established Western democracies are barely a century old.

On the eve of independence, practically all the new states were committed to full democratic politics, for which careful constitutional arrangements were thought to offer definite guarantees. Yet in most of them competitive politics have not lasted long and have given way to autocratic government in one form or another.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 01 January 1966 , pp. 205 - 226
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1965

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References

1 Dahl, Robert A. (Ed.), Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1966, Ch. I.Google Scholar

2 By ‘new states’ I mean states that have only recently become independent. See on this point Edward Shils, ‘On the Comparative Study of the New Nations’, in Geertz, Clifford (Ed.), Old Societies and New States, New York/London, 1963 Google Scholar. I have found Shils’s various writings on the new states an inexhaustible fund of brilliant insights.

3 See Coleman’s, James S. concluding chapter to The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton, 1960, especially, pp. 532–44.Google Scholar

4 See his chapter on Germany in Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies.

5 Cf. Shils, op. cit., p. 3; and Geenz, ‘The Integrative Revolution—Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States’, Ibidem, pp. 105–57.

6 Lucian W. Pye points in addition to the circumstance that leaders in the new states ‘often find the international political process more clearly structured than the domestic political scene. Consequently they can make more refined calculations as to the advantages in taking a definite position in world politics.’‘The Non‐Western Political Process’, as reprinted in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David E. (Eds.), Comparative Politics—a Reader, New York/London, 1963, p. 663 Google Scholar.

7 I have elaborated this point somewhat in ‘Parties, Elites and Political Development(s) in Western Europe’, a chapter in the forthcoming publication, LaPalombara, J. and Weiner, M. (Eds.), Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton.Google Scholar

8 Dahl, Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, Chapter I.

9 ‘Political Development in the New States’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, II, 1959–60, p. 391.

10 There is, of course, considerable difference in the extent, to which single‐party regimes have become actually oppressive in the new states. Hence the attempt of Weiner, LaPalombara and others to distinguish between sub‐types like ‘one‐party totalitarian’, ‘one‐party authoritarian’, and ‘one‐party pluralistic’ systems. All single‐party regimes do have in common, however, the refusal to tolerate the challenge of rival opposition parties—and are hence not really party systems, but party‐state systems. Cf. Giovanni Sanori’s remarks on this point in his stimulating ‘The Theory of Parties Revisited’ in the forthcoming publication by David Easton and Leonard Binder (Eds.), Theory and Method in Comparative Politics, Englewood.

11 I attempted a short assessment in a public lecture, entitled The Role of the Military in the Emerging Countries, Mouton, The Hague, 1962.

12 In Eckstein‐Apter, Comparative Politics—a Reader, p. 647

13 Robert, Jacques, ‘Opposition et Contrôle au Maghreb’, paper presented to IPSA‐Round Table, Grenoble, 1965 Google Scholar

14 Cf. Apter, David E., ‘Some Reflections on the Role of a Political Opposition in New Nations’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, IV, 1961–2, pp. 154–68.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Pye, ‘The Non‐Western Political Prxess’, op. cit., p. 660.

16 See especially Shils’s essay ‘The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States’, World Politics, XII, 1959–60, pp. 329–68, reprinted also in Kautsky, John H., Political Change in Underdeveloped Countries, New York, 1962, pp. 195–234.Google Scholar

17 J. LaPalombara, F. W. Riggs and others have forcefully argued that allegedly ‘neutral’ public administration assistance serves in fact to strengthen the weight of authoritarian bureaucratic structures in the new states, and hence tends to attain in effect the opposite of what is intended by naïve democratic ideologists. See LaPalombara, J. (Ed.), Bureaucracy and Political Development, Princeton, 1963 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim.

18 See the interesting essay by Immanuel Wallerstein in the forthcoming volume, Political Parties and Political Development, edited by J. LaPalombara and Myron Weiner.

19 Pye, op. cit., p. 660.

20 Cf. D. Lerner, Comparative Analysis of Processes of Modernization, paper presented to the Round Table on Comparative Research, International Social Science Research Council, Paris, 1965, passim.

21 See on this vital point the brilliant study of Baschwitz, K., Du und die Masse—Studien zu einer exakten Massenpsychologie, second edition, Leiden, 1951 Google Scholar.

22 Tinker, Hugh, ‘Broken‐Backed States’, New Society, 30 01 1964 , PP. 6–7.Google Scholar

23 Deutsch, Karl W., ‘Social Mobilization and Political Development,’ The American Political Science Review, LV (1961) pp. 493–514 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted also in Eckstein‐Apter, Comparative Politics—a Reader, pp. 582–603.

24 The Committee on Comparative Politics of the American Social Science Research Council is currently engaged in a joint effort to define and describe in historical detail six fundamental crises in the process of political development, termed respectively the crises of (1) Identity (2) Legitimacy (3) Participation (4) Integration (5) Penetration and (6) Distribution. See Lucian W. Pye, Political Systems and Political Development, paper presented to the Round Table on Comparative Research, International Social Science Research Council, Paris, 1965.

25 See From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. by Gerth and Mills, Oxford University Press, New York, 1946, p. 296.

26 Shils, ‘The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States’, op. cit., and Harry J. Benda, ‘Non‐Western Intelligentsias as Political Elites’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, VI, 1960, pp. 205–18 (also reprinted in Kautsky, op. cir., pp. 235–51). For an interesting parallel with the position of the French intellectuals in the 18th century, see Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Régime and the French Revolution, 1856, Part III, Chapter I, Anchor editions, Doubleday, Garden City, 1955, pp. 138–48.

27 ‘Sayings of the Week’, The Observer, 28 June 1964.

28 Shils, ‘Political Development in the New States’, op. cit., p. 265.

29 Cf. Du Contra Social, Lime II, Chap. III.

30 Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalirarian Democracy, London, 1952, pp. 1–2 Google Scholar.

31 ‘The Intellectuals in the Political Development of the New States’, in Kautsky, op. cit., p. 215.

32 Mary Matossian, ‘Ideologies of Delayed Industrialization’, in Kautsky, op. cit., p. 262.

33 Leviathan, Chapter XXIX.

34 Raymond Aron, Le Développement de la Société Industrielle et la Stratification Sociale, Cours de Sorbonne, 1958, p. 49.