Abstract
We all recognise how we can change our experience of reality merely by putting on a pair of glasses. Telescopes and magnifiers reveal things not previously observed; bifocals may change our perception of depth, and sun-glasses our view of colour and shade. Political scientists, too, may adopt different pairs of spectacles, resulting in the differing organisation of material and leading them to varied conclusions about the reality they are describing and analysing. In other words, different approaches or methodological perspectives generate alternative conclusions which vary with the type of lens brought to bear. These different approaches are often referred to as paradigms or models; they are working pairs of glasses.
‘All theory, dear friend, is grey, but the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.’ (Goethe)
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Notes to Chapter 1
See David Nicholls, Three Varieties of Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1974), especially chapter 2;
also G. David Garson, ‘On the Origins of Interest-Group Theory: A Critique of a Process’, American Political Science Review, vol. 68, no. 4, December 1974, pp. 1509–11.
Arthur Bentley, The Process of Government (ed. Peter Odegard) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1967) p. 208.
David Truman, The Governmental Process (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951) p. 505; see also p. 13.
David Easton, The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953).
Robert Dahl, ‘The Behavioural Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest’, American Political Science Review, vol. 55, no. 4, December 1961, pp. 763–72.
Robert Dahl, Who Governs, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961);
Nelson Polsby, Community Power and Political Theory, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963, 2nd edn 1980).
R. Dahrendorf, Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959) p. 317.
Robert Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954) p. 145.
Lester Milbrath, The Washington Lobbyists (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1963) p. 345.
J. K. Galbraith, American Capitalism (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952).
R. M. Punnett, British Politics and Goverment (London: Heinemann, 1980, 4th edn) p. 158.
Reginald J. Harrison, Pluralism and Corporatism. The Political Evolution of Modern Democracies (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980) p. 69;
cf. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet Books, 1973) p. 131.
Robert Dahl, ‘On Removing Certain Impediments to Democracy in the United States’, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 92, no. 1, spring 1977, p. 9;
see also Robert Dahl, Dilemmas of Pluralist Democracy (London: Yale University Press, 1982), especially chapter 3.
William Connolly, ‘The Challenge to Pluralist Theory’, in William Connolly (ed.) The Bias of Pluralism (New York: Atherton Press, 1969) pp. 11–13.
Earl Latham, The Group Basis of Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952) p. 390.
J. J. Richardson and A. G. Jordan, Governing under Pressure (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979) p. 17.
Ibid., p. 27.
William Kelso, American Democratic Theory. Pluralism and Its Critics (London: Greenwood Press Inc., 1978) pp. 13–19.
Suzanne Keller, Beyond the Ruling Class (New York: Random House, 1963);
cf. Theodore Lowi, ‘The Public Philosophy: Interest Group-Liberalism’, American Political Science Review, vol. LXI, no. 2, March 1967, pp. 5–24;
Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York: Knopf, 1966).
See Richard Rose, Politics in England (London: Faber, 1980, 3rd edn) pp. 306–10.
Hugh Thorburn, ‘Ethnic Pluralism in Canada’, in S. Erlich and G. Wootton (eds) Three Faces of Pluralism (Farnborough, Hants: Gower, 1980) p. 151.
See, for example, Jerry Hough, ‘The Soviet System: Petrification or Pluralism?’ Problems of Communism, March–April 1972, pp. 25–45;
Darrell Hammer, USSR: The Politics of Oligarchy (Hinsdale, Illinois: Dryden Press, 1974), especially chapter 6;
Peter Ludz, The Changing Party Elite in East Germany (London: MIT Press, 1972).
Sidney Ploss, ‘Interest Groups’, in Allen Kassof (ed.) Prospects for Soviet Society (London: Pall Mall Press, 1968) p. 95.
Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union Is Governed (London: Harvard University Press, 1979) p. 534;
cf. William Taubman, ‘The Change to Change in Communist Systems’, in Henry Morton and Rudolf Tokes (eds) Soviet Politics and Society in the 1970s (New York: Free Press, 1974) p. 390.
Some studies adopt a specific interest group framework, for example, H. G. Skilling and F. Griffiths, Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971);
T. Friedgut, ‘Interests and Groups in Soviet Policy-Making: The Case of the MTS Reforms’, Soviet Studies, vol. 28, no. 3, October 1976, pp. 524–47;
Alexander Shtromas, Political Change and Social Development: The Case of the Soviet Union (Frankfurt a/Main: Peter Lang, 1981). Other studies do not, but mobilise evidence which has then been used to support the pluralist case — for example, Peter Solomon, Soviet Criminologists and Criminal Policy: Specialists in Policy-Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978); John Lowenhardt, Decision Making in Soviet Politics (London: Macmillan, 1981); Vincente Navarro, Social Security and Medicine in the USSR: A Marxist Critique (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1977). There are also a few studies of Eastern Europe: for example, Sharon Wolchik, ‘The Scientific-technological Revolution and the Role of Specialist Elites in Policy-making in Czechoslovakia’, in Sharon Wolchik and Michael Sodaro (eds) Foreign and Domestic Policy in Eastern Europe in the 1980s (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp. 111–32.
Dennis Ross, ‘Coalition Maintenance in the Soviet Union’, World Politics, vol. XXXII, no. 2, January 1980, p. 266; Ross terms the USSR a competitive oligarchy, with ‘a pluralism of elites and an oligarchical structure of rule’ (p. 266). Cf. Paul Cocks, ‘The Policy Process and Bureaucratic Politics’, in Paul Cocks et al., Dynamics of Soviet Politics (London: Harvard University Press, 1976) p. 159.
Gordon B. Smith, ‘Bureaucratic Politics and Public Policy in the Soviet Union’, in Gordon B. Smith (ed) Public Policy and Administration in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1980) p. 11.
H. G. Skilling, ‘Pluralism in Communist Societies: Straw Men and Red Herrings’, Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. XIII, no. 1, spring 1980, p. 85.
Loc. cit.; cf. H. G. Skilling, Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976) pp. 372, 835, chapter XVIII;
see also Archie Brown, ‘Pluralism, Power and the Soviet Political System’, in Susan Solomon (ed) Pluralism in the Soviet Union (London: Macmillan, 1983) pp. 66–75.
Sarah Terry, ‘The Case for a Group Apprach to Polish Politics’, Studies in Comparative Communism, vol. XII, no. 1, spring 1979, p. 29.
Jerzy Wiatr, ‘Interests, Political Relations and Political Parties’, in Political Sciences in Poland (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1979) p. 114.
Eugeniusz Zielinski, ‘Types of Polish Pluralism Enumerated’, trans, from Nowe Drogi, no. 9, September 1983, in Joint Publications Research Service, East Europe Report, EPS-84–003, 4 January 1984, p. 39.
Gaetano Mosca, The Ruling Class (ed. Arthur Livingston) (New York: McGraw Hill, 1939) p. 50.
Robert Michels, Political Parties (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1958, reprint) p. 418.
As with many aspects of elite theory, there are variations in the stress laid on elite cohesion. For example, Pareto, another classical elitist, is not always clear on the extent of that coherence; see V. Pareto, Sociological Writings (ed. S. E. Finer) (London: Pall Mall Press, 1966) pp. 268–9.
See also James Meisel, The Myth of the Ruling Class (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1958) pp. 356–61 for a criticism of the positions of Mosca and Pareto regarding elite coherence and the formulation of Meisel’s famous three Cs: elite consciousness, cohesion and conspiracy.
C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (London: Oxford University Press, 1956) p. 11.
Robert Conquest, ‘The Soviet Order’, in Robert Wesson (ed.) The Soviet Union: Looking to the 1980s (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1980) p. 232.
G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1967);
W. L. Guttsman, The British Political Elite (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965).
G. Sartori, ‘Anti-Elitism Revisited’, Government and Opposition, vol. 13, no. 1, winter 1978, p. 69.
Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (London: Harvard University Press, 1981).
T. H. Rigby, ‘A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in the Soviet Union’, in T. H. Rigby (ed) Authority, Power and Policy in the Soviet Union (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1980) p. 25.
Alexander Groth, ‘USSR: Pluralist Monolith?’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 9, no. 4, October 1979, pp. 445–64.
Some of the major early works, dealing with Nazi Germany as well as the USSR, include, for example, Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (London: Meridan Books, 1958, 2nd edn);
Carl Friedrich and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965, 2nd edn);
J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Seeker & Warburg, 1952).
See, for example, Seweryn Bialer, ‘The Soviet Political Elite and Internal Developments in the USSR’, in William Griffiths (ed) The Soviet Empire: Expansion and Detente (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1976) p. 53.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967) p. 82.
Nicos Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973). There is a useful critique of Poulantzas’s and other Marxists’ views in Bob Jessop, The Capitalist State, (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1982).
See, for example, Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics (London: Oxford University Press, 1977) chapter 6.
Goran Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When It Rules? (London: Verso, 1980) p. 193.
See, for example, Tony Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia (London: Pluto Press, 1974, reprint), especially chapter 4.
See, for example, Chris Harman, Bureaucracy and Revolution in Eastern Europe (London: Pluto Press, 1974).
See, for example, Ernest Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory (London: Merlin Press, 1974, reprint), especially chapter 15;
see also Ernest Mandel, ‘Once Again on the Trotskyist Definition of the Social Nature of the Soviet Union‘, Critique, no. 12, autumn-winter 1979–80, pp. 117–26.
Some of the major coporatist writings appeared in Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1977, subsequently published in Phillippe Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds) Trends Toward Corporatist Intermediation (London: Sage, 1979).
See also Alan Cawson, ‘Pluralism, Corporatism and the Role of the State’, Government and Opposition, vol. 13, no. 2, April 1978, pp. 178–98;
Keith Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society (London: Deutsch, 1979);
Trevor Smith, The Politics of the Corporate Economy (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979);
G. Lehmbruch and Phillippe Schmitter (eds) Patterns of Corporatist Policy-Making (London: Sage, 1979); and many of the works cited below.
Phillippe Schmitter, ‘Still the Century of Corporatism?’, Review of Politics, vol. 36, no. 1, January 1974, pp. 93–4.
Otto Newman, The Challenge of Corporatism (London: Macmillan, 1981) p. 55.
Martin Heisler, ‘Corporate Pluralism Revisited: Where Is the Theory?’, Scandinavian Political Studies, vol. 2 (new series), no. 3, 1979, pp. 285 ff.
See Bob Jessop, ‘The Transformation of the State in Post-War Britain’, in R. Scase (ed.) The State in Western Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1980) p. 51;
G. Lehmbruch, ‘Liberal Corporatism and Party Government’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1977, pp. 96, 122.
C. Offe, ‘The Attributions of Public Status to Interest Groups: Observations on the West German Case’, in S. Berger (ed), Organizing Interests in Western Europe (London: Cambridge University Press, 1981) p. 136.
See B. Nedelman and K. Meier, ‘Theories of Contemporary Corporatism: Static or Dynamic’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1977, p. 40.
Leo Panitch, ‘The Development of Corporatism in Liberal Democracies’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1977, especially pp. 67–8;
also Leo Panitch, ‘Trade Unions and the Capitalist State’, New Left Review, no. 125, January–February 1981, pp. 21–43. See also Newman, p. 221.
Phillippe Schmitter, ‘Models of Interest Intermediation and Models of Societal Change in Western Europe’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 10, no. 1, April 1977, p. 34; see also Nordlinger, especially pp. 168–74.
Gabriel Almond, ‘Corporatism, Pluralism and Professional Memory’, World Politics, vol. 35, no. 2, January 1983, p. 251.
See also Ross Martin, ‘Pluralism and the New Corporatism’, Political Studies, vol. XXXI, no. 1, January 1983, pp. 86–102.
See Valerie Bunce and John Echols III, ‘Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era: “Pluralism” or “Corporatism”?’, in Donald Kelley (ed) Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era (New York: Praeger, 1980) pp. 1–26;
Valerie Bunce, ‘The Political Economy of the Brezhnev Era: The Rise and Fall of Corporatism’, British Journal of Political Science, vol. 13, no. 2, April 1983, pp. 129–58; Jerry Hough, ‘Pluralism, Corporatism and the Soviet Union’, in Susan Solomon, pp. 37–60; and in the same volume Brown, especially pp. 75–80.
P. Bachrach and M. S. Baratz, ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, vol. 56, no. 4, December 1962, pp. 947–52.
Robert Dahl, ‘A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model’, in F. G. Castles et al. (eds) Decisions, Organisations and Society (London: Penguin, 1971).
Attempts have been made to achieve greater precision; see, for example, Alec Nove, Political Economy and Soviet Socialism (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979) pp. 195–218;
Alec Nove, ‘The Class Nature of the Ruling Class Revisited’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXV, no. 3, July 1983, pp. 298–312.
Geraint Parry, Political Elites (London: Allen & Unwin, 1969) pp. 106–9.
See especially W. G. Runciman, Social Science and Political Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969) pp. 64–86.
Nicos Poulantzas, ‘The Problem of the Capitalist State’, reprinted in John Urry and John Wakeford, Power in Britain (London: Heinemann, 1973) especially pp. 293–5.
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© 1986 Alan R. Ball and Frances Millard
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Ball, A.R., Millard, F. (1986). Pressure Groups and the Distribution of Power. In: Pressure Politics in Industrial Societies. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18257-2_1
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