Elite Attitudes and Political Legitimacy in France

Abstract

I N THE SUMMER OF 1964, a team of American political scientists undertook a survey of elite opinions in France and Germany, with particular reference to problems of European integration and arms control. A total of 147 members of French elites and 173 West German leaders were interviewed by four American political scientists in Germany and three (including the author of this article) in France. The results of these interviews were reported and analyzed in the recently published book by Karl Deutsch, Roy C. Macridis, Lewis J. Edinger and Richard L. Merritt, France, Germany and the Western Alliance: A Study of Elite Attitudes on European Integration and World Politicsl and in several reports by the Yale University Political Science Research Library. This Yale Project was one of the most exciting and important collective ventures in the field of comparative politics in the past decade. Whatever questions may be raised about methodology, the fact that seven American political scientists were able to interview, and have intelligent discourse with 320 members of the French and German elites is itself a memorable accomplishment. Publication of the study has provoked a healthy and critical reaction, and polemical argument has already begun to swirl about the findings.2 Interviewing members of a political elite necessarily is quite different from surveying mass opinion. Knowledgeable and powerful people-at least in France-are outraged by the suggestion that answers to complex questions should be reeled off and then copied down by interviewers. It is not possible to conduct a meaningful elite interview in this way. As Richard L. Merritt points out, all interviews