Rigidity and Adaptation

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeEditors’ NoteRigidity and AdaptationLeonard Feldman and Roger KarapinLeonard FeldmanAssociate Editor for Political Theory Search for more articles by this author and Roger KarapinEditor-in-Chief Search for more articles by this author Associate Editor for Political TheoryEditor-in-ChiefPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreRigidity and adaptation, stiffness and flexibility: these are ways we characterize structures in our built environment as well as psychological dispositions. Political institutions and agents also vary along a continuum between the rigid and the adaptable—some may be stiff to the point of brittleness, while others are flexible to the point of fluidity. Somewhere between these poles may lie the right balance of structure and pliability. Machiavelli’s prince must have the flexibility to be both a lion and a fox, strong and sly. Modern political institutions that look like rigid hierarchies may contain elements of slack, such as the often extensive discretion possessed by front-line workers in bureaucracies. Other institutions adapt because they are porous, open to reshaping by external ideologies and insurgent actors.When states fail to adapt to new grievances and movements, events such as the Arab Spring may occur, as analyzed by Tansa George Massoud, John Doces, and Christopher Magee in this issue’s first article, “The Arab Spring: An Empirical Investigation.”1 Their analysis of protests in nineteen Arab League states in the 1990–2011 period concludes that protests were more intense in partial democracies with factional politics, corruption, repression, inflation, and a high use of the Internet and cell phones, and not due to a demographic youth bulge. In “State Building through Mediation: The U.S. Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group in World War II,” Gerald Berk focuses on what would appear to be a very rigidly hierarchal institution—the U.S. military in wartime—and reveals the surprising degree of creative adaptation on the ground (or rather, at sea), as soldiers and scientists experimented with ways to confront German U-Boat attacks.2 Next, Inder S. Marwah examines the flexible career of developmentalism. In “Provincializing Progress: Developmentalism and Anti-Imperialism in Colonial India,” he shows that what began as a nineteenth-century European political discourse deeply imbricated in Western imperialism was adapted by political actors and thinkers in India’s independence movement to critique British rule and facilitate political resistance to it.3Robert Sparling, in “Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets,” argues that the solution to the problem of extending or limiting the logic of market relations should be adapted to the political regime in which exchanges occur.4 Then, Adam Hilton, in “The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in U.S. and U.K. Postwar Party Development,” traces the immediate influences and long-term legacies of reform movements within the Democratic and Labor Parties.5 Finally, in “A Case of Communicative Learning?: Rereading Habermas’s Philosophical Project through an Arendtian Lens,” Peter J. Verovšek looks at the adaptability of conceptual thought through its openness to external influence, by focusing on the various acknowledged and unacknowledged contributions of Hannah Arendt’s ideas to the development of Habermas's political theory.6 Notes 1. Tansa George Massoud, John A. Doces, and Christopher Magee, “Protests and the Arab Spring: An Empirical Investigation,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx.2. Gerald Berk, “State Building through Mediation: The U.S. Anti-Submarine Warfare Operations Research Group in World War II,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx.3. Inder S. Marwah, “Provincializing Progress: Developmentalism and Anti-Imperialism in Colonial India,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx.4. Robert Sparling, “Blocked Exchanges and the Constitution: Montesquieu on the Moral and Constitutional Limits of Markets,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx.5. Adam Hilton, “The Politics Insurgents Make: Reconstructive Reformers in U.S. and U.K. Postwar Party Development,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx.6. Peter J. Verovšek, “A Case of Communicative Learning?: Rereading Habermas’s Philosophical Project through an Arendtian Lens,” Polity 51 (2019): xxx–xx. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Polity Volume 51, Number 3July 2019Rigidity and Adaptation The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/704179HistoryPublished online May 13, 2019 © 2019 Northeastern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.