Scientific-Technical Innovation in East Germany

Abstract

Does politics in an industrialized Communist system cease with the pronouncement of policy by the elite? In other wor4is, is policy application a relatively straightforward administrative affair? Is the implementation process dominated (or controlled) by a monolithic, hierarchical party apparatus? Does the party apparatus constitute a so-called political army at the disposal of the regime's leaders? To what extent are economic officials and technical experts champions of a rational, scientific, and pragmatic Weltanschauung? To what extent do apparatchiki (party bureaucrats) interfere in the daily activities of economic managers, and what is the nature of this interference? Is the economic-administrative system in socialist countries characterized by an inherent conflict of basic interests between party bureaucrats and administrative technical specialists? These questions are derived from what Jerry Hough has termed the and pluralism models of Communist politics. According to the modified totalitarianism model, policy implementation is a relatively straightforward affair. Once the details of a policy line have been established by the party leaders (after limited consultation with the topmost administrators affected by the policy), the party mobilizes administrators and technical specialists for relatively swift execution of the party's will. The entire mobilizationimplementation process is policed by a ubiquitous, disciplined, and ideologically motivated party apparatus. Given their fanatic devotion to the will of party leaders, and to the perpetuation of their own dominant status as party elite overseers in the economic hierarchy, party bureaucrats may be presumed to be