Society and Economy in the Western World System

Abstract

A computer-based content analysis of British Speeches From the Throne, 1795-1972, is reported which indicates a 52-year cycle of changing thematic concerns or issues. This thematic cycle replicates earlier results from an analysis of party platforms in American presidential elections. The thematic cycle is correlated with the Kondratieff economic cycle, the latter reflecting recurring crises in capitalist societies. The 52-year thematic cycle reflects a debate within society as to the legitimacy of capitalist political economy under varying economic conditions and in light of periodic structural reorganizations of the economy. Finally, the content-analytic findings are discussed in terms of Wallerstein's world system concept and the two dominant conceptions of power in macrosocial analysis. Do you know those charts, where the movement of prices, discount rates, etc . . . during the year is plotted? To analyze the phenomenon of crisis, I have attempted several times to compute the formulas of those irregular curves (I think that is possible if sufficient reliable material can be made available) in order to determine mathematically the main laws governing the crisis. X Marx to Engels, May 1873 How is the legitimacy of capitalism maintained despite long-term structural changes in political economy? The answer proposed here suggests that systematic changes occur in the justifications of capitalism offered by the capitalist classes in response to systematic changes of the economy. This conclusion draws on three lines of inquiry: the neo-Marxist analysis of *The research reported here was supported by a National Science Foundation Dissertation Research Grant, #GS-42403. For helpful comments and suggestions I thank Zvi Namenwirth, Albert K. Cohen, Charles Logan, Jill Janows, Philip J. Stone, Hayward Alker, Jr., Peter Mohler, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Karl Schuessler, and Seymour Warkov. A large part of the writing was completed while I was Visiting Scholar at the Zentrum fur Umfragen, Methoden, und Analysen, Mannheim, West Germany. The support of all its staff, especially Hans-Dieter Klingemann and Max Kaase, Director, is gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of this paper was read at the Text Analysis Conference, Free University of Amsterdam, 1980. ? 1981 The University of North Carolina Press. 0037-7732/81/041130-48$01.90