National Political Systems Research Articles

Grime and Verts: Two faces of European ecologism

Using recent Eurobarometer data, this article aims to verify, through an analysis of voters characteristics and attitudes the hypothesis of a socio‐historical differentiation of European Ecologism in two poles: the New Left radicalism of the German Grüne, and the more pragmatic way of the newly more visible French Verts. Such a Janus’ Head of some the most prominent actors of New Politics largely reflects specific constraints of their respective national political systems and different strategic partisan orientations.

The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics and Agricultural Change During Reconstruction , and: Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation, and the American Civil War (review)

284CIVIL WAR HISTORY Congressional Globe. Historians and lawyers still need to take seriously the lack of literature on what the law actually was and what citizenship meant for white Americans in a time of change. Patricia Allen Lucie Glasgow University The Union League Movement in the Deep South: Politics andAgricultural Change During Reconstruction. By Michael W. Fitzgerald. (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1989. Pp. xii, 283. $25.00.) Conflict and Compromise: The Political Economy of Slavery, Emancipation , and the American Civil War. By Roger L. Ransom. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xvi, 317. $39.50 cloth; $12.95 paper.) Michael Fitzgerald's monograph provides both more and less than its title suggests. The work is concerned with two states, Alabama and Mississippi, and it is not so much a history of the Union League per se as it is an interpretation of the overall relationship between Reconstruction politics and the transition from a slave to a free labor system in the postwar South. As such this is a well researched and thoughtful work that provides a persuasive theoretical statement and a welcome emphasis upon the usually neglected connection between political and socioeconomic developments during the Reconstruction period. The theoretical focus of the work sometimes seems a bit askew, however; the author is apparently unfamiliar with James S. Allen's Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy (1937) and exaggerates the uniqueness of his own appreciation of the importance of the Union League. With the advent of radical Reconstruction in 1867, the Union League became a major organizational tool for Republicans throughout the South. As hundreds of local league chapters were established, they not only mobilized the desired Republican voters, but they also became strong and active arms of Republicanism that played an independent and often controversial role in Reconstruction conflicts of many different types. The secrecy and local autonomy of the league organizations especially lent themselves to the needs of blacks in their ever dangerous struggle to maximize the meaning of emancipation. Fitzgerald's detailed picture essentially confirms James S. Allen's judgment that during radical Reconstruction the Union Leagues "were the heart of the revolution" as "a constant struggle was waged, on the plantations, in the towns, at the polling places, at the crossroads" (Allen 91-96). Fitzgerald carefully traces the origins and rapid spread of the league among both blacks and whites, depicts in substantial detail its impact and varying roles in urban and rural settings, and analyzes its strengths and weaknesses. Particular BOOK REVIEWS285 attention is paid to the central role of the league in helping blacks secure a system of decentralized tenant farming in place of the old plantation system. Although successfully resisting co-optation and economic intimidation , the league was ultimately destroyed by the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, and its destruction was central to the collapse of Southern Republicanism and to the undermining of whatever promise the system of tenant farming held. "The League, in essence," concludes Fitzgerald, "was an overwhelmingly successful mobilization on behalf of a doomed cause." He succeeds well in establishing much of the reality of that impressive but tragic tale. Ransom's much broader study is an informed, well written, and persuasive synthesis that covers the period from 1776 to 1876 and provides an excellent introduction to major political and economic issues respecting the origins of the Civil War, the nature of that war, and the impact of emancipation and the Civil War on the United States. A brief introductory chapter provides a historiographical introduction and explains Ransom's intention of utilizing the models and findings of a selected group of recent economic and political historians to provide an interpretive narrative account. Four succeeding chapters (over half the volume) analyze the coming of the Civil War with an emphasis upon the sectional conflict over slavery, the Southern stake in that profitable system, the role of racism, and the reasons why the nation's political system was unable to resolve the crisis. A sixth chapter offers an explanation of Northern victory, Southern defeat, and the policy of emancipation. Two concluding chapters cover Reconstruction and the impact of the war on the economy of the United States. These two...

Authoritarian and Democratic Transitions in National Political Systems

Authoritarian and Democratic Transitions in National Political Systems

Political Ascent of Bolivia's Peasant Coca Leaf Producers

During the Past Decade, Bolivia's peasant coca-leaf growers have made impressive strides in political development. This development is demonstrated by their almost mercurial ascent within the national political system, a climb which parallels the upward economic mobility of many growers. Organized through a network of unions (sindicatos), and determined to resist state policies and programs which threaten their local economies, Bolivia's peasant coca-leaf producers have learned to improve their political skills, including the building of alliances with other key political actors.The thesis advanced here holds that not only has the peasant sindicato movement blocked attempts of the state to both reduce coca production and control coca-leaf marketing, but that those same state policies have actually strengthened the Left-of-Center labor unions and opposition political parties. Moreover, while the international war on drugs has thus far proved only minimally effective in curbing the flow of drugs from the Andean region, it has succeeded in antagonizing the sindicato organization of cocaleaf growers to the point that anti-US sentiment is widespread throughout the Bolivian countryside.

Authoritarian and Democratic Transitions in National Political Systems

Considerable comparative political development research has shown that there is a positive relationship between societies' levels of socio-economic development and their political development. Cutright (1963) formulated an explicitly theory concerning this relationship. His data on 77 nations for the 1940-60 period showed that while most were equilibrium in the sense that their level of political party competition was what would be expected when this was regressed on their level of socio-economic development, a number of nations were extremely out of equilibrium. Chile and the Philippines had been much more democratic than expected on the basis of their relatively low level of socio-economic development, while Spain, Portugal and Saudi Arabia were the most extreme outliers in the opposite direction. Qualitative data from the political history of these five countries are examined to test theoretic predictions. As predicted, Chile and Philippines moved toward greater by becoming less democratic (more authoritarian) in the 1970s, while Spain and Portugal had transitions from dictatorships to democracy during the same decade. Only one of the five countries-Saudi Arabia-has (to date) remained in disequilibrium, contrary to the prediction.

Factional Conflict in the Punjab Muslim League, 1947-1955

Political parties in Pakistan have been unable to give stability and order to that nation's political system, in part because they have been riddled with factions. This article examines factional conflict within the Muslim League, the oldest party in the country, and finds it rooted in the political culture of the landlords who dominate party councils and legislative assemblies. This factionalism is encouraged by the higher levels of bureaucracy, which exercise effective power in the state, so as to keep the political parties from challenging the bureaucracy's preponderance in government. This pattern has characterized Pakistan's experience with democratic politics and is unlikely to change, the author concludes, unless the economic basis of the landlord culture changes.

Civil-Military Relations in Developing Countries

Students of civil-military relations, particularly those in the developing countries, admit having to work on myopic assumptions, meagre data, sloppy conceptualization and inelegant explanations. The relative newness of this area of studies could be one reason for this. The study of civil-military relations in the narrow sense referring mainly to military coups and interventions, has attained importance after World War II. But the study of civil-military relations in the broader perspective of multiplicity of relationships between military men, institutions and interests, on the one hand, and diverse and often conflicting non-military organizations and political personages and interests on the other, has begun to draw academic interest only in the last two decades or so. In the twentieth century, the armed forces, being an universal and integral part of a nation's political system, no longer remain completely aloof from politics in any nation. If politics is concerned, in David Easton's celebrated words, with the authoritative allocation of values and power within a society, the military as a vital institution in the polity can hardly be wished out of participatory bounds, at least for legitimate influence as an institutional interest group with a stake in the political decision-making. The varying roles the military may play in politics range from minimal legitimate influence by means of recognized channels inherent in their position and responsibilities within the political system to the other extreme of total displacement of the civilian government in the forms of illegitimate overt military intervention in politics. This paper seeks to attempt an overview of the existing scholarship on civil-military relations; second, it examines civil-military relations in the world with special reference to major political systems of the world; third, it surveys the literature on civil-military relations in general, and finally, it attempts to develop a general, complex, and hopefully fruitful causal model for analyzing the dynamics of civil-military relations; exploring implications for future research on civil-military relations.

Explaining the origins of socialism: Thought and action in an age of revolution

This paper draws some cornpariso~~ between the utopian socialist movements (as they are customarily described) in Britain and France between about 1830 and 1848: a period which witnessed a remarkable growth and dissemination of socialist ideas and the rapid spread of socialist organisation and various forms of collective action, particularly in the decade from 1838 to 1848. The paper focusses on the problem of how we are to explain that general expansion of socialism during this period, giving consideration also to the highly significant dgfferences between the socialist movements in these two countries. There can be little doubt that utopian, pre-Marxian socialism achieved a much greater level of popular mobilisation and commitment in France than in Britain, and this raises the question of whether this distinction was due to any particularly decisive features characteristic of the two countries at this stage of their development: including aspects of economic and technological transformation, dimensions of social structure, cultural identity, and the role of the state and political power relationships. In general, the importance of the political system and the overall culture of politics has tended to be neglected in most previous accounts of the origins of socialism, and there has been a marked tendency to put forward broadly socio-economic interpretations of utopian socia1ism.i While it is certainly the case that economic and social historians, both Marxist and nonMarxist, have added much to our understanding of the significance of the labour process as a context for the emergence of new values and aspirations amongst workers at this time, there is a danger that an emphasis on the economic and social context of ideas will lead to a neglect of the various ways in which new traditions of thinking, and the major movements in which they find expression, are actually moulded by the political alignments and cleavages which divide society, and by processes of political participation and mobilisation. We need to remind ourselves that utopian socialism in Britain and France emerged, flourished and declined in certain specific political contexts, and that the differences between the two national political systems and cultures had much to do with the contrasting positions in which the socialist movements of the two countries found themselves by the middle of the century.

Arctic Canada and Zambia: A Comparison of Development Processes in the Fourth and Third Worlds

An analysis of the processes behind socio-economic development is necessary to further the understanding of contemporary Inuit conditions in arctic Canada. It is apparent that many of the realities and reasons underlying development in the North are similar to those in the Third World. The term development encompasses strategies and programs to improve living conditions of the target population, processes that either directly or indirectly transform indigenous economies into ones like those of the Western world, and theories that seek to explain these changes and their outcomes. People from government, business, and religion were the agents of development in both Canada and Africa. One of the most overt changes to indigenous societies brought about by these agents was a shift to a modern market-oriented economy. Education is part of a development process and contributed to this change. Education in arctic Canada and a Third Word country, Zambia, is based on teaching local residents to participate in a Euro-North American economic system. In both countries, however, the national or regional economies cannot sustain employment for many of the educated indigenous people. In Lwawu, a remote part of Zambia, this has led to social tensions and polarization between socio-economic classes. In arctic Canada, it has contributed to confusion over one's cultural identity and an inability to participate economically in either the modern or traditional sectors. The Inuit face added difficulties in that to obtain wage employment they must integrate within national cultural, economic, and political systems governed by people who are of different races and cultures and not indigenous to Canada. The end result of these and similar situations is that indigenous people are not necessarily better off than before contact with development agents.

Three Ways to Build

We contrast three societies in terms of the way property development is socially organized by real estate entrepreneurs, political parties, governments, and corporations. Whereas local growth coalitions dominate in the United States, this is less true of Japan and Italy. National government, linked to conglomerate firms, plays a significant role in Japanese development. In Italy, the national political party system (as opposed to government) is prominent in setting the conditions of local development. Although large corporations are a critical force in all three societies, the manner in which they impact locality differs substantially with divergent consequences for urban morphology and citizens' daily lives.

Comparative Politics - National Politics and Community in Canada. Edited by R. Kenneth Carty and W. Peter Ward (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986. 200p. $14.00).

Many Canadians are convinced that region, class, gender, and ethnicity define the minority units of national society. Challenging this conviction, the authors of this collection examine the nation as a unit and make the national political system, its institutions, and its personnel the heart of their concern.

Les partis politiques français et l'Europe : système politique et fonctionnement du discours

A study of the « European » discourse of French political parties shows that it is all too often a mere reformulation of the symbolic universe which structures the national political System and the debutes which take place within it. The four major French parties see Europe essentially as one theme among others, not as a specifie universe in which they could really be involved as actors. Discourse changes less because the vision of Europe becomes substantially different than because of the changes which affect the respective positions of the parties within the national political system.

A prince by any other name? identity and politics in Highland Cameroon

Small public acts carry with them the keys to the cultural and institutional worlds in which they occur. To understand why a particular person in the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon changed his name, and thereby the symbol of his public identity, this study presents the cultural and political context in which such an act makes sense. This context includes the historical relations between the two Grassfields chiefdoms of Nso and Nseh, as well as the relations of each with the national economic and political systems.

The Challenge of Managing Mexico: The Priorities of the 1982-1988 Administration

As has been the case for every six years since 1934,' Mexico held its federal elections on the first Sunday of July 1982. The results of those elections were outstanding, though not surprising: 75 percent of the registered voters went to the polls in the midst of an overwhelmingly peaceful and ordered environment. Needless to say, this event constituted a rare case within a convulsed Latin America, the region where Mexico has a privileged place in terms of stability, social peace, and freedom; a privileged position that-despite contrary opinion-will never be lost. Despite Latin America's turbulence, a nation such as Mexico, whose solid and vigorous foundations are strongly supported by its people, cannot be disrupted. But, as mentioned above, such demonstrations of civic responsibility and political maturity did not surprise those who know the Mexicans. For, on the one hand, despite their troubles, the Mexican people appreciate the liberty and social peace they enjoy; and, on the other, Mexicans realize that a broad and strong support by the people is essential for its leaders to be able-in a world ruled by realpolitik-to face the external pressures and to be able to operate the national political system on the basis of the country's deepest traditions. There is, nonetheless, another reason for the high turnout of voters in the recent election. Namely, the political reform undertaken by the outgoing President L6pez Portillo, expressed in the new Federal Law of Political Organizations and Electoral Processes. This reform's main outcome consisted in establishing a broad national political consensus for the support of the Mexican system by giving political minorities, for the first time, a chance to be represented in the national Congress.2 Although the details of this complex political breakthrough lie beyond this paper's limits, it is worth mentioning that, in July's federal elections, the reform fostered the participation of nine political parties which advanced seven presidential candidates, 432 candidates to the Senate, and 2,348 candidates for the 300 majority seats as well as 900 candidates for the 100 minority seats of the Camara de Diputados (House of Representatives).3 Understandably, such proliferation of political parties and candidates may seem strange to those accustomed to the two-party, Anglo-Saxon tradition. But before making an a priori judgment, one should realize

NINE SECOND‐ORDER NATIONAL ELECTIONS – A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF EUROPEAN ELECTION RESULTS

ABSTRACTThe composition of the directly elected European Parliament does not precisely reflect the “real” balance of political forces in the European Community. As long as the national political systems decide most of what there is to be decided politically, and everything really important, European elections are additional national second‐order elections. They are determined more by the domestic political cleavages than by alternatives originating in the EC, but in a different way than if nine first‐order national elections took place simultaneously. This is the case because European elections occur at different stages of the national political systems' respective “electoral cycles”. Such a relationship between a second‐order arena and the chief arena of a political system is not at all unusual. What is new here, is that one second‐order political arena is related to nine different first‐order arenas. A first analysis of European election results satisfactorily justifies the assumption that European Parliament direct elections should be treated as nine simultaneous national second‐order elections.

The Soviet‑Vietnamese Treaty: A Giant Step Forward

The Superpowers and their Foreign Policies In international affairs, only two superpowers, namely, the U.S. and the Soviet Union ? because of their military, technological and economic resources ? have the capacity to exercise a global presence, intervene in crisis situations and establish peace and security in every pan of the world. Their nuclear arsenal and continued development in strategic weapons assure themselves of a mutual deterrent against each other. The Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) and d?tente can be viewed as efforts to maintain their military balance. Thus, unless a suicidal or mad leader comes to the scene, there is little likelihood of direct conflict or war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. But the interests of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, outside of their bilateral relations, are not constrained by the nuclear deterrent, SALT or d?tente. Both seek through diplomatic, economic, technical and military means, and through covert and overt actions, to maintain their global presence, create spheres of influence, support allies and friendly governments and extend their power and influence. Since the end of the Second World War, the superpowers have dominated: the state of international affairs, peace and war, crisis and stability in various regions have been a result of their relationship. The relations of the superpowers with states in the international community are linked to their national security, economic well-being and political system. These relations are tied up by alliances, treaty arrangements, economic and technical aid programmes and diplomatic support. However, the superpowers have certain priorities in terms of their commitment and their role in the defence of certain governments. These are firm and consistent in areas which are considered vital to the interests of the superpowers: these are the spheres of influence of the superpowers. For the U.S., these regions are North America and Western Europe, and the states are Israel, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. For the Soviet Union, they are Eastern Europe and the states of North Korea and Cuba. These are states which for geopolitical reasons and treaty corrimitments are considered vital and, hence, those which they are prepared to defend at all costs. The governments in these states look to either the U.S. or the Soviet Union for military protection, economic and technical assistance and diplomatic support. Many of them derive inspiration from the political and economic system of either the U.S. or the Soviet Union. The maintenance of the status quo in these regions and states is directly related to the bilateral relations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. For this reason, both are constrained from extending their power and influence to the other camp, and from intervening in the internal affairs of governments in these regions and states. It is in the so-called Third World where the competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union for power and influence has held promise of expansion for them. In the

Electoral Instability, Civil Disorder, and Relief Rises: A Reply to Albritton

In Regulating the Poor, we argued that the welfare explosion of the 1960s had its roots in the problems created for the national political system, particularly for the national Democratic party, by economic and demographic changes. Agricultural modernization in the South, followed by migration, eventually generated a rising tide of volatility, both at the polls and in the streets, which in turn destabilized the regional coalition of the national Democratic party. In the 1960s, the party's response was to cope with these instabilities with a series of measures, ranging from civil rights legislation to urban service programs; one consequence of the urban service programs was to help set off the welfare explosion at the local level. In our analytical scheme, the relationship between and the welfare explosion was indirect; it was mediated by complex national electoral conditions. Given the main elements of this analysis, the proper relationships for testing are apparent. One set of relationships is between unstable voting patterns and protest, on the one hand, and the national Democratic party's New Frontier and Great Society legislative and administrative initiatives, on the other. Another set of relationships is between these policy responses and the rising welfare rolls. In short, did help explain a series of national policy initiatives that in turn contributed significantly to the subsequent rise in the welfare rolls? Albritton short-circuited these indirect relationships, and proceeded as if we had said black crime and rioting alone led directly to welfare rises, locality by locality. If we had thought the matter so simple, we would not have troubled to make a detailed analysis of the complex interaction among economic and demographic change, volatility, and national legislative responses, and then between national legislative responses and the subsequent local welfare rises. Only by tossing aside our entire analysis of national electoral politics could Albritton treat mass volatility as equivalent to crime and rioting among blacks. In fact, we included voting instabilities in that term, and we gave voting instabilities great weight. Agricultural modernization drove southern rural blacks northward to the urban strongholds of the national Democratic party, with the consequence that a civil rights bloc formed in the northern wing of the party. The South responded with outrage and voting defections. The resulting regional fissure was first visible in the Dixiecrat revolt of 1948, and it worsened in the elections of 1952, 1956 and 1960 (it also worsened because industrial modernization in the South was thrusting up a new middle class whose political sympathies tilted toward the Republican party). The in black voting patterns which then appeared in the election of 1956, and to a lesser extent in 1960, compounded these problems. Perhaps the national Democratic party could survive defections among southern whites, or among blacks, but it could not survive defections among both. Civil disorder, welling up in the context of electoral instability, aggravated the national Democratic party's problems all the more. Nor was civil disorder limited to crime and rioting, or just to one contending racial group. Blacks mounted organized protests, exemplified in the southern civil rights movement and the northern welfare rights movement. Southern whites also rose up in protest, ranging from the emergence in the mid-1950s of a movement of massive resistance led by the political leaders of the South, to the southern white mob and police violence that erupted at the same time and persisted for ten years. These various expressions of were treated as interactive in our analysis; discontent first took form in the voting booths, and then in the streets, but each manifestation

THE MASS CLIENTELISM PARTY: THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN CATANIA AND IN SOUTHERN ITALY

ABSTRACTThe main theoretical question confronted in this article concerns the nature and character of the Christian Democratic party (DC) in Catania and in Southern Italy. The Catania DC was transformed in the early fifties from a party of representation led by “notables” to a modern party under the direction of a new class of party professionals. The DC has become a mass party, containing various characteristics attributed to the mass party model in the literature; but it lacks some mass party features and contains others which are extraneous to it. The particular use of the party's mass membership in the intraparty struggle for position and power and the employment of the instrument of clientelism for achieving its goal, is what distinguishes the Southern Italy party. A mass‐based structure, clientelism and the use of public resources for distributing benefits are the main characteristics of the mass clientele party. The article examines the structure and the mode of operation of the mass clientele party; the principal sets of social, economic and political conditions necessary for the emergence of such a party; the functions it performs in the regional and national political systems.

The Political Dynamics of Islamic Resurgence in Pakistan

IN PAKISTAN'S FIRST DECADE of independence, role of Islam in nation's political system was a dominant theme of public debate.' During following years, however, this issue receded in importance and was generally overshadowed by other, non-Islamic, issues. Ayub Khan (President 1958-1969) retained some of indispensable Islamic ideology legitimized by Pakistan movement and early post-Partition years, but he was clearly a modernist in his interpretation of Islam as subject to conditions of contemporary nationhood.Z Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's success in 1970 elections appeared to be a further extension of this trend. One writer noted the secularization of politics brought about by President Zulfikar Bhutto and his party's ascendancy, and added:

Socioeconomic Environment, Political System, and Educational Policy Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of 102 Countries

While the structure and functioning of national political systems has always been a central concern of political scientists interested in comparative politics, the content of public policy is also a dependent variable which political scientists must endeavor to explain. Policy outcomes express the value commitments of political systems and these commitments are important political data. The task of comparative politics is to identify and assess the forces that shape and explain variations in public policy, and this includes educational policy. Mounting concern over the achievements of public education in the developed countries has drawn attention to the relationship between politics and educational policies in these countries.1 The growing recognition of the role of education in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East in providing the requisite skills, aspirations, resources, and values essential to the development of modern societies has been documented in many recent studies.2 All of this tends to greatly accentuate the need for examining policy outcomes in public education in the developed and developing countries. To date very little research has been reported which attempts to bring some of the conceptual models and statistical tools of political science to a comparative study of the independent variables that relate to educational policy outcomes in a large number of countries of the world.3 The purpose of the research reported below was to explore some of the determinants of educational policy outcomes in 102 national political systems for the 1964-65 period. Specifically, we wished to assess the impact of political system variables on educational outcomes, and to compare the effect of these political variables on educational outcomes with the effect of socioeconomic