Party Bureaucracy Research Articles

States and urban revolutions

The structural perspective applied here highlights the features that led to the successful, anti-modern, and backward-looking religious revolution in Iran and the failure of a democratic socialist, worker-oriented movement in Poland. I argue that one can best understand the outcome of modern revolutions by focusing on the state and its relations to the society. By contrasting two countries and two revolutions, I have tried to show that variables such as the structure of the state, the patterns of state-church conflicts, the shifting church-class alliances, and the impact of geopolitics on these domestic factors are essential in explaining why one revolution succeeded while the other failed. The comparative argument can be summarized in the following way. In terms of state structure, the one-man rule in Iran strengthened the absolutist power of the Shah, but weakened the organizational capacity of the various state agencies to deal with political crises. The state bureaucracy and military disintegrated when the leadership lost its authority. In Poland, the existence of powerful and potentially autonomous organizations within the state apparatus made the counterrevolution possible. The party bureaucracy functioned despite chaos at the top and bottom of the hierarchy; and the Polish generals used the united military to seize power by declaring martial laws. The dialectical relation between state and society is equally important to understanding the different revolutionary outcomes. The Iranian state intensified its attacks on the Shiite clergy in the 1970s, emasculating the power of this non-state elite. When popular discontent broke out, the Shiite clerics became the revolutionary vanguard, mobilizing the support of all urban classes and leading the final assault on the monarchy. On the other hand, after a period of repression, the Polish regime made peace with the Roman Catholic church in order to appease the overwhelming Catholic population and to gain legitimacy. Because of the moderation of the state's religious policy, the church played a mediating rather than revolutionary role in the state-class conflict of 1980–81. While the clergy in Iran allied with the urban classes, the Polish church first supported the creation of Solidarity and then broke this alliance; the neutrality of the church thus reduced drastically the capacity of Solidarity to negotiate with the party-state. In these two cases, the participation of the clergy or the withdrawal of its support to urban classes means class capacity or incapacity to fight the regime. In addition, the international contexts had a great impact on the Iranian and Polish conflicts. The Polish state was constrained by its satellite position within the Soviet military empire, and the Polish Catholic church by the Vatican bureaucracy. The Soviet threat of invasion forced the party to choose military repression and convinced the religious elite to adopt a cautious attitude. In contrast, the Iranian state was relatively independent from the United States. The U.S. administration had no policy of military intervention in the Gulf region, and because it was devoid of any constraint, Iran's clergy followed the revolutionary call by a charismatic leader.

Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933-1938

This is a study of the structure of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. Based upon archival and published sources, the work describes the events in the Bolshevik Party leading up to the Great Purges of 1937–1938. Professor Getty concludes that the party bureaucracy was chaotic rather than totalitarian, and that local officials had relative autonomy within a considerably fragmented political system. The Moscow leadership, of which Stalin was the most authoritarian actor, reacted to social and political processes as much as instigating them. Because of disputes, confusion, and inefficiency, they often promoted contradictory policies. Avoiding the usual concentration on Stalin's personality, the author puts forward the controversial hypothesis that the Great Purges occurred not as the end product of a careful Stalin plan, but rather as the bloody but ad hoc result of Moscow's incremental attempts to centralise political power.

Poland's crisis and East European socialism

Poland's crisis and East European socialism

Workforce, Management and Party Bureaucracy under the New Economic Policy. A Social History of the Bolshevik Party 1920–1928

Workforce, Management and Party Bureaucracy under the New Economic Policy. A Social History of the Bolshevik Party 1920–1928

An analysis of the Chinese national examination: The politics of curricular change

Any assessment of recent educational change within the People's Republic of China (PRC) must take into account the swift and at times dialectical nature with which educational policies have been enacted. The range of policy shifts within the past 30 years, while paralleling to some extent, regime changes at the highest levels of leadership within the party and state bureaucracy, nonetheless is all the more remarkable given the immense size of the Chinese educational system. A total of 146.24 million children now enroll in formal primary schooling; 65.48 million enroll in a middle school program (Beijing Review, 1980). The initiation of a National Examination system in 1977, centralized in 1978, has had a marked effect in a direct-and in an indirect-manner on all participants within that system: teachers, administrators, parents, and students; today it is playing an extremely significant role in shaping the specific educational experience of urban students. Thus, an analysis of the nature of the examination process, the specific curricular content of the exam itself, and its impact upon policy changes within the PRC is both timely and relevant. While the 1978 National Examination has been translated into English by the Office of Education, and selected comparative observations concerning the curriculum content of the examination were solicited, a systematic evaluation of both the examination and its actual as well as potential educational impact was not attempted (Barendsen, 1978). This paper tries to rectify that omission by using the translated documents and accompanying scholarly analyses within the Office of Education document as a foundation for further inquiry. In so doing, it makes the major assumption that curricular change can have profound political and social consequences, and looks for specific instances which document this claim.

Capital Formation in the USSR, 1959-1974: An Econometric Investigation of Bureaucratic Intervention in the Process of Capital Construction

JN their analysis of the Soviet economy, Western economists have often stressed the degree to which this is a politicized economic system, one in which the allocation of factor inputs and intermediate materials is subject to intervention by State and Party bureaucracies. Such intervention may serve to enforce enterprise compliance with official plans or to implement a centralized decision to depart from those plans. In the effort to construct a macroeconometric model of the Soviet Union, the author and others have attempted to partition what we observe in Soviet data into three categories: (1) technological regularity, (2) institutional or bureaucratic regularity, and (3) centralized intervention. This article represents a case study of the application of this econometric methodology to a major component of the Soviet economy, the phasing of capital investment expenditures into operative fixed capital. II. The Specification of Capital Formation in the Soviet Economy

The Bureaucratic State: Party Bureaucracy and the Decline of Democracy in America, by H. R. Shapiro

<i>The Bureaucratic State: Party Bureaucracy and the Decline of Democracy in America</i>, by H. R. Shapiro

BOOK REVIEWS

Oil, Power AND Politics. Conflict In Arabia, The Red Sea And The Gulf. By Mordechai Abir.Arab States Of The Lower Gulf. People, Politics, Petroleum. By John Duke Anthony.The New Oil Stakes. By Jean‐Marie Chevalier.Oil And Politics. By Henry Madelin. Translated from the French by Margaret Totman.A Plain Man's Guide To Oi. By Philip Windsor.The Seven Sisters. The Great Oil Companies And The World They Made. By Anthony Sampson.The Critical Phase In Tanzania 1945–1968. Nyerere And The Heagence Of A Socialist Strategy. By Cranford Pratt.Industrial Relations In Fleet Street. By Keith Sisson.The Foreign Policy Process in Britaik. By William Wallace.Lloyd George. By Peter Rowland.The Politics of Reappraisal 1918–1939. Edited by Gillian Peele and Chris Cook.British Government 1966–1975: Years of Reform. By Fraxk Stacey.Lessons of Ulster. By T. E. Utley.The Origim of Ulster Unionism. By Peter Gibbon.The Edwardiass: The Remakixg OF British Society. By Pagl Thompson.Nonconformity in Modern British Politics. By Stephen Koss.British Public Opinion and the Abyssinian War 1935–36. By Daniel Waley.Power And Party Bureaucracy in Britain. By David J. Wilsox.The Commonwealth. By Peter B. Harris.The Office of Prime Minister. By Robert Blake.The Tiger: The Life of Georces Cleyenceau 1841–1929. By Edgar Holt.

Party Bureaucracy in Britain: Regional and Area Organization

In recent years the discipline of political science has focused much of its attention on political parties. In 1967 Professor L. D. Epstein noted ‘Writing about Political Parties in Western democracies is not a novel enterprise. It is several decades since political scientists, once preoccupied with constitutional forms, ceased to neglect parties’. In Britain, however, there remains much uncharted territory which requires detailed exploration by the political scientist. Much of the research carried out in Britain has concentrated on one of two levels of analysis, either national or local. Basic information about the intermediate branch of party organization, the regional and area structures, is lacking. As Professor J. Blondel has noted: ‘The eleven regions of the Labour Party and the twelve areas of the Conservative Party are rarely examined’. There is, therefore, a gap in our knowledge of political parties in Britain, a gap which Professor R. T. McKenzie readily acknowledged in his own study of British parties.

The Class Structure of Burma: Continuity and Change

The facts and evaluations presented here were designed to outline some of the characteristics of the Burmese class-structure. Of particular relevance seems to be the occupational structure and its modification during the last three or four decades. The income distribution among various occupational groups also helped in this characterization. The differentiation and cooperation between the different elites was described, together with the setting in which they function, the qualification for admission and the patterns of mobility comparing the standard of aspirations with the channels available. In this context roles and status image were discussed including the rough after status components, status symbols and the preferred occupational hierarchy in terms of social prestige. Finally the internal cohesiveness of the social strata in so far as distinct self-conscious entities are concerned was examined.The material presented may be summed up as follows:1. The population of Burma was split into two main parts: a small elite concentrated in government administration, party bureaucracy and the military on the one hand, and the peasants, small traders, business and hired labourers on the other hand. In between the two is a very small group of middle-class people and skilled workers.2. Although the average income level was exceedingly low, at least until 1962, the span between the highest and lowest income categories was rather great.3. The modern elite was small and though the internal differentiation is slight the antagonism is considerable. Before the coup the main adversary groups (excluding the underground) were administrators, politicians and students. The elite groups enjoyed little autonomy and freedom of action as there was no alternative outlet except the government bureaucracy, the military and an underdeveloped party bureaucracy. The weakness of the legal opposition parties and trade unions, the small number of independent economic organizations made it difficult for oppositional elite to develop and be institutionalized in relatively independent power positions. This had many repercussions on the already limited ability of the political and social centre to cope with economic and political problems.4. Despite the generally universalistic criteria, for acceptance in the various elite groups, and the not insignificant de facto mobility, channels for such upward mobility were few and restricted to certain sectors of the political and government bureaucracy. This enabled the ruling elite to exert much influence on the chanelling of desirable recruits, but created permanent pressure from unemployed or underemployed high school and university graduates.5. Leaving the ethnic minorities aside, crystallized class-oriented groups were very rare, and the main criteria for belonging to the few that existed were the type of education received and the amount of exposure to Western culture. This dividing line drawn by these criteria did not coincide entirely with that between town and countryside. There was little difference in this respect between the majority of the urban and the rural population.Accordingly, Burma's class structure appears to be in a state of extensive flux. It would seem, therefore, that the primary problem is to achieve a more institutionalized differentiation of the sub-elite strata. This would particularly bridge the gap between the elites and the rest of the population and facilitate communication as there would be more “non congruent” status groups capable of serving as intermediaries between the elites and the more sophisticated, differentiated population.

Electoral Participation and the Occupational Composition of Cabinets and Parliaments

This is a comparative analysis of the occupational composition of cabinets and parliaments of several countries. The following hypothesis is tested and accepted: the higher the electoral participation, the lower the proportion of political leaders recruited from business and legal occupations, but the higher the relative number recruited from other professions and from labor and party bureaucracies. It was also found that, by and large, members of parliament and cabinet ministers are not recruited from the lower middle and lower classes, even though token recruitment of the former into parliaments, but not into cabinets, was the case in most of the countries investigated.

The German Democratic Republic and the West

to by spokesmen of the Western powers, the words so-called inevitably precede its national designation. In contrast to the Federal Republic of Germany, it appears backward, sullen and resentful: a Marxist aberration on hallowed German soil. Its population has revolted twice: once actively in 1953; once silently with their feet until the Berlin border closure in 1961. The implication is that popular hostility is endemic. Industry is alleged to lag and agriculture to stagnate. Its leadership is regarded as the most pedantic and pedestrian in the lacklustre constellation of Eastern Europe. East Germany remains a transitory entity on the world scene, a relic of Soviet expansion from which the Russians will ultimately pull back. German unification, based on free elections, eventually will return a liberal, popular, Christian, and non-Communist government. Or so almost everyone expects. The thesis of this article is that times have changed. The model of Stalinism most frequently associated with the German Democratic Republic (GDR) has never had significant validity. For Stalinism, among other things, implies extreme police terror and capricious one-man rule. But since the inception of the GDR, Ulbricht has had to share his power: first with Pieck and Grotewohl; presently with Erich Honecker and the party bureaucracy on the one hand, and a rising class of managers and

The Origin of the Communist Control Commission

The recent successes achieved by Khrushchev in concentrating in his hands the instruments of power over the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union point once more to the decisive role played by the Party apparatus in the process of consolidation. While the attention of students of Soviet affairs had been focused on the basic component of the Party machine, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, headed by Khrushchev, it is, nevertheless, of interest to recall the existence of a rather obscure but important unit of the Party bureaucracy, namely, the Party Control Committee.

Power in British Political Parties [I

J t I 'UCH of the confusion about the distribution of power within the \/ major British political parties arises from a careless use of terms. a L g iThe phrases Conservative and Labour are commonly used as if each referred to a unified political entity consistlng of three sections: a parliamentary party, a voluntary mass organization and a professional staff or party bureaucracy. It is usually assumed that if either party were truly democratic }, the leaders of the party in Parliament would hold themselves responsible to the ' members of the party , i.e., to those who belong to the mass organization. But an examination of the history of the two parties shows that in practice they do not. Therefore many observers End themselves dnven to cynical or pessimistic conclusions about the nature of intra-party democracy. Some conclude with Robert Michels that an iror} law' inearitably prevents the members of a nominally democratic political organization from controlling their leaders. Others, paraphrasing A. Lv Lowell, conclude that Both parties are shams, but with this difference, that the Conservative organization is a transparent, and the Labour an opaqueg sham . There are good grounds for cynicism about certain features of the British party system and there is much to be said for both Michels and Lowell. But a clarification of terms helps to put the problem into perspective. In fact two autonomous political entities face each other in Parliament; they are The Conservative Party and The Parliamentary Labour Party (P.L.P.). Each is associated with a voluntary mass organization of its supporters outside Parliament, the former by The National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations , the latter by a body properly known as The Labour Party . In addition, the Conservative Party has at its disposal a professional staff of party workers outside Parliament, the Conservative Central Office (which