Showing papers in "Comparative politics in 1986"

The Politics of Economic Stabilization: IMF Standby Programs in Latin America, 1954-1984

Abstract: During the late 1970s authoritarian rule in Latin America began to give way to processes of political liberalization and democratization. The debt crisis of the early 1980s accelerated this trend. Under the weight of crippling external financial obligations, the region slid into its worst recession since the 1930s. Widespread unemployment, plummeting living standards, acute shortages of foreign exchange, declining investment, and severe inflation all magnified the vulnerabilities and contradictions of authoritarianism. By 1985 elected governments had displaced military regimes in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Peru, and Uruguay. Among those countries with some prior democratic experience, only Chile resisted the continentwide shift away from authoritarian rule. For participants and outside observers alike, the key question raised by these developments was the viability of liberal democracy under conditions of economic austerity. Circumstances that favor regime emergence are not necessarily conducive to regime consolidation, and in the case of Latin America it became immediately apparent that the economic crisis undermining authoritarianism also reduced prospects for the consolidation of democratic institutions. As a variety of analysts have suggested, economic growth creates conditions conducive to political compromise, but when the economic pie is shrinking, conflict and opposition tend to mount.' The problem confronting Latin American democracies during the 1980s, however, has not been simply that of survival in the face of economic decline. To retain access to international financial markets, governments throughout the region have been forced to adopt politically painful stabilization measures involving currency devaluations, wage and credit restrictions, and strict fiscal controls. Most observers have questioned the willingness and capacity of democratic leaders to implement such measures, despite the obvious costs of failure and the absence of viable policy alternatives. According to conventional wisdom, stabilization policies pose such unacceptably high political risks for democratic governments in Latin America that authoritarianism is virtually a prerequisite for successful adjustment.2 The purpose of this study is to reexamine this conventional wisdom regarding the politics of economic stabilization. Does the historical record sustain the view that Latin American democracies are singularly ill-equipped to manage programs designed to correct serious and persistent balance-of-payments deficits? Do conventional stabilization policies carry higher political risks for democratic governments than for authoritarian ones? How have the trade-offs between coercion and consent affected the relative capacity of military and democratic governments to impose stabilization measures? Under what conditions, if any, has democratic rule produced successful stabilization and authoritarianism resulted in failure? The answers to such questions are not only central to theoretical debates over the

The Political Consequences of Corruption: A Reassessment

Abstract: Disagreement continues over the political consequences of corruption. Perspectives on the question are almost as numerous as cases of corruption itself. Thus, the literature resists any easy classification into schools of thought. In general, however, "moralists" (a term used more by critics of this outlook than by its adherents) have long argued that corruption is harmful to societies and governments, impeding development and eroding the legitimacy even of honest elites and well-run institutions.' "Revisionists, by contrast, point to possible benefits of corruption, suggesting that it can speed up cumbersome procedures, buy political access for the excluded, and perhaps even produce de facto policies more effective than those emerging from legitimate channels.2 A third outlook suggests that the consequences of corruption depend in part upon the characteristics of political systems, such as the balance of political and economic opportunities,3 levels of economic development, national integration, and governmental capacity,4 or upon the relationships among key factions and elites.5 But while the debate has produced many useful studies of particular cases, its overall findings have been contradictory. In one sense, the debate has been curiously asymmetrical, with moralists arguing that corruption is harmful, while revisionists reply that it can be beneficial.6 Moralistic analyses also suffer, at times, from an a priori assumption that corruption is a bad thing (or that "legitimate" policies are inherently preferable to those produced corruptly) and tend to blame corruption for a disproportionate share of a society's problems. Revisionists, for their part, often rely too much upon anecdotal evidence, hypothetical cases, and speculative linkages between corruption and social outcomes. This paper is an attempt to refocus the debate by calling attention to two recurring problems. First, I will argue that we have tended to focus upon overly broad (and at times unanswerable) questions. Before we can attribute general systemic trends and problems to corruption, we need to understand its more specific political effects. Second, I will suggest that we can reconcile seemingly contradictory findings if we recognize that corruption can come in many forms with differing consequences. Most forms of corruption, I will argue, can be studied as processes of exchange whose internal logic differs from one form to another. This approach will be used to define four common types of corruption and to point out the political consequences of each. These will be "micro" consequences, specifically the extent to which each tends to solidify or weaken linkages among people and groups at various strata of political systems. This analysis is not intended to produce global generalizations about the implications of corruption for such systematic processes as economic or political development. Rather, it will propose categories which will allow us to employ the concept of corruption more

Consumer Subsidy Cuts, Violence, and Political Stability

Abstract: Many observers have predicted that developing countries accept IMF conditions for new loans at the risk of their political stability. The Fund's conditions, which include devaluing a currency, restraining money supply, and cutting the government deficit, are seen as leading to economic austerity that in turn will provoke political instability.' We have argued that the IMF often provides resources that make adjustment easier and thus may lessen the chances of instability and that the IMF's conditions may lead to policy changes that are more likely to generate economic success than those policies many governments have been implementing.2 We, and other analysts, have argued that instability arises from many factors, not just from economic austerity. Moreover, the complicated interactions of external and internal political and economic factors are not captured by overarching frameworks such as dependency theory or world-system theory. We start with the assumption that countries must adjust to balance-of-payments imbalances and that their adjustment strategies are constrained by both international and domestic factors. At this stage of our knowledge, case studies are needed to build confidence in specific propositions about benefits and costs to different groups that follow the imposition of IMF conditions. Extensive analyses of a number of cases also throw light on the implications of specific tactics that governments employ when they implement austerity measures such as the speed and scope of adjustment and the sequences in which policies are implemented. Such studies can also illuminate which political factors seem crucial to success or failure of a government's adjustment attempts: elite unity; strength of specific constituencies such as labor unions or the armed forces; the capacity of government to implement policies in the face of oppositions.3 Here we examine an idea that seems to be especially widespread but relatively unexamined empirically. It is the view that decreases in consumer subsidies, in particular, lead to political instability in developing countries. Well-publicized violent opposition to these government actions have contributed to this view. In addition, there are reasons to think that subsidy cuts have immediate and significant effects on political stability. First, these changes affect food, fuel, and transport, basic goods that loom large in the budgets of consumers in developing countries. Second, most subsidy programs benefit urban dwellers, and the presumed volatility of urban politics leads observers to think that subsidy cuts will be destabilizing. Third, governments are directly involved in the changes and therefore may be held responsible for price rises. For many countries in Latin America and Africa, however, subsidy cuts may provoke discontent, but they do not appear to be more fundamental as a cause of instability than many other short-run factors which are at work leading to social and political instability, not to say long-run trends in society. Indeed, protests against subsidy cuts appear to be chronic

Women in Latin American Guerrilla Movements: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract: Guerrilla warfare in Latin American revolutionary movements has until recently been regarded as an exclusively male domain of political behavior. North American analysts have tended to consider Latin American women's political behavior largely in terms of conventional democratic processes such as voting, reflecting both ethnocentricity and gender bias.' Major works on guerrilla warfare have also failed to provide even cursory information on the role of women.2 Latin American women, however, have contributed to the guerrilla struggles of past revolutionary movements, though not in extensive numbers.3 With the influx of numerous women into the Nicaraguan, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan movements, analysts have been forced to acknowledge and reconsider women's contributions to armed struggles. This paper delineates and compares patterns of women's participation in the guerrilla struggles of Latin American revolutionary movements. While some analysts have limited the term '"guerrilla" to forces fighting only in the countryside, others, including guerrilla leaders themselves, refer to both urban and rural forces.4 This paper assumes the latter definition. Guerrillas are members of political organizations operating in both rural and urban areas which use armed warfare for the purpose of changing societal structure.5 Latin America's historically dependent position in the world capitalist system indicates that past revolutionary struggles have been directed at colonial powers as well as internal political elites that arise from each nation's specific pattern of dependency.6 Three questions are discussed in regard to women's participation in guerrilla struggles.7 First, what factors constrain Latin American women's participation as compared to men's? Second, within gender, which classes face the least barriers to participation? Finally, what roles do "guerrilleras" most likely perform'? Expected patterns of participation are delineated in light of these questions. Guerrilla struggles in five nations are then compared to demonstrate the extent that the patterns of participation hold.

Neocorporatism and Incomes Policy in Western Europe and North America

Abstract: Pathbreaking analyses of neocorporatism in western advanced industrial societies have, paradoxically enough, been accompanied by profound skepticism regarding the viability and generalizability of neocorporatist policymaking. Rather than stressing the stability of the phenomenon they analyze, as they have on occasion been accused of doing, the leading scholars of corporatism have generally emphasized the specific requisites on which neocorporatist bargains rest and the strength of the disintegrating forces they face.' This is not, perhaps, surprising. Neocorporatist policymaking presupposes consensus rather than conflict among the major groupings in society. It is, essentially, an approach to problem-solving' that demands cooperation between the state and functional interest groups, especially those representing capital and labor, in the formulation and implementation of public policies. Such cooperation, particularly with regard to the central issues of economic policy, is likely to rest on restrictive conditions regarding both the political interrelationships and representational structure of major groups and social classes. As a goal, strategy, or ideal of government, we are likely to find much evidence of neocorporatism; as an institutionalized practice, neocorporatism is a relatively unusual phenomenon. In this vein, Gerhard Lehmbruch has noted that explicit corporatist arrangements are prone to "overload" and concludes his authoritative overview of liberal corporatism with the remark that, "since its capacity for consensus-building is limited, it would be unrealistic to consider corporatism as a realistic alternative to representative government and the party system."2 In several articles, Leo Panitch has explored the underlying causes and implications of "the manifest instability of corporatist arrangements in liberal democracies by the late sixties and early 1970s," while Philippe Schmitter has noted the difficulties involved in change towards neocorporatist interest group/state relations and has stressed that "established, societally ccorporatist systems are also facing new tensions which they, too, seem incapable of resolving."3 The problems of institutionalization and continuity are especially severe in the core field of neocorporatist policymaking, consensual incomes policy, consisting of the negotiated cooperation of government, unions, and employers to coordinate and constrain wage increases (and, in some cases, prices and profits) in the context of a comprehensive macroeconomic program. In the first place, this form of policymaking must surmount varying degrees of class animosity directed against any form of institutionalized wage restraint, whether bargained or not. Industrial relations combine divisive issues of authority, economic reward, and the distribu

Voter Sensitivity to Economic Conditions: A Canadian-American Comparison

Abstract: The theory that voters hold government responsible for economic conditions has contributed to a more comprehensive explanation of electoral behavior in a number of countries,' although in American studies aggregate analysis has tended to produce stronger support for the theory than does survey research.2 In Canada aggregate analysis of the effect of economic performance on voting behavior has not previously been attempted, while election survey analyses have tended to report null or weak net effects for this relationship on party vote shares.3 This study examines the effect of economic performance on incumbency voting in Canadian federal elections from 1930 to 1979, using aggregate economic and electoral data. In addition, the sensitivity of the Canadian and American electorates to interelection economic conditions is compared.

Regionalism in Western Europe: Conceptual Problems of a New Political Perspective

Abstract: A conceptual discussion of regionalism in western Europe should bear in mind that we are confronted by a novel dimension of societal conflict unforeseen until recently by the analysis and prognoses of modem social science. Also, a new political perspective of territorial fragmentation can be observed in all advanced industrial democracies. One recent survey of regionalism in western Europe lists some fifty active regional movements,' while another account refers to no less than 187 ethnic activist associations in France alone.2 A rapidly expanding body of literature has been focusing on ethnic conflict in the western world, territorial politics in industrial nations, the impact of center-periphery conflict on nation-building and spatial variations in politics, and the overall trends of decentralization in western democracies.3 Critical observers have noted, however, that due to a centralist Weltanschauung both politicians and political scientists have been slow to recognize decentralization as a general trend. Consequently, they have failed to anticipate the impact of regional movements on politics in western Europe.4 Regionalism is used as a common denominator in order to understand such diverse and yet overlapping concepts as territoriality, ethnicity, and socioeconomic disparity as components of the same general phenomenon. The concept focuses on the objective existence of regional differences within and across the boundaries of nation-states and on the subjective perceptions of these differences. It is important to note that subjective perceptions, while often serving as the driving force of regional movements, may not accurately reflect objective conditions.5 Regional differences can be political, economic, sociocultural, or, most likely, a combination of these. Regionalism can then be defined as the persistence of subnational and transnational differences, identities, and commitments. In the context of the modern centralized nation-state, the main characteristics of regionalism and its perception are geopolitical distance, sociocultural difference, and socioeconomic dependence.6 It will be argued here that in these terms regionalism is an inevitable product and consequence of the uneven development of the modern capitalist state. Why, then, has the recognition of this fact been so late and reluctant? The analytical endeavors of modem social science are much too focused on the explanation of existing sociopolitical phenomena and therefore lack a more anticipatory dimension. Lijphart cites an impressive list of reasons for this failure, with modernization and integration theories and their emphasis on the irreversible process of homogenization as the most plausible ones. Consequently, the conceptual efforts of catching up with anunexpected reality are described as a move from "falsified predictions" to "plausible postdictions".7 Apart from the persistence of modernization ideologies there is another major cause for

Postindustrial Politics in Germany and The Origins of the Greens

Abstract: The 1983 German federal election marks the first time since the establishment of the three-party system in the 1950s that a new party has gained sufficient votes to enter the Bundestag. More important, the party that achieved this, the Greens, is one that poses a fundamental challenge to the established structure of political elites in the Federal Republic. The combination of a successful breakthrough by a protest movement, often labeled an "antiparty" party, and the reestablishment of a Christian Democratic-Liberal governing coalition has inevitably led many observers to inquire whether we are observing a profound transformation in postwar German politics. In this article we shall examine in depth the origins of the Green phenomenon. Our strategy is to take a retrospective look at the German Greens by analyzing in particular the changing political orientations and behavior of those social milieux that have provided the electoral and activist soil in which Green party roots have prospered. From this it may then be possible to make an informed judgment about the broader significance of this protest movement.

Interest Representation, Party Systems, and the State: Italy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: On the political wane elsewhere, Socialist-led governments rule all of southern Europe today. Economic conditions present the stickiest test for them. If they are to maintain power, they must find ways of selling their relatively unpalatable economic policies to both labor and business. Negotiating the competing claims of capitalism and democracy, these governments are looking for institutional mechanisms with which to bind functional organized interests to the state, thus allowing some measure of political control of the economy. If and how they succeed in doing so are the major questions for today's southern European political economies. Europe's classic postwar political geography was arranged around ruling social democracy in the North and delegitimated Socialist and Communist parties in a uniformly conservative South. The contemporary inversion of Europe's political map poses the question whether newly ruling left-wing parties in the South will follow the path laid down by their northern colleagues, a path marked out by Keynesian demand management policies, extensive welfare states, and corporatist policymaking networks. Or will Mediterranean socialism emerge as a "third way" of governing? This essay argues that it will follow the latter path, although in ways and for reasons which may be less than obvious. It makes general claims about the types of relations among the state, the party system, and organized functional interests that may be expected to develop in Europe's Socialist-led southern tier and then uses the analysis to illuminate a decade of Italian political economy. Because Italy is the country for which "northern" expectations have been repeatedly expressed, it offers an especially strong case for demonstrating the weaknesses of reading the northern Europe social democratic model into the South.

Polarization and Nonproportionality: The Greek Party System in the Postwar Era

Abstract: This paper examines the evolution of the Greek party system in the postwar era. It is well known that parties are but a subsystem of a polity. Yet, by virtue of the fact that they constitute a central intermediate structure between society and government,' they provide invaluable clues for the understanding of the overall performance of this polity. Until very recently, research on parties was almost totally absent from modern Greek historiography,2 and it is not an exaggeration to say that we do not have a single treatment of the party system qua system, that is, as a bounded whole with concrete and patterned interactions of its parts (the parties) that may influence in its own right other spheres or systems of the polity. Thus, when not totally disregarded, parties have always been portrayed as responding to-but never shaping--societal tensions. In this respect, Greece has been the wonderland of what Sartori called "sociological reductionism."'3 This work aspires to contribute to reversing this trend. Let it be understood right from the beginning that the underlying assumption here is not that parties can create and impose upon civil society tensions which the latter totally lacks. The point is rather that the character of interparty competition qua party system clearly influences the dynamic of these tensions and potentially accentuates or minimizes them.

Philippine Authoritarianism and the International Economy

Abstract: In 1972 Ferdinand Marcos imposed martial law in the Philippines, instituting an authoritarian regime and toppling what was thought to be the most stable democratic government in Southeast Asia. How significant was the role of Philippine ties with the international environment in the advent of authoritarianism? The Philippine position in the world economy has been intimately related to its domestic politics since independence. Similarities between events there and the pattern of political change emerging in other countries that have initiated aggressive programs of capitalist development appear too consistent to be coincidental or to be ignored.' The postwar evolution leading to martial law can best be understood as a series of three stages, each shaped by an attempt to create a "formula" for economic development. First, the immediate postwar period was characterized by the erection of trade barriers and the growth of protected national industry. Second, industrial stagnation during the late 1950s led to repeated attempts to redirect the Philippine economy, each ending in impasse as the policies dictated by domestic political concerns came into conflict with constraints imposed by the international economy. Finally, the forces that coalesced around Ferdinand Marcos in 1972 broke the preceding cycle of frustrated efforts, imposing an authoritarian solution that resolved the development debate on terms most suitable to themselves. The evolution of these events in the Philippines will be explored following Guillermo O'Donnell's analysis of foreign economic relations in the transition to authoritarianism. In his work on Latin America O'Donnell has provided a succinct explanation of the relationship between the international economy and the abandonment of political pluralism, suggesting a link between authoritarianism and the end of "easy-phase" import substitution.2 According to the model, import substitution, while it does not necessarily correspond with political democracy, is at least compatible with it. During the easy phase of import substitution the manufacturing sector, protected from the vicissitudes of the world economy, expands rapidly as it fills the domestic market. Industrialists will tolerate higher wages and social welfare provisions by the government because these increase the internal market for goods and services and because they enjoy protection from foreign competition. They are, at this stage, willing to enter into political coalitions with the working class in order to counter traditional landed interests. While such interclass alliances have not always led to democracy, they at least did not exclude the possibility. All too soon, however, structural bottlenecks appear. These reduce the pace of growth and limit the possibilities for further industrialization along the same course. As a result some among the industrialists and planners begin working for industrial "deepening," that is, the shift to production of intermediate and capital goods.

Why Is There No Taylorism in the Soviet Union

Abstract: Many "modernity" or "industrial society" analyses assume that there is only one best way in which work can be organized, a way dictated by the technology of mass, machine-based production. The most efficient industrial organization in capitalist and socialist societies, then, would be essentially identical. Harry Braverman reached a similar conclusion from a different direction in his seminal Marxist analysis of the labor process, asserting that:

Pluralist and Corporatist Intermediation, Activities of Business Interest Associations, and Corporate Profits Some Evidence from Canada

Abstract: An important problem for any government is to control the absolute and relative amounts of resources extracted from the economy by various components of society, especially the rate of business profits. If many or most economic actors are able to raise the absolute level of resources extracted in a dramatic way, rapid increases in inflation seem sure to follow unless production also increases. If only a few economic actors increase their capabilities in this area, then relative economic positions will change with the likelihood of political conflict increased. Both inflation and economically based political conflict are significant problems for all governments domestically and of interest to foreign governments since inflation can be exported and rapid relative economic changes in one or a few countries can disrupt patterns of world trade. How can governments prevent economically based instability? Economists have proposed a variety of macroeconomic tools. Some political scientists, however, have argued that current contending economic theories of macroeconomic outcomes and the policy tools that flow from these theories simply do not explain or fit well the economic reality of the past fifteen years.' At the same time over the past ten years an extensive literature on the different modes of organizing interests, sometimes called the corporatist literature, has developed.2 The rise of interest in corporatism and its apparently growing use in the western liberal democracies have led to the conclusion that corporatist instruments are far more effective in controlling inflation than market mechanisms or Keynesian techniques.' The relative presence or absence of corporatism is normally examined at the national level of political economies. The problem with this type of analysis linked to economic outcomes is that some other properties of individual nations may better explain these outcomes. One way of lessening this problem is to examine the organization of interests in different business sectors in the same country. If a country has some business sectors organized along pluralist lines and one or more along corporatist, and if these patterns of organization change over time, then we are better able to identify any relationship between interest intermediation and the attempts of government to control the extractive capacity of the business community. In order to answer this question this article will analyze nine business sectors in Canada over the period 1965-1980. First, we will examine the organization of these sectoral business interests in light of the classic definitions of pluralism and corporatism of Philippe C. Schmitter.4 Second, we will extend these definitions by classifying and defining the meaning of the activities of business interest associations and show how some activities are

From Consensus to Dissensus: A Note on Postindustrial Political Parties

Abstract: Much of the postwar period in advanced industrial democracies was characterized by a consistent decline of ideological asperity and substantive policy conflict between major parties of the right and of the left. The decline was so palpable in the eyes of some analysts that they once confidently spoke of "the end of ideology." Politics in these democracies lost the traditional "hot" political climate of combat and struggle and instead became, in the words of one European journalist, "boring."' Thus arrived an era of political consensus-convergence of the right and the left-and an age of "depoliticization."2 Indeed, during the postwar period through the 1950s, and 1960s, and perhaps into the first years of the 1970s, it did not seem to matter much in these nations whether government was in the hands of the party of the right or that of the left. Whatever differences remained between them were tactical--questions of "how" and "how much"-and not substantive, that is, not of objectives. Khrushchev's caustic observation about party competition in the United States, that it did not make any difference which horse won because both were from the same stable, was basically accurate and applied to most of the western democracies. Major parties, of the right as well as of the left, had ceased to be the agents of differing visions of societal destiny and had instead become instruments of intermediation and consensus-building, and they appeared to be quite successful. That age of policy consensus seems to have deteriorated, however. In its place, there have emerged in some democracies trends toward repoliticization and dissensus. Ideological contentiousness is on the rise again. Resurgence of policy differences between some parties of the right and those of the left, as a consequence, is becoming noticeable. And which party is in power seems again to make differences in policy outcome. These trends are, of course, not uniform among advanced industrial democracies. In some, such as Britain, they are quite pronounced; in others, for example West Germany, they may be considered incipient; in still others, they are not ascertainable at all. Why in some but not in others? This essay attempts first to summarize briefly the causes of consensus that obtained during much of the postwar period (and still obtains in a number of these democracies) and then to examine those of new dissensus and repoliticization where this new trend seems more noticeable.

Issue Creation and Interest Groups in Soviet Environmental Policy: The Applicability of the State Corporatist Model

Abstract: In the past two decades, diverse political forces have debated environmental issues in the Soviet Union. These forces may be referred to as "groups" based on their commonality of interest, although by other criteria (degree of organization, institutionalization of communications, patterns of interaction among members) they scarcely merit this appellation. The pervasiveness and diversity of such groups are readily apparent in certain policy areas. The Soviet environmental policy process is so replete with examples of group activity that it provides an excellent critique of the totalitarian model of Soviet politics. According to the totalitarian model, policy is formulated by a small group of leaders or a single dictator, devoid of any meaningful input from the public, and implemented with complete ruthlessness and total disregard for public preferences.' Studies of Soviet environmental policy, on the other hand, have emphasized the multiplicity of bureaucratic and specialist organizations exercising some role in the formulation and implementation of policy.2 This article contends that both the totalitarian and the interest group models distort the essence of the policy process, at least in the field of environmental protection. Whether or not this model is applicable to Soviet labor relations, legal policy, or other policy areas is problematic.3 We will comment on the broader utility of the state corporatist model at the conclusion of this article.

The Political Consequences of China's Reforms@@@The Political Economy of Reform in Post-Mao China@@@Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China@@@Chinese Politics after Mao: Development and Liberalization, 1976 to 1983@@@Groups and Politics in the People's Republic of China@@@The Critique of Ultra-Leftism in China, 1958-1981@@@Chinese Democracy

Abstract: Ten years have now passed since the calamitous year of 1976, when Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Mao Zedong all died, Deng Xiaoping fell for the second time, and the Gang of Four went down once and for all. The decade of sweeping reform that followed that watershed year has been as momentous as the "Cultural Revolution decade" which preceded it. The question now is how profoundly this period of reform has altered Chinese politics. The books reviewed in this article represent the first wave of scholarship to come to grips with this question. They offer a composite portrait of postreform politics in China. This portrait, which I will examine in this review, reveals a shift in the locus of state power that has profited certain social groups and harmed others; it also shows the extent to which ideology, law, and democracy now mediate state power. In addition, the books under review adopt distinctive methods for analyzing the unprecedented flow of information from China since 1976, inviting an appraisal of which approaches are most telling in the new conditions for research.

The Proposals for Presidential Government in Israel: A Case Study in the Possibility of Institutional Transference

Abstract: The politicians who call for the adoption of a presidential system in Israel assume that it will bring about the establishment of a stable and effective government capable of dealing successfully with the major problems facing Israel.' Moreover, the personality of the president would, they claim, become a symbol of national unity helping to reduce the major cleavages dividing Israeli society, namely those between the religious and secular sectors, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Jews and Arabs, rich and poor, and doves and hawks. The necessity of establishing a coalition government is singled out as the major deficiency of the present parliamentary system. The proposals to change the present parliamentary system would put an end to the almost extortionist character of the demands made by the minor coalition parties on the government. These pressures, according to the proponents of the reform, have been the main factors in undermining the stability of the government and its ability to govern and create major anomalies in the allocation of scarce national resources. The presidential system, essentially one like the Fifth French Republic, is singled out as particularly relevant for removing the shortcomings of the Israeli political system.

Constraints on Modernization: The Case of Administrative Theory in the U. S. S. R.

Abstract: In the mid 1960s, the Soviet leadership launched a campaign to develop a science of administration for socialist society. Its goal was simple yet ambitious: the creation of a theoretical foundation for the optimal management of a socialist economy, thereby helping to reverse the negative economic trends already becoming apparent. (The concern with management has since spread to the noneconomic sector as well, though state administration still receives far less attention.) Since that time, administrative science has become an established academic discipline, as evidenced by the creation of research institutions and management training programs and by the vitality of its publications infrastructure. Some twenty years have passed, however, since this modernization drive got underway, and its impact remains limited at best. Despite the public commitment of three successive regimes to administrative modernization, and despite some well publicized experiments with this, the theorists' research seems to have made a negligible impression on the everyday behavior of the practicing Soviet manager. There appear to be two principal reasons for this. First, the Soviet manager is notoriously resistant to change, for reasons well known to students of the Soviet economy.' This is true not only among enterprise-level managers, but also among their superiors in branch management and even among some of those highest ranking of managers in the council of ministers. Second, the research itself has been unable to justify much administrative innovation, due to ideological constraints on theory-building. Consequently, little work has been produced that is persuasive enough to overcome the bureaucratic roadblocks to putting theory into practice. This study will examine three components of Soviet administrative theory: decision-making, organization design, and effectiveness evaluation, each of which is subject to various bureaucratic and ideological constraints imposed by the Soviet system. For example, decision theory must develop within the confines of the Leninist model of organizational behavior and by means of ideologically approved methodologies; organization design is constrained by a preference for centralization that owes more to tradition and an entrenched bureaucracy than to ideology; and effectiveness evaluation is hampered by a lack of clarity in goal setting, especially on the part of the Communist Party. This combination of ideological and political constraints has strongly influenced administrative science's development in the USSR.

China's New Economic Policies and the Local Industrial Political Process The Case of Wuhan

Abstract: A well publicized program of economic reform has been underway in the People's Republic of China since 1979, involving, in schematic terms, decentralization of powers and the purse on a vertical dimension and redistribution of investment among sectors and regions on a horizontal one. In short, there have been some fairly significant alterations in the rights and moneys allocated to--and drifting into--the hands of lower-level officials and managers, while capital and material allocations have shifted among economic ministries, broad geographical areas, industrial sectors, provinces, and individual cities. One might hypothesize that these new policies would bring in their wake certain political phenomena tending in the direction of democratization. Specifically, many of the behavioral effects of the policies seem to suggest that privatization may be appearing as the state withdraws and that pluralization could be accompanying intergroup clashes that have emerged in response to the state-led redistribution schemes. Indeed, the past few years have seen in China new forms of non-centrally-directed marketing activity, the birth of urban and firm profit-retention and profit-seeking, an explosive growth of extrabudgetary funds in the hands of local leaders and enterprise managers and their use of these funds in unauthorized capital construction, regional interest articulation and advocacy in public arenas, and a sudden spurt of competition throughout the system. This paper tests the often accepted notion that economic liberalization lays the ground for or at least is closely correlated with political transformation of the same type. For the sake of simplicity, recent data from one Chinese city will be used to assess the extent to which, at the local level, two key modifications are taking place. First, has decentralization sparked privatization, as the state "sheds" its former functions, relegating these tasks to nonstate actors?' Second, has redistribution (termed "readjustment" in Chinese parlance) produced a process of pluralization, involving bargains, battles, negotiations, and lobbying among "multiple, voluntary, competitive, nonhierarchically ordered and self-determined" units, as they attempt to defend threatened policies and pork barrels that benefit them and as they fight against proposals harmful to their interests?2 The purported linkage between economic and political forms, and a related trend of homogenization between systems has been suggested in the writings of a number of social scientists in recent years. Thus, J. L. Metcalfe has concluded that "neither an atomistic nor a unitary model adequately represents the structure and behavior of the modem economy. S . . In short, the economy is more accurately portrayed as a pluralistic political order rather than an atomistic or unitary system . . . characterised by the existence of a number of centres of power and decision making." He views all modem economies as being situated