Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-01T21:28:14.039Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Control without Opposition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Jerzy J. Wjatr  and
Adam Przeworski
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The historical development of western civilization has produced several patterns of political opposition deeply rooted and relatively well established in the political systems. This opposition is usually identified with the control of the governed over the government : it is maintained that opposition is at the same time a sufficient and a necessary condition for the existence of such control. Opposition, as the term is commonly used, has the following characteristics : (a) it is political; (b) it is institutionalized in the form of a party or parties; and (c) it is often said that it is also ‘responsible’, i.e., it does not extend to obstruction of the government's actions. In order to define more precisely the relationship between opposition and control, we must ask two questions of a more specific nature: (i) is opposition a sufficient condition for effective control? And (ii) is it a condition sine qua non for any kind of political control? In spite of some ideological assertions, it seems clear that the answers to both questions are negative. Since the problem of opposition in the two- and multiparty systems is discussed elsewhere, we shall focus here on those mechanisms of control which present an alternative to opposition as institutionalized in the party system.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 01 January 1966 , pp. 227 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1965

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For example, Lipset, S. M., The First New Nation, New York, 1963.Google Scholar

2 Lipset, S. M., Political Man, New York, 1960 Google Scholar. Coleman, J. S. in Almond, G. A. and Coleman, J. S., eds., Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton, 1960.Google Scholar

3 UNESCO, ‘Rapport de la Réunion d’Experts sur les Conditions Sociales de la Croissance Économique’, 1963, pp. 31ff. Galenson, Walter, ed., Labor and Economic Development, New York, 1959, p. 16 Google Scholar. Heilbroner, Robert, Future as History, New York, 1959, p. 35 Google Scholar. Duverger, Maurice, La Dictature, Milan, 1960, p. 104.Google Scholar

4 Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation, Cambridge, Mass., 1960, pp. 329–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Lipset, S. M., The First New Nation, p. 11.Google Scholar Wriggins, W. H., ‘Impediments to Unity in New Nations: the Case of Ceylon’, APSR, 55, 1961 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Gray, R.F., ‘Political Parties in New African Nations’, and the comment by Mair, Lucy, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 5, 1963 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation, pp. 284ff.Google Scholar

6 Przeworski, Adam, Party System and Economic Development, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1965.Google Scholar

7 For the concept of dominant party system see Duverger, Maurice, Les Partis Politiques, Paris, 1951 Google Scholar and ‘Sociologie des partis politiques’, in Gurvitch, George, ed., Traité de Sociologie, Vol. 2, Paris, 1960 Google Scholar. Also G. I. Blanksten, ‘The Politics of Latin America’, in Almond and Coleman, eas., Politics of the Developing Areas. For the concept of hegemonic party system see Jerzy J. Wjatr, ‘One‐party Systems—The Concept and Issue for Comparative Studies’, in Allardt, E. and Littunen, Y., eds., Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems, Helsinki, 1964 Google Scholar.

8 Op. cit., p. 479.

9 Tucker, R. C., ‘Towards a Comparative Politics of Movement‐Regimes’, APSR, 55, 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Juan J. Linz, ‘An Authoritarian Regime: Spain,’ in E. Allardt and Y. Littunen, eds., Cleavages, Ideologies and Party Systems.

11 Moore, Barrington Jr., Political Power and Social Theory, Cambridge, Mass., 1958.Google Scholar

12 The Programme of the League of Yugoslav Communists. Adopted by the VIII Congress held from 22 to 26 April 1958. Belgrade, 1958, p. 239.

13 Cases of party elections in which former office‐holders or officially supported candidates were defeated are not infrequent in Poland and Yugoslavia. The ‘rotation’ system, recently introduced in the latter country may intensify this phenomenon but it is still too early to anticipate its consequences.

14 Winicjusz Narojek, ‘The Structure of Local Power’, in Ostrowski, K. and Przeworski, A., eds., Local Political System in Poland, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, P.A.N., Warsaw, 1965 Google Scholar, mimeographed.

15 K. Ostrowski and A. Przeworski, ‘Trade Unions and Economic Planning in Poland’, Polish Studies in Political Science, I. 1965. In press.

16 For example, in Mexico ‘virtually all types of firms are required to belong to one or another trade organization which represents that trade to the government and through which the government can make its policy known to the industry’. Edminster, Robert, ‘Mexico’, in Pepelasis, A., Mears, L., Adelman, I., eds., Economic Development, New York, 1961.Google Scholar

17 Kothari, Rajni, ‘The Congress “System” in India’, Asian Survey, 4, 1964, p. 1162.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 In Poland, United Peasant and Democratic Parties; in Bulgaria, Peasant Union; in Czechoslovakia, Peasant Party, Slovak Rebirth Party, and Slovak Freedom Party. In addition some of these countries have political organizations which formally are not parties but which jointly with other parties and organizations participate in elections, publish newspapers, etc. In Poland, for example, there are three political organizations of Catholics differing in political philosophy, tactics, and affiliations.

19 V. Kotok, The Soviet Representative System, Progress Publishers, Moscow, no date, p. 37.

20 See Godic, Dragan, ‘April Elections’, Review, Yugoslav Monthly Magazine, 03 1965 Google Scholar; Neal, F. W., Titoism in Action, The Reforms in Yugoslavia after I949; Berkeley, 1958 Google Scholar; Pelczynski, Z. A., ‘Poland 1957’, in Butler, David, Elections Abroad, London, 1959.Google Scholar

21 Wjatr, Jeny J., Niektore problemy opinii priblicznej w swietle wyborow 1957 i 1958, Warsaw, 1959Google Scholar and ‘Elections and Voting Behavior in Poland’ in Ranney, Austin, ed., Essays on the Behavioral Study of Politics, Urbana, 1962 Google Scholar.