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Comparative Politics: Liberty and Policy as Variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Roy Pierce
Roy Pierce*
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

Political science has been greatly stimulated in recent years by the invention of new designs for the comparative analysis of political systems. The diversity of these designs, however, risks creating a situation in which it may be difficult to derive agreed conceptual tools. Any points of convergence which can be found, therefore, and particularly in contrasting comparative designs, need to be emphasized. The purpose of this note is to show that in two recent designs for comparative analysis which are divergent in purpose, method and universe of application, there is a convergence on two fundamental points. The first is that liberty, taken to mean freedom of criticism and of discussion, is a major variable for comparative analysis. The second is that once liberty has been employed as a variable, it is necessary to employ policy as a secondary variable in order to discriminate among those political systems in which freedom of discussion does not exist or is severely limited.

Neither of the systems of comparative analysis which I will discuss, one constructed by Raymond Aron and the other by Gabriel Almond, explicitly employs either liberty or policy as variables. In fact, Aron makes a deliberate effort to avoid using liberty as a variable, and policy is implicitly ruled out of Almond's design by his reliance on functional categories. Yet both authors implicitly take freedom of discussion as a major variable, and when they discuss totalitarian regimes they both employ additional variables which can be subsumed under the heading of policy.

Type
Critical Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , September 1963 , pp. 655 - 660
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1963

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References

1 Aron, Raymond, Sociologie des Sociétés Industrielles, Esquisse d'une théorie des régimes politiques (Paris: Cours de Sorbonne, 1957–1958)Google Scholar. These are lectures which represent work in progress and not conclusions, and they should be interpreted in this light only.

2 Almond, Gabriel A., “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton University Press, 1960), pp. 3–64Google Scholar. This work will hereinafter be cited as Almond (1960).

3 Aron, loc. cit., p. 36.

4 Almond (1960), p. 17.

5 Ibid., p. 58.

6 Aron, loc. cit., pp. 230–36.

7 Ibid., p. 25.

8 Ibid., p. 36.

9 Almond, Gabriel A., “Comparative Political Systems,” Journal of Politics, Vol, 18 (08, 1956), p. 397CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Aron, loc. cit., pp. 37–8.

11 Ibid., p. 38.

12 Ibid., pp. 40–43.

13 Claims to leadership based on past service are also customary, however, especially among leaders who have led national revolutionary movements. That is one reason why charges of colonialism will endure longer than colonialism itself. On backward-oriented dictatorial justifications, see Cobban, Alfred, Dictatorship (London, 1939), p. 273Google Scholar.

14 Aron, loc. cit., p. 57.

15 Ibid., p. 49.

16 Ibid., pp. 59–70. Aron goes on to analyze constitutional-pluralist systems by treating the problems inherent in giving institutional expression to democratic principles. The analysis is extremely interesting, but it is not relevant to the argument here.

17 Ibid., p. 27.

18 Ibid.

19 For example, ibid., p. 22.

20 The phrase is associated particularly with Ernest Barker's analysis of parliamentary government. See his Reflections on Government (Oxford University Press, 1942), ch. 2Google Scholar.

21 Almond (1960), p. 59.

22 Ibid., p. 18.

23 Ibid., p. 63. Other stylistic variables which Almond uses are: latent and manifest, covert and overt, formal and informal, and intermittent.

24 Ibid., p. 18.

25 Ibid., pp. 35–36.

26 Ibid., p. 33.

27 Ibid., p. 46.

28 Ibid., p. 61. Italics in original.

29 Ibid., pp. 46–47.

30 Ibid., p. 47.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., p. 50.

33 Almond does not add it, but he does say: “One may liken the communication function to the circulation of the blood. It is not the blood but what it contains that nourishes the system.” Ibid., p. 47.

34 Ibid., pp. 53–54.

35 The choice of terminology is entirely appropriate. Aron is concerned mainly with the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the regimes most generally regarded as being ideologically based. Almond is concerned mainly with the developing nations, many of which are not governed by ideologically oriented leaders, although their leaders surely have goals.

36 “What is true of totalitarian systems is that they are characterized by a high rate of coercive social mobilization.” Almond (1960), p. 41. Italics mine.

37 Aron discusses this point carefully. Loc. cit., pp. 182–90.

38 Friedrich, Carl J., ed., Totalitarianism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954), p. 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 MacIver, R. M., The Web of Government (New York, 1947), pp. 196, 225Google Scholar.

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