Prospects for the New Nations
Coser, Lewis
The sudden emergence of new nations in Asia and Africa poses crucial problems for our age. No longer is it sufficient to applaud the demise of imperialism. We have also to discard any...
...But the way integration is brought about may differ very significantly...
...But when the traditional legitimations for the status quo break down—and they have broken down to a greater or lesser degree in all underdeveloped countries—then a new standard of judgment seeps into the consciousness of the deprived groups and leads them to compare their situations with that of other groups both within and without their own society...
...Totalitarianism, ed...
...Consider only the immense difference in the "superstructure" of, say, 19th century Germany and England...
...In the nineteenth century, when the liberal model was most nearly approximated in parts of Europe and North America, non-governmental forces such as kin groups, autonomous religious organizations, owners of landed or mobile property succeeded in restricting and limiting governmental action...
...Conflicts with some produce associations with others and provide bonds between citizens, drawing them into a rich social life...
...Given their trained receptiveness to new ideological currents, the Westernized intellectuals are the first to criticize the accepted scheme of things...
...Where totalitarian societies suppress all forms of autonomous organization and all independent sources of information, the authoritarian regimes suppress organized opposition and public criticism...
...Whether such a development will come about will depend to a very significant degree on patterns of recruitment...
...2 Cf...
...George Simmel, Conflict and the Web of Group Affiliation, transl...
...The claims of efficiency might appear often to militate in favor of authoritative directives and centralized government...
...they more and more fill up the place of an aristocracy...
...Such strata are peculiarly apt to engage in the politics of discontent...
...in collective appropriation all positions of power have been appropriated by a single ruling group which then allots shares to individuals and groups according to their status...
...c. The Authoritarian Model The authoritarian model may be said to stand midway between the totalitarian and the liberal models...
...10 Lowenthal, ofi...
...I1...
...This very openness poses a challenge: Is it possible to isolate at least some crucial factors which will help determine the structure of these nation-states...
...They may try to make the Church into a pliant instrument of their rule, yet they will not attempt to deny the religious order a measure of autonomy in regard to otherworldly concerns...
...But if modernization at all levels comes to depend on the state alone, if there are no local, religious or class forces independently pushing in the same direction, then democratic revolutions become unlikely...
...g., the religious and the economic) to modernize themselves, and then to provide opposition cadres—as did the protestant sects in England or the Third Estate in France...
...It justifies a ruthless policy of forced savings...
...15 It should also be noted here that to the extent that there are tendencies toward closure in the political and bureaucratic structures...
...The destruction of rural handicraft industries through the competition of cheap industrial goods from Europe and America was another significant factor...
...Berkeley and L. A.: University of California, 1958...
...When absolute monarchs attempted to win such a monopoly, democracy was powerfully enhanced by the struggle of new social formations, reformed churches and sects, trade unions, voluntary organizations of all sorts, and local and regional bodies, all of which sought to limit governmental power and ensure their members a voice in the affairs of state...
...The political order has unquestioned primacy over all others...
...Nor can we assume that the end of colonial servitude will necessarily usher in an age of democracy...
...Yet if the population is not in the long run to become totally dependent on the tutelary power of the state, it is essential that the political elite of the center does not control the new forces set free, thus preventing the development of autonomous social and political centers of power...
...They can, if they so desire, deliberately create or at least permit the growth of a dispersed power structure in their countries...
...3 Cf...
...All social life is "politicized...
...9 Myrdal, Beyond the Welfare State, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960, p. 121...
...Lewis A. Coser, The Functions of Social Conflict, New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1956...
...The three were chosen because they have all been associated with the course of industrial development in a variety of historical settings...
...In fact, most of the leaders of these countries are not at present prepared to accept the totalitarian and monolithic state as a precondition for the planning of development...
...12 In these new nations the intelligentsia is likely to exhibit a fierce pride in the distinctiveness of native culture and must hence be extremely reluctant to rupture the continuity with tradition...
...This essay will focus attention on a few such variables without claiming that these are the only ones needing consideration...
...i. e., that they aim at the control of all institutional spheres...
...It invests the uprooting of traditional life, the frightening impact of social and technical change, the bitterness of years of sacrifice with a meaning...
...4 Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, transl...
...To the totalitarian powerholder anything that is not controlled will seem a fatal flaw...
...The full flowering of positive freedom was precluded in the liberal model if for no other reason than that it could function only if internalized repression among its citizens domesticated drives and energies into institutionally approved channels...
...This intelligentsia first becomes aware of the backwardness of the country through more intimate contacts with Western conditions than are available to other groups...
...Owing partly to the rapidity with which they have gained independence, most of these new states are characterized by fluid and ill-defined social and political structures...
...While in the West industrialization was mainly the outcome of a process of spontaneous growth in the economic order, "nourished by the enterprise of individual profit-seekers, exploiting new techniques to their own advantage, 9 the development of the new nations " required concentration of economic power in the state...
...no independent organization even of an utterly non-political character is allowed to exist...
...Even when a determined effort is made to centralize political power, this power seems all too often to seep away through innumerable rivulets to village communities and tribal structures, to money lenders or army chieftains, to religious leaders and heads of clans...
...Any society beyond the relatively undifferentiated tribal level can be broken down, for purposes of analysis, into major institutional orders of which the political, the economic, the military, the religious and the family or kinship orders may be considered the most important.' These institutional orders must be integrated in some way if the society is to function...
...No claim is made, of course, that any of them is fully embodied in any society or nationstate...
...autonomous educational and scientific institutions, and the like...
...When individuals are freed from the dominance of traditional institutions and when they cannot be attracted by authoritarian regimes devoid of a coherent ideology, they become available for a new type of integration along the lines of totalitarian coordination...
...Where liberal society fosters the autonomy of the various institutional orders, the authoritarian society limits and confines activities within these orders but does not attempt to control them completely...
...22-28...
...Hence its ambivalence...
...The integration of authoritarian society is achieved by a "mixed" process of authoritative imposition on the part of the political agents and spontaneous balancing among the other institutional orders...
...they are especially susceptible to the appeal of communism...
...The competition for souls between proselytizing religions furthered the freedom of the individual...
...The requirements of struggle against traditional elements lead to the erosion of local centers of feudal and tribal power...
...But they should heed the warning that the most efficient administrations are likely to be found in model prisons rather than in vital human communities...
...they compete, and the resultant balance of power among them leaves a deep impress on political decision-making...
...Colonial exploitation both through unilateral transfers of wealth from colonial countries to Western Europe and the seizure of peasantoccupied lands for plantation purposes, played a major part...
...It proclaims the superiority of planned investment by the state over laissez faire...
...It is typically drawn toward an eclectic program in which it strives to counterbalance traditional elements and innovating plans...
...In many of these new nations a thin veneer of 20th-century ideology is superimposed on a community in which magical rather than rational modes of thought predominate...
...Though the nationalist intelligentsia reacts against the traditional culture which it holds responsible for the backwardness of the country, it is also unwilling and unable to create a cultural tabula rasa through the imposition of a ready-made total plan...
...they are also likely to struggle with the central power, as well as among themselves, for the allegiance of the citizens...
...cit., p. 126...
...Nigeria, Pakistan, even Burma and Indonesia provide excellent examples...
...The appeal of the totalitarian model, in particular in its Communist form, was, on the contrary, considerably stronger...
...The liberal society assured that, to use Erich Fromm's term, the great majority of individuals wanted to do what they had to do...
...Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man, Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1960, p. 45 ff...
...As gatekeepers of ideas, they are strategically placed to facilitate the penetration of modern ideologies...
...the major decisions within the society were preferably brought about through bargaining, conflict and competition between the agents of the various institutional orders...
...And yet the chances of democratization depend ultimately on the degree to which power will be dispersed or centralized...
...We have also to discard any previous reliance on simple ideologies of progress...
...It follows that the furtherance of democracy requires the strengthening of "private persons" and this is possible only if such private persons can rely on protective secondary powers uncontrolled by the state...
...Nor would the bulk of the native Westernized intelligentsia relish a head-on clash with the traditionalistic elites—a clash which would inevitably occur should an attempt be made to mold the state according to the totalitarian pattern...
...Employment in the state or party apparatus, be it in executives bodies or the bureaucracy, is likely to be regarded as the most significant channel of upward mobility and as the major means of access to scarce power, resources and prestige...
...They must desire to create citizens free from particularistic loyalties to village, communal groupings, family, tribal chief or traditional aristocracy...
...If other centers fail to attract gifted leaders, the political order will preempt the available supply of scarce talents...
...As Richard Lowenthal has said in an essay from which I have borrowed several seminal ideas: "If conditions were such that a liberal economy would work, the country would not have remained underdeveloped in the first place...
...Just as the totalitarian state cannot tolerate autonomous organizations, so it cannot tolerate individual withdrawal into a private—and hence uncontrolled— sphere...
...The adoption of the totalitarian model would necessarily mean that an underdeveloped nation would forego much of the technical know-how available in however slim a stratum of native entrepreneurs and professionals...
...Some political compulsions did in fact face the individual in such liberal societies...
...The new nations, and those who will make the key decisions within them, face a series of crucial choices...
...Before a liberal politics could make its appearance in Europe a new breed of autonomous, self-governing men had first to develop...
...At the same time such groupings and institutions will limit the political agents and prevent them from exercising unchallenged sway...
...it is firmly controlled by political agents...
...Within the political realm, different political parties competed for power and thus maximized the chances for the citizen's democratic participation in the political process...
...As distinct from liberal societies, here the non-political orders enjoy no customary immunity from the exercise of political will, but neither are they deprived of all power...
...The Church, the army, economic agents, class interests—all may clash and limit each other...
...by A. M. Henderson and T. Parsons...
...They tend to have a somewhat unstable character...
...The very clash and conflict between autonomous centers of power would serve as a balancing mechanism...
...Here integration is attained through deliberate coordination of all institutional orders and the suppression of conflict among them...
...The mopping up of savings to raise funds for investment, the allocation of scarce resources to the strategically most important tasks, the promotion of an intellectual climate favorable to the development of an ethos of work, the breakdown of the traditional barriers to the exercise of disciplined and rational modes of organization—none of these tasks of industrial take-off could be accomplished without public action by the agents of the political order...
...In such regimes we witness an apotheosis of the political order...
...If the ruling intelligentsia prevent the emergence of new diversified centers of power and loyalty, if they attempt to control all accumulations of newly available power, they move in a totalitarian direction...
...Insofar as different institutional orders still continue to exist, activities within them are heteronomous...
...If the community is to have the right to share in the direction of political affairs, the diffusion of power among a number of power centers is essential...
...i. e., on whether potential leaders will be attracted mainly by the centralizing state or at least a certain proportion of them will be available for leadership in local and regional centers of power, and in non-governmental institutions...
...Today it has moved in the direction of a mixed regime—and has expelled the Russian ambassador...
...While totalitarian societies suppress all conflict among component parts of the social structure, the authoritarian society channels and deflects such conflicts without, however, eliminating them altogether...
...Hugh Seton-Watson calls such regimes "populist," by analogy to the wellknown Russian movement of the 19th century, in so far as they attempt like their Russian forebears to achieve some kind of synthesis between traditional culture and the need for modernization...
...they do not follow laws of motion of their own but are impelled by forces emanating from the political order...
...The Chances of Democratization A minimal condition for democracy is the legitimation of regular opportunities for changing governing personnel, i. e., the presence of social mechanisms—political parties, free elections, free press, etc.—permitting the underlying population to choose among contenders for political office...
...If gifted members of the intelligentsia flock exclusively to the service of the government rather than, say, to teaching positions in schools or colleges, then the latter will be staffed by the mediocre and lose even more prestige...
...If, on the other hand, there emerges a diversity of allegiances and a many-sided integration of individuals in a variety of institutional orders, then the chances for a democratic development at a later time are increased...
...15 When power and opportunity are concentrated in the center, they act like a magnet, attracting the talented men from the whole society and gradually undermining the resistances emanating from off-center powers...
...For an excellent analysis of key political factors in the new nations see Gabriel Almond and James S. Coleman, ed., The Politics of the Developing Areas, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960...
...New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953, esp...
...In the liberal model, economic agents are relatively free from political or religious interference, and so are religious organizations, which are usually not dominated by economic agents...
...Yet, if the road toward later democratic developments is not to be blocked, the widest possible diffusion of power compatible with centralized planning is a prerequisite...
...The multiple antagonistic and diversified interests which found expression within such social structures served as a balancing mechanism, preventing the cleavage of society along one line...
...In the long run this would lead to an approximation of the totalitarian model...
...All one can say at this stage is that this is possible, and that the road into the future of the new nations, far from being determined in advance, is still open...
...Many commentators seem to argue for a rigid determinism according to which industrialization in the underdeveloped countries must necessarily bring in its wake predetermined "superstructures...
...The individual came, so to speak, to stand at a point at which many conflicting or non-conflicting groups and institutional orders intersected...
...13 Cf...
...This would lead to the gradual erosion of other, non-political institutional orders, and the preponderance of the political over the economic, cultural, and educational elites...
...And in most cases, this was not a gradual growth but a series of revolutions...
...Imperialist domination hindered the development of a class of indigenous industrial entrepreneurs, though it often favored the emergence of a partly Westernized class of comprador traders and middle-men...
...The Use of Talent Given the dominant role of the state apparatus in the new nations, it is to be expected that it will attract a high proportion of all those who wish to rise on the scale of prestige and to profit from the reallocation of power...
...And we have to recognize that some or all of the new nations will present features deeply distasteful to men of a libertarian vision...
...Many of them have a political structure boasting the paraphernalia of the modern state while their social structure is composed of essentially tribal or semi-feudal units...
...8 Richard Lowenthal, "The Points of the Compass," Encounter, London, Sept., 1960, pp...
...Such a position in social space helps to minimize the chance of individual autonomy...
...But such men are still very rare in the new nations...
...In all of them, though economic development is ardently desired, the elite encounters most serious obstacles from the traditional powers...
...trade unions in the industrial centers...
...Every social unit must be "gleichgeschaltet...
...The political elite monopolizes political power but it shares social powers with the agents of other institutional orders...
...cit., p. 25...
...Nor have the social groups and classes which made revolutions in the West developed in the new nations...
...nor did it dominate the individual...
...In none of them did a single interest dominate the whole...
...13 But in addition to such mechanisms, a democratic polity requires a sufficient dispersion of power...
...for a fine study of similar developments in Africa cf...
...This underdevelopment is due to a complex of historical circumstance which can only be hinted at here...
...The bulk of their populations live in traditional rural communities...
...Such a trend can be effectively weakened only to the extent that participation in the non-governmental sphere will carry no less prestige and influence, and bring psychic and monetary income commensurate with that derived from employment by the state...
...In the new nations, with their low living standards, their small degree of industrialization, and urbanization, their low standards of education, and their lack of a "protestant ethic," the basis of a democratic polity is not at present available...
...Their productivity, national product and per capita income is low and this is reflected in low standards of nutrition, housing, education, and health...
...A liberal order, moreover, requires some ideological preparation...
...Role of the Intelligentsia What social stratum is likely to take the initiative in this development...
...So long as the ideology or mystique of a society continues to hold the allegiance of the masses, they will endure the grossest inequalities of wealth, status and power...
...The state may have been a "night-watchman" state, but it nevertheless imposed, even if hesitatingly and sparingly, compulsory military service, education and taxation, and it held firmly to its monopoly over the legitimate exercise of the means of violence...
...They may limit the exercise of proprietary rights and channel the allocation of scarce resources, yet they will not attack the legitimation of property as such...
...5 Cf...
...Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955...
...the competitive struggle for scarce resources between a great variety of economic interests prevented the preemption of economic chances...
...New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1959...
...s Given the absence of independent economic agents, the task of development had to fall to the powers of the state...
...Shifts in the balance of power between the various groups will find their indirect reflection in political life...
...Such regimes are likely to lack the frozen rigidity of totalitarian regimes while also lacking, owing to the heavy predominance of the political order, the flexibility of the liberal model...
...The localism, particularism, and traditionalism which militate against the development of democracy also act against the introduction of efficient Soviet-type totalitarian regimes...
...But quite apart from the impact of imperialism, the traditional cultures of Asia and Africa in themselves did not foster strong and independent middle classes—the classes which in the West were the main promoters of capital accumulation, industrial enterprise and rational work discipline...
...local and regional governing boards...
...And, last but not least, it justifies all the privileges a self-appointed but dedicated elite may require.10 While the totalitarian model has considerable attractions for the underdeveloped countries, it also encounters deeply seated resistances...
...they follow the same impelling direction...
...To the extent that the centralized state would assume predominance and come to constitute in the eyes of the population the major source of power, financial reward and prestige, the local, regional and non-governmental centers of power would be weakened...
...11 We may then provisionally conclude that the totalitarian regime, " short of direct military take-over by external Communist powers, is not likely to become the model for developments in the new nations, at least, not before the destruction of traditional power...
...7 The process has often been described in Asia...
...Individuals otherwise isolated, mutually hostile or apathetic, are in this way brought into the field of public activities...
...Democracy has historically been highly correlated with relatively high standards of living, with urbanization, industrialization and education...
...This relative absence of a work ethic and a tradition of individual self-control and autonomy accounts also for the fact that nepotism, corruption and the like do not encounter institutional or internalized obstacles to nearly the same degree as in the West...
...By being pitted against each other in competition and conflict, and struggling for the loyalty and allegiance of men, they furthered individual autonomy...
...Though in such societies he has multiple affiliations with a great number of groups, these do not conflict with or criss-cross each other...
...They may be committed to deep-going agrarian reform, yet shrink from wholesale collectivization on the Chinese model involving the breakup of familistic property patterns...
...The very process of modernization, even though it may be cushioned in various ways, undermines traditional structures, be they tribal or feudal, particularistic family domination or religious interests...
...Political power has been appropriated by a political elite which suppresses all rival claimants...
...The social and economic distance between them and their own upper class is greater than that between the poor of the West and their upper class...
...In most of them the cultural distance between the intellectual elite and the underlying population is so wide that the two strata seem to live in entirely different worlds...
...a. The Liberal Model In the classical liberal model of society, the structure is unified, yet leaves a high degree of autonomy to the various institutional orders and minimizes the dominion of the state...
...To the extent that the various institutional orders limited each other they allowed individuals a certain interstitial leeway...
...In some countries, as in Egypt, Iraq and Sudan, where standing armies have been available as a source of power, a revolutionary "intelligentsia in uniform" has succeeded, through domination of the military order, in controlling the political order...
...The Church, the army, the family, and property constitute distinct and not always harmonious interests...
...There are no equivalents to this entrepreneurial ethos as yet discernible in the new nations...
...The private as well as the public man must be caught in the seamless web of control...
...All are in flux, open to various courses of development...
...William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society...
...In feudal times, the immunities of Church and estates, of landed aristocracy or independent townships prevented the center from monopolizing power...
...Where totalitarian societies have "politicized armies," authoritarian societies often have a "militarized polity...
...Such authoritarian regimes might move against the claims of the religious order if its representatives attempted to limit the innovating actions of the state through an appeal to religious norms...
...The essence of totalitarian regimes is that their claims are total...
...12 Hugh Seton-Watson, Neither War Nor Peace, New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1960, Chapter VI...
...The Futherance of Democracy Tocqueville considered the gravest peril for individual freedom to stem from conditions where "the performance of private persons are insignificant, those of the state immense...
...yet it is also well aware that only a resolute break with major aspects of past tradition will allow a take-off in development...
...Competition for marriage partners prevented the domination of the marriage market by kinship groups and enhanced the chances of free marital choice...
...The distinction between public and private spheres, central to the liberal model, disappears in totalitarian society...
...by Kurt H. Wolff and Reinhard Bendix...
...Only the military order has limited autonomy...
...III...
...Hence, the strengthening of autonomous institutions, such as independent schools and universities, independent trade unions, regional and local power centers, village cooperatives and the like, are of prime importance if the road toward democratization is not to be permanently barred...
...They can, though ruling as authoritarians, lay the foundations for a future democracy...
...They may harbor resentment against the West, yet shrink from a course which would inevitably cut them off from Western economic aid, both public and private...
...The political order thus never achieved a large measure of dominance over the other institutional orders...
...Where traditionalistic sources of power have dried up and given way to modern universalistic power structures manned by members of the rapidly swollen intelligensia, the chances of authoritarian regimes decline...
...Individual autonomy, discipline, methodical application to work characterized the early entrepreneurial middle class, and this "innerwordly asceticism" was a powerful stimulant for that energetic pursuit of rational domination over the world and of industrial creativity which has characterized the West since the seventeenth century...
...14 This integration can conceivably take place in two different ways: the energies and activities of those who have relinquished traditional positions of leadership as well as of those who can be freshly recruited into leadership positions can be channelled into diversified centers of power, or they can be funneled into one center...
...They must, in other words, become part of a network of diverse social relationships in a variety of group involvements...
...This is why I cannot subscribe to the theory of an ineluctable drift toward totalitarianism which is now so often bandied about...
...Economic agents act in accord with the demands of State and Party, religious institutions become adjuncts to political institutions, and even the family is pressed into the service of political goals...
...The poorer a country, the greater the differences between the rich and the poor...
...Thus both a too exclusive recruitment of the elite into the central political order, and a closure in that order barring potential recruits from access and yet not offering alluring chances in other areas, are likely to have detrimental consequences for the process of democratization...
...i. e., coordinated with the governing apparatus...
...These revolutions depended on the ability of various institutional orders (e...
...Obstacles to Totalitarian Model There is a more profound reason why the Westernized elite of most of the new nations, though willing to borrow techniques of development from the Communist arsenal, cannot easily accept the totalitarian model: large illiterate populations, strong traditional ideologies, the newness and numerical weakness of the urban population and the elite—these factors preclude the planned mobilization of the total population...
...No claims of family, property, or religion counter- balance or limit the actions of the State and the Party...
...Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism...
...At the same time the multiple affiliations of individuals in a variety of groups and associations served to enhance personal freedom...
...They must attempt to undermine and neutralize traditional modes of behavior...
...Conflict and competition between the various orders, far from endangering integration, help to "sew society together...
...If in addition there develops a rich associational life in the non-political orders, the national community may gradually be led to rely on the process of bargaining between groups and individuals rather than on governmental fiat...
...Whether they will do so in a significant number of cases it would be rash to predict...
...Even where a state church existed, other organizations served to balance and limit its power in the religious sphere...
...National allocation of scarce resources requires central planning...
...Yet they will not destroy the institutions of property...
...They will rather operate in an environment marked by a high incidence of clash and conflict...
...The individual in authoritarian societies does not enjoy the autonomy granted him in liberal societies...
...most of them have not yet reached the take-off stage in the process of industrialization...
...As individuals affiliated with a multiplicity of groups and as these multiple affiliations crisscrossed each other, they welded society together...
...Finally, it furnishes the militant faith needed for the cultural revolution, with its materialist attack on traditional superstition, its glorification of dedicated, disciplined work for the community, its emphasis on production as the highroad to national power and individual liberation from misery...
...Yet the state's recourse to its power of compulsion, that is to political means, was only thought of as a last resort...
...Nor did any other order achieve dominance...
...But one cannot expect that the other major barrier —the concentration of power—will necessarily decrease and hence allow the expansion of chances for wider participation in political life...
...None of the new nations outside of the Soviet orbit has achieved even relative social and political stability...
...To be sure, the freedom thus made possible was a negative freedom only, freedom from rather than freedom to...
...also Bert Hoselitz and Myron Weiner, "Economic Development and Political Stability in India," DISSENT, VIII, 2 (Spring 1961...
...The concrete forms of regimes dominated by the intelligentsia may differ widely...
...In other words, not only absolute but relative deprivation characterizes the mass of the underlying population in the new nations...
...When the intelligentsia searched for models to guide economic development, they almost invariably discarded the liberal model...
...A year ago Guinea seemed on its way toward a Moscow-dominated "People's Democracy...
...This is why India, where such institutions function rather vigorously, seems to have the best chances fully to institutionalize democratic processes...
...The engineering of souls is as essential as the engineering of the social structure...
...At this point the new nations will face another set of choices: totalitarianism or democracy...
...Monopolistic control of the means of violence and of the channels of communication, as well as an official ideology covering all major aspects of a man's existence, characterize totalitarian societies...
...the family also is protected from political interference...
...There is no guarantee that the new will be desirable or appealing...
...Consequently they will not be able to function as a counterweight to the powers of the political order...
...In such societies the political power-holders may recognize no constitutional limitations of state power, yet in practice they do recognize some limitations...
...Similar consequences are likely to follow in the economic order, be it private or cooperative: the quality of the economic elite will steadily decline and so will its prestige if the more enterprising and ambitious members of the younger generation will be attracted by employment in the central economic administration...
...513-16...
...Not only are such centers of secondary power likely to function as effective checks to central power...
...Hence the liberal model with its emphasis on the balanced interaction of different institutional orders found little favor in the new nations...
...Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure...
...by Carl Friedrich...
...Such mobilization, however, is a sine qua non of the totalitarian model...
...The forces likely to push toward one or the other model in the years immediately ahead can then be analyzed and an attempt made to assess the long-run chances for de mocracy...
...The Consequences of Underdevelopment By comparison with the West, all the new nations are "underdeveloped" economically...
...men tempered in the struggles and contentions of societies with rich and diversified group life, drawn toward each other in multifarious battles to realize their own goals, are less wont to rely on the tutelary power of the state...
...The totalitarian model may be considered the antithesis of the liberal model...
...They form a nation in each nation...
...Deprived of the support of non-governmental structures, the individual faces alone the immense tutelary power of the Party and State...
...Yet it seems true that while the day of reckoning may be postponed for a considerable period of time, in the long run such innovating authoritarian regimes will inevitably weaken the hold of traditional interests...
...Yet they will not try to dissolve the traditional family loyalties...
...11 Myrdal, op...
...14 For ideas developed in the next few pages I have borrowed considerably from a seminal paper by Professor Samuel N. Eisenstadt of the University of Jerusalem, "Soziale Entwicklung and Politische Stabilitaet in Nichtwestlichen Gesellschaften," Koelner Zeitschrift fuer Soziologie and Sozialpsychologie, XII, 2, 1960, pp...
...For atomized and isolated individuals are ready to rely on the immense tutelary power of a state which alone, so it seems to them, is able to provide the satisfactions they crave...
...Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954...
...There remains the authoritarian model...
...There are in addition, as in Pakistan or Burma, a number of mixed modernizing regimes embodying in greater or lesser degree traditional and innovating elements as well as civilian and military power, and maintaining these elements in an uneasy balance...
...Chapter XII...
...The underdevelopment of economic resources has significant consequences for the system of stratification...
...And hence the chance that, though it will attempt through programmatic planning to shorten the trials of development, it will at the same time resist the temptation of totalitarianism...
...A kind of vulgar Marxism has again become quite fashionable of late...
...They will react against the particularistic criteria emanating from the kinship order or the tribal structure and attempt to displace them with universalistic standards of judgment and performance...
...With gradual modernization, one can expect a gradual rise in education, living standards and the like, and this will remove a significant barrier to democracy...
...Much will depend on their intentions and on the ideology which informs them...
...Under such conditions direct governmental intervention could be kept at a minimum and broad policies replace detailed directives...
...But the correlation is not automatic, for in Europe democracy grew out of the resistance of various semi-autonomous communities, strata, and religious bodies to the absolutist state which had begun the process of modernization...
...They face two dangers: the rise of liberalism through a revival of the power of temporarily suppressed groups, and the establishment of a totalitarian regime through a Gleichschaltung of all orders and interests...
...These nations are not only underdeveloped in the economic but also in the political sense, since in none of them is there a sufficient degree of development of those key factors that are necessary for secure democratic systems (though in some, notably the Philippines, India and Ceylon, a number of favorable factors have al lowed approximations to Western democracy...
...Lacking an independent entrepreneurial middle class and its peculiar ethic, the new nations could not rely on unaided economic development...
...Integrating Individuals Yet once the power of the Indian princes, the Indonesian traditional aristocracy, the Ashanti chieftains in Northern Ghana or the emirs in Northern Nigeria has been broken, the new nations still face the problem of integrating individuals who have become freed from traditional allegiance and loyalties...
...The modernizing elites, in their efforts to create new collective symbols and a new source of legitimacy as well as a new economic and social structure, clash with traditional centers of power and prestige...
...The democratic socialist model is not discussed here because, as Marx foresaw, it has been approximated only in those nations which have already gone over the hump of development...
...1 Cf...
...3 b. The Totalitarian Model In comparing the liberal with the totalitarian model one can apply Max Weber's distinction between individual and collective appropriation of power.4 Individual appropriation takes place through conflict and competition among the members-at-large of those strata which have a legitimate claim to power...
...I shall describe three such models, the liberal, the totalitarian, and the authoritarian, and then discuss their applicability to the new nations...
...189-203...
...The chances for greater participation of non-governmental organizations in the modernizing process will increase if under authoritarian regimes there grows up a new social structure with an autonomous life of its own: modernizing rural cooperatives under the guidance of new members of the technical intelligentsia...
...Furthermore, in none of these countries has it been possible for the ruling elite to develop an indigenous ideology and a set of organizations strong enough to attract and hold men suddenly freed from the world of tradition...
...To the degree that conflicts between groups and orders mark the social life of authoritarian society—even though they may be channelled and partly directed— individuals have some chance to realize their non-political interests...
...I need hardly stress that considerations in regard to the cold war play an important role in this context...
...They will attempt to lay out economic plans and allocate resources according to criteria of economic development rather than in terms of profitability...
...Yet the European experience itself suggests no such easy generalizations...
...The best chances for democracy may sometimes clash with the optimum conditions for efficiency...
...Myrdal seems correct when he says that "even if they were willing, they would not be able to exert the fanatical discipline implicit in the Soviet system...
...New York: Oxford University Press, 1947, pp...
...Cut loose from traditional thought, troubled by a sense of national humiliation, intellectuals in fact have taken the lead in the movement toward independence and modernization...
...Consequently such societies do not exclude conflicts between the various orders or within them...
...The discrepancy in living standards between the elite and the rest of the population which characterizes underdeveloped nations will be an added incentive for joining the elite...
...In none of these countries have the strong centripetal tendencies of the ruling strata succeeded in breaking down the centrifugal pull of various types of traditional elites...
...All orders are interrelated and influence each other, yet each maintains a high degree of autonomy...
...Lowenthal so ably summarizes the attractions of Communist totalitarianism for underdeveloped countries that I shall quote him at length: In its Stalinist form, the Communist ideology has been specifically adjusted to deal with the problems of forced modernization...
...it may even tend to dominate it...
...Social forces are no longer antagonistic, the various interests are no longer diversified...
...They must attempt to legitimize secular power, even giving it a "sacral" character, so as to free the polity from control by traditional powerholders and representatives of the religious order...
...Yet he can escape from the public scene into the relative autonomy of an uncontrolled private life...
...The liberal model has no chance of institutionalization in the underdeveloped countries, if for no other reason than that economic development will require an amount of deliberate centralized planning which is incompatible with liberalism...
...See also James S. Coleman, Nigeria, Background to Nationalism...
...The state claimed primacy during situations of emergency or stress, but in the ordinary course of events limited its impact on the other orders...
...They are intent upon introducing the rational techniques of the West while preserving what they consider viable in native tradition...
...As citizens are drawn into such conflicts they increase their own political awareness and participation...
...Liberal society was criss-crossed by many conflicts and antagonisms between, as well as within, institutional orders...
...Those who are moved only by considerations of efficiency and consider that only neat and orderly arrangements are likely to permit the new nations to emerge from the sloth of traditional stagnation, are likely to find my suggestions rather unappealing...
...indeed, their pressures are mutually reinforcing...
...New York: Meridian Books, 1958...
...society is integrated by fiat of the State...
...i. e., the steeper the stratification pyramid...
...Yet they will not break with the religious agents or attempt fully to control the religious sphere...
...Tocqueville knew this well when he wrote, "In proportion as the duties of the central power are augmented, the number of public officials by whom that power is represented must increase also...
...A multiplicity of associations, a pluralism of power centers, whose diverse purposes criss-cross each other, help to prevent the atomization on which totalitarianism has always thrived...
...Authoritarian regimes will attempt to mobilize the citizen in the pursuit of their political goals, yet they will not obliterate the distinction between the public and the private sphere—they will leave the latter relatively untouched...
...Three "ideal typical" models of social integration, derived from a variety of concrete instances, will be outlined...
...They may hesitate before the application of terroristic means for the extraction of surplus labor from the peasantry...
...Wherever this is the case, the democrat must be willing to sacrifice optimum efficiency...
...5 Totalitarian societies destroy traditional social groups, communities or self-conscious classes and then replace them by new units which are subject to coordination and control by State and Party...
...New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1955...
...139-48 and 245-50...
...Not only are the poor in underdeveloped countries poorer in absolute terms than those of the West, but they are relatively poorer within their own class system...
...Irving Howe and Lewis A. Coser, The American Communist Party, Boston: Beacon Press, 1957, pp...
...6 Hence the urge to develop the country so as to reap the fruits of industrialization, raise national product, and reduce inequalities becomes well nigh irresistible in underdeveloped nations which have broken from traditional moorings...
...In authoritarian societies the military order is typically somewhat independent of the political order...
...1. Three Societal Models The difficulty inherent in the fact that political systems differ in a great many ways, so that comparison seems almost an impossible task, can best be overcome by constructing theoretical models against which particular units can be measured...
...in other instances, as in Ghana, Guinea, or Tunisia, a civilian intelligentsia, skilled in methods of mass propaganda, has succeeded in appropriating the governmental apparatus and has used mass parties built around a charismatic leader as an effective counterweight to the traditional forces...
...Moreover, with the growth of modern mass communication and transportation, the poor of the underdeveloped countries increasingly have occasion to compare their lot with that of the population of the developed countries of the West...
...We must ask bluntly what are the chances that a democratic polity can ultimately win over authoritarian and totalitarian politics...
...Since entrepreneurial middle classes have hardly developed in these nations, and the traditionalistic leaders have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, the partly Westernized intelligentsia is likely to take the lead...
...What has been said about the relations between the various institutional orders in liberal society applies even more strongly to relations within these orders themselves...
...He is cribbed and confined by agents of the political order...
...Traditional Interests Weakened In practice, then, whether by design or force of circumstance, the authoritarian regimes in the new nations will not be able in the immediate future to coordinate the various institutional orders...
...David E. Apter, The Gold Coast in Transition...
...If the universalistic criteria which are a precondition for industrial development were to prevail, the particularism of the kinship order and the non-rational taboos of religious tradition had to be broken down...
...Recent developments in Toure's Guinea are instructive in this respect...
...6 Cf...
...But as the checks on power that can be exercised by traditional elements decrease, so do the chances for a drift totward totalitarian regimes increase...
...i. e., to the extent that they limit recruitment of new personnel from the outside, there is a danger of the creation of strata of disappointed office seekers...
...Since only power can effectively check power, democracy requires the presence of secondary groups and associations which can be nodal points of power interposing themselves between the individual and the state...
...The gradual development of a "Protestant" work ethic and a peculiar pattern of repression and self-control has been a precondition for the development of capitalist industrialism in the West...
Vol. 10 • January 1963 • No. 1
