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Workers' Councils and Political Stratification: The Yugoslav Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Sidney Verba  and
Goldie Shabad
Sidney Verba
Affiliation:
Harvard University
Goldie Shabad
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
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Abstract

Many students of citizen participation claim that one solution to the problem of political inequality in liberal democracies lies in the establishment of direct participatory channels in decentralized socioeconomic and political institutions similar to those found in Yugoslavia. Others argue that the availability of participatory channels in the workplace leads to the domination of these channels by a technocratic elite. Still other students of participation in Yugoslavia claim that participatory channels are dominated by the political elite, the League of Communists.

In this paper, we examine this set of conflicting hypotheses by using data which come from an extensive survey of participatory activities in four Yugoslav republics. Our findings are consistent with the interpretation that workers' councils open channels for a more technocratically oriented participation. When it comes to other kinds of activity, affiliation with the League is more important than socioeconomic or professional status in determining who participates. But because League members come disproportionately from upper-status groups, there is not a marked difference in the extent to which membership in workers' councils and participation in other kinds of activity are biased in favor of the advantaged segments of Yugoslav society. In each case, but for different reasons, it is the upper-status citizen who is likely to be active.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 72 , Issue 1 , March 1978 , pp. 80 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1978

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References

1 See, for example, Blumberg, Paul, Industrial Democracy: The Sociology of Participation (New York: Schocken, 1968)Google Scholar; Dahl, Robert A., After the Revolution. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Garson, G. David and Case, John, eds., Workers' Control. (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), pp. 268–321Google Scholar; Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Denitch, Bogdan, “Notes on the Relevance of Yugoslav Self-Management,” Politics and Society, 3 (Summer 1973), 473–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For official views and discussion of Yugoslav self-management, see Socialist Thought and Practice, a journal published in Belgrade.

2 Numerous articles and books deal with the first three questions. See the bibliography in Shabad, Goldie, “Participatory Democracy: The Case of Yugoslavia” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1976)Google Scholar.

3 See Verba, Sidney and Nie, Norman H., Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. (New York: Harper & Row, 1972)Google Scholar, Chs. 1 and 8; and Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H. and Kim, Jae-on, Participation and Political Equality: A Seven Nation Comparison. (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

4 Verba and Nie, Chs. 11 and 12.

5 Verba, Nie and Kim, Chs. 4 and 9.

6 Numerous writers have argued that opportunities to participate in the private sphere provide the training and skills to participate politically. See, for example, Cole, G. D. H., Guild Socialism Restated. (London: Leonard Parsons, 1920)Google Scholar; Inkeles, Alex, “Participant Citizenship in Six Developing Nations,” The American Political Science Review, 63 (December 1969), 1120–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Pateman, Chs. 4 and 5. For a discussion of these issues which uses the same data upon which this analysis is based, see Goldie Shabad.

7 See Dunn, W. N., “Ideology and Organization in Socialist Yugoslavia; Modernization and the Obsolescence of Praxis,” Newsletter on Comparative Studies of Communism, 5 (August 1972), 21–56Google Scholar; Parkin, Frank, “Class Stratification in Socialist Societies,” British Journal of Sociology, 20 (December 1969), 361CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Radoyanovic, Miroslav, “Contemporary Yugoslav Society in Conflict with Itself,” International Journal of Sociology, 2 (Winter 1972–1973), 428Google Scholar; Zukin, Sharon, Beyond Marx and Tito: Theory and Practice in Yugoslav Socialism. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For a discussion of the economic reforms and their political consequences, see Neal, Fred Warner and Fisk, Winston M., “Yugoslavia Towards Market Socialism,” Problems of Communism, 25 (November-December 1966), 28–37Google Scholar; and Russinow, Dennison I., “Laissez-Faire Socialism in Yugoslavia,” American Universities Field Staff Reports, 14 (September 1967), 1–19Google Scholar.

9 The criteria for membership in workers' councils and for the League of Communists need not be incompatible with each other. The role of “citizenproducer” and the importance of productive work are central to the League's ideology.

10 These data were gathered as part of the Cross-National Program in Political Participation and Social Change, directed by Sidney Verba, Norman H. Nie and Jae-on Kim. The study was conducted in collaboration with Jan F. Triska of the Institute of Political Studies of Stanford University, and with Ana Barbie, Katja Boh, Dmitir Mircev, Pavle Novosel and Luba Stoic under the auspices of the Institute of Sociology and Philosophy in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia. The data were analyzed with the support of grant GS3155 of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

Here we will report only those findings based on the combined sample of all four republics. We are well aware that Yugoslavia is an extremely heterogeneous society and that there are major ethnic, cultural and economic differences among the four republics sampled in our survey. A previous analysis of these data, however, indicates that many of the overall patterns concerning the various kinds of participation that we find based on all four republics combined, were found in each of the four republics as well. See Sidney Verba and Goldie Shabad, “Workers' Councils and Political Stratification: The Yugoslav Experience” (paper presented at the 1975 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association), Appendix I.

11 The commune is the basic socio-political unit in Yugoslavia. Each is approximately the size of a county in the United States.

12 Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H., Barbie, Ana, Irwin, Galen, Molleman, Henk and Shabad, Goldie, “The Modes of Participation: Continuities in Research,” Comparative Political Studies, 6 (July 1973), 235–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Verba, Sidney, Nie, Norman H. and Kim, Jae-on, The Modes of Democratic Participation: A Cross-National Comparison, Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics 01–013, 1971, pp. 15–44Google Scholar.

14 Analysis of the occupational composition of the three activist types show a similar pattern of greater upper-status bias in relation to workers' self-management activity than in relation to other kinds of activity. Skilled workers are more likely to be workers' council members than unskilled workers; and highly educated white collar employees are more likely to be workers' council activists than more poorly educated white collar employees. A single exception to the greater bias of workers' self-management in comparison with other kinds of activity is the greater overrepresentation of skilled blue-collar workers among workers' council members than among other activist types. In this sense, workers' councils do provide a participatory opportunity for a group that would otherwise be relatively inactive in politics. See Verba and Shabad, pp. 32–36; and Shabad, Ch. 5.

Data gathered over two decades indicate that the bias of workers' council activity towards the better educated white collar employee is increasing dramatically, especially since the introduction of the 1965 economic reforms. See Shabad, Ch. 8.

15 See Garson, p. 36; Parkin, 364.

16 If we distinguish regular political activists according to their degree of activity, we find that within the eligible population, those who engage in high amounts of regular political activity are more likely to be League members than are workers' council members. See Verba and Shabad, pp. 39–46, for a more detailed analysis of the relationship between party affiliation and participation.

17 The Socialist Alliance is a mass organization of over 8 million members. While League members as well as nonmembers belong to the Socialist Alliance, it accepts the basic premises of the League and its leadership come primarily from League members.

18 This is not to say, however, that nonmembers do not participate. Their participation rate is, nevertheless, substantially lower than that of Alliance or League members. See Triska, Jan F. and Barbie, Ana, “Evaluating Citizen Performance on the Community Level: Does Party Affiliation in Yugoslavia Make a Difference?” (unpublished paper, 1975)Google Scholar.

19 Looking at the same data in a somewhat different way, 2 percent of those low on our socioeconomic scale are four of the League, while 26 percent of those in the top third of the scale are League members.

20 The variables on the vertical axis in Figure 1 and Figures 2, 3 and 4 are not equivalent in the absolute sense, but they do allow us to highlight the different ways in which the two forces–socioeconomic resources and institutional recruitment–interact in relation to regular political activity, political self-government and participation in workers' councils.

21 For further analysis of differences in political attitudes among the various participant groups, see Shabad, Ch. 9.

22 Other possible responses were to serve in the armed forces and to act in a moral way.

23 See footnote 14.

24 See Tanic, Zivan, “Social Composition of Workers' Councils in Yugoslavia,” Indian Journal of Industrial Relations, 3 (July 1967), 27Google Scholar; “The Composition and Some Aspects of the Activity of Self-Management Bodies in Enterprises,” Yugoslav Survey, 14 (November 1973), 22Google Scholar.

25 For a discussion of the impact of class-based organization on political inequality in other countries, see Verba, Nie and Kim, Participation and Political Equality. See also, Shabad, Ch. 8.

26 Many Yugoslav social scientists have argued that the absence of autonomous trade unions serves to reinforce the bias of workers' councils toward highly skilled and professional workers. See Arzensek, Vladimir, “A ‘Conflict Model’ and the Structure of Yugoslav Society,” International Journal of Sociology, 2 (Winter 1972–1973), 364–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zupanov, Josip, “Employees' Participation and Social Power in Industry,” Participation and Self-Management, Vol. I (First International Sociological Conference on Participation and Self-Management: Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, December, 1972), 33–40Google Scholar. For data concerning the relationship among union membership, socioeconomic status and membership in workers' councils, see Shabad, Ch. 8.

27 For a discussion of the impact of class-based ideologies on political inequality in other countries, see Verba, Nie and Kim, Participation and Political Equality Stratification. For a discussion of this issue in relation to Yugoslavia, see Adizes, Woodward, and Shabad.

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