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Institutionalization and Political Development: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Gabriel Ben-Dor
Gabriel Ben-Dor
Affiliation:
University of Haifa
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Extract

In recent years, institutionalization has become one of the key concepts in comparative politics in general, and in the study of political development in particular. This elegant and almost geometrically tidy theory of political order best articulated by Huntington has been acclaimed as a major new school, one that will be able perhaps to narrow what La Palombara called the ‘widening chasm’ between ‘macrotheories and microapplications in comparative politics’. Indeed, Huntington in his book attempted to apply his theoretical tenets to the analysis of such important phenomena as military intervention in politics, corruption and violence, all this via the usage of a few major variables. In the notoriously slippery field of theorizing in comparative politics, this constituted a welcome influx of fresh air. No wonder, then, that Huntington's theory and concepts have been widely prevalent and frequently referred to—again a relative innovation in the easy-come-easy-go world of theories in the study of political development.

Type
Political Institutions and Social Policy
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , July 1975 , pp. 309 - 325
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1975

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References

1 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968),Google Scholar and the earlier theoretical formulation in his ‘Political Development and Political Decay’, World Politics XVII (04 1965).Google Scholar

2 See the reviews by Bayley, David H., in the Annals of the American Academy, 382 (03 1969);Google ScholarWallerstein, Immanuel, in the American Journal of Sociology, XXXV (11 1969), 440–1;CrossRefGoogle ScholarRustow, Dankwart A., in the Journal of International Affairs XVIII (1, 1969);Google ScholarZolberg, Aristide R. in the Midwest Journal of Political Science XIII3 (08 1969);Google ScholarBendix, Reinhard in Political Science Quarterly, LXXXVII3 (03 1971).Google Scholar Wallerstein's review is the most critical one. For a thoughtful and perceptive evaluation see Baxter, Donald J., The Notion of Institutionalization in Political Development: A Concept Mauled(Paper delivered at the 44th annual meeting of the Southern Political Science Association,Atlanta, Georgia,November 2–4, 1972).Google Scholar

3 LaPalombara, Joseph, ‘Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Politics: A Widening Chasm’, Comparative Politics I (10 1968).Google Scholar

4 Apter, David E., Some Conceptual Approaches to the Study of Modernization (Englewood Cliffs, 1968);Google ScholarRiggs, Fred W., ‘The Theory of Political Development’ in Charlesworth, James C. (ed.), Contemporary Political Analysis (New York, 1967);Google ScholarPackenham, Robert A., ‘Approaches to the Study of Political Development’, World Politics, XVII/1 (10 1964);Google ScholarWillner, Ann Ruth, ‘The Underdeveloped Study of Political Development’, World Politics, XVI (04 1964).Google Scholar

5 Huntington, , Political Order, p. 12Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 31.

7 Ibid., p. 12.

8 Ibid., p. 194.

9 Ibid., p. 64.

10 Ibid., p. 71.

11 On this see Baxter's useful remarks in his The Notion of Institutionalization, passim. A number of scholars attempt to utilize the concept, but only in an intuitive and unsystematic way, e.g., Urwin, Derek W., ‘Social Cleavages and Political Parties in Belgium: Problems of Institutionalization’, Political Studies XVIII/1 (03 1970).Google Scholar

12 Huntington, , Political Order, p. 12.Google Scholar

13 For an excellent brief discussion on the differences between behavioral and structural variables see Eckstein, Harry, ‘On the Etiology of Internal Wars,’ in Mazlish, Bruce et al. (eds.), Revolution (New York, 1971), pp. 31–4.Google Scholar

14 Feit, Edward, ‘Pen, Sword and People: Military Regimes in the Formation of Political Institutions’, World Politics, XXV (01 1973), p. 251. Italics in the original.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 252.

16 Ibid.

17 Kesselman, Mark, ‘Overinstitutionalization and Political Constraint: The Case of France’, Comparative Politics II/l (10 1970), p. 25.Google Scholar

18 Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., ‘Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework’, American Political Science Review, 57 (1963);CrossRefGoogle Scholaridem, ‘Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review 56 (12 1962).Google Scholar

19 Cf. Halpern, Manfred, ‘The Rate and Costs of Political Development’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 358 (03 1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 According to S. N. Eisenstadt, the ‘most crucial test of modernization is the ability to maintain “sustained” growth in the major institutional spheres and to develop an institutional structure capable of absorbing such changes with relatively few eruptions and breakdowns’. ‘Breakdowns of Modernization’, in Finkle, Jason L. and Gable, Richard W. (eds.), Political Development and Social Change (New York, 1966), p. 574.Google Scholar the basic institutional patterns of the political system are challenged and routine response is inadequate … and some new institutionalized means of handling problems of that sort is required to satisfy the discontent’. Verba, , ‘Sequences and Development’, in Binder, Leonard et al. (eds.), Crises and Sequences in Political Development (Princeton, 1971), p. 302.Google Scholar

21 Huntington, , Political Order, pp. 13–17.Google Scholar

22 Cf. Halpern, Manfred, ‘The Revolution of Modernization in National and International Society’, Revolution (Nomos VIII) (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

23 See also Rustow, p. 127; Halpern, Manfred, ‘Toward Further Modernization of the Study of New Nations’, World Politics XVII (10 1964).Google Scholar

24 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 26.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.

26 Thus, the good of the Soviet Union may require the passing away of a given party or organ in order to give way to new institutions that can effectively cope with problems that the older institutions (built in a different era in response to different problems) cannot optimally deal with, notwithstanding the criteria of ‘adaptability’ in Huntington's formulation of institutionalization’.

27 Huntington, , Political Order, p. 12.Google Scholar

28 On this, see also Baxter, pp. 22–4.

29 Huntington, , Political Order, p. 24.Google Scholar

30 Verba, Sidney, ‘Comparative Political Cultures’, in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, (eds), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, 1965);Google ScholarAlmond, Gabriel A. and Verba, , The Civil Culture (Princeton, 1963), passim.Google Scholar

31 E.g., Pye, , ‘Political Culture and Political Development’ in Pye, and Verba, , p. 22.Google Scholar

32 Political Order in Changing Societies, pp. 28–32.Google Scholar

33 Ibid., p. 32.

34 Huntington, , Political Order, p. 12–24, analysed at length in Baxter, pp. 17–21.Google Scholar

35 Kesselman, p. 23.

36 On the ensuing problems see Ben-Dor, Gabriel, ‘Corruption, Institutionalization and Political Development: The Revisionist Theses Revisited’, Comparative Political Studies, VII (04 1974).Google Scholar

37 Hudson, Michael C., ‘Conditions of Political Violence and Instability: A Preliminary Text of Three Hypotheses’, Sage Professional Papers in Comparative Politics, I, 5 (1970), pp. 282–3.Google Scholar

38 Schneider, Peter R. and Schneider, Ann L., ‘Social Mobilization, Political Insitutions and Political Violence: A Cross-National Analysis’, Comparative Political Studies IV/1 (04 1971), quoted by Baxter, pp. 26–7.Google Scholar

39 Baxter, p. 27.

40 Huntington, , Political Order, pp. 12–22. Kesselman (p. 23) suggests subsuming the four features into two: complexity and adaptability as one, and coherence and autonomy as the second. Other than for purposes of parsimony, there seems to be no compelling evidence for such an approach either.Google Scholar

41 Political Order, pp. 12–17.Google Scholar

42 Cf. Zoiberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: The Party States of West Africa (Chicago, 1967).Google Scholar

43 Baxter, p. 12

44 Huntington, , Political Order, pp. 17–22.Google Scholar

45 As articulated, inter alia, in Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, Bingham, Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach (Boston, 1966).Google Scholar For remarks on this, see Nettl, J. Peter, Political Mobilization (New York, 1962), especially Chap. 3.Google Scholar

46 Kesselman ‘Overinstitutionalization and Political Constraint’. Kesselman also utilized a rather vague notion of ‘effectiveness of interest groups’ (p. 28). Organizations are numbered absolutely and per capita. For difficulties in applying earlier conceptions of institutionalization, see Finer, Samuel E., The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (London, 1962).Google Scholar For difficulties in applying the notion of institutionalization to the study of military intervention, see Ben-Dor, Gabriel, ‘The Politics of Threat: Military Intervention in the Middle East’, Journal of Political and Military Sociology I (Spring 1973).Google Scholar

47 Kesselman, p. 24.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid., pp. 24–7, 43–4.

50 Ben-Dor ‘Corruption, Institutionalization and Political Development’.

51 See, for instance, the case of Israel in: Arian, Alan, The Choosing People (Cleveland, 1972), Chap. 8.Google Scholar

52 Kesselman, p. 26. If read in this perspective, many valuable additional insights can be obtained from Nettl, J. Peter, ‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, World Politics, XX/41 (07 1968);Google Scholaridem, Political Mobilization, Chaps. 5–6, and Lipset, Seymour M. and Rokkan, Stein, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Lipset, and Rokkan, (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York, 1968).Google Scholar

53 This formulation is taken from Kesselman, p. 25.

54 Ben-Dor, ‘Corruption, Institutionalization and Political Development’.

55 Huntington, ‘Political Development and Political Decay’. The opening chapter of his book (published three years later) based on this article is entitled ‘Political Order and Political Decay’.

56 See Ben-Dor, ‘Corruption, Institutionalization and Political Development’.

57 Political Order, pp. 137–8.Google Scholar

58 As mentioned in note 55; Huntington's article originally published in 1965 was entitled ’Political Development and Political Decay’ while the book published in 1968 opens with a more or less identical chapter entitled ‘Political Order and Political Decay’.

59 See Butwell, Richard (ed.), Foreign Policy and the Developing Nation (Lexington, Kentucky, 1969),Google Scholar and especially Packenham, Robert A. ‘Political Development Doctrines in the American Foreign Aid Program’, World Politics XVIII (01 1966).Google Scholar

60 Cf. Bienen, Henry, ‘What Does Political Development Mean in Africa?’, World Politics XX/1 (10 1967).Google Scholar

61 This term is taken from Clement Moore, Henry, ‘On Theory and Practice Among Arabs’, World Politics XXIV (10 1971).Google Scholar

62 Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order (Chicago, 1966).Google Scholar

63 Bachrach and Baratz, ‘Decisions and Non-Decisions’.

64 Welfling, Mary B., Political Institutionalization: Comparative Analyses of African Party Systems (Sage Professional Paper in Comparative Politics, No. 01–041, Beverly Hills, 1973), p. 13.Google Scholar

65 In the sense defined and used in Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, (Chicago, 1962).Google Scholar

66 Cf. LaPalombara, ‘Macrotheories and Microapplications in Comparative Polities’.

67 Nettl offers an interesting explanation of stability and instability in developing countries, somewhat parallel to Huntington's approach, although he utilizes ‘state’ and ‘legitimacy’ instead of ‘institution’ and ‘being valued’ on the macro level: ‘The very instability of governments in developing countries suggests that the competition for norms is very strong. A State could, therefore, develop only if a politically supported regime remains in power for a considerable time and is able to transpose its own norms across the high threshold of time and internalization of legitimacy into a situation of stateness, within which interests can eventually be articulated and institutionalized by cleavage structures. All the current evidence from the third world is to the contrary; the political area of normlessness is large and evident, and hence the possibility of developing states of the European type in today's new nations seems remote.’ (‘The State as a Conceptual Variable’, p. 589).

68 Needless to say, this does not mean that these two levels ought to be far apart. To the contrary, adequate linkages between them are crucially important and they remain one of the most important challenges of theorizing in comparative politics. (See La Palombara, ‘Macrotheories and Microapplications’) as well as in the study of international relations. (On this see, for instance, Singer, J. David, ‘The Level of Analysis Problem in International Relations’, in Knorr, Klaus and Verba, Sidney (eds.), The International System: Theoretical Essays (Princeton, 1961)).Google Scholar