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A Plea for a Genuine ‘Micro-political’ Analysis in Political Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Jean Blondel
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Government and Opposition , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , 2010 , pp. 553 - 578
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2010.

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References

1 Merriam, C. E., Private and Public Government, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1944 Google Scholar, quoted in Lakoff, S. A. (ed.), Private Government, Glenview, IL, Scott, Foresman and Co, 1973, pp. 10–11 Google Scholar.

2 Easton, D., The Political System, New York, Knopf, 1953, pp. 126ff. Google Scholar

3 Tsebelis, G., Nested Games, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1990, p. 6 Google Scholar.

4 The question seems to arise in connection with policy analysis, which is often regarded as being part of what could be described as the political science ‘domain’. For an endeavour to find a distinction in this respect, see Genieys, W. and myrl, M. S, Elites, Ideas, and the Evolution of Public Policy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, especially at pp. 42–5Google Scholar.

5 Goodin, R. and Klingemann, H. D. (eds), The New Handbook of Political Science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 7 Google Scholar.

6 Goodin, R. (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Science, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009 Google Scholar.

7 Lasswell, H. and Kaplan, A., Power and Society, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1952 Google Scholar.

8 Goodin and Klingemann,The New Handbook, p. 8. On the other hand, S. B. Bacharach and E. J. Lawler, Power and Politics in Organizations, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1980, p. 2, emphasize the link between power and politics and claim that what is political in organizations is that power is being used frequently, contrary to what, in their opinion, many sociologists of organizations appear to believe.

9 Steiner, J., Amicable Agreement v. Majority Rule, English edn, Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1974 Google Scholar.

10 Ostrom, E., Governing the Commons, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Rhodes, R. A. W., Binder, S. A. and Rockman, B. A. (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, 2008, pp. 22–38 Google Scholar.

12 Tsebelis, Nested Games, p. 6.

13 Ibid.

14 Tsebelis, Nested Games, p. 11.

15 W. Riker, The Art of Political Manipulation, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1986.

16 Ibid. In the New Handbook of Political Science, B. R. Weingast examines ‘Political Institutions: Rational Choice Perspectives’ (pp. 167–90) and specifically analyses endogenous institutions. Yet he does not account for the very existence of institutions. He merely suggests that ‘[b]ecause institutions limit the flexibility of decision-makers, it must be in the interest of actors to abide by the limits imposed by institutions’ (p. 175). It seems as if institutions are set up by some kind of deus ex machina and that what the (impotent) actors can only do in this respect is to ‘abide by the limits imposed by institutions’!

17 Rhodes et al., Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions, pp. 23–38 especially at p. 24.

18 This is not quite so of G. Doron and I. Sened, whose Political Bargaining (London, Sage, 2001) is markedly more sensitive, in the early pages of the work, to the problems of cooperation than are the statements of many rational choice analysts. There is subsequently a return to the more classical rational choice value judgements about selfish attitudes and the fact that ‘cooperative game theory is ill-suited to the study of some bargaining problem’ (p. 28). There are however occasional returns to a more realistic(and less selfish) approach to these problems (at p. 60, for instance).

19 There are of course constituting meetings of groups, but the body which is set up as a result is regarded as being a lasting one, except for what is the very special case of fleeting and evanescent developments, such as those resulting from crowds following a self-appointed leader.

20 Members are not necessarily permanently actors or non-actors. The case of partial actors is discussed in the third section of this article.

21 As is well-known, turnout does pose a problem since the vote of any individual is unlikely to have any effect at all on the result. The only case in which it can be rational to expect an effect is if there is collusion by a significant number who decide formally to vote tactically.

22 The ordinary electors are in reality not actors, even if they eventually vote, for the reason mentioned in the previous note.

23 It is well-known, for instance, that the state has difficulty in implementing its decisions in some parts of the world, for instance in parts of Latin America and of Africa.

24 Hirschman, A. O., Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1970 Google ScholarPubMed.

25 Especially The Politics of the Developing Areas (with J. S. Coleman), Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1960, and Comparative Politics (with G. B. Powell), Boston, MA, Little, Brown, 1966.

26 La Palombara, J., ‘Parsimony and Empiricism in Comparative Politics’, in Holt, R. T. and Turner, J. E. (eds), The Methodology of Comparative Research, New York, Free Press, 1969, pp. 123–49Google Scholar.

27 Tsebelis, G., Veto Players, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 M. S. Shugart and J. M. Carey, Presidents and Assemblies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992. The authors introduced two further categories of presidentialism, those of premier-presidential and president-parliamentary, but these did not solve the problem which results from the differences among the formal powers and the effective use of these powers by the presidents within each of these categories.

29 For instance, R. Elgie has provided a comprehensive examination of all the cases of presidents elected by universal suffrage in Europe in Semi-presidentialism in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.

30 The Italian president is not elected by universal suffrage and yet plays a significant part in the political process of the country, not just in relation to the decision to dissolve or not to dissolve the chambers but in a more routine fashion, in particular in relation to decrees drafted by the government.

31 Rhodes et al. The Oxford Handbook, pp. 323–43, especially at pp. 325–6.

32 It can be argued that political science was developed as a top-down discipline, in the sense that what has counted from the start has been what occurred at the level of monarchs, presidents, governments and parliaments and not what happened at lower levels. The converse has been true for economics.

33 American political science is to an extent an exception, although, even there, psychological investigations undertaken by political scientists are in a rather small minority.

34 This is plainly stated in G. Lindzey and E. Aronson, ‘Preface to the Fourth Edition’, in Handbook of Political Psychology, 4th edn, 1998, pp. xi–xii.

35 ‘Group theory’ at the beginning of the twentieth century did alter the balance since groups were regarded as being more important than individuals. Yet the old suspicion of groups does remain: indeed, in the book on Private Government edited by S. Lakoff, published in 1973, many negative comments against groups are made throughout the volume. This is the case in particular in a key article at the outset, ‘Public and Private Government’, by G. McConnell (pp. 16–41) reproduced from a volume published in 1966, in which strong attacks are made against private groups. That paper ends by stating: ‘The record of private associations in dealing with these problems [of politics] gives little justification for the wishful view that the private association is the natural home of democracy’ (p. 41).

36 The argument in favour of the role of ‘great men’ is made cogently in Hook, S., The Hero in History, Boston, Beacon Press, 1955 Google Scholar.

37 Economics has also been moving towards giving appreciably more importance to psychological characteristics.

38 Olson, M., The Logic of Collective Action, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1965 Google Scholar.

39 Baron, R. S., Kerr, N. L. and Miller, N., Group Process, Group Decision, Group Action, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1992 Google Scholar.

40 Finer, S. E., Anonymous Empire, London, Pall Mall, 1958 Google Scholar.

41 Tarrow, S., in Power in Movement, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994 Google Scholar, distinguishes sharply the case of members of movements from those of protective groups from the point of view of the opportunity or desire of group members to be free riders.

42 Batson, C. D., ‘Altruism and Prosocial Behavior’, in The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th edn, 1998, vol. 2, Columbus, OH, McGraw-Hill, 1998, pp. 282–316 Google Scholar.

43 As was alluded to earlier, there are sub-units, in states and also in other groups. These sub-units are likely to have limited goals and thus tend to have the same characteristics as lower-level groups.

44 A general analysis of coalitions is indeed undertaken in a paper on ‘Understanding Organizations’ by J. Pfeffer in The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th edn, vol. 2, pp. 733–77. See also a paper on ‘Small Groups’ by J. M. Levine and R. L. Moreland in the same Handbook, pp. 415–69.

45 Baron et al. Group Process, pp. 117–19.

46 Ibid., p. 118.

47 Ibid.

48 R. F. Baumeister, ‘The Self’, in The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th edn, vol. 1, pp. 680–740, at p. 689.

49 An example may be the ‘revolution’ which occurred among the shareholders of the Channel Tunnel which led to the ousting of the existing board.