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The Institutional Myth: Huntington's Order Revisited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Alexander J. Groth
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Extract

Among influential writers in the field of political development and comparative politics in the last two decades few have excelled Samuel P. Huntington. With a prudent economy of basic concepts, Huntington has addressed a variety of political problems in many different kinds of societies. His work has been germane to the issues of power and morality, revolution, stability, violence, corruption, participation, and, above all, the political implications of social change. In a challenging and encyclopedic manner, Huntington has managed to relate his ideas to the experiences of Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States, enriching the conceptual insights of diverse area specialists and providing interesting theoretical linkages for seemingly very different and singular social and political worlds. Acknowledging all this, one nevertheless may (and this writer would say “must”) question the basic premise of Huntington's understanding of politics: both theoretically and practically.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 1979 , pp. 203 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1979

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References

1 See Kenski, Henry C. and Kenski, Margaret C., “Teaching Political Development at American Colleges and Universities,” Western Political Quarterly, 28 (1975) 567–578CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The author wishes to express appreciation for the helpful comments and suggestions of his colleagues, Richard Gable, Donald Rothchild, and Larry Wade.

In a survey carried out in May 1973, the authors discovered that Huntington's Political Order in Changing Societies was the most widely used text in political development courses (mentioned by 57.6 percent of faculty respondents as compared with 26.5 percent for Almond, and Powell, , Comparative Politics [Boston, 1966]Google Scholar in second place [Table 4]). Among approaches cited as useful by respondents, Huntington's was mentioned by most (59.4 percent [Table 5]).

See also Mayer, Lawrence C., Comparative Political Inquiry (Homewood, 1972), chap. 12, pp. 248–272Google Scholar; Bill, James A. and Hardgrave, Robert L. Jr, Comparative Politics: The Quest for Theory (Columbus, 1973), chap. 2, pp. 43–83Google Scholar; and Merkl, Peter H., Modern Comparative Politics, 2nd ed. (Hinsdale, 1977)Google Scholar.

2 Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968), p. 461Google Scholar.

3 See particularly O'Brien, Donal C., “Modernization, Order and the Erosion of a Democratic Ideal: American Political Science 1960–1970,” Journal of Development Studies (1972), 351Google Scholar, 378.

4 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 12.

5 See, for example, Hill, Larry B., “Institutionalization, The Ombudsman, and Bureaucracy,” American Political Science Review, 68 (1974), 1075–1085CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on one such attempt to employ Huntington's criteria in the study of organization. See also Putnam, Robert D., “Toward Explaining Military Intervention in Latin American Politics,” World Politics, 20 (1976), 83–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 15.

7 Ibid., p. 13.

8 Ibid., p. 14. This critique addresses not the whole corpus of Huntington's writing, but the issues of organization and institutionalization most explicitly and thoroughly laid out by Huntington in the 1968 work mentioned above. Among his other contributions, developing the themes of Political Order in Changing Societies, have been The Soldier and the State (Cambridge, 1957)Google Scholar; “Political Development and Political Decay,” World Politics, 17 (1965), 386–430CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “The Change to Change: Modernization, Development and Politics,” Comparative Politics, 3 (1971), 283–322CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Huntington's, subsequent work, particularly “Postindustrial Politics: How Benign Will It Be?” Comparative Politics, 6 (1974), 163–191CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reflected a more pessimistic outlook on Western stability than did his earlier works, but the institutional myth remained unaltered.

9 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 17.

10 Ibid., p. 11.

11 Ibid., p. 10.

12 Ibid., p. 24. Praising institutions, Huntington, cites Rousseau to the effect that “the strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into might and obedience into duty” (p. 9)Google Scholar

13 Ibid., p. 28.

14 Ibid., p. 31. Describing organization, Huntington, says “the greater the number and variety of subunits the greater the ability of the organization to secure and maintain the loyalties of its members” (p. 18)Google Scholar. Among contradictions which come to mind, one wonders if this proposition would characterize correctly the evolution of, say, the CIA in recent years.

15 See, for example, the conclusions of Allison, Graham T. in The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, 1971)Google Scholar. Allison, , among other things, tells us that the “parochial priorities and perceptions” of organizations “do not facilitate accurate information or estimation” of situations which, like war, confront whole societies (p. 262)Google Scholar.

16 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 15. For Huntington an organization which has lost its original function (s) but found new one(s) is “adaptable.” It could also be parasitical, of course, and “dysfunctional” for the rest of society, but Huntington does not seem to be aware of such a possibility.

17 Ibid., p. 25.

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Was Thomas Jefferson right when he wrote that the “judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners working underground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. … To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy”? (Padover, S.K., ed., Democracy by Thomas Jefferson [New York, 1939], pp. 97–98)Google Scholar. If Jefferson was right, then perhaps John Marshall's career did not serve the public interest? See also Schubert, Glendon, The Public Interest (Glencoe, 1960)Google Scholar, who concludes that the concept “makes no operational sense, notwithstanding the efforts of a generation of capable scholars” (p. 296). Compare Flatham, Richard B., The Public Interest (New York, 1966)Google Scholar, who believes that public interest is a “standard or norm [which] exists and can be described [and] is taken seriously at least by some” (p. 193). The discussion of the book, however, turns on moral principles and logical inferences, not institutions or organizations.

21 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 261.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid., p. 27.

24 See Friedrich, Carl J. and Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy (New York, 1963), pp. 37–46Google Scholar. The Nazi Labor Front “included virtually every gainfully employed person, management as well as employees, 25 million in all” (ibid., p. 220). The Italian syndicates were somewhat less inclusive but some 87 percent of industrial employees in the 1930's were enrolled (p. 224). Compare Gripp, Richard C., The Political System of Communism (New York, 1973), Table 2, p. 46Google Scholar, on 14 ruling Communist parties' membership. According to Frederick A. Ogg and Harold Zink, the NSDAP had had a membership of 7 million out of a population of about 80 million in 1939 (Modern Foreign Governments [New York, 1949], p. 703; see also p. 668)Google Scholar. The SA formations included between 1.5 and 2.0 million members during the war, and the SS about 300,000 on the eve of the war (p. 676). The authors characterize the organization of the Nazi party as “elaborate” on the national, regional, and local levels (p. 671; see pp. 669–679 for detailed description). Facilitating participation of sorts, the Nazis built a stadium in Nuremberg which seated 400,000 persons for the annual party congress and projected one capable of seating an incredible 2,000,000 persons! (P. 678.)

25 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 265. Huntington, adds that “revolutions are unlikely in political systems which have the capacity to expand their power and to broaden participation in the system,” and also that the “most neglected fact about successful great revolutions is that they do not occur in democratic systems” (p. 275)Google Scholar. Of course, his definition all but forbids them. See below.

26 Ibid., p. 274.

27 Ibid., pp. 36–37.

28 Ibid., p. 47. Also, see pages 49–50 for a list of nine factors which Huntington gives, linking rapid economic growth to social destabilization; several of these, such as increased geographic and social mobility and increasing capacity for political action are obviously as applicable to the “developed” as the “developing” world.

29 According to Huntington, , in 1968, “Most Latin American societies … are too complex, too highly articulated, too far advanced economically to be susceptible to salvation by military reform” (p. 228)Google Scholar. And further: “To say that the Brazil of the 1960's needed a Nasser was somewhat like saying that the Russia of the 1960's needed a Stolypin. The two types of leadership were simply irrelevant to the stage of development that these societies had reached” (p. 229). In 1968, Huntington also confidently described the military of Chile and Uruguay, along with those of Rica, Costa and Mexico, , as abstaining from politics and primarily a “professional force” (p. 22)Google Scholar.

30 See, for example, Weinstein, Martin, Uruguay: The Politics of Failure (Westport, Conn., 1975)Google Scholar: “The history of Uruguay from the mid-1950's to the present is one of economic decline, increased social and political tension, deepened and widened ideological division, erosion of civil liberties, and most recently the destruction of constitutionalist government” (p. 113). On the other hand, as Leo B. Lott wrote in 1972: “Venezuela's GNP has increased at an average rate of 4.5 percent over the past five years, well above the 2.5 percent called for by the Alliance [for Progress]. Food production has risen at an annual rate of 7 percent” (p. 356). As for institutional legacies and capabilities, former president Lopez Contreras (1936–1941) once remarked: “When I was President, at a cabinet meeting where all the men were older than myself, I asked the question: Which of you have ever voted in a popular election? Not one of them had done so. Not a single living Venezuelan had had this experience. Now we have to start with what to everybody in other countries is the ABC of political life” (p. 153). According to Winfield J. Burggraff, the most likely cause to undo Venezuela's newfound democracy and bring renewed military intervention would be “the inability of the authorities and the private sector to effect a successful change-over from the oil-dominated economy of today to a diversified semi-industrialized economy of tomorrow…” (The Venezuelan Armed Forces in Politics 1935–1959 [Columbia, 1972], p. 204)Google Scholar.

31 See, e.g., Feierabend, Ivo K., Feierabend, Rosalind L., and Nesvold, Betty, “Social Change and Political Violence: Cross-National Patterns” in Political Development and Social Change, eds. Finkle, J. F. and Gable, R. W., 2nd ed. (New York, 1971)Google Scholar. Based on a variety of indices for the period 1948–1965, these authors classified Chile and Uruguay as the seventeenth and nineteenth, respectively, most politically stable nations in a worldwide study of 84 nationstates (Table IB, p. 583). Focusing more narrowly upon political violence, the authors classified Uruguay nineteenth and Chile fortieth most nonviolent out of 84 (Table 2, p. 583). In contrast, Venezuela and Colombia were rated seventeenth and nineteenth most unstable out of 84, i.e., virtual reverse of the rankings for Chile and Uruguay. Venezuela was also rated third most violent, and Colombia fifteenth most violent in the world. See also Fitzgibbon, Russell H., Uruguay: Portrait of a Democracy (New Brunswick, 1954)Google Scholar; Johnson, John J., The Military and Society in Latin America (Stanford, 1964)Google Scholar; Vanger, Milton I., “Uruguay Introduces Government by Committee,” American Political Science Review, 48 (1956), 500–518CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clagett, Helen L., Administration of Justice in Latin America (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Stokes, William S., “Parliamentary Government in Latin America,” American Political Science Review, 39 (1945), 522–536CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McAlister, L. N., “Civil-Military Relations in Latin America,” Journal of Inter-American Studies, 341–50Google Scholar; and Wyckoff, Theodore, “The Role of the Military in Latin American Politics,” Western Political Quarterly, 13, 745–763Google Scholar.

32 In 1974, Glen L. Kolb found Venezuela to be in only her fifteenth consecutive year of representative government, “the longest such period in her history” (Democracy and Dictatorship in Venezuela 1945–1958 [Hamden, Conn., 1974], p. 198)Google Scholar. Compare Alexander, Robert J., The Venezuelan Revolution (New Brunswick, 1964), p. 118Google Scholar.

Prior to 1948, Colombia, admittedly, had been one of the more stable states of Latin America, with a well-established two-party system, but during the 1948–1958 civil war and well into the 1960's virtually all of its institutions underwent a wrenching of enormous proportions. By 1963 some 200,000 persons are estimated to have been killed in the domestic violence. “Damage to property, disruption of life, and physical and emotional injuries [were] incalculable” (See Booth, John A., “Rural Violence in Colombia, 1948–1963,” Western Political Quarterly, 27 [1974], 657–676)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Dix, Robert H., Colombia: The Political Dimensions of Change (New Haven, 1969)Google Scholar: “No other country in Latin America—and few nations of the world have in mid-twentieth century experienced internal violence and guerilla warfare as has Colombia” (p. 360). In the election of 1962, held in the aftermath of most of the fighting, only 5.5 percent of the population voted, putting Colombia into the lowest fifth of Latin American states along with Ecuador, Peru and Guatemala during this period (see Edelman, Alexander T., Latin American Government and Politics [Homewood, 1965], Table 12–2, p. 346)Google Scholar. Returning to Venezuela, this had been the nation with the greatest number of constitutional changes recorded in Latin American history between national independence and the early 1960's—22 (see ibid., Table 13–1, p. 376). In contrast, the institutionalist credentials of Chile (9 constitutions since 1811) and Uruguay (4 since 1830) were impressive, if not impeccable.

33 On the trade-offs between the effectiveness of a regime's performance and the legitimacy it enjoys among the citizenry, see, among others, Seymour Lipset, Martin, Political Man (New York, 1960)Google Scholar, chap. 3, “Social Conflict, Legitimacy, and Democracy”; and Easton, David, “A Reassessment of the Concept of Public Support,” British Journal of Political Science, 5 (1975), 435–451CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 32. Huntington's views about communist states are all the more remarkable, given his collaboration with Brzezinski, Zbigniew K. in Political Power: US/USSR (New York, 1963)Google Scholar.

35 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 336. Considering Huntington's praise for the stabilizing effects of communist rule, it is of interest to note that the Feierabends and Nesvold study for 1948–1965 rated no communist state as politically stable as Chile or Uruguay (“Social Change and Political Violence,” table IB, p. 582); none as nonviolent as Uruguay; and only 6 out of 11 communist states studied as less politically violent than Chile (ibid., Table 2, p. 584). Moreover, allowing for the level of economic development, communist states were actually somewhat less stable than noncommunist states. Thus, out of 9 communist states classified as “undergoing industrial revolution,” 5 were classified as “unstable” and 4 as “stable.” The division for noncommunist states was 11 and 11. One communist state (Albania) was classified as “transitional” and also as “stable,” and one (China) as “traditional civilization” and as “unstable” (ibid., Table 4, p. 588).

36 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 275. While the bibliography of terror and repression in the communist states is so extensive that it would require a lengthy essay, the following represent a small sample of some standard references: Beck, F. and Goden, W., Russian Purge and the Extraction of Confession (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Dallin, D. J. and Nicolaevsky, B., Forced Labor in the Soviet Union (New Haven, 1947)Google Scholar; Ginzburg, E., Journey into the Whirlwind (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Gorbatov, General A., Years of My Life (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; Herling, Gustav, A World Apart (New York, 1951)Google Scholar; Kravchenko, V., I Chose Justice (New York, 1946)Google Scholar; Lengyel, J., From Beginning to End (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1968)Google Scholar; Lipper, E., Eleven Years in Soviet Prison Camps (Chicago, 1951)Google Scholar; Roeger, B., Katorga: An Aspect of Modern Slavery (London, 1958)Google Scholar; Sakharov, Andrei, Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (New York, 1963)Google Scholar and Gulag Archipelago (New York, 1974)Google Scholar; Stypulkowski, Z., Invitation to Moscow (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Swaniewicz, S., Forced Labor and Economic Development (London, 1965)Google Scholar; Weissberg, Alexander, The Accused (New York, 1952)Google Scholar; Wolin, Simon and Slusser, Robert M., eds., The Soviet Secret Police (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Zawodny, J. K., Death in the Forest (Notre Dame, 1962)Google Scholar. Kostiuk, H., Stalinist Rule in the Ukraine (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Chukovskaya, Lydia, The Deserted House (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Schapiro, Leonard, The Origin of Communist Autocracy: Political Opposition in the Soviet State, 1917–1922 (Cambridge, Mass., 1955)Google Scholar; Conquest, Robert, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the Thirties (New York, 1968)Google Scholar and Soviet Deportation of Nationalities (New York, 1960)Google Scholar; Deriabin, Peter and Gibney, F., The Secret World (Garden City, N.Y., 1959)Google Scholar; Poretsky, Elizabeth, Our Own People (Ann Arbor, 1970)Google Scholar; Armstrong, John A., Ukrainian Nationalism, 2nd ed. (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Bilinsky, Y., The Second Soviet Republic: The Ukraine After World War II (New Brunswick, N.J., 1964)Google Scholar; Chornovil, V., ed., The Chornovil Papers (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

37 Political Order in Changing Societies, p. 339.

38 Ibid., p. 340.

39 Ibid., p. 343.

40 In fact, Huntington's classification of communist systems implies that violence and corruption are not significant among them. His view is that high likelihood of violence and corruption is a consequence of “weak political institutions” (p. 63), and also that: “A highly developed political system has procedures to minimize, if not to eliminate, the role of violence in the system” (p. 21).

That corruption has long been a significant aspect of the Soviet system is attested to by many sources, including official ones. In May 1975, e.g., no less a personage than the first secretary of the Ukrainian party organization declared that government officials “tolerate or engage in book doctoring, eye-washing, grabbing and abuse of official status for self-interest.” In Armenia, K. S. Demichyan, the first secretary of that party organization, declared that “widespread negative phenomena” included “embezzlement of socialist property, abuse of official position, bribe taking, influence peddling, speculation, avarice, hooliganism, and other negative manifestations” (see Donaldson, Robert H. “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, ed. Staar, R. F. [Stanford, 1976], p. 72)Google Scholar. See also Kramer, John M., “Political Corruption in the USSR,” Western Political Quarterly, 30 (1977), 213–224CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to Kramer, , “sufficient evidence exists to support the observation of one Western commentator that ‘corruption may be as integral to Soviet life as vodka and kasha’” (p. 223)Google Scholar. Kramer's definition of corruption is “behavior of public officials which diverges from the official duties of a public role to serve private ends” (fn. 2 p. 219).

41 Since Leninist rule has been imposed on East Germany, the number of people who have fled the GDR has been much higher than the number of West Germans who have fled to the East. Thus, between 1945 and 1961, i.e., before the erection of the Berlin Wall, the net flow of population from East to West was 2,789,000 or an average of 165,000 a year. At least 164 persons have been killed trying to escape from the GDR between 1961 and 1975. See Waldman, Eric in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1975, ed. Staar, R. F. (Stanford, 1975), p. 331Google Scholar. All of this has occurred notwithstanding the fact that in proportion to the respective populations, many more people have been variously “organized,” “integrated,” and “activated” in East Germany than in the West.

42 On analogies in party memberships and organization see, e.g., Skilling, H. Gordon, The Governments of Communist East Europe (New York, 1966)Google Scholar: “Even in the early stages of Communist rule, [party] charters, in contrast to the state constitutions, followed closely the model of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and embodied what was called the Leninist organization principles of a ‘party of a special type’. … The statutes went through periodic revisions at successive party congresses, often copying the most recent alterations in the CPSU. Some differences with the latter continued to exist, mainly, however, in nomenclature and wording, and without serious effect on the general method of work” (pp. 56–57).

43 See the account of Rothschild, Joseph, Pilsudski's Coup D'Etat (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; and more generally, Macartney, C. A. and Palmer, A. W., Independent Eastern Europe: A History (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

44 See Hanhardt, Arthur M. Jr, The German Democratic Republic (Baltimore, 1968)Google Scholar; and Staar, R. F., The Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe (Stanford, 1971), p. 101Google Scholar.

45 On Hungarian party collapse in 1956, see Vali, Ferenc A., Rift and Revolt in Hungary (Cambridge, Mass., 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zinner, Paul E., Revolution in Hungary (New York, 1962)Google Scholar. Zinner concludes that the Hungarian party's “incapacity to function was an absolute prerequisite to the outbreak of revolution” (p. 359). Parenthetically, Zinner notes that the “Hungarian events” could occur in other communist systems because of the tensions more universally engendered by party rule and “periodic crises of succession” (p. 364).

46 See, for example, Dziewanowski, M. K., The Communist Party of Poland, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), pp. 266–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on how the Poznan riots (in which, officially, 53 persons were said to have died and 300 to have been wounded) posed the ultimate issue of continued party control over the nation. See also Bethell, Nicholas, Gomulka, His Poland and Communism (London, 1969), pp. 198–221Google Scholar, on collapse of party power. Also Bromke, Adam, Poland's Politics: Idealism vs. Realism (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hiscocks, Richard, Poland, Bridge for the Abyss? (London, 1963)Google Scholar; Gibney, Frank, The Frozen Revolution: Poland, A Study in Communist Decay (New York, 1959)Google Scholar; and Zinner, Paul E., National Communism and Popular Revolt in Eastern Europe: A Selection of Documents on Events in Poland and Hungary February-November 1956 (New York, 1956), pp. 67–74Google Scholar; 197–239. Syrop, Konrad, Spring in October: The Story of the Polish Revolution of 1956 (London, 1957)Google Scholar; and Stehle, Hansjakob, The Independent Satellite: Society and Politics in Poland Since 1945 (New York, 1965)Google Scholar.

47 See particularly Skilling, H. Gordon, Czechoslovakia's Interrupted Revolution (Princeton, 1976), pp. 824–852Google Scholar, on the 1968 Prague crisis as stemming from a gradual loss of power by the party. According to Skilling, what happened to the Czechoslovak party in 1968 was that “the rulers were unable to continue to rule in the old way, and the ruled were unwilling to be so ruled” (p. 834). Concerning Czechoslovakia, see also the accounts of Schwartz, Harry, Prague's 200 Days: The Struggle for Democracy in Czechoslovakia (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Windsor, Philip and Roberts, Adam, Czechoslovakia 1968: Reform, Repression and Resistance (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Zeman, Z. A., Prague Spring: A Report on Czechoslovakia 1968 (New York, 1969)Google Scholar.

48 See, for example, Cassinelli, C. W., Total Revolutions: A Comparative Study of Germany Under Hitler, The Soviet Union Under Stalin and China Under Mao (Santa Barbara, California, 1976)Google Scholar who sums up the analysis in this way: “Each of the three evolutionary regimes … sought the establishment of a ‘mass society’ with a high degree of social equality of (better) similarity, and each … tried to implement its goal by an arrangement of power that stresses flexibility and fluidity, condemns administrative organization and other social systems, and involves the absolute preeminence of a single leader” (p. 225).

49 See, for example, Lenin's, V. I. essay, “Can There Be Equality Between the Exploited and the Exploiter?” Against Revisionism (Moscow, 1959), pp. 406–413Google Scholar, on organization as coercion of some by others, not as institutionalization of universalistic (and therefore open to the bourgeoise, and to other class enemies) rules.

50 Indeed, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in 1956 with respect to the Soviet Union then ruled by Khrushchev: “Totalitarian dictatorship cannot allow society to settle down completely to a stable existence and develop stable relationships … [Purges] are part of the general totalitarian process of constant internal movement and change” and “Totalitarianism … is always engaged in attempts to subvert or overcome in one way or another … basic restraints on its power” (The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism [Cambridge, Mass., 1956]), pp. 5Google Scholar and 19. One could argue, of course, that the Communist political system, in the USSR and elsewhere, has fundamentally changed since the 1950's but, if it has changed in the late 1950's or 1960's, as of 1968 Huntington does not appear to be cognizant of what it has been for most of its existence. In 1956, Brzezinski, thought that “the need for the purge will not diminish …” and one of the fundamental reasons for it, according to Brzezinski, was the unresolved problem of succession (p. 170)Google Scholar.

51 As Vishinsky, Andrei observed in his famous treatise: “Marxism teaches the necessities of using law as one of the means of the struggle for socialism— of recasting human society on a socialist basis” (The Law of the Soviet State [New York, 1948], p. 50)Google Scholar. Compare Hazard, John N., Settling Disputes in Soviet Society [New York, 1960], p. 31)Google Scholar. For analogous Lenin views, see also Berman, Harold J., Justice in the USSR, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 25–26Google Scholar.

On the peculiar “institutionalization” of communist courts and their singular lack of autonomy, see the excellent discussion by Kulski, W. W., The Soviet Regime: Communism in Practice (Syracuse, 1959), chap. 3, pp. 163–199Google Scholar. Appropriately enough, chapter 7 on “Basic Rights, Freedoms and Duties of Citizens of the USSR” in the new (1977) Soviet Constitution makes it clear that “rights” are not universally available to citizens but only insofar as they are “not to the detriment of the interests of society and the state” and “in accordance with the aims of building communism” (Article 51) or, so as to “strengthen and develop the socialist system” (Article 50). This seems to provide quite a few hints for the Soviet judiciary and police personnel.

52 Illustratively, Article 2 of the new Soviet Constitution provides that “All power in the USSR belongs to the people” and that this power is “exercised through Soviets of People's Deputies.” But Article 6 says: “The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system, of all state organizations and all public organizations is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The CPSU exists for the people and serves the people.

“The Communist Party, armed with Marxism-Leninism, determines the general perspectives of the development of society and the course of the home and foreign policy of the USSR, directs the great constructive work of the Soviet people, and imparts a planned, systematic and theoretically substantiated character to their struggle for the victory of communism. All Party organizations shall function within the framework of the Constitution of the USSR.”

The latest statutes of the CPSU itself, like the previous versions, mention the position of general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (Article 39) without giving as much as one sentence, or phrase, describing his duties, powers and responsibilities. See Hendel, Samuel, ed., The Soviet Crucible (North Scituate, Mass., 1973), pp. 416–421Google Scholar. Compare the earlier version in Hazard, John N., The Soviet System of Government (Chicago, 1957), pp. 224–240Google Scholar. Adopted in Stalin's time (at the 1952 nineteenth CPSU congress) it did not even mention the general secretary! All discussion focused on a collective Secretariat whose role was, literally, “to direct the current work, chiefly the organization of verification of fulfillment of Party decisions, and selection of personnel” (Article 34).

53 On the question of succession in the USSR, the oldest Marxist-Leninist regime, see Rush, Myron, Political Succession in the USSR: The Rise of Khrushchev (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; and Swearer, Howard R., The Politics of Succession in the USSR (Boston, 1964)Google Scholar. Rush observes that the Soviet regime has chronically suffered from a “susceptibility to succession crises” (p. 204). See also pages 208–214, on the overthrow of Khrushchev by “coup d'etat” and “conspiracy.” He concludes that “the lack of legitimate and recognized means for the transfer of power is the crucial problem within the Soviet regime” (p. XI).

Compare this with Huntington's claim that in communist dictatorships “general agreement exists as to … procedures to be used for the resolution of political disputes, that is, for the allocation of office and the determination of policy.”

Interestingly enough, in their joint Political Power: USA/USSR (New York, 1964)Google Scholar, Brzezinski, Zbigniew and Huntington wrote: “The United States has a regular procedure for replacing its top political leader at least once every eight years and possibly every four years. The Soviet Union lacks any such system” (p. 182)Google Scholar.

54 This view implies that the occasional or even frequent Party invocations of slogans about “collective leadership” and “Leninist norms of party life” should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt by the wary. See Skilling, H. Gordon, Communist Governments: “Rule by one man, although but an example of a universal tendency toward personification of power seems to be a peculiarly inherent and inescapable feature of Communist government” (p. 73)Google Scholar. Compare Gripp, , Political System of Communism, who says that “because of numerous strong leaders, some authors suggest that Communist systems require, or at least tend toward, a single, strong-man dictatorship” (p. 45)Google Scholar. Gripp sees four out of fourteen regimes: post-Khrushchev USSR, North Vietnam after Ho Chi Minh, post-1956 Hungary, and Romania, as contrary to the trend (ibid).

55 See Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi Party, 1933–1945 (Pittsburgh, 1973)Google Scholar, who notes that in 1934 the Nazi party had had a corps of professional functionaries numbering 373,000 out of a total party membership of only slightly more than 1 million. In contrast, under Weimar the Social Democrats with a party membership of 2.5 million had had only 10,000 officials (p. 93). Yet, as Orlow, says, “It is not without irony that the NSDAP accomplished its own demise with greater suddenness and completeness than any other project it undertook during its institutional life. … The Nazi phenomenon had no success in carrying its political influence beyond the capitulation of the Third Reich. Even such blatantly neo-Nazi constructs as the West German National Democratic party at the height of its influence had a following that was only slightly larger than the NSDAP's dismal showing in the 1928 elections” (p. 485)Google Scholar.

See also Deakin, F. W., The Brutal Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Italian Fascism (New York, 1962)Google Scholar, who notes how the coup against Mussolini, on 25 07 1943, occurred “in an atmosphere of apathetic calm. The expected reaction from the Fascist Party and Militia never came” (p. 484)Google Scholar; and “the slow erosion of Fascist morale had reached the point of collapse…” (p. 485).

Compare this with Germino, Dante L., The Italian Fascist Party in Power (Minneapolis, 1959)Google Scholar, who provides much impressive information on Fascist organization activities, and credits them with a relentless development “toward the totalitarian pattern” (p. 144) but does not explain the seemingly scant Fascist legacy of postwar Italy. Germino attributes the party's downfall wholly to the war (p. 131).

56 It is of interest to note that when Poland adopted its 1952 Stalinist Constitution, four years before the so-called Polish October, the regime claimed over 200,000 mass meetings with 11.5 million persons attending (more than half of the adults in the country) and with 1.8 million individuals offering suggestions—all preparatory to its adoption. The regime claimed to have adopted 91 amendments from grass-roots sources. Given what we know of structured mass input into the Danish and Swedish constitutions, the upheaval seems to have occurred in the wrong place! Gripp, , Political System of Communism, Table 9, p. 113Google Scholar.

57 As Guenther Roth reminds us, “personal rulership transcends the dichotomy of tradition and modernity.” See his discussion of “industrial feudalism,” “bossism,” and “clan rule” in “Personal Rulership, Patrimonialism and Empire-Building in the New States,” World Politics, 20 (1968), 194–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.