Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T04:00:40.497Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Economic Performance and Communist Legitimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Stephen White
Stephen White
Affiliation:
East European Studies at the University of Glasgow, Scotland
Get access

Abstract

Unlike liberal democracies where the legitimacy of government inheres mostly in the process of competitive elections, communist regimes are widely believed to be legitimated mostly by their socioeconomic performance. The marked slowdown in the economic growth of the communist countries, particularly since the late 1970s, has suggested to many scholars that regimes of this kind are likely to experience a “legitimacy crisis” in the relatively near future. Prognoses of this kind are held to be premature and probably misconceived; they overlook the ability of the regimes concerned to maneuver politically and to generate additional support by the development of their consultative capacities. Four such “mechanisms of adaptation” are examined in detail: the electoral mechanism; incorporation into the ruling party; associational incorporation; and letters to party and state bodies and to the press.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 3 , April 1986 , pp. 462 - 482
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 A good general discussion of legitimacy in contemporary politics is available in Denitch, Bogdan, ed., Legitimation of Regimes: International Frameworks for Analysis (London Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1979)Google Scholar. A useful selection of more recent papers may be found in Connolly, William, ed., Legitimacy and the State (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984)Google Scholar. On political legitimation in communist countries, see particularly Rigby, T. H. and Feher, Ferenc, eds., Political Legitimation in Communist States (London: Macmillan, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lewis, Paul G., ed., Eastern Europe: Political Crisis and Legitimation (London: Croom Helm, 1984)Google Scholar.

2 Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, IX (New York: Macmillan, Free Press, 1968), 244–45Google Scholar; Schaar, John H. D., Legitimacy in the Modern State (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1981), 15Google Scholar. Related discussions are in Poggi, Gianfranco, The Development of the Modern State (London: Hutchinson, 1978), 132–34Google Scholar, and Almond, Gabriel A. and Powell, G. Bingham Jr., Comparative Politics: System. Process and Policy, 2d ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 30–34Google Scholar. Weber's discussion of legitimacy is most conveniently available in his Economy and Society, ed. by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), I, 212–99.

3 Gehlen, Arnold, Studien zur Anthropologie und Soziologie (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1963), 255Google Scholar.

4 See, however, Lane, Christel, “Legitimacy and Power in the Soviet Union through Socialist Ritual,” British Journal of Political Science 14 (April 1984), 219–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See, respectively, Kusin, Vladimir, From Dubcek to Charter 77 (Edinburgh: Q Press, 1978), 179Google Scholar; Pravda, Alex in Tokes, Rudolf L., ed., Opposition in Eastern Europe (London: Macmillan, 1979), 226–27Google Scholar, 250–52; and Feher, Ferenc, Heller, Agnes, and Markus, Gyorgy, Dictatorship over Needs (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983), 104, 277–79Google Scholar.

6 Löwenthal, “The Ruling Party in a Mature Society,” in Field, Mark G., ed., Social Consequences of Modernization in Communist Societies (Baltimore and London: The Hopkins University Press, 1976), 81–118Google Scholar, at 107. Lowenthal takes a similar view in his chapter on “Political Legitimacy and Cultural Change in West and East,” in Social Change and Cultural Crisis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

7 Bialer, , Stalin's Successors (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 295, 298Google Scholar.

8 Burks, “The Coming Crisis in the Soviet Union,” East European Quarterly 18 (Spring 1984), 61–71.

9 Pipes, “Can the Soviet Union Reform?” Foreign Affairs 63 (Fall 1984), 47–61, at 50.

10 See Drewnowski, Jan, ed., Crisis in the East European Economy (London: Croom 1982), 158Google Scholar; Guardian (London), July 14, 1983, p. 19. Alternative data based upon utilized national income are presented in Radio Liberty Research Bulletin RL 484/84, December 19, 1984; they show an annual average of 7.1% in 1966–1970, 5.1% in 1971–1975, 3.9% in 1976–1980, and 3.2% in 1981–1984. The complex methodological considerations involved in such calculations are considered in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, USSR: Measures of Economic Growth and Development, 1950–80 (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 1982)Google Scholar.

11 Pravda, January 29, 1984, p. 1, and January 25, 1985, p. 1.

12 Central Intelligence Agency, Handbook of Economic Statistics 1982 (Washington, U.S. G.P.O., 1982), 42–43Google Scholar.

13 United Nations, World Economic Survey 1984 (New York: United Nations, 1984), 87Google Scholar.

14 Radio Free Europe Background Report: Eastern Europe No. 1, January 4, 1985; Fi nancial Times, January 3, 1985, p. 2.

15 Radio Free Europe Background Report: Yugoslavia, No. 79, May 16, 1984.

16 United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Survey of Europe in 1983 (New York: United Nations, 1984), 175Google Scholar.

17 See Connor, Walker, Socialism, Politics and Equality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

18 On this last and somewhat controversial point, see, for instance, U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Soviet Economy in the 1980s: Problems and Prospects, 2 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. G.P.O., 1983), II, pp. 193–96 and elsewhere.

19 World Economk Survey 1984 (fn. 13), 1, 87–88.

20 See, for instance, Triska, Jan F. and Gati, Charles, eds., Blue-collar Workers in Eastern Europe (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982)Google Scholar, esp. chap. 6.

21 See Brown, Archie and Gray, Jack, eds., Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States, 2d ed. (London: Macmillan, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 This term is taken from W.J.M. Mackenzie's work on political adaptivity; see his Biological Ideas in Politics (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), esp. chap. 6.

23 See White, Stephen, Gardner, John, and Schopflin, George, Communist Political Systems: An Introduction (London: Macmillan, 1982), 76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 A good general survey is available in Sakwa, George and Crouch, Martin, “Sejm Elections in Communist Poland: An Overview and a Reappraisal,” British Journal of Political Science 8 (October 1978), 403–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Trybuna Ludu, June 20, 1984, p. 1; “Elections to the People's Councils,” Poland Watch, No. 6 (1984), 13–21; Radio Free Europe Situation Report: Poland, Nos. 11 and 13, June 15 and July 13, 1984, and No. 18, November 8, 1985.

26 See Friedgut, Theodore H., Political Participation in the USSR (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 145–47Google Scholar.

27 See Rigby and Feher (fn. 1), 41.

28 Ulc, Otto, “Legislative Politics in Czechoslovakia,” in Nelson, Daniel and White, Stephen, eds., Communist Legislatures in Comparative Perspective (New York: SUNY at Albany Press, 1982), 116Google Scholar.

29 See Scharf, C. Bradley, Politics and Change in East Germany (London: Pinter, 1984), 25–26Google Scholar.

30 In the 1982 elections in that country, only one voter is reported to have failed to endorse the single slate of candidates; see Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1983 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 237Google Scholar.

31 Nelson and White (fn. 28), 87; Scinteia, March 11, 1980, p. 1, and March 19, 1985, p. 1.

32 Zihua, Cheng, “On China's Electoral Law,” Beijing Review 22 (September 14, 1979), 15–18Google Scholar; Guardian, November 1984, p. 7. Also see Robert E. Bedeski, “Electoral Reform in China,” paper presented to the XIII IPSA Congress, Paris, 1985 (mimeo).

33 Radio Free Europe Situation Report: Hungary, June 21, 1985.

34 Radio Free Europe Background Report: Hungary, September 26, 1983; The Times (London) Higher Education Supplement, June 1, 1984, p. 8; Tokes, Rudolf L., “Hungarian Reform Imperatives,” Problems of Communism 33 (September-October 1984), 17Google Scholar.

35 See Nelson and White (fn. 28), and Nelson, Daniel N., ed., Local Politics in Communist Countries (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1980)Google Scholar.

36 Reported in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1984 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1984), 336Google Scholar.

37 See Scharf (fn. 29), 43; Scinteia, March 27, 1984, p. 3.

38 Ezhegodnik Bol'shoi Sovetskpi Entsiklopedii 1984 [Yearbook of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia] (Moscow: Sovetskaya entsiklopediya, 1984), 12; Partiinaya zhizri', No. 15 (1983), 18.

39 Radio Free Europe Situation Report: Poland, June 11, 1984. However, “nearly 50 percent” of current recruits are reported to be workers. BBC Summary of World Broadcasts: Eastern Europe 7662/C/3, June 6, 1984.

40 Radio Free Europe Situation Report: Romania, No. 10, July 17, 1984; Pravda, November 20, 1984, p. 4.

41 See Mason, David, “The Polish Party in Crisis, 1980–1982,” Slavic Review 43 (Spring 1984), 30–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kruszewski, Z. Anthony, “The Communist Party during the 1980–81 Democratization of Poland,” in Bielasiak, Jack and Simon, Maurice, eds., Polish Politics: The Edge of the Abyss (New York: Praeger, 1984), 241–67Google Scholar.

42 In the Soviet case, for instance, the proportion of industrial workers on regional, territorial, and republican committees has increased from 27.8% in 1965–66 to 31.1% in 1980–81, with correspondingly higher numbers being recorded at lower levels of the party organization. See Voprosy istorii, No. 2 (1984), 4.

43 The Times (London), January 22, 1985, p. 6; Pravda, April 18, 1985, p. 1.

44 Pravda, March 6, 1982, p. 2.

45 Pravda, June 19, 1983, pp. 1, 3.

46 Adams, Jan S., “Citizen Participation in Community Decisions in the USSR,” in Potichnyj, Peter J. and Zacek, Jan Shapiro, eds., Politics and Participation under Communist Rule (New York: Praeger, 1983), 178–95, at 188Google Scholar.

47 Guardian, November 26, 1984, p. 6; Radio Free Europe Background Report: Poland, No. 1, January 4, 1985; The Times (London), January 22, 1985, p. 6.

48 Radio Free Europe Situation Reports: Czechoslovakia, April 28, 1982; Romania, September 16, 1983, and March 14, 1984.

49 Gripp, Richard C., “Workers' Participation in Communist Politics,” in Schulz, Donald E. and Adams, Jan S., eds., Political Participation in Communist Systems (New York: 1981), 137–62Google Scholar, at 142–43. See also Radio Free Europe Situation Reports: Hungary, January 12, 1984, December 21, 1983, and March 4, 1982.

50 Radio Free Europe Background Report: Bulgaria, No. 15, November 7, 1984.

51 Radio Free Europe Background Reports: Yugoslavia, No. 128, July 20, 1984, and No. 180, September 21, 1984.

52 Pravda, February 3, 1984, p. 2.

53 See White, Stephen, “Political Communications in the USSR: Letters to Party, State and Press,” Political Studies 31 (January 1983), 43–60, at 51–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Chu, Godwin C. and Chu, Leonard C., “Mass Media and Conflict Resolution: An Analysis of Letters to the Editor,” in Chu, Godwin C. and Hsu, Francis L.K., eds., China's New Social Fabric (London: Kegan Paul, 1983), 176–77, 214Google Scholar. The impact of such communications (for instance, on preventing the amalgamation of brigades of agricultural workers) is considered by Burns, John P., “Chinese Peasant Interest Articulation,” in Goodman, David S., ed., Groups and Politics in the People's Republic of China (Cardiff: University College Press, 1984), 126–51, esp. 134–36Google Scholar.

55 Radio Free Europe Situation Reports: Romania, June 14, 1984, and May 30, 1985.

56 See White (fn. 53), 57–60.

57 I owe this term to Peter Rutland of the University of Texas at Austin.

58 Schram, Stuart R., Ideology and Policy in China since the Third Plenum, 1978–84 (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1984), 24Google Scholar.

59 Scinteia, March 31, 1983, and March 28, 1984.

60 Mason (fn. 41), esp. p. 35.

61 Radio Free Europe Situation Report: Yugoslavia, No. 1, January 24, 1985.