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Political Integration and Political Stability: A Hypothesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Claude Ake
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Extract

These notes are part of a study on the problem of political integration. My hypothesis is that the political system driving for integration maximizes its chances for achieving a high degree of integration and remaining stable, in spite of the short-run destabilizing effects of the drive for integration, if it is authoritarian, consensual, “identific,” and paternal. If any of these four characteristics is absent, and to the extent that functionally compensating factors are also absent, the destabilizing effects of the drive for integration are increased.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 19 , Issue 3 , April 1967 , pp. 486 - 499
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1967

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References

1 The historical context of this research problem is the experience of the new states. For the purposes of the study, “new states” refers to the newly independent states of Africa. But since I am attempting to lay the groundwork for a general theory, my concern is not entirely limited to the African experience.

2 For an overview of the impediments to political integration in the new states, see Coleman, James S., “The Problem of Political Integration in Emergent Africa,” Western Political Quarterly, viii (March 1955), 44–57Google Scholar; Wriggins, W. Howard, “Impediments to Unity in the New States: The Case of Ceylon,” American Political Science Review, LV (June 1961), 313–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For related analyses, see Weiner, Myron, “Political Integration and Political Development,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 358 (March 1965), 52–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Geertz, , ed., Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa (New York 1963), 105–57Google Scholar; Shils, Edward, “Political Development in the New States,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, II (April 1960), 265–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (July 1960), 397–411.

3 Verba, Sidney, “Comparative Political Culture,” in Pye, Lucian and Verba, Sidney, eds., Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton 1965), 513.Google Scholar

4 Lucian Pye, “Introduction: Political Culture and Political Development,” in Pye and Verba, 8.

5 Verba, 526.

6 For more on political identity, see Pye, Lucian, “Personal Identity and Political Ideology,” in Marvick, Dwaine, ed., Political Decision-Makers (New York 1961), 290–313Google Scholar, and Pye, , Politics, Personality and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven 1962)Google Scholar; Erikson, Erik, Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History (New York 1958); Verba, 512–60.Google Scholar

7 For other definitions of political integration, see Haas, Ernst, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces (Stanford 1958), 16Google Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W. and others, Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Ught of Historical Experience (Princeton 1957), 31Google Scholar. In these works, political integration is understood as the uniting of distinct national entities. Coleman, James S. and Rosberg, Carl G. Jr., in Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley 1964), 9Google Scholar, define political integration as “the progressive bridging of the elite-mass gap on the vertical plane in the course of developing a participant community.” The process here described as political integration bears a close resemblance to the process often referred to as national integration. See Binder, Leonard, “National Integration and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, LVIII (September 1964), 622–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deutsch, Karl W. and Foltz, William J., eds., Nation-Building (New York 1963), 6ff.Google Scholar

8 Deutsch, , “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” American Political Science Review, LV (September 1961), 494Google Scholar.

9 For more on the process of social mobilization, see Deutsch, , “The Growth of Nations: Some Recurrent Patterns of Political and Social Integration,” World Politics, v (January 1953), 168–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” 493–514; Deutsch, , Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York 1953), esp. 75–102Google Scholar.

10 Some of the questions listed under the concepts need to be refined and broken down into subquestions because, as they stand, they operationalize the concepts only in a crude sense.

11 The instability exists because the development of their political cultures is in an embryonic state. See Verba, 519.

12 Dahl, Robert, Modern Political Analysis (Englewood Cliffs 1963), 32–35.Google Scholar

13 Almond, Gabriel A., “Introduction: A Functional Approach to Comparative Politics,” in Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton 1960), 17Google Scholar.

14 This analytic distinction is borrowed from Friedrich, Carl J., “Political Leadership and the Problem of Charismatic Power,” Journal of Politics, xxiii (February 1961), 3–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 On the causes and political consequences of anxiety, see Neumann, Franz, “Anxiety and Politics,” in Marcuse, Herbert, ed., The Democratic and the Authoritarian State: Essays in Political and Legal Theory by Franz Neumann (Glencoe 1957), 170–95Google Scholar; Lasswell, Harold, “The Psychology of Hitlerism,” Political Quarterly, iv (July-September 1933), 373–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Related works include Willner, Ann and Willner, Dorothy, “The Rise and Role of Charismatic Leaders,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 358 (March 1965), 77–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Durkheim, Emile, Le Suicide (Paris 1897)Google Scholar; de Grazia, Sebastian, The Political Community: A Study in Anomie (Chicago 1948)Google Scholar.

16 On associational interest groups, see Almond, 34.

17 I have coined this word to describe a political system characterized by mutual identity between the rulers and the ruled.

18 For an excellent exposition, see Shils, 265–92, 397–411.

19 “Political formula” is the “legal and moral basis, or principle, on which the power of the political class rests . . .” (Mosca, Gaetano, The Ruling Class [Elementi di Scienza Politica], trans. Kahn, H. D. [New York 1939], 70Google Scholar).

20 Ashford, Douglas E., The Elusiveness of Power: The African Single-Party State (Ithaca 1965), 14Google Scholar.

21 Roseboom, Eugene H., A History of Presidential Elections (New York 1959), IIGoogle Scholar.

22 For more on the paternal element, see Roche, John P., “The Founding Fathers: A Reform Caucus in Action,” American Political Science Review, LV (December 1961), 801Google Scholar.

23 On George Washington's charismatic appeal, see Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York 1963), 21ff.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., 22.

25 Pp. 804ff.

26 A New History of the United States, rev. ed. (New York 1962), 104ff.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 106.

28 Lipset, 44.

29 Miller, 115.

30 Ibid., 20.

31 Smelser, Marshall, “The Federalist Period as an Age of Passion,” American Quarterly, x (Winter 1958), 394ff.Google Scholar

32 Fitzgibbon, Russell, “The Revolution Next Door: Cuba,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 334 (March 1961), 113–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 Blanksten, George, “Fidel Castro and Latin America,” in Kaplan, Morton A., ed., The Revolution in World Politics (New York 1962), 113–36.Google Scholar

34 On the charismatic appeal of Castro, see Fitzgibbon, 114–17; Blanksten, 120–21; Free, Lloyd, Attitudes of the Cuban People Toward the Castro Regime (Princeton 1960).Google Scholar

35 Blanksten, 124.

36 Ibid., 125–26.