Internal Contradictions in Bureaucratic Polities

1958 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. N. Eisenstadt
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Ancient Egyptian ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
The Common

Centralized bureaucratic polities can be defined as those political systems with the following major characteristics: first, the political sphere is relatively autonomous and distinct from other social institutions and second, there exist special permanent administrative organizations. We shall base our analysis on a number of pre-modern historical examples: the ancient Egyptian Empires, the Sassanid Empire of Persia, the Chinese Empires from the period of Han onwards, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, certain European countries (especially France) in the age of Absolutism, and the Spanish American Empire. Our purpose is to bring out the common characteristics of the political process in these historical societies, especially as it effects their continuity and stability. In the following pages we shall present some preliminary hypotheses and analyses about the political process in these polities. These hypotheses and analyses are derived from a larger and more detailed study which is in progress.

Political Struggle in Bureaucratic Societies

1956 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-36 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. N. Eisenstadt
Keyword(s):  
European Countries ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Historical Societies ◽  
The Common

THE purpose of this article is to analyze in a preliminary way some of the basic sociological problems of bureaucratic political systems—legitimation, autonomy, and political struggle. For reasons which will be specified later—not least among them, reasons of space—we shall limit our discussion to pre-modern, historical societies, such as the ancient empires (especially the Egyptian), the Byzantine, Chinese, and Ottoman Empires, and some of the European countries in the age of absolutism. By way of introduction, we shall endeavor to discern some common characteristics in all these political systems, and the main differences among them; and then inquire into some of the sociological conditions that are related to both the common features and the chief differences.

Парламент или Советы: российский выбор 1918 года

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 93-99
Author(s):  
Игорь А. Исаев
Keyword(s):  
Legal History ◽  
Direct Action ◽  
The State ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Political Form ◽  
The Revolution

The article deals with one of the most important issues in the Soviet political and legal history. The choice of the political form that was established almost immediately after the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Revolution of 1917, meant a change in the direction of development of the state. Councils became an alternative to the parliamentary republic. The article analyzes the basic principles of both political systems and the reasons for such a choice. The author emphasizes transnational political direction of the so-called “direct action” which took place not only in Russia, but also in several European countries.

Political Translation and the Sustainable Development Goals

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
Chris G. Pope ◽  
Meng Ji ◽  
Xuemei Bai
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Sustainable Development Goals ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals

The chapter argues that whether or not the world is successful in attaining sustainability, political systems are in a process of epoch-defining change as a result of the unsustainable demands of our social systems. This chapter theorizes a framework for analyzing the political “translation” of sustainability norms within national polities. Translation, in this sense, denotes the political reinterpretation of sustainable development as well as the national capacities and contexts which impact how sustainability agendas can be instrumentalized. This requires an examination into the political architecture of a national polity, the norms that inform a political process, socioecological contexts, the main communicative channels involved in the dissemination of political discourse and other key structures and agencies, and the kinds of approaches toward sustainability that inform the political process. This framework aims to draw attention to the ways in which global economic, political, and social systems are adapting and transforming as a result of unsustainability and to further understanding of the effectiveness of globally diffused sustainability norms in directing that change.

Electoral system as a motivation to reforming political system- The Iraqi model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shamall Ahmad
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Electoral System ◽  
Political Reform ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
The Masses

The flaws and major flaws in the political systems represent one of the main motives that push the political elite towards making fundamental reforms, especially if those reforms have become necessary matters so that: Postponing them or achieving them affects the survival of the system and the political entity. Thus, repair is an internal cumulative process. It is cumulative based on the accumulated experience of the historical experience of the same political elite that decided to carry out reforms, and it is also an internal process because the decision to reform comes from the political elite that run the political process. There is no doubt that one means of political reform is to push the masses towards participation in political life. Changing the electoral system, through electoral laws issued by the legislative establishment, may be the beginning of political reform (or vice versa), taking into account the uncertainty of the political process, especially in societies that suffer from the decline of democratic values, represented by the processes of election from one cycle to another. Based on the foregoing, this paper seeks to analyze the relationship between the Electoral and political system, in particular, tracking and studying the Iraqi experience from the first parliamentary session until the issuance of the Election Law No. (9) for the year (2020).

Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy

1959 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seymour Martin Lipset
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Legitimacy ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The Political ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Existence And Stability ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
Determinants Of Action

The conditions associated with the existence and stability of democratic society have been a leading concern of political philosophy. In this paper the problem is attacked from a sociological and behavioral standpoint, by presenting a number of hypotheses concerning some social requisites for democracy, and by discussing some of the data available to test these hypotheses. In its concern with conditions—values, social institutions, historical events—external to the political system itself which sustain different general types of political systems, the paper moves outside the generally recognized province of political sociology. This growing field has dealt largely with the internal analysis of organizations with political goals, or with the determinants of action within various political institutions, such as parties, government agencies, or the electoral process. It has in the main left to the political philosopher the larger concern with the relations of the total political system to society as a whole.

scholarly journals Emergence and Development of the Foreign Political Dimension of the EU: PreMaastricht Period

2017 ◽  
pp. 6-16
Author(s):  
Victoria Ruda
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
European Community ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
European Countries ◽  
The Political ◽  
The West ◽  
Common Position ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Eu ◽  
West European

Almost from the very outset the development of the common foreign policy and establishing the common defense have been the main aims of the European Community, but the real cooperation in these fields turned out to be quite complex and run into certain obstacles. As part of the European Community, the member states realize the necessity to comply with the common policy in order to become a full-fledged member on the political arena, but this does not take their fears to lose their national sovereignty and to give up some political advantages acquired through either the geographical position or the economic or political and military peculiarities. This explains to a certain extent the complexity of the consensus in searching process between the West European countries in the sphere of the common foreign and security policy. The integration process in Europe was concentrated on the economic cooperation in the first place. Later on the leaders of the West European countries recognized the readiness of the European countries to take a common position on the political and economic aspects of the security and the importance of the foreign policy cooperation in regard to the economic one was for the first time officially admitted. The development of the foreign policy pillar in the pre-Maastricht period clearly distinguished the sphere of competencies of the EU and NATO. The signing of the Single European Act allowed the EU country members to occupy the common position and coordinate their foreign policy. All this allowed the cooperation in the political sphere, which was evolving in two directions: first, conducting the coordinated foreign policy and secondly, ensuring the common security policy with a prospect of establishing the common defense as its separate pillar.

Exercising Deliberative Agency in Deliberative Systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 66 (3) ◽  
pp. 635-650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Ebeling ◽  
Fabio Wolkenstein
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Theoretical Development ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Justification ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Ideal

At the heart of the ideal of deliberative democracy lies an emphasis on the political autonomy of citizens participating in procedures of public justification aimed at the promotion of the common good. The recent systemic turn in deliberative democracy has moved so far away from this ideal that it relegates the deliberations of citizens to a secondary matter, legitimising forms of rule that may even undermine the normative impulses central to the project of deliberative democracy. We critically discuss this theoretical development and show how deliberative agency can effectively be exercised in complex political systems. We argue, in particular, that political parties play a central role in facilitating the exercise of deliberative agency, fostering deliberation among citizens and linking their deliberations to decisions. Instead of giving up on the possibility that citizens participate in procedures of public justification, deliberative democrats should look to parties’ unique ability to enable deliberation.

The Dynamics of Coercion in the Malaysian Political Process

1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 797-822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Barraclough
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political System ◽  
Political Process ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Democratic Values ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Direct Bearing ◽  
Control And Management

The study of coercion and how it is applied within a political system is useful for a number of reasons. As a strategy of control and management it is in itself worthy of investigation. Moreover, an examination of how coercion is applied can tell us much about the nature of a particular polity. Indeed, as Weber emphasized, the state itself is distinguished from other political systems to the extent that it successfully upholds the claim to the legitimate application of force. The willingness of a regime to use coercion against opponents or dissidents, or to regulate the political participation of the ordinary citizenry, has a direct bearing upon such questions as human rights, democratic values, authoritarianism, and the degree of consensus within a given polity.

Political pluralism in Morocco

1967 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. William Zartman
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Political System ◽  
The Political ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Political Pluralism ◽  
Social Interests ◽  
The Common ◽  
Separated Powers

Le système politique rnarocain est original en Afrique, non seulernent parce que le Maroc est doté d'un régime monarchique rnais aussi parce que ce pays est Ie seul à avoir tenté et poursuivi depuis son accession à l’indépendance une experience de multipartisme.Societies are generally neither monolithic nor homogeneous; every political system must deal with the problem of pluralism in some way. But political systems tend to be organized hierarchically, with power and authority concentrated at the top. The confrontation of social pluralism and political concentration can well give rise to tensions, since centralized political structures deal with diversified social interests. Tensions are also likely to grow out of pluralism within the political structure itself, as factions form on the bases of personalities, programmes and interests. Factions can exist within a single organizational or institutional framework, or they can be reflected in competing parties, checking and balancing institutions, and separated powers. The single-party regime has often become a familiar way of containing these tensions and factions in developing countries, particularly in Africa, and the existence of many African single-party regimes has led to efforts to discover the common elements behind the common phenomenon. The purpose of this study is not to challenge these explanations, but to look more broadly into the nature of interests, factions and power in developing polities, suggesting a model of political development that puts both unipartism and political pluralism in their places.

Soviet Elite Participatory Attitudes in the Post-Stalin Period

1968 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 827-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton Lodge
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Formation ◽  
The Political ◽  
Attitudinal Change ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
Changing Patterns ◽  
Set Up ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

This paper, part of a larger study, is a comparative analysis of five Soviet elites—the central Party apparatchicki, and four specialist elites: the central economic bureaucrats, the military, the literary intelligentsia, and the legal profession. By content analyzing representative periodicals for each elite, data are collected on elite attitudes toward participation in the political system. The overall goal is to gain a measure of the direction and scope of Soviet elite attitudinal change since Stalin; more specifically, (1) to measure the extent to which the elites perceive themselves as participants in the policy-making process, (2) to determine whether the elites perceive their participatory role as expanding over time, and (3) to demark changing patterns of Partyspecialist elite relations from 1952–65.To ground this study in a theoretical framework, analytical categories and hypotheses—derived in part from Brzezinski and Huntington's Political Power: USA/USSR—are formulated to test the perceived extent of elite participation in the Soviet political process. Synoptically, models of political systems may be built by reducing to essentials the mode of interaction between the regime and society. A key variable in analyzing this interaction between superstructure and base is the role and efficacy of societal groups in influencing policy formation and implementation. Following this tack a descriptive continuum may be set up for classifying political systems. At one end of the continuum are ideological systems (e.g., the USSR), at the other “instrumental” systems (e.g., the United States). In instrumental systems the relationship between the political and social system is characterized by “access and interaction.”

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