pART 2: INSTITUTIONALISM

TITLE: RETURN TO THE STATE

AUTHOR: GABRIEL ALMOND

NOTES:
Questions to address:
First, are the pluralist, structural functional, Marxist, and other literatures of
political science societally
reductionist?
Second, does the "statist
paradigm" remedy these defects? Third,regardless of the substantive merits of these
arguments, are there heuristic benefits flowing from this critique of the
literature

ARGUMENTS FOR THE RETURN TO THE STATE

-David garson reviwed the history of interest group theory
- His principal conclusion was that political science "grows" largely reactively,
in response to outside stimuli: "the rise of economic groups, the tides of
progressivism and disillusion, the birth and excitement of modern psychology
-pointed out the early polemic bet. classic sovereignty and classic pluralist
theorists
-Andrew Mcfarland, reviewed the hostory of interest group theory in WW2 by
describing the works of Dal who focused on poliarchy and the implicit economic
theory of democracy;
Truman's American inst. and politics as a bargain ing among myriad of interest
groups
;Lindblom's incremental decision making policies
-Inthe 60s-70s US politics dillusioned and demoralized shooked these models
-Lowi developed the plural-elitist model in which special interests captured
particular areas of public policy, forming "iron triangles" or "subgovernments
-pluralist revisionism in 70s-80s was a reaction to the interest group theory of
50s-60s

-Triadic model of Farland which was associated with J.Wilson

-policy process as specialized by issue era
- triad consist of: 2 interest groups and an autonomous set of state agencies

*Garson and Mcfarland's perspective showed that the statism pluralism polemic
during that time except with the classic pluralism interlude in 50s-60s the various
versions of interest group theory have operated with some measure and form of
governmental autonomy

Conceptions of State
-Watkins observed that the complexity of the intereaction be.t the govt and the
people political scientists prefer to use other terms in describing the phenomena
that was once under the concept of state
-Watkins argued that the concepts of state and sovereignty made sense during the
Treaty of wesphalia and the frensch rev but in the democratic society it is hard to
distinguish
-Watkins claim that the use of the concept of the state be in the Weberian sense
-to define the state in terms of the limit and to study the conditions that
accomany the greater or lesser degress of monopoly that have been achieved in
particular times and places

-abandonment of the concept of the state and replace it ith others was bc of the
political mobilization in the west in 19th and 20th centuries and the mergence of
new political intstitutions: pol. parties, pressure groups, mass media
-Concept of political system included the concept of the state but added new extra
legal and para legal institutions
Return to the State
Nettl
-The State as a Conceptual variable (1968)
-explain the neglect of the concept of the state in UK and US
-point made was differeing salience of the state in the US continent europe
4 Components of State (Nettl)
1. collective summates a set of functions and structures in order to generalize
their applicability
2. unit in IR= all indep nations whether having a strong or weak state
3. autonomous, distinct sector of society
4. a socio cultural phenomena
-invid, members of the state have a gneralized cognition nad perception of it
-stateness is a quanttitative variable where the strenght and weekness in indiv.
societies is comparable thru functional analysis
*Nettl's contribution is beyond the mainstream view of a state in the general area
of cnetral government
*However Nettl was not able to relate the concept of the state to ggregates su,,ats
and integrates
*It is necessary to operationalized and disaggregate the concept

Alfred Stepan
-contemporary statist movement
-critical of reductionismof the liberal pluralist and classic marxist approaches
-describes the liberal pluralist approach to the state as integrally individualist
and full committed that there can be no general good other than that from the
pursit of indiv. interests
-argues that liberal pluralism treats the state as a DV, to make the state look
like an autonomous agency

Eric Nordlinger
-empirical and positivist
-asserts autonomy of the state
-attributes societal reductionism
-avoids vague and amophous forumations
-offers an operational definition of the state
-refer to indiv. rather than to some other kinds of phenomena such as inst.
arrangements or the legal normative order
other components of the state:
-all public officials elective/appointive who are invovled in making of public
policy
-should avoid all characterizzation that varies across cases (ex:
legitimacy&sovereignty)
-definition that seeks neutrality
3 Levels of State Autonomy (Nordlinger)
Third Level (Type3)
-situtaions in which state* society perferences dont diverge and the state acts on
its own preferences
-policy adopted is the one preffered by state officials even though there is
oppositions from society
Second level of Autonomy (Type2)
-society's preferences differ from the state's pereferences but state officials
persuade society to adopt the state preferences
HIghlest level (Type 1)
-situations in which preferences of the state and society diverge

PLURALISM AS THEORY AND IN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

-pluralism-structural functionalism and marxism view state as dependent variable
-where actions are explained by the interplay of interest grps /social classes
-written works from the SSRC were focused on pluralism and interest groups which
had ignored public actors and institutions
-According to Krasner pluralists recognize the role of political leaders they
reduce state inst. to indiv. acting in roles not restrained by institutional
imperatives and restraints

*Although Krasner and Skocpol claim for the return to the state since pluralist
empirical lit reduced the state &govt to an arean and treated the govt as a DV they
failed to cite the substantial pluralist interest group lit.

Pluralist writers closest to statist:

Arthur Bentley
-Process of Government
-initially did not receive any attention
-presented an analytic reduction of institutions to obervable behavior within
interest groups

David Truman
-utilitzed Bentley as an analytical model
-interest group and government processes interaction
Earl Latham
-characerizing governmental inst. as group themselves

Reductionist Model writers

Pendleton Herring
-Public adminsitration and the public interest
-primary question was how administrative organization in a democracy could resist
the onslaught of particularistic groups and its own conservative propensitiees and
contribute to the general welfare
-state autonomy

Elmer Schattscneider
-US presidency as the principal rallying point for great public interest of the
nation the point at which the issues of public policu are discovered and exploited

V.O Key Jr.

-argues that public officials and political leaders can frequent;y obtain
acceptance of a polciy more nearly reflecting the general interests by going over
the heads of pressure group leaders to workers businessmen to farmer who have
ordinarily a greater sense of community responsibility than their hired men
-Key cited statutues that regulating the interests of powerful grops in the 1930s

Robert Dahl
-study of business interests and tariff policy in post WW2 records the attenuation
of societal influences and the attainment of state autonomy
-his work demonstrated the strong relationship between political structure and
process and the substance of public policy

Interest Group literature

Harry Eckstein
-pointed our that prssure groups are anxious not to tget on the wrong side of the
government bc of the crucial powers that htey enjoy over their affairs.
-influences and effectives of pressure groups is dependent on governmental policy
and organization
-he sees policy process as aset of interactions between state and society
Henry Ehrmann
-study the business groups in france as the central administrative power
-compare the nationalzied industries from the 4th rep. and the transformations in
the 5th republic showing the power shift from parties and parliament to the
executvie and bureaucracy

La Palombara
-study of italian interest groups dealing with factors that enable the italian
bureaucracy to resist the pressure of interest groups

*Based from the literature review from the pluralist theory, group theriy and
activities of interest grouos in US&eu STRESS THE IMPORTATNCE OF INTEREST AND
PRESSURE GROUPS IN POLICY MAKING AND DO NOT SUPPORT THE REDUCTIONIST THESIS

*Lipset &Schneider argue that political sociology can be defined as the study of
interrelationship bet. society and polity. bet.social structures and political
institutions
*Political institutions are themselves social structures are often independent that
affect nonpolitical social structure

NOTE ON MARXISM AND STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM

-On theoretical and empirical evidence from pluralist lit. show that it cannot
support neostatist critique of society centeredness
-Skocpol argues that at theoretical elvel neo marxist writers have retained deeply
imbedded society centered assumptions
- states are ineherently shaped by classes or class struggles and function to
preserve and expand modes of production

-David Eastion characterized the entirety of the return=to=the=state movement from

a contemporary revival of maxism
3 comings of Marxism
1. occured during the origin of marxist movement toucing US in 1880s&1890S
2. Occured during the great depression of 1930s
3.neostatist mvoement
-more complex than the first 2

*structural functionalism was the least developed theme in the neostatist movement
-said to be societally reductionist but no attention is given to the structura
part
-properties of institutions were not taken as normatively given but as something
to be researched empirically

NEOSTATIST DEFINITIONS OF THE STATE

-Neostatist movement wanted to return to large and relatively defined concepts such
as state and the society
Criticism on statism
-they refer to strong and weak states but it is not clear what they mean by
strength and weakenss
-most dimensions are conflated
-central concept either is not clearly specified or when it is very like
definitions of government pol sys and other terms denote the totality of pol.
phenomena

5 Attributes of Statist Literature (Krasner)

1. views politics more in terms of rule and control than of allocation
2. state is an actor in its own right
-it cant be understood as a reflection of societal characteristics or preferences
3. statist studies place more emphasis on institutional constrainst on individual
behavior
4.particular choice tends to preclude other options
-importance of historical dimnesions
5. behavioral polsci tends to view pol. phenomena in equilibirum process and
compatibility
-pressure group struggle presented by herring,odegard,key and others took was not a
product of non struggle

Concluding Reflections
-if statism fail in tis attack against pluralist reductionism and if tis positive
formulations do not convince there is still a 3rd ground--heuristic ground