Review

Author(s): Hugh Whalen

Review by: Hugh Whalen
Source: The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science / Revue canadienne
d'Economique et de Science politique, Vol. 31, No. 3 (Aug., 1965), pp. 441-444
Published by: Wiley on behalf of Canadian Economics Association
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Reviews of Books/ Comptesrendus

441

account of what they wrote. But this is a point about the men, and not about
their theories. For an evaluation of their theories, we need to apply some
standards (maybe not contemporary ones, I hasten to say) of good theory.
Many theories, given their unexamined assumptions, are not unreasonable; but
nor are they philosophically interesting, and this for just such reasons as that
they have unexamined assumptions. This of course is not to say that they
may not be historicallyinteresting. It is possible for outrageously bad philosophy to be an important historical phenomenon, as this book may demonstrate,
and Locke's Second Treatise certainly does. Greenleaf seems to me to confuse the philosophically with the historically interesting, in such a way that
to justify the attention paid to the people he has investigated, he feels bound
to say that they have some philosophical merit. He is probably no worse in
this regard than the people he complains of, who take no interest in the likes
of Sir Robert Filmer, just because they are such dreadful philosophers. I
think we ought to be very glad that there are people like Greenleaf who
(albeit for bad reasons) have such monumental patience with the third-rate
thinker, because I am sure he is right in thinking that the "great hinterland
of belief" which these people represent is historically very important; and
quite apart from that it is fascinating.

J. F. N.

HUNTER

Political Parties: A Behavioral Analysis. By

Rand McNally. 1964. Pp. viii, 613. $8.40.

UniversityCollege, Toronto

SAMUEL

J.

ELDERSVELD. Chicago:

The art of political understanding, like the art of living, is essentially that of
drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. In the case of political
parties, those mysterious organisms of key importance in public life, our
inherited stock of premises and generalizations is at once meagre and suspect.
On the one hand, parties are held in suspicious, even cynical, regard; on the
other hand, their political necessity cannot be denied. We recall Washington's
warning about the baneful effects of "the spirit of party," and remember
Jefferson having said that if he could not go to heaven but with a party, he
would not go there at all. A traditional and widely shared view was well
expressed by Pope: "Party,"he said, "is the madness of the many for the gain
of the few." Surveys in a number of countries confirm the existence of a pervasive ambivalence.
As the author of this important book suggests, our ambivalence toward
parties is reflected in political scholarship. For nearly a century there has been
strong intellectual commitment to parties as the focal instruments of democracy. Yet there has always been serious doubt, given what were assumed to be
internal party characteristics, that they could perform in accordance with
democratic requirements, particularly during periods of stress and uncertainty.
The greatest scholars of party have certainly supplied compelling criticism of
the dysfunctional aspects of organized political life: its rigidity and authoritarianism in the European systems; its amorphous, unrepresentative, and
localist tendencies in the United States; and in general its quasi-bureaucratic
and self-regarding modes. In a monumental study published more than a
decade ago, for example, Duverger concluded that democracy was not
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442
threatened by the existence of parties as such, but rather by the prevalence of
negative tendencies in their internal organization. Substantially the same position has been taken in the United States by Schattschneider, the American
Political Science Association, and Bailey. Yet the author of this volume argues
-and rightly so-that our understanding of the real nature of internal party
phenomena is strangely deficient.
Notwithstanding the proliferation of descriptive and comparative studies, it
cannot be claimed that there exists an accepted framework for the study of
political parties. Duverger's work, for instance, has been severely criticized on
methodological and conceptual grounds. Indeed, at the level of critical
generalization, there has persisted a considerable dependence on the pioneering
insights and originating hypotheses of Michels, Bryce, and Ostrogorski. For
nearly half a century a number of stereotypes concerning the nature of internal
party processes have circulated freely in the body of political discourse. The
longevity of ideas such as Michels' "iron law of oligarchy" and his "accordion"
theory of party recruitment has been the despair of an increasing number of
analysts who have developed new methods for observing the minutiae of party
phenomena and have postulated more realistic linkages between party and its
social-cultural context.
In this reviewer's opinion, the book under examination, when viewed in the
broad perspective of political party literature, constitutes a major revisionist
thrust. Professor Eldersveld fairly acknowledges and makes excellent use of the
traditional ideas and models. But his informing vision springs from another
source: the empirically-oriented, non-normative tradition of Charles Merriam
and Harold Lasswell; the behavioural mode of the old Chicago school transformed by social survey and data-processing technology, enriched by foundation funds and interdisciplinary talent, and institutionalized in Stanford's
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Columbia's University
Bureau of Applied Social Research, and Michigan's Survey Research Center.
Like some other recent major behavioural studies, Eldersveld's Political Parties
is an awesome performance. The book required nearly a decade to complete.
It involved a massive co-operative enterprise: the author acknowledges, for
example, the assistance of numerous academicians, graduate students, universities and other organizations, and a large number of political leaders in the
Detroit survey area. Unprecedented in the depth and complexity of its analysis,
the book cannot be summarized adequately in a mere review. We must be
content, therefore, with a few remarks concerning method and result.
The author postulates four structural conditions or properties of a political
party. First, the "omnibus" tendency observed by Michels is assumed to be
operative: the democratic political party has an open, informal, personalized,
clientele-oriented structure. Second, the party is a structure of reciprocal
exploitation seeking to capture power. ("It is joined by those who would use
it; it mobilizes for the sake of power those who would join it.") Being a poweraspiring body, it must suffer in its midst groups (subcoalitions) whose demands
are often in conflict.

(". . . the party does not settle conflict; it defers the

resolution of conflict.") Third, Eldersveld rejects Michels' oligarchic theory

and posits instead a party hierarchy characterized by a proliferation of ruling
persons and functions. ("Rather than centralized 'unity of command', or a
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Reviews of Books/ Comptesrendus

443

general dilution of power throughout the structure, 'strata commands' exist

which operate with a varying, but considerable degree of, independence....
(H)eterogeneity of membership, and the subcoalitional system, make centralized
control not only difficult but unwise.") Following Lasswell, the author labels
this decentralized hierarchical structure stratarchy. When thus formulated,
party organization becomes a "reciprocal deference structure." Finally, the
author hypothesizes a special type of career pattern within parties which rejects
the notion of a single elite cadre. ("We see the party elite as consisting of
pluralized sets of separable 'career classes' . . . with considerable differentiation
in congruence [of ideological, role and other perspectives], communicative
interchange and self-consciousness.") Traditional theory concerning elite circulation is rejected; the author uses a five-part typology of career categories
which includes the following classes: formal organization mobiles, informal
mobiles, non-mobile regulars, potential careerists, and non-careerists.
One significant feature of the generalized dynamic image of party which thus
emerges is the coexistence of tensions within and among the various dimensions
of structure. Ease of access to party membership and leadership roles, for
instance, suggests difficulties from the standpoint of internal management
control. Clientele orientation implies a continuing tension between the goal of
power acquisition and obligations regarding the satisfaction of subcoalitional
demands. Stratarchyand its decentralized modes may improve worker efficiency but it may equally frustrate leadership coherence and operational
ingenuity. Finally, a loosely articulated career structure implies conflict between
mobility and status demands. These multiple-vector relationships have never
been so clearly conceptualized.
Having tested the basic propositions in the survey area, the author next
undertook three separate analytic exercises. First, the effect of the four structural conditions on the ideology, role perceptions, and motivations of party
officials at different levels of the hierarchy was determined. Second, the influence of these conditions on the party as task group, information network,
and decision system was examined. Third, the party with its structural features,
perspective patterns, and internal organizational relationships was evaluated as
a functional unit in society.
Except for those disposed to consider behavioural analysis and survey
method inherently suspect, this book will be regarded as a significant scholarly
achievement. Eldersveld has successfully synthesized not only the best of the
traditional theoretic inheritance but has incorporated as well the newer contributions of organization theory, electoral analysis, and the steadily accumulating data on micro-political patterns. His framework, like that of other
behavioural models, will undoubtedly be criticized for its dependence on
American institutions, experience, and norms. It will be said that the party
universe he has abstracted looks too much like that of Wayne County, Michigan. But such criticism is valid only if the author insists that his macro-analytic
model has ubiquitous validity. His claim, in fact, is more modest.
Parties gradually evolve characteristicmodes or properties which tend to become
accepted and tolerated in a given area and culture. But change can and does occur,
and it is possible that at critical points in time party structuresdo develop reorientations. Thus, although we are rather committed to accepting the basic theory outlined
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444
above, as having generalizablevalidity for modern-dayparties in democraticsocieties,
we accept the possibility that these, or their degree of manifestationat this point in
time, are not fixed and unalterable. (p. 13)
This is welcome modesty on the part of a social scientist. For we no longer
have stomach for the all-embracing, the presumably definitive, the massively
substantive theory. And, in any case, the task of testing the general relevance
of Eldersveld's model for democratic political systems will surely yield much
urgently needed comparative information on political parties.
HUGHWHALEN

University of Toronto

Congress: The Sapless Branch. By SENATOR JOSEPH S. CLARK. New York:

Harper and Row [Toronto: Longmans]. 1964. Pp. xx, 268. $5.50.
Unlike their Canadian counterparts, a surprisingly large number of United
States senators have written books for commercial publication. About 20 per
cent of the present membership of the Senate have volumes recently published
or awaiting publication. Senators Fulbright, Humphrey, Keating, Javits, Proxmire, and Young are only a few of those on the current publication lists.
Senator Joseph S. Clark of Pennsylvania is one of the latest of this illustrious
body to be infected with the ancient disease of cacoethes scribendi. He comes
with all the susceptibilities. He is a graduate of Harvard and of the University
of Pennsylvania Law School. Like a number of his colleagues who hesitate to
sport the KEY either on the floor or in the hustings, he is also a member of
Phi Beta Kappa (this is roughly the top 1 per cent of the graduating class in
selected American Universities). He is a wealthy man who lives well on
Philadelphia's Main Line. But he has also had a long career as a reform candidate and served at one time as mayor of Philadelphia (the first democratic
mayor in 67 years). During the last War, he was on General Stratemeyer's
staff in the ill-fated and explosive China-Burma-India theatre. In short, Senator
Joseph Clark is no cartoon Klaghorn.
Congress: The Sapless Branch is an interesting book. It is articulate. It is
well organized. It is tempered with a good sense of humour. And it is serious.
On page 23, the Senator states his thesis: his "deep conviction that the legislatures of America, local, state and national, are presently the greatest menace in
ouLrcountry to the successful operation of the democratic process." These are
strong words. But Senator Clark, on the basis of his eight vears of experience
in the Senate, gives his reasons: the actions of an entrenched congressional
"establishment"; the presence of a continuing legislative-executive tug of war;
the abuse of the committee system, of the filibuster, etc.; the demands of "millions" of American citizens for private treatment (the Senator's office receives
an average of 110,000 letters a year and 15,000 pieces of bulk mail), which the
Senator calls the "major"business of Congress. None of these criticisms, of
course, are new. It is not often, however, that a senator points them out.
Senator Clark does not ston wvithcriticism. Almost one half of the book is
concerned with suggested reforms for Congress. He divides this into what he
calls "internal"reform and "external"reform. The first concerns what Congress
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