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Michael Lewis, The Culture of Inequality, Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978, 207 pp., $12.50. In this provocative book Michael Lewis argues that Americans interpret the existence and nature of inequality through a set of assumptions that have achieved the status of cultural hegemony. He explores this "culture of inequality", its effects on the self-esteem of most persons, and its consequences for policy toward the disadvantaged. He illustrates the pervasiveness of this culture by a case study of a particular community, "Middle City". Although he thinks that this case study supports his argument by helping to make sense of the experiences of his readers, he admits that he offers "no systematic tests of hypotheses, no formal method of verification" (p. 91). Lewis argues that this culture of inequality is grounded in the American rejection of ascribed status and affirmation that everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve in proportion to his or her talents and efforts. This culture became so powerful because it was at least partially confirmed in much everyday experience, since most people could rise some distance above their origins. In emphasizing that the individual is responsible for the amount of personal success achieved, the culture of inequality has a conservative and a liberal manifestation. The conservative version blames failure on character flaws that are volitional. The liberal version emphasizes personal deficiencies, such as the lack of ability and necessary skills. Neither the conservative nor the liberal versions of the individual-as-central sensibility recognizes that a lack of success might be structural, caused by unjust social and economic conditions. According to Lewis, most people inevitably do not achieve their higher aspirations; they enter the occupational system where they can, not where they would, and they remain close to this point of entry throughout their lives. Since almost everyone assumes that the possibilities of success are limited only by effort and capacity, the aspiration-achievement disparity is a great threat to self-esteem. People doubt their character or their competence, or both, and are haunted by personal guilt. They then engage in a Social Indicators Research 15 (1984) 187.
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variety of strategies in the attempt to salvage their self-esteem. They may claim a situational impediment, but the only impediment that can be successfully claimed within the individual-as-central culture is serious illness. They may lower their aspirations, but this strategy is generally ineffective because it is dependent on the claim of a situational impediment. They may also inflate their achievements through conspicuous consumption, honorific achievements in voluntary assocations, or identification with their children. Since these strategies usually fail, people then take the crucial step. They contrast their own modest success with the failure of others. This empasis on relative achievements ironically reinforces the individual-as-central sensibility that threatens people with despair. The culture of inequality is thus "a closed and self-fulf'dling system. It creates psychological need which only the invocation of its basic premise - the individualization of success and failure - can serve. It is sustained by the very trouble it creates" (p. 88). The most controversial aspect of this book is Lewis's argument that major American social problems are "mandated" by the culture of inequality, not as the result of a conscious conspiracy, but as "a function of the collective need to sustain a visible population of pariahs whose very existence is reassuring to those who need to distinguish themselves from apparent failures" (p. 184). Since people try to manage the aspiration-achievement disparity by seeing their own limited success over against the failure of others, poverty, poor schools, and crime are a "social necessity". The only remedies for poverty that most people will support are those that are just sufficient to maintain low income groups in their poverty. Educational reforms that might be effective are not attempted, since most people need to attribute the failure of many students to insufficient talent and effort. Even crime is made necessary, for whatever their own achievements, ordinary people can at least feel that they are not criminals. Significant changes in the criminal justice system therefore receive little support. Moreover, non-white racial status is associated with poverty, poor schools, and crime, not because people are bigoted, but because they are caught within the individual-as-central sensibility and need to feel more successful than some easily identifiable group. Lewis summarizes his argument as follows: "In the last analysis, then, where the issues associated with the existence of poverty, racial justice, educational failure, and crime are concerned, we have but o n e problem - the culture of inequality itself'
(p. 87). Lewis successfully shows that there is a powerful culture of inequality in
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the United States and that this culture must be taken seriously when certain persisting social problems are examined. However, while he establishes that the dominant culture wrongly presupposes that people actually succeed in proportion to their talents and efforts, he does not show that ability and hard work are of no significance as factors that enable people to escape poverty and deprivation. Moreover, his evidence and argument do not demonstrate that the culture of inequality is the reason why the problems that he discusses are not solved. Other plausible reasons might be suggested. For example, it could be argued that American predispositions against public services and ordinary selfishness combine to undermine support for programs that might reduce poverty and deprivation. Finally, although Lewis insists that the culture of inequality improperly rules out any consideration of the structural causes of inequality, it is unclear how this culture can be the cause of the mandated problems if those problems also have structural causes. Lewis needs to explain how structural inequalities are related to the culture of inequality.
University of New Orleans
R O B E R T B. T H I G P E N
Vladimir J. Kone~ni and Ebbe B. Ebbesen, The Criminal Justice System: A Social.PsychologicalAnalysis, San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982.
Rapid Review General appraisal Accuracy of information Scope Clarity of writing Quality of illustrations Comparative value of book
** Excellent Excellent Good Not applicable Excellent
This book shouM and probably will upset a number of participants both within and outside of the criminal justice system. Kone~ni and Ebbesen are responsible for editing a book which punctures many of the beliefs about how the legal system operates. The editors have drawn together a number of writers to analyse the decisions made by various participants in the criminal justice system. After the first two introductory chapters written by the editors on theory and research methods, the book follows a procedurally Social Indicators Research 15 (1984).
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determined temporal sequence of events starting with the offenders decision to commit the crime (Carroll), followed by chapters on eyewitness identification (Levine and Tapp), police activities (Grant, Grant, and Toch; Stofland), the bail system (Ebbesen and Kone~ni), prosecution (Gelman), jury behavior (Kerr), sentencing (Kone~ni and Ebbesen), parole hearings (l~slach and Garber), and parole derisions (Wilkins). Kone~ni and Ebbesen conclude their book with "an editorial viewpoint" rather than with the typical summary statement usually found in edited volumes. Their decision to write an editorial instead of platitudes about implications and conclusions was probably meant to shock and disturb the reader. However, anyone who has already read the whole book will have been sensitized to the many problems in the criminal justice process. Depending upon one's position and status in the system these ideas may be welcomed, or will be rationalized and rejected. The editors do not pull their punches. The first group to be rocked on their heels are social psychologists, many of whom merely study the legal system in laboratory settings or attempt to simulate the real-word legal system. The strengths of these approaches are outweighed by their weaknesses in the editors' opinions. In contrast, Kone~ni and Ebbesen argue that several research methods should be used, particularly the archival analysis of the documents available to the decision-maker. The archival analysis is not the favored approach of many researchers because of the costs (both in time and effort) involved, but as Kone~ni and Ebbesen show the pay off may be worth the investment. Critics of this approach, however, are not convinced that it can be used in all legal situations (e.g., eyewitness identification) with effectiveness. In addition, it is not the case, contrary to the editors arguments, that one necessarily knows the causes of events through archival analyses. Surely, what one chooses to use as coding categories will determine the types of statements that eventually will be used to describe causal relationships. The decision-making of judges, attorneys, probation officers, police and citizens are examined in critical detail. Myths about the legal system are carefully described. For example, it turns out that sentencing decisions are not as complicated and difficult to make as we are led to believe by the courts but, instead, are simple. Sentencing does not incorporate the concept of individualized justice. The behavior of judges, trial lawyers, and other participants at sentence hearings appears to be staged for self-serving purposes. Perhaps the most interesting argument to this writer is the view that judges are far
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from being the central, powerful, meaningful and vital ingredient in the sentencing process that is commonly accepted. In contrast "the judge is merely the main 'broadcaster' of sentencing decisions reached by probation officers" (p. 327). I liked this book and recommend that it be read by all research psychologists interested in the legal process. I hope that judges, lawyers and other legal officials read the book as well. However, I am reminded of the writings of Munsterberg, a Harvard psychologist, back at the turn of the century. Munsterberg attacked the courts as backward and ignorant of the contributions of the behavioral sciences to the criminal justice system. Munsterberg's criticisms did not go unanswered. In fact, Professor Wigrnore, a noted jurist of the time, answered Munsterberg in a satire which may have restricted the possible interactions between psychology and the law for years to come. Kone~i and Ebbesen may not be seen in the same way by jurists as Munsterberg once was, but their outspoken criticisms, many of which I agree with and I confess I enjoyed reading in print, will not go unaz~swered.Hopefully, the legal response will be critical and fair such that the union between scientific psychology and the law, one that Kone~ni and Ebbesen claim is a long way off, is just around the comer (with only a few road blocks in between).
University of Guelph
A. D A N I E L Y A R M E Y
David Pitt, The Social Dynamics of Development, Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1976, 162 pp.
General appraisal
Not recommended
This brief work is developed around a straightforward conceptual framework. Part One introduces a series of 'Problems and Ideas', some of which are related to the subsequent sections. Part Two discusses aspects of 'Development from Above', which amounts essentially to a critique of exogenous development promoted by the North-West in collaboration with Southern elites. This is contrasted, in Part Three, with the more promising strategy of 'Development from Below', which the author sees as possible and desirable if only the objects of development can integrate local needs, appropriate technology and some aspects of traditional socio-political organization into the development process. Social Indicators Research 15 (1984).
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The book does not aspire to present any fundamentally new or original theses. It does not even address, for instance, the basic-needs approach, although many of its arguments would seem to warrant such a discussion. Nor is it interested in prescribing any radical departures from existing development paradigms: the transplanting of the 'Soviet political style' to the South would represent "the attempt to erase the plurality of the Third World, a social structure which we would argue stimulates development, identity and culture" (p. 139). Similarly, both Marxist and structural-functionalist models of development (or at least the author's simplified interpretation of them) are seen as overly "deterministic" (pp. 1,6 and passim). For him, the various dependency schools, as well as nee-Marxist theories of the world system and the Third World state apparently have nothing to contribute to the issue of underdevelopment. Thus eschewing received models originating in East and West, the author sets out to present his own "personal view of development" (p. 2), which amounts to a rather eclectic, idiosyncratic amalgam of partial theories, isolated studies and facts combined and recombined to constitute often elusive arguments. His vision - or rather visions - of successful development do not however point beyond the limits of the existing international political and economic order. He returns again and again to the theme that altruism and good intentions on the part of the rich, though present and necessary, are not sufficient to foster Southern development. More empathy, more realism would contribute far more to the solution of the problems of the South. These highly subjective premises suggest the kind of development which the book advocates. Arguing, paradoxically, that determinism and oversimplification have hitherto characterized the developmental social sciences (p. 8) and that therefore basic concepts like development have not been adequately defined, the author, in a few paragraphs, proffers his own even more mystifying definition of development: '... the perceived increased effectiveness of social and economic activities and functions of the society or situation and ... the range of options open to people" (.pp. 8-9). This common-sense relativism emerges again when the book's purpose is stated as "[trying] not to ask the question of whether an explanation is right or wrong, but whether it is relevant or irrelevant" (p. 12). The critique of development from above centres mainly around the pathologies of international development institutions. With their headquarters
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in the developed countries, their "tied" aid programmes, the socialization of their officials at diplomatic cocktail parties or through lavish emoluments, the technical ultra-specialization of their sub-agencies, and their obsession with bureaucratic ritual and proliferation, these agencies have lost touch with the people for whom development is a vital necessity. Indeed, international development personnel are so concerned with salaries and benefits, isolated and sumptuous living in host countries (especially the wives, who resist contact with the "locals" and insist "that their husbands stay in town, even when they wanted to get out into the bush"; p. 46), taking mistresses, enjoying the "sleazy clubs" (p. 47), and the like, that they are practically unable to contribute to meaningful development. Development from below, by contrast, can only take place if indigenous techniques and insights are permitted fuller scope. In large measure, this means modifying the policies and actions of international development agencies to make them relate more closely to local needs and capacities. There is actually much in this thesis. For instance, the Sahelian drought did produce a full-scale famine because "modernization" had removed the people's "traditional defences against such calamities, notably nomadism, by making people sedentary farmers" (p. 69). And the ability to revert to subsistence production in times of economic distress does work against periodic destitution and starvation in village communities (pp. 76-77). Certainly too, Western concepts such as regular labour, time, private property and capitalist social classes cannot be transferred intact into societies with far different values, beliefs and techniques. Furthermore, Third World communalism, cooperation and mutual aid are potential alternative organizational principles with which to build a developed society. But merely to assert these differences, without demonstrating how, and by whom they might be cast into an adequate strategy for development, is to say nothing more than is already contained in the large body of descriptive anthropological microstudies ( a literature to which, not coincidentaUy, the author himself has contributed). The book's main message is contained in the two-page "Conclusion". It is that development is already taking place at the grassroots levels of Southern society and must be allowed to progress within its own context, that the social distances between the three central spheres of development - "the donors, the national governments and the recipients" - have become too great and must be overcome, and that therefore, "it is this separation rather
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than any economic stratification of the Marxist kind which creates many of the inequalities that do exist" (p. 138). Secondarily, the international development bureaucracies must be reformed and rationalized. These superficial, unoriginal and hence unsatisfactory conclusions serve to underline the fact that substantially the book has little to offer to students of development, particularly since the author appears to have consulted few works written after the mid-1960s. The deficiency is not even redeemed - as often happens in personal-view-works - by original formulations or compelling style. Quite the reverse: grammatical lapses ("a phenomena"; p. 41), tired clich~es ("the politico-bureaucratic machine is another kettle of fish", "we are at a watershed in the history of development", "the peasant wants to have his cake and eat it too"; pp. 138-139) and sloppy prose ("the importance of such situations is important"; p. 27) weigh down upon the work like a ton of bricks.
University of Guelph
W I L L I A M D. G R A F
Ralph Miliband, Capitalist Democracy in Britain, London: Oxford University Press, 1982, 165 pp. General appraisal
Highly recommended
Following upon Ralph Miliband's important contributions to contemporary Marxist theory - Parliamentary Socialism, The State in Capitalist Society, Marxism and Politics - the present work 0ike the others) is certain to enter into the interdisciplinary debate and discussion surrounding the nature and functions of the capitalist state and the British state in particular. Miliband throws out his challenge and hypothesis in the 'Introduction'. It is that: "if democracy is defined in terms of popular participation in the determination of policy and popular control over the conduct of affairs, then the British political system is far from democratic" (p. 1). In fact, the system has evolved, and is structured to prevent the exercise of popular power.-This produces a fundamental contradiction in British society "... between the promise of popular power, enshrined in universal suffrage, and the curbing or denial of that promise in practice" (p. 1). Although this contradiction holds in all advanced capitalist societies to some extent, only in Britain has it been so "smoothly" and "effectively" accomplished ~ . 2). SociallndicatorsResearch 15 (1984).
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Two organizing concepts serve to develop the book's thesis: 'The Containment of Pressure' (Ch. 3) and 'The Management of Conflict' (Ch. 4). The pressure which capitalist democracy must contain of course emanates from below. In a class-divided society like Britain's, as the author argues in his 'Introduction', there are in fact two nations, those who own and control the means of production, and those who do not. The distinction applies, despite the continued differentiation within these class groupings as capitalism evolves. The primary function of the political system, in such societies, "...is to maintain and protect these arrangements, and to contain the pressure against them' (p. 11). In other words, the dominant classes in capitalist society are engaged in a permanent struggle to maintain "hegemony" over the subordinate classes. Explicitly basing himself on Gramsci, Miliband defines hegemony, not merely as direct, coercive class domination, but acceptance by the subordinate classes of the "moral and political precepts and notions which support and strengthen that domination" (p. 76). Ruling class hegemony is fostered by a whole array of institutions, ideologies and processes peculiar to the capitalist system. The specifically British factor of "Parliamentarism" is rightly accorded a separate chapter (Ch. 2). Not the House of Commons' actual powers, but the way in which it defuses conflict, creates the illusion of popular participation through provision of the franchise, and hence legitimates the government of the day makes it an indispensible means of maintaining class hegemony. It reduces all political conflict and alternatives to a search for the mystical 51 per cent of the popular vote. And that vote is determined by a pseudo-democratic first-past-the-post representative system which ensures, for various reasons, that those classes dominant in economy and society also occupy the top positions in the state (pp. 36-37). In particular, the working class and its organizations must be made to feel an identity with capitalist democracy and thus to reject radical change. Parliament is one institutional device by means of which this achieved, but it is not sufficient in itself. Hence the trade unions have been transformed, over time, into mere defence agencies intent upon realizing labour's interests entirely within the hegemonic framework of liberal democracy (p. 54 et seq.). Much the same applies to the Labour Party which, with its consistent anticommunism and its preoccupation with winning elections, has developed into a central prop of the capitalist state. These arguments are essentially the same as those advanced in Parliamentary Socialism and therefore need no further
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discussion here. One is also acquainted, from The State in Capitalist Society, with the present work's analysis of the hegemony of the dominant classes. Legitimation of class domination is continuously produced by the mass media, "patriotic" associations, ideological lobbies, the educational system, the churches, most intellectuals, and so on. The second conceptual leitmotiv, "the management of class conflict", is also basically a restatement and updating of the theory of the capitalist state as developed in Miliband's previous work. This is well done. Drawing from the current "relative autonomy" discussion, he demonstrates that, though the state's central purpose under advanced capitalism is to act on behalf of capital (p. 95), government is a rather more vulnerable institution of the system since it is subject to immediate popular demands; the "... other parts of the state system are largely or even wholly immune from direct political pressures, notably from below, while governments in a capitalist democracy are subject to them and have to manage them" (p. 94). The merit of the relative autonomy thesis is that it helps to account both for intra-61ite conflicts (say, between the various capitals) and for the fact that the state is not merely an unmitigated instrument of a single ruling class; it must in some measure respond to pressures from below, for instance from organized labour or the voting power of the subordinate classes as a whole. But business, as the by far most predominant interest group, as well as capital's permanent control of the other institutions of the state apart from government, ensure that the interests of capital always prevail in a general way: Universal suffrage brings a government to office: the rest of the state system sees to it that the consequences are not so drastic as to affect conservative continuity. Governments, in this perspective, are also inserted in a structure of political and administrative inside the state; and the parts of that structure other than the government axe of critical importance in the shaping of policy and in the determination of state action (p. 100;
it~licsin original). Miliband then discussesat length the conservative,system-maintaining function exerted by the principal extra-govemmentai organs of the capitalist state:bureaucracy, military,police,judiciary,House of Lords, and monarchy. One of the book's real innovations is itssynthesisof recent works on, and analysis of 'Class, Power and Local Government' (Ch. 5), a subject which until comparatively recently has not been assayed by Marxist theorists.Apart from the House of Commons, under Britishunitarism,local government is the sole political institution subject to popular elections,which explains why "...from the point of view of the conservative forces, this is preciselywhy ff
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must be controlled and contained" (.p. 136). In addition to promoting further the identity between the citizen and state and fostering cooperation and reconciliation among the various social groups, local government "[gives] status, prestige, honour, and influence to people who otherwise [have] very little of it" (p. 137) - including on occasion labour officials and potentially radical individuals. Its legitimacy function is thus evident, despite the fact that its higher offices are overwhelmingly occupied by the wealthiest and most prominent local individuals, and that a whole series of checks and controls against possible radical or revolutionary departures is possessed by the higher levels of government. The work concludes with a chapter on 'The Future of Capitalist Democracy in Britain'. Projecting the systemic need for containment into the future, Miliband foresees the evolution of an increasingly repressive capitalist state. Although the working class, by virtue of its size and strength, will remain the main agency of pressure from below, other groups and interests will reinforce this pressure: (black and white) unemployed youths, the women's movement, immigrant groups, the peace movement, etc. Pressure will also be generated by the rise of what he terms "a state of desubordination", or a propensity on the part of subordinate workers to "... do what they can to mitigate, resist, and transform the conditions of their subordination" (p. 151). Given this frame of mind, coupled with continuing economic crisis and the radicalization or at least proletarianization of many groups and individuals hitherto immune to radical appeals (such as those employed in "intellectual" occupations), then, heightened protest and thus further repression are probable. Although this book is theoretically less original than Miliband's earlier works, it is a most successful attempt at bringing to bear theoretical insights developed in the current Marxist political economy of the capitalist state onto a specific case study of contemporary Britain. Very little of this sort of work has been done so far, and more needs doing. More than that, the book stands as no doubt the best available analysis, on the left, of the British state despite its high level of abstraction and consequent lack of "specificity". The beginning student of British politics could not make do with this volume alone. But the critical reader in possession of a basic awareness of the events, people and developments with which it deals will fred much in it to challenge, provoke, stimulate and enlighten. -
University of Guelph
WILLIAM D. GRAF
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Phillippe C. Schmitter and Gerhard Lehmbruch (eds.), Trends Towards Corporatist lntermediation, Beverly Hills/London: Sage Publications, 1979, 328 pp.
General Appraisal
Highly recommended
The ten essays contained in this volume on the theme of corporatism were presented at various international conferences during the late 1970s. Written by political scientists and sociologists from Britain, Canada, the United States and West Germany, the collection presents a variety of viewpoints on a theme which in recent years has received increasing attention from students of interest politics and policy-making in highly industrialized capitalist societies. Corporatism as an empirical phenomenon, the contributors to this volume agree, requires theoretical attention that goes beyond the narrow confines of the liberal pluralist framework. The specific elements of an alternative conceptualization, however, are the subject of much controversy. Critical theoretical discussions of this problem as well as a number of interesting case studies, which are included in the majority of the essays, make this volume as a whole very stimulating and useful to both scholars of political theory and of comparative politics. Phillipe Schmitter, in his seminal article entitled 'Still the Century of Corporatism', which appropriately is the first of the ten essays, analyzes the historical origins of corporatism as an organic or ideological concept. In order to rescue it for scientific theorizing, Schmitter suggests restricting the concept "to refer only to a specific concrete set of institutional practices or structures involving the representation (or misrepresentation) of empirically observable group interests" (p. 9). Corporatism can be defined as a system of interest representation in which the constituent units are organized into a limited number of singular, compulsory, noncompetitive, hierarchically ordered and functionally differentiated categories, recognized or licensed (if not created) by the state and granted a deliberate representational monopoly within their respective categories in exchange for observing certain controls on their selection of leaders and articulartion of demands and supports (p. 13).
Schmitter distinguishes two forms of corporatism. Societal (or liberal) corporatism - which applies to most Western parliamentary democracies - has its origins "in the slow, almost imperceptible decay of advanced pluralism", and state (or authoritarian) corporatism - which correspondingly applies to Social Indicators Research 15 (1984).
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non-democratic regimes - has its origins "in the rapid, highly visible demise of nascent pluralism" (p. 23). In 'Consociational Democracy, Class Conflict, and the New Corporatism', co-editor Gerhard Lehmbruch proposes that the management of conflicting interests between organized societal groups ("consociational democracy) has evolved into a patterned arrangement between organized groups and the government "for stabilizing and steeringhighly developed capitalist economies by promoting a new type of social integration" (p. 53). This new liberal corporatism is characterized by a high degree of cooperation among organized groups. The practice of liberal corporatism is based on an "interdependence of interests" image of society rather than on a "conflict of interests" image. Lehmbruch foresees for the near future that a growing mobilization of the grassroots, particularly in trade unions, may force the leadership to make more militant demands in top-level bargaining. As a result, the interdependence may lose out to the conflict image unless structural changes can be secured - in his view an unlikely prospect. In his second essay, 'Modes of Interest Intermediation...', Schmitter attempts to refine his original conception in two ways. First, he argues that all the interest intermediation systems of Western Europe should be seen as a mixture of three static and descriptive ideal types: pluralism, corporatism, and syndicalism. Second, in order to introduce an historical dimension to the analysis, we need an explanation of the dynamics of social change. Existing approaches to this problem - Schmitter considers "structural differentiation", "historical materialism", and "political economy" as alternative interpretations - have in common the assumption that changes in the mode of interest intermediation reflect prior changes in economic and social structure. The central assumption of the corporatist model(s), on the other hand, is that relations between the state and organized interests exhibit a dynamic of their own. That is, "the mode of interest intermediation may be molded from 'within' and 'from above', so to speak, in relative independence from the condition of civil society" (p. 91) and even from the individual or class interests represented. In 'Theories of Contemporary Corporatism - Static or Dynamic?', Brigitta Nedelmann and Kurt Meier argue that in order for corporatism to become an adequate explanatory framework, the theoretical questions raised concerning the connections between the organizational structure and state behaviour, on ,he one hand, and between a differentiated social structure and organized
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interests, on the other, would have to be addressed. The authors make preliminary suggestions for a "dynamic approach to corporatism" which they illustrate by reference to three instances of Swedish corporatist decisionmaking. Emphasizing the processes underlying corporatist interaction constellations which include both definitions of issues and definitions of situations by the parties involved, they argue that the modes (or structures) of intermediation are in fact changed through redefinitions of issues and situations. Leo Panitch, in 'The Development of Corporatism in Liberal Democracies', sees three specific and interrelated areas in which the corporatist paradigm is deficient. First, a rigorous theory of the state is lacking although the state plays such an important - sometimes even determining - role in the model. Second, "the functional representation in economic decision-making of trade unions and business organizations takes place within the framework of an equivalence of power and influence between the two" (p. 125). Third, and related to the above two assumptions, the high degree of instability in tripartite structures is largely ignored. 'Liberal Corporatism and Party Government' is the subject of Lehmbruch's second essay. His central thesis is that liberal corporatism has emerged as a subsystem complementing the control functions of political parties and parliament: "the relationships of corporatism and party government, in highly developed capitalist countries with liberal constitutional govemements, tend to develop toward a structural differentiation into subsystems which permits them to absorb higher problem loads" (p. 149). More specifically, the competitive orientation of party politics frequently is not suited to the consensus-building required in economic policy-making, in particular with respect to "managing" the business cycle. Lehmbruch then provides a comparative overview of incomes policies in European countries, concluding that "the associational subsystem has a strong symbiotic relationship to the party system" (p. 178). Bob Jessop, in his essay 'Corporatism, Parliamentarism, and Social Democracy', takes issue with the thesis of functional complementarity and structural differentiation as an adequate explanation of corporatist forms of intermediation. Jessop argues that the success of functional representation of major economic interests (capital and labour) in centralized "corporations" is conditional upon the degree of political control these institutions can wield over their membership. Since corporatist intermediation is aimed at pro-
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moting the general cconditions for accumulation, the special interests of union members or individual capitals must be compromised. "Thus corporatism can be disarticulated through union leaders' failure to control rankand-f'de militancy and.., through the attempts of particular capitals to win a competitive advantage" (p. 201). Since corporatist organs combine functions of representation and administration, a crisis of representation will have repercussions in the administrative field. "In this sense corporatism is more vulnerable than parliamentarism to the effects of representational crises and thus potentially less stable" (ibid.). 'Why No Corporatism in America?' is the question Robert Salisbury addresses in the following article. As a preliminary answer, Salisbury proposes that the United States lacks an essential ingredient of a corporatist polity, namely strong peak associations which could claim "quasi-monopolistic hegemony over a significant sector of socio-economic self-interest" (p. 217). He attributes this fact to a tradition of social diversity and institutional fragmentation and the problem of interest group legitimacy - "monopolistic interest groups are regarded with deep suspicion in the American political culture" (p. 220). If corporatism is basically a response to the need for stability in advanced capitalist societies, in the United States this stability has been sought through other limited forms of national economic planning. 'Corporatism Without Labor? The Japanese Anomaly' is examined by T.J. Pempel and Keichi Tsunekawa. The authors remark critically that theorizing at a high level of abstraction "too often degenerates into empty nominalism and defmitionalism" (p. 234), and much work on corporatism has focussed almost exclusively on domestic political activities. Their core argument is th~,t "the variations in the strength of corporatist linkages between components of the state and components of society will vary directly with changes in the character of the dominant domestic coalition and the relative place of a country within the international system" (p. 238). On this basis, the authors provide an excellent historical analysis of Japan's high degree of corporatized interest intermediation that has virtually excluded organized labour. In his article 'Political Design and the Representation of Interests' Charles Anderson discusses corporatism as a normative problem for democratic political theory. Attempting to determine "principles of interest representation that are compatible with the basic norms of liberal democracy', the fundamental question is "whether any forms of functional representation can be
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reconciled with basic democratic criteria of political design" (pp. 275-276). Thus rather than merely describing the various corporate practices that exist, Anderson suggests we should develop criteria for how to incorporate economic interest organizations into the planning and policy-making processes without violating democratic practice. In conclusion, corporatism is still far from providing an integrated theoretical alternative to more estalbished paradigms of socioeconomic and political change. Whatever its future in this respect may be, it has already succeeded in posing new theoretical problems that have both challenged - in a more or less fundamental fashion - the wisdom of competing theories and prompted scholars from a variety of traditions and disciplines to enter into the debate. As s document of this ongoing debate, the volume can only be recommended.
Universityof Guelph
ANDREAS PICKEL
