Roy C. Macridis

A Suggested Research Strategy in Western European Government and Politics.

If one compares the literature on American government and politics with that which concerns continental Europe, it is quite evident that the two fields of study in the last decades have proceeded on somewhat different assumptions as to the scope and methods of political science. This divergence is of relatively recent origin. Before World War I a substantial number of leading American students in this field had their training in European centers of learning, and brought back with them the rich tradition of European historical, philosophical, and legal scholarship. With noteworthy exceptions the study of continental European political institutions still tends to be dominated by this historical, philosophical, and legal emphasis. The continuity of scholarship in the continental European area has -been broken by the two world wars, by totalitarian regimes, by enemy occupation, and by the persistence of internal antagonism and cleavages. With the exception of a few years in the 1920s, the entire era since World War I has been one of catastrophe or the atmosphere of catastrophe in which scientific inquiry and the renewal of the scientific cadres could be carried on only for short periods, under the greatest handicaps, and with inadequate resources. In the United States, beginning after the First World War and stimulated in some measure by the great European innovators such as Ostrogorski, Bryce, Weber, Pareto, and Michels, the conception of the scope of political science began to undergo a significant change. This development occurred in an experimental and pragmatic way, and with little theoretical explication. As American political scientists discovered that governmental institutions in their actual practice deviated from their formal competences, they supplemented the purely legal approach with an observational or functional one. The problem now was not only what legal powers these agencies had, but what they actually did, how they were related to one another, and what roles they played in the making and execution of public policy. In this respect they were plowing more deeply into ground which had been broken by such English political scientists as Bagehot and Bryce. Once having departed from the legal framework and method, they began to probe into the non-legal levels and processes of politics, and a substantial literature developed including-in addition to realistic and functional analyses of the presidency, the courts, the Congress, and the bureaucracy-studies of non-legal or semi-legal institutions and processes such as political parties, pressure groups, public opinion, and political behavior.

Stalinism and the Meaning of Titoism

The Soviet-Yugoslav dispute and the subsequent defection of the Yugoslav Communist Party from the ranks of the Cominform early in 1948 took the world by surprise. This surprise was in itself indicative of our belief that Stalinist control was to be taken for granted at least in the areas where the local Communist parties had come to power through direct or indirect help from the Soviet Union and particularly from the Red Army. Even when no such help had been given, the ideological affinities of Communist states and their need of alliances to preserve the Communist power structures would lead, it was believed, to a tightening of relations with the Soviet Union and to Soviet predominance. In other words, we tended to accept without question the premises of Stalinism.

Cabinet Instability in the Fourth Republic (1946-1951)

Cabinet instability has been considered traditionally one of the most characteristic phenomena of French political life. In the course of the period of the Third Republic the average life of the Cabinet was eight months and ten days; and in the two decades preceding World War II, social and economic issues provoked repeated crises within the various majorities and produced an even higher rate of cabinet mortality. The causes of this instability have been sought in the complex of deep-seated social, historical, and economic forces of the country, in the institutional arrangements which established the primacy of the legislature over the executive, and in the electoral system which encouraged party fragmentation and multiplicity. It is not my purpose to review here critically the literaturel on the subject and evaluate the various interpretations of cabinet instability in the Third Republic. My purpose is to give an account and an interpretation of cabinet instability in the first legislature of the Fourth Republic between December, 1946 and June, 1951 in the course of which eight cabinets held office. During this period we shall find a remarkable reappearance of the old patterns of instability, with one difference that should be indicated at the outset. Cabinet changes do not appear to be caused any longer by disagreement on political issues upon which the political parties or the nation are divided. They are caused rather by the institutional arrangements which give free scope to marginal minority groups to exert an influence incommensurate with their numerical strength. The existing area of agreement on political issues an agreement wider than ever before in the past cannot be translated into effective policymaking.