Santosh Kumar Nandy

Book Reviews : Benjamin E. Lippincott, Democracy's Dilemma, The Totalitarian Party in a Free Society, The Ronald Press Company, New York, 1965, x + 293 pp.,

The author of Victorian Critics of Democracy (1938) has produced another valuable work on democracy, now related particularly to contemporary democracies, in advanced and developing countries. Though the author describes this as &dquo;a work in the history of political ideas and in political theory,&dquo; its significance lies in other fields of the study of political life also. It can well be considered as a contribution to statecraft and also to the

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One of the most widely discussed but often confused concept in the study of social change in contemporary sociology is that of &dquo;modernization.&dquo; The one significant point on which consensus exists as to what this term actually connotes is that it is a pattern of social change. With regard to details of the modernization process, there is sharp disagreement. The term has often been taken synonymously with industrialization, urbanization, bureaucratization, and not the least with another much-used but often confused term &dquo;westernization.&dquo; However, it is increasingly being realized by researchers in social change that modernization has many facets, e:g., economic, political, social, and cultural, which can be investigated singly and in combination. The present work by Apter handles some of the political implications of modernization in developing countries. Apter observes that preoccupation with questions of modernization began in Europe in the latter part of the nineteenth century after the consequences of industrialization and commercialization had become apparent, and that the character of Western society was so altered that it became a model for the comparison of countries elsewhere. The emphasis today is mainly on the modernization of new nations and their development of national forms of polity, the objects of which are to increase the social product with fair shares for all. The author describes modernization in non-industrial societies as the trans-

Book Reviews : David E. Apter, The Politics of Modernization, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1965, xx + 481 pp.,

of the earlier economic development of Europe, Russia, and Japan. The author is almost over-zealous in presenting a pessimistic picture of the future of emerging nations and in carefully discussing all facets of this complicated subject. The presentation of the pluralistic approach is balanced by a critical evaluation of current economic and sociological theories dealing with national development. Although he ignores the importance of religion as an element

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autonomous political, economic, linguistic, religious, and racial structures which complexly interact (p. 3); &dquo;it is also a society characterized by an extraordinarily high level of internal conflict, contradiction, and dysfunction&dquo; (p. 3). The society is &dquo;ridden with almost total lack of consensus on values&dquo; (p. 4). In the system of production, the country has undergone rapid change, whereas, politically, and in its ascriptive system of stratification, it has remained largely static (p. 3). Internal tensions and disequilibrium have been aggravated over the years as a result of discrepancy between rapid change in some segments of society accompanied by rigidity and inadaptability in others (p. 3). Rightly has the author selected conflict as the dominant theme of this book.