Theodore J. Lowi

American Business, Public Policy, Case-Studies, and Political Theory

Case-Studies of the policy-making process constitute one of the more important methods of political science analysis. Beginning with Schattschneider, Herring, and others in the 1930s, case-studies have been conducted on a great variety of decisions. They have varied in subject-matter and format, in scope and rigor, but they form a distinguishable body of literature which continues to grow year by year. The most recent addition, a book-length study by Raymond Bauer and his associates, stands with Robert A. Dahls prize-winning Who Governs? (New Haven 1961) as the best yet to appear. With its publication a new level of sophistication has been reached. The standards of research its authors have set will indeed be difficult to uphold in the future. American Business and Public Policy is an analysis of political relationships within the context of a single, well-defined issue—foreign trade. It is an analysis of business attitudes, strategies, communications and, through these, business relationships in politics. The analysis makes use of the best behavioral research techniques without losing sight of the rich context of policies, traditions, and institutions. Thus, it does not, in Dahls words, exchange relevance for rigor; rather it is standing proof that the two—relevance and rigor—are not mutually exclusive goals.

The end of liberalism : the second republic of the United States

The main argument which Lowi develops through this book is that the liberal state grew to its immense size and presence without self-examination and without recognizing that its pattern of growth had problematic consequences. Its engine of growth was delegation. The government expanded by responding to the demands of all major organized interests, by assuming responsibility for programs sought by those interests, and by assigning that responsibility to administrative agencies. Through the process of accommodation, the agencies became captives of the interest groups, a tendency Lowi describes as clientelism. This in turn led to the formulation of new policies which tightened the grip of interest groups on the machinery of government.

THE STATE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE: HOW WE BECOME WHAT WE STUDY

American political science is a product of the American state. There are political reasons why particular subdisciplines became hegemonic with the emergence of the “Second Republic” after World War II. The three hegemonic subdisciplines of our time are public opinion, public policy, and public choice. Each is a case study of consonance with the thought-ways and methods of a modern bureaucratized government committed to scientific decision making. Following Leviathan too closely results in three principal consequences: (1) failure to catch and evaluate the replacement of law by economics as the language of the state, (2) the loss of passion in political science discourse, and (3) the failure of political science to appreciate the significance of ideological sea changes accompanying regime changes.

The politics of disorder

Periods of disorder in the United States have generally been regarded as evil times which must be terminated as quickly as possible. But in this provocative analysis of our political system, pursuing the argument of his noted study The End of Liberalism, Theodore J. Lowi maintains that political disorder affords new opportunities for effective political action-or that it can, in system of juridical democracy. Professor Lowi presents a convincing case for the workable possibility of juridical democracy-formal democracy, whose main feature is rule of law-as against interest-group democracy, characterized by policy-without-law.

The Public Philosophy: Interest-Group Liberalism *

Until astonishingly recent times American national government played a marginal role in the life of the nation. Even as late as the eve of World War I, the State Department could support itself on consular fees. In most years revenues from tariffs supplied adequate financing, plus a surplus, from all other responsibilities. In 1800, there was less than one-half a federal bureaucrat per 1,000 citizens. On the eve of the Civil War there were only 1.5 federal bureaucrats per 1,000 citizens, and by 1900 that ratio had climbed to 2.7. This compares with 7 per 1,000 in 1940 and 13 per 1,000 in 1962—exclusive of military personnel. The relatively small size of the public sphere was maintained in great part by the constitutional wall of separation between government and private life. The wall was occasionally scaled in both directions, but concern for the proper relation of private life and public order was always a serious and effective issue. Americans always talked pragmatism, in government as in all other things; but doctrine always deeply penetrated public dialogue. Power, even in the United States, needed justification. Throughout the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, almost every debate over a public policy became involved in the larger debate over the nature and consequences of larger and smaller spheres of government. This period was just as much a “constitutional period” as that of 1789–1820. Each period is distinguished by its effort to define (or redefine) and employ a “public philosophy.”

The Return to the State: Critiques

This symposium features three critiques of Gabriel Almonds argument—by Eric A. Nordlinger of Brown University, Theodore J. Lowi of Cornell University, and Sergio Fabbrini of the University of Trento.

Toward Functionalism in Political Science: The Case of Innovation in Party Systems

In the life of all organizations there seems to be a general tendency toward a state of affairs called “equilibrium” by the favorably disposed and “rigidity” by the disaffected. Once the internal processes of an organization have become routine and its relations to the outside world have become stabilized, a kind of inertia seems to set in. The prevailing patterns are seen as good by the members. Identification involves a good deal of resistance to change. But if this is true of organizations, certain conditions also provide incentives for innovation. All stable organizations are in a continual process of adaptation. Innovation is that part of the process which is deliberate, self-conscious adaptation. Activities are innovative if they are attempts to change the organization and its environment in keeping with policies thought out in advance of the attempt. Innovation is not to be confused with liberalism or reform. The antonym for innovation is “consolidation,” not conservatism. Liberalism and conservatism are postures toward the kinds of changes required. To have no policy at all for changing things or to have a policy against changing things is to be neither liberal nor conservative; it is to be non-innovative or consolidative.

Our Millennium: Political Science Confronts the Global Corporate Economy

Of all the freedoms for which the cold war was fought, free enterprise was deemed sufficient for acquisition of all the other freedoms. The task of political science should now be to expose the loose and insecure moorings of economic ideology and to develop an approach more appropriate to the realities of our time. Our new millennium is a corporate millennium that has been interpreted in the hegemonic model to mean private and free (that is, unregulated) markets. However, any theory capable of incorporating the corporation has to be one of political economy. The first section of this article identifies six state-provided assumptions homo economicus has to be able to make prior to making or entering a market, without which homo economicus stays home. The second section puts the issue in a global context by identifying three developmental tracks—macro, meso, and micro. Their existence denies the possibility of a pure economic theory of globalization. The third section describes the distinctive politics of each of the three tracks, demonstrating still more conclusively that political economy is the only approach competent to deal with the new corporate millennium. In conclusion, the author argues that political economy is and should be the new political science that this new era requires.

The Third Revolution, Politics, and the Prospect for an Open Society

This paper first attempts to characterize information technology as a political resource. How and in what respect, for example, does information technology compare in nature and significance to energy and other industrial capacities? What are the key differences, from the standpoint of politics? The paper then goes on to identify and assess a few particular impacts this technology is having and is likely to have on the future of American politics and government. Problems dealt with include: the problem of a new class division between those who know how and those who know; the problem of new forms of participation and their effect on the old; the problems of privacy and secrecy; and the future role of education.

Presidential Power: Restoring The Balance

In a single office, the presidency, the great powers of the American people have been invested, making it the most powerful office in the world. Its power is great precisely because it is truly the peoples power, in the form of consent regularly granted. But there is great uncertainty about the terms of the social contract. We can know that virtually all power, limited only by the Bill of Rights, has been granted. And we can know that when presidents take the oath of office they accept the power and the conditions for its use: the promise of performance must be met. But we cannot know what is adequate performance. No entrepreneur would ever sign a contract that leaves the conditions of fulfillment to the subjective judgment of the other party. This is precisely what has happened in the new social contract underlying the modern government of the United States. The system of large positive national government in the United States was a deliberate construction, arising out of the 1930s. The urgency of the times and the poverty of government experience meant that the building was done exuberantly but improvisationally, without much concern for constitutional values or history. The modern presidency is the centerpiece of that construction. Considered by many a triumph of democracy, the modern American presidency is also its victim. The gains from presidential government were immediate. Presidential government energized the executive; it gave the national government direction; it en-