The
and
the
Comparative
of
British
Study
Method
Politics
Samuel H. Beer
I
My title suggests paradox. How can you make comparisons when you are
dealing with only one system? The question has poini and I am going to
hinge these brief introductory remarks on methodology on a distinction between what I shall call the method of comparison and the method of
hypothesis.
When we first began discussing these questions of comparative politics
quite some years ago, we talked a good deal about what we called "the logic
of comparison." In trying to imagine what procedure this logic involved,
we would think of an interesting phenomenon such as two-party systems
and then try to work out an orderly procedure for determining the necessary
and sufficient conditions for its existence. Frankly, in our projections of
what we thought this method might achieve, the prospects were somehow
not nearly so bright as we felt they ought to be. Was not comparison the
social scientist's equivalent of the natural scientist's laboratory?
It was only when we added to our operations the method of hypothesis
that the prospects began to brighten. We moved our stress from induction
to deduction. We approached comparison through theory rather than approaching theory through comparison. From theory-from Aristotle or
Hobbes, from Marx or Weber-we drew out hypotheses about important
and interesting events and then sought to test them in particular contexts.
In this way interesting questions about political development and about
such things as the role of elites, classes, and intellectual innovation were
injected into comparative and historical studies.
Of course, I am aware that the two methods are complementary. When
you have tested a hypothesis in one particular context you will probably go
on to test it in another. If you have found the hypothesized correlation you
will want a control to assure you that the connection is real, not accidental.
Moreover, as you move on from case to case it is likely and desirable that
your initial hypotheses or hunches will be developed and revised.
Nevertheless, the difference in emphasis can mean a difference in research
strategy. It is perhaps mainly a difference in what you focus on at the start:
theory or fact. The former-the method of hypothesis-is, I think, particularly appropriate for the study of individual systems. Sensitized in countless ways by your knowledge of theory, you examine some system or aspect
of a system, draw out hypotheses that seem relevant, and test them against
the facts.
Looking back, it seems to me that this method reflects the way I proceeded
when I made a study of British parties and pressure groups several years
ago.1At present I am engaged in bringing this study up to date. In this article
1 British Politics in the Collectivist Age (New York, 1965).
19
20
Comparative Politics
October 1968
I shall give an account of my progress in the hope that it will illustrate this
method. First I wish to bring out the theoretical background, with stress on
certain aspects of modernization theory. Next I shall turn to recent changes,
focusing on questions raised by theory. A concluding section will be concerned with possible future developments.
II
My immediate concern has been to place British politics in the context of
the "organizational revolution."2 By this I mean the rise of the large-scale,
formal organization to a position of dominance in most spheres of Western
society during recent generations. The leading example is the great business
corporation. But as Weber pointed out in his discussion of "universal
bureaucratization," we see similar forms in government, education, and
politics.
In this task of description and explanation, I have been helped by organization theory, especially those ideas developed in the study of economic
concentration. At the same time, I have been concerned with the further
elaboration of these ideas, using the British materials to get some light on
why such organizations arise in the field of parties and pressure groups,
what effect their size has upon their internal structure and external relations,
and, finally, what their tendencies of future development may be. To put
the matter briefly and ambitiously, my concern has been to work out the
"laws" of political concentration. Thus, not only is theory brought to the
study of fact, but also, I hope, such study is so conducted as to enhance
theory.
While my emphasis is on recent decades, these are examined against a
background of British political development going back to the sixteenth
century. The most recent phase, which I call Collectivist, is considered as
following earlier phases, Radical, Liberal, Old Whig, and Old Tory. These
terms, I have said, "characterize the main stages in what one may call the
modernization of British politics."3 My larger concern therefore is also with
the forces that have impelled development over a broad sweep of British
history. This is not the place to elaborate a theory of modernization. A few
broad outlines, however, may be sketched in order to show how, with regard to certain major forces and trends, contemporary British politics is
continuous with preceding phases.
This term "modernization" is a question rather than an answer. The
question is whether one can find in Western society of recent centuries and
in the process by which it arose a type or model that is useful for general
comparative study and analysis. Following Weber, I should say that the
key concept is rationalization.4 By a process of rationalization I mean the
growth of scientific knowledge in the broadest sense and the impact of this
2 Kenneth Boulding, The Organizational Revolution (New York, 1953).
3 British Politics in the Collectivist Age, p. x.
4 See also Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 1951), on "institutionalized
rationalization and 'cultural lag,'" pp. 505-520; and Parsons, "Certain Primary Sources
and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World," Essays in
Sociological Theory, Pure and Applied (Glencoe, 1949).
Samuel H. Beer
21
knowledge upon culture and social structure. Knowledge has extended
human control and enhanced the sense of human competence ever since
prehistoric man made his first tools and established his first laws. Modernity,
however, was produced and characterized by a particular kind of knowledge, viz., knowledge that was at once empirically founded and systematically ordered. We may call it scientific only if the term is understood broadly
enough to include the protoscience and developing folk technology that led
to some of the earlier products of modernity, such as the first inventions of
the Industrial Revolution. For the purposes of this present study we especially need to distinguish the highly developed science, both natural and
social, of recent decades which is producing the "scientific revolution" and
which has vastly enhanced the impact of rationalization upon both society
in general and the polity in particular. It is in this new phase of the modernizing process that we find some of the principal forces tending to transform British politics of the Collectivist age.
Rationalization has been a principal force producing directly and indirectly some of the main features of modern society, such as industrialization
and bureaucratization. Yet we must not try to make it explain too much.
There are important traits of the modern polity which derive from other
sources. With regard to attitudes and values, one of the most important is
what may be called "voluntarism." By this I mean the view that human
wishes are the basis of legitimacy in constitutional structure and in public
policy. The principal contrast is with the premodern views of classical and
medieval political culture that the basis of legitimacy is to be found in
some source outside the human will, such as divine command or a teleological order.
Rationalism, as the notion that men have the ability scientifically to control nature and society, does not logically entail voluntarism, the notion
that men ought to design their environment, natural and social, to suit their
own purposes and wishes. Yet in the rise of political modernity the two are
closely associated. For instance, the modern conception of law-making involves both. It includes the notion that men can use their empirically derived knowledge to control events in order, say, to promote the increase in
the wealth of the nation by the appropriate economic policy. It also exfor instance, it is the
presses the attitude that what men want-whether,
greater national power of mercantilist theory or the consumers' satisfaction
of Smithian economics-should
be the basis of public policy.
The importance of this association is that the rise of voluntarism has
given a wide scope to the process and products of rationalization. The application of science and technology to economic, social, and political problems greatly alters the mode of life in these spheres, often requiring farreaching adaptation of norms and values. If premodern attitudes prevailed,
the resulting conflict between a rigid ethical discipline and the requirements
of a developing society would lead to severe strain and conflict. Indeed,
because such attitudes have in many respects survived, Western modernization has frequently been marked by a special kind of conflict to which
Parsons has given the name "fundamentalist reaction."5 In Britain these
5 Parsons, "C rtain Primary Sources."
22
Comparative Politics
October 1968
conflicts have usually been milder than in most other countries of the West.
Yet they have occurred, and even today in some spheres of British political
development one can discern this typical strain of modernization. A principal instance would be the tenacious assertion of class identities by members
of both upper and lower strata.
III
Voluntarism leaves open many questions, not the least of which is, Whose
wishes are to govern? An elitist version could be conceived which put so high
a value on the wishes of a few that the many would be wholly excluded from
power. Fascism would fit this pattern. Yet in contrast with classical and
medieval notions, there does seem to be in voluntarism an openness, if not
a tendency, toward democracy. While it is fairly obvious that knowledge of
the good, on which premodern conceptions based authority, is unequally
distributed throughout society, it is hard to deny that every man at least
knows what he wants.
Another tendency toward democracy, or at any rate toward that participation of which democracy is one variety, is more interesting and probably
more important. It arises from situational rather than ideal forces. Very
broadly, the proposition is that the pattern of public policy itself sometimes
requires that certain groups be given power. When we study the rise of
democracy we commonly concentrate on the struggle of excluded groups
for access to influence and authority. One of the interesting problems of
modernization studies is how excluded groups acquire and use the nonpolitical power necessary to wage successfully this struggle for entry. Yet
we should also recognize that a group's chances for success may be greatly
enhanced by the polity's need for their participation. It has, for instance,
been cogently argued that the Reform Act of 1867 was necessary in order to
win the consent and cooperation of the skilled working class for the new
pattern of government intervention that was being inaugurated.6Nor is the
possibility confined to modern times: the origins of medieval representation
have been interpreted as "self-government at the King's command."7
A major instance, however, is provided by the new system of functional
representation that has arisen in Britain in the Collectivist period. The welfare state and especially the managed economy of recent decades simply
could not operate without the advice and cooperation of the great organized
producers' groups of business, labor, and agriculture, and the history of
these groups provides many instances showing the powerful influence of
government in calling them into existence, shaping their goals, and endowing them with effective power.8 At the present time the burdens and complexities of the welfare state and managed economy similarly require a still
greater mobilization of consent.
I do not by any means intend to say that every such need of public policy
will be met by a corresponding and appropriate incorporation of the relevant group into the effective polity. An authoritarian system may meet the
6 By Prof. H. L. Beales of the University of London in private conversation.
7 Albert B. White, Self-Government at the King's Command: A Study in the Beginnings of English Democracy (London, 1933).
8 British Politics in the Collectivist Age, esp. Ch. 12.
Samuel H. Beer
23
need by a mobilization of consent that involves little or no real accommodation of the structure of power. Moreover, and more generally, the "needs"
of systems, as of individuals, simply may go unfulfilled. Yet the fact that
such situational pressures do arise throws light on an important connection
between rationalization and participation, two of the major features commonly ascribed to the modern polity.
As a matter of historical fact, we do find that the development of public
policy under the influence of growing knowledge has been associated with
the extension of democracy, or its authoritarian substitute. No doubt the
forces promoting each of these developments are in many respects independent of one another. Yet there are strong ties that tend to make them
develop together. Rationalization and participation can in the short run
come into conflict, as is shown by the familiar problem of reconciling
democracy and planning. Yet as the analysis of this problem also shows, in
the long run the two go together. The kind of flexible and constantly changing control typically exercised by modern polities cannot rest on rigid
norms and unthinking custom, but must enlist the active response and
understanding of affected groups. Certainly, in considering the possible
future developments of a political system, as we shall do at a later point of
this article, we should look for those changes in public policy that may require an adjustment of the structure of power in favor of relevant groups.
IV
Rationalism and voluntarism characterize the modern spirit and generally
pervade attitude and behavior so far as a society is modern. In politics, they
suggest a broad but distinctive class of systems, defining the basic orientations that legitimize and institutionalize processes of rationalization and
democratization.
What do these criteria tell us about the five types of politics that I have
used to periodize British political development? The premises of Old Tory
political behavior were still essentially medieval, reflecting the ancient faith
of "the Great Chain of Being." Actually, under the influence of a powerful
monarch and newly centralized government, law-making was practiced on
a far wider scale than before, yet was still restricted in theory by the notion
of a fixed and unchanging order of man and nature and in fact by conscious
imitation of a hierarchic and corporatist past. The modernism of nineteenthcentury politics stands out in sharp contrast. Laisser-faire itself expressed
a growing systematic knowledge of society and was consciously adopted as
a public policy that would promote economic development. In political
thought, the source of legitimacy was now conceived as human will-for
the Liberals, the will of rational, independent men; for the Radicals, the will
of all the people.
Our focus on modernization makes the Old Whig model a fascinating
example of transitional politics. Its basic orientation is modern, for although
much of the Old Tory ideal of hierarchy and corporatism is retained, the
premises have shifted radically, permitting far greater scope for human
contrivance and changing circumstance. Incidentally, the significance of
this period in British development is suggested by a comparative look at
24
Comparative Politics
October 1968
France, which moved from its Old Tory period directly to Liberal and
Radical regimes, with a resulting shock from which it has not yet fully
recovered.
On the whole, the five types of politics show a trend toward greater
modernization. May we say then that the Collectivist model is the most
modern? In the British case this could be argued. The public policy of the
welfare state and managed economy certainly reflects the broadest and
deepest power of social control. In conception the Collectivist model is more
democratic than the others since it provides not only for parliamentary but
also for functional representation. Moreover, one could also reasonably
contend that in the British context Radical democracy could never achieve
its object until it was transformed by the class politics of the Collectivist
phase.
Yet it must not be assumed that further political development in Britain
must continue this trend. The developing needs of the pattern of policy may
reduce as well as enhance the importance of groups, even conceivably
eliminating some from effective participation. In relation to the economy,
it has been possible to conceive of the withering away of the rentier;
similarly, important political classes can lose their relevance to policy and
decline. Such changes make us consider among the possibilities not only
further democratization, but also a "rehierarchization."9
Above all, even though these conceptions are useful for comparative
analysis, we must not infer from them that the British succession will be
followed in other countries. That the British polity went through an individualist phase, for instance, is no reason to believe that other countries will
or must go through a similar phase. Indeed, countries that modernize later
can be expected to use their knowledge of what happened elsewhere in
order to guide or, if they choose, to short-circuit some phase. Our growing
knowledge of modernization is itself an example of the rationalization
process and shows how it may give us greater control over political development.
Modernization theory helps us pick out and identify important trends.
It is, however, an aid not only to description, but also to explanation, suggesting ways to get at the dynamics of the process and the causes of change.
In the present study, rationalism, as an orientation that institutionalizes the
pursuit of knowledge and its application to problems of control, is a principal source of this dynamism. We can get a closer look at some of the complexities of this process if we turn now to the tendencies of Collectivist
politics.
V
In constructing a model of Collectivist politics, I made a two-fold use of
theory. One task was to identify the basic orientations of political actors.
In doing this I exploited the resources of the history of political thought,
vulgarized so as to throw light on operative ideals. British socialist thought
helps one get a grasp of the premises of action of the Labour party, espe9 The expression of a Tory acquaintance of mine.
Samuel H. Beer
25
cially during the party's "Socialist Generation," which ran roughly from
1918 through 1945. Tory thought, although, as one would expect, more diffuse and less formalized in utterance, brings out the orientations of the
central current of sentiment and behavior among Conservatives.
In both cases, these orientations, while suffused with the rationalist and
voluntarist ethos of modernity, also embody other values, especially conceptions of class, which exhibit powerful strands of premodern thought and
feeling. These values center on class, yet they conceive its functions quite
differently, the Socialist regarding class as creating a horizontal division
in society, while the Tory looks on it as a form of vertical integration. In
spite of such vitally important differences, however, both sets of class
values legitimize a complex set of more particular attitudes supporting
party government and functional representation. In the British political
community, this general acceptance of party government and functional
the one hand
representation leads to massive political concentration-on
the mass party and on the other hand what we might call the mass pressure
groups, meaning by this especially the great producers' organizations of the
industrial economy, such as trade unions and trade associations.
The use of theory in the analysis above may be thought of as a kind of
political anthropology. Like the cultural anthropologist, we can look for the
orientations or premises of action that support, perhaps through intervening
levels of thought and feeling, a set of particular attitudes displayed in complex, concrete behavior. Although we are dealing with the intentional and
purposive life of a community, the findings have explanatory value, insofar
as they locate motivational bases on which behavior depends.
The conceptions of party government and functional representation
greatly help in identifying and describing the broad outlines of British
politics in the twentieth century and in setting off certain of its distinctive
features from those of the liberal and individualist nineteenth century. As
we examine the political behavior of this more recent time, however, we
find patterns of behavior that are not included in this description. We find
uniformities derived from the structures and patterns legitimized by the
operative ideals of Collectivist politics, but not intended by them. The
model of party government and functional representation, in other words,
has not only manifest functions, but also latent functions.
In identifying these latent functions and in tracing their origin and interconnection, organization theory proves useful. Economists in their study of
economic concentration have shown how the size of the large corporation
affects both its internal structure and its external relations. These consequences of economic concentration can be summarized under four headings,
two relating to internal effects and two relating to external effects: managerialism, bureaucracy, bargaining, and what Galbraith has called "dependence effect."10
Abstracting from the economic context, I found this analysis of the
tendencies of large-scale organization highly suggestive when applied to
political formations. While not exactly analogous, this pattern of relations
in the economic field helped me find similar consequences resulting from
10 J, K. Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston, 1958), p. 158.
26
ComparativePolitics October1968
concentration in parties and pressure groups and so to see the meaning and
interconnection of forms of behavior that had previously seemed unrelated.
The distinctive intellectual contribution of sociology, Robert Merton has
said, is to be found in the study of unintended consequences.1' In this sense
this analysis of the "laws" of political concentration, i.e., of the latent
functions of certain purposive structures, can be thought of as a kind of
political sociology.
VI
With the hunches and hypotheses suggested by these elements of organization theory, we can detect and order the unanticipated consequences set in
train by the pattern of party government and functional representation. As
has often been observed, the mass party, even if its inspiration is highly
democratic, tends to separate the leadership from the rank and file and to
accumulate influence in their hands. The conventions of British cabinet
government also work in this direction. But it is well to see that such
tendencies toward managerialism also inhere in other large formations such
as workers' and employers' organizations as well as political parties.
A major source of managerialism is the specialized and indeed professional skills that leaders must develop and exercise if they are to hold their
organizations together and carry out their purposes. Organizational necessities of this kind help us explain the decline of the Labourparty conference
and of the party's extraparliamentary organization from the role given it in
the party's image of itself and actually carried out in the earlier phases of its
history. Such elitist tendencies cause little strain among Tories, whose
ancient sociology accepts hierarchy as a law of orderly life. Insofar, however, as political managers win their status by achievement and by demonstrated capacities of expertise or professional knowledge, there is as sharp
a clash of managerialism with Tory as with Socialist values.
Size and complexity in political formations as in other organizations also
tend to promote bureaucracy or, to use the more general term, formalization.
Sidney Webb's neat constitution of 1918, as elaborated and amended over
the years, illustrates the point. On the Conservative side, the party and its
leaders have shown themselves remarkably forward in the use of formal
organization from the days of Disraeli through the era of Woolton. No doubt,
however, there is greater reluctance than among Socialists to formalize the
framework of vital decisions and authoritative positions, as shown by the
long delay in establishing an explicit set of rules for choice of a party
leader.
"Managerial bureaucracy" refers to the effects of concentration on internal structures. Its effects on external relations are twofold. The operative
ideals of functional representation legitimize and even require consultation
between government and producers' groups. The degree of concentration
achieved by many of these groups in their respective fields means, however,
that consultation almost inevitably becomes negotiation and, indeed, a kind
11 Robert K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, (Glencoe, 1949), Ch. 1,
"Manifest and Latent Functions," p. 66.
Samuel H. Beer
27
of collective bargaining. The annual price review between the government
and the National Farmers Union is a good example. Of even more importance are the repeated efforts of governments to achieve agreement with
trade unions and trade associations on an incomes policy from which, indeed, when the efforts are successful, a kind of "extraparliamentarylegislation" results.
When we look at the relations of the parties and the electorate, however,
the appropriate term is "bidding"rather than "bargaining."These two fairly
evenly matched parties make an intense effort to identify and attract every
vote that might float. This leads to a great stress on group appeals. One can
think of these voters as consumer groups, the beneficiaries or prospective
beneficiaries of the welfare state. "The voter," as Lord Woolton once said,
"is also the consumer." One result of this process of bidding is to enhance
the role of the usually poorly organized consumer groups in the electoral
and governmental process. At the same time there is a certain "dependence
effect" as political parties shape the often inchoate wishes of these electors.
One further tendency of political concentration should also be mentioned
because of its bearing on a major development of recent years. In Britain
as in most other Western countries during the postwar period, the intensity
of political conflict significantly, and rather unexpectedly, diminished, leading to much discussion of "the decline of ideology" and "consensus politics."
Various reasons will be considered at a later point. Here it may be pointed
out how this tendency is promoted by the objective political conditions
under which the two mass parties must operate. Each party when seeking
power must bid for the votes of many of the same consumers' groups and
when in power must bargain with much the same set of producers' groups.
These are the hard realities of getting elected and of governing. Together
they have worked to promote a convergence of party program, greatly lessening the ideological distance between Socialist and Conservative. As
ideological contours have faded a new group politics has appeared as a
more and more prominent feature of the political scene.
VII
Such in brief are the latent functions of the model of party government and
functional representation. The two major situational factors from which
they flow are a high level of political concentration and a wide scope of
government intervention. It is also important that there are two major
parties and that they have been fairly evenly matched in electoral strength.
The propositions embodied in this analysis are not merely descriptive, but
also explanatory. If we do not project too much onto the term, we can think
of them as "laws" of political concentration. They are continuous with much
well-established organization theory and go on to develop certain hypotheses in a form that makes them testable in the context of other political
systems.
In the previous analysis, latent function is in each instance in conflict
with operative ideal. The tension and strain that result have a psychological
aspect that can be readily illustrated. One example is the long agony of the
Labour party in the fifties when it was torn by the conflict between its
28
Comparative Politics
October 1968
deeply felt democratic and socialist myth and the hard realities of political
survival. Nor is the strain of conflict of this sort embodied simply in factional conflict. Perhaps even more significant is its impact on individuals,
dividing them against themselves, as, for instance, in the case of a Tory
leader who wins his position by achievement, yet attempts to adapt to the
surviving conceptions of hierarchic class feeling among his fellows. Voters
in the mass may also be affected, responding with unease and confusion to
the fact that the great political organizations do not merely respond to the
public will, but in some degree manufacture it.
These psychological aspects have a bearing on political development and
would be worth exploring further. Here our concern is with the more direct
tendencies to change proceeding from the Collectivist model. The unanticipated consequences that we have considered are themselves departures in
behavior from an intended pattern, which for a longer or shorter period
was established. Yet, as this brief sketch suggests, latent functions may in
an important sense work to maintain the structure or other unit from which
they proceed, even though they are in conflict with its purpose. The Labour
party, for instance, could hardly have survived if it had not modified its
original practice to allow for far stronger leadership. Latent functions may
support even while they transform a structure.
VIII
Having looked at the tendencies of the Collectivist model as exhibited generally in the postwar period, we may now consider what has been happening
in the sixties and then go on to examine the possibilities of the future. In
this discussion I want even more explicitly to make the concept of rationalization the focus of inquiry. This concept is especially relevant to recent
developments because of the explosion of scientific knowledge with its
ramifying impact throughout society. One of the most obvious effects is on
the economy where, as we are continually told, the scientific revolution has
become the principal dynamic force, bringing about a professionalization
of the mode of production, distribution, and exchange. Among other things,
it continually reduces the number of manual workers and increases the
white-collar class equipped with technical and professional training, a
change in occupational structure that cannot help but have important effects
upon parties and politics.
Moreover, the scientific revolution affects the polity not only indirectly
through economic development, but also directly as our knowledge of society itself responds to the scientific impulse. Thus, for instance, not only
in government departments, but also in the leading echelons of parties and
pressure groups there is occurring a professionalization of reform as the
social sciences are applied to problems of public policy. Surely the most
weighty instance of the way greater knowledge can affect politics is the
impact of Keynesian economics on the conflict of parties. Throughout the
West and well before the era of affluence, this revolution in ideas dissolved
the rigid doctrines of prewar "capitalism" and "socialism," bringing old
combatants into a wide area of agreement, as the emergence of "Butskellism" revealed to slightly astonished Britons in the early 1950's. In this way,
Samuel H. Beer
29
reason has had as much to do with reducing the class struggle as any material force.
In the economic sphere the dominance of science and applied technology
is a major characteristic of the "postindustrial" society. It should not be
surprising if its impact were also wide and deep enough to produce a "postcollectivist" politics.
IX
It will be convenient to consider the changes of the sixties under the two
headings of party government and functional representation.
If we ask whether there has been a further lessening of the ideological
distance between the two parties, the answer is clearly Yes. The last major
Labour program of the fifties, The Future Labour Offers You, which was
put out in 1958, showed how far group politics had qualified party politics.
The harsh defeats suffered by Hugh Gaitskell when he tried in 1959-1960 to
alter Clause IV, the ancient pledge of universal public ownership, revealed
great strength on the part of the old myth. Yet by the first years of-ironWilson's leadership, revisionism had clearly carried the day,
ically-Harold
and the old rhetoric of nationalization had just about vanished from party
and trade-union oratory.
On the Conservative side there had been at least an equivalent movement
toward their opponents. Although the Conservatives showed after returning
to power in 1951 that they had accepted not only the welfare state, but also
the managed economy, they still rejected planning. Under Macmillan, however, they gave up their brief flirtation with "neoliberalism" and created the
National Economic Development Council, establishing what they hoped
would be a British version of French planification. After Labour took office
in 1964, the two parties came to look even more alike. Like the Conservatives in the late 1950's who had been obliged to resort to deflation in order
to protect the pound, Labour not only accepted that obligation, but finally
resorted to the deliberate creation of unemployment in attempting to honor
it. A left wing among backbenchers and in the party organization continued
to protest and resist. Yet a comparison with the "Keep Left" group in the
days of Attlee's government shows how vastly the Left had declined in
weight, influence, and ideas.
If class ideologies have declined, class politics, on the other hand, continues to flourish mightily. By class politics I mean primarily class voting,
although I also include other partisan behavior such as party membership.
If we take manual and nonmanual occupations as identifying respectively
the working class and the middle class and then ask how each of these two
groups has divided its support between the two main parties since the war,
we find that in spite of party convergence, affluence, and like developments,
the index of class voting has remained remarkably high and stable over the
years.12 In the elections of both 1964 and 1966 there were slight shifts in
12 See Robert R. Alford, Party and Society (Chicago, 1963), p. 348; and Alford, "Class
Voting in the Anglo-American Political Systems," in Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein
Rokkan, eds. Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York, 1967), esp. p. 85 and
p. 93, n. 51.
30
Comparative Politics
October 1968
middle-class strata to Labour, with the result that "the class polarisation of
the British electorate was perhaps fractionally reduced."'13A rather similar
but more substantial shift also was revealed among Labour MP's, candidates elected in 1965-1966 showing a striking increase in professional occupations and university background.
Perhaps the most important and certainly not the least puzzling developments relate to party membership.14We recognize, of course, that only a
small fraction of the millions reported by each party are in fact active party
workers. Still these millions represent a source of great financial support
and a recruiting ground for the scores of thousands of activists. Although
the Conservatives do not keep a very exact account, their membership fell
from about 2.8 million to 2.3 million between the early fifties and early
sixties. On the Labour side, individual membership reached a peak in 1953
of about one million after some years of steady growth. From 1953 to 1966,
however, the figure dropped by almost 25 percent. Trade-union membership in the party reached its peak in 1956, also after a long and steady
climb. In the following ten years, although the trade-union total fell off by
only 2 percent, it failed to keep pace with the work force, which grew by
some 7 percent. The Labour party, far from embracing ever larger circles of
the working class, suffered not merely a stop but an absolute decline.
As for causes of this decline, the most plausible is the change in occupational structure. In manufacturing alone, for instance, between 1954 and
1964, the percent of administrative, technical, and clerical workers rose
from 18.4 to 23.1. The effect on membership in the unions themselves has
been marked. Although white-collar workers are being unionized, they do
not make up for losses in the declining occupations, such as mining, shipbuilding, and textiles, and between 1953 and 1963, although the total number of employees went up 9 percent, trade-union membership rose only 4
percent.
Such changes in occupational structure surely must affect political behavior. Yet the relationship is not simple. For one thing, this occupational
shift has been going on for a long time. From 1931 to 1951, for instance,
manual wage-earners declined as a percent of the population from 70.3
to 64.2, while white-collar employees rose from 23.0 percent to 30.9 percent.
Yet it was in the mid-fifties that the Labour party reached the peak of its
individual and trade-union membership. Moreover, the fact that the Conservative party has also lost membership suggests that the relevant condition must affect both parties.
The decline of ideological distance between the parties could well be an
influence. The relationship is familiar: a party reaches out to attract new
voters, but in the process waters down the doctrine that had previously
attracted new recruits. Yet this formulation implies a diminution of intensity
of support among partisans which does not square easily with the fact that
per capita financial contribution from the local parties to the national Labour party has almost doubled during the period of declining membership.
13 D. E. Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1966 (New York,
1966), p. 265.
14 For a searching discussion, see Leon Epstein, Political Parties in Western Democracies (New York, 1967), esp. Ch. 4, "The Socialist Working-Class Party."
Samuel H. Beer
31
Another portentous innovation of the sixties surely needs to be considered. This is the parties' increasing use of new communications techniques,
especially survey research and advertising and television. In both parties
there was strong initial resistance. On the Conservative side the ideal of
Tory statesmanship suggests that the role of the governing class is to govern
and then to ask the approval of the people, on whose favorable judgment it
can, in the long run, count. On the Labour side the notion of conference as
the authentic voice of the working class is no more favorable to the use of
survey research to identify the wishes of voters. The effectiveness of the new
techniques in winning elections, however, finally broke through these obstacles. Fears of their slipping popularity led the Conservatives to take
the first step in 1959, even though they were at that time in office. Labour
followed suit in 1964, being greatly influenced by the scientific findings of
Dr. Mark Abrams and the leadership of Hugh Gaitskell. Indeed this whole
change in tactics was part of the "revisionist" triumph over the ideologues.
In 1966 both parties continued their efforts, the Conservatives in their attempt to locate "target voters" making a far more ambitious use of survey
research than had ever been made before.
For all the remaining resistances of traditionalism, there can be no doubt
that this revolution in electoral methods and the resulting professionalization of vote-getting will go forward. The conventional wisdom of the party
leader and agent about the voter appeal of pensions, housing, education, and
other elements in the bidding process is now refined and made far more
exact by survey research, while the attempt to win the support of the relevant groups is heightened by an increasingly sophisticated use of advertising and television.
The effects of this major step in rationalization are not likely to be confined to elections, and can hardly help affecting the power structures of the
two parties. There is still a role for the local activists, yet as a means of ascertaining and influencing the public will they are overshadowed by the
new techniques. In the Labour party, the effect will surely be to reduce still
further the role of conference in policy-making. With regard to the positions
of the two parties, the new and more effective processes of bidding may
very well draw them even closer together. Tory statesmanship itself cannot
wholly resist the effect of hard evidence of the voters' desires. In 1966, for
example, when survey research showed that the voters preferred Labour's
policy of comprehensive education to the Conservative stand, statesmanship
at least compromised by omitting the mention of education from the manifesto. No doubt the immensely increased demands for money which the
new techniques entail also could affect power structure. In 1964, for example, Labour trebled its expenditures on its preelection campaign as compared with 1959. It is worth mentioning that a special committee has recently
proposed that the Labour party adopt a system of graduated dues for its
individual members, varying with their incomes.
x
In revising his standard work on British pressure groups in 1965, Professor
Finer wrote:
"...
. The most striking impression I have received is the stabil-
ity and durability of the system it describes....
Broadly speaking, the same
32
Comparative Politics
October 1968
great organisations still hold the centre of the stage, continue to make the
same sort of demands, and press them by the same sort of tactics."15With
regard to functional representation, two developments, both continuous
with past trends, are notable. The system of quasi-corporatism bringing
government and producers' groups into intimate and continuous relationships has been still further elaborated and institutionalized. At the same
time, the expert, the scientifically and professionally trained person, has
continued to gain a position of greater influence. In neither case, however,
has the course of events been smooth; on the contrary, like British planning
itself, it has been punctuated by "Stop and Go."
A new and greater commitment to planning was institutionalized in new
machinery that the Conservatives inaugurated and Labour developed: the
National Economic Development Council with its score or so of little Neddies for specific fields, the Department of Economic Affairs, the National
Board for Prices and Incomes. Through these channels, consultation between government and producers' groups was widened and regularized.
A major change facilitating this new level of contact was the crucial shift
in the attitudes of organized business toward the acceptance of economic
planning. Even after the war, industry continued to be torn between its old
principle of independence of government and the new possibilities of exercising influence on it at the cost of closer association. Finally, in the
early sixties a decision was made in favor of the latter alternative, reflected
in the vigorous advocacy by the Federation of British Industries of economic
planning for growth on the French model. Indeed, it was industry's acceptance of its new responsibilities in the NEDC that led to the amalgamation
of the three main peak organizations into one comprehensive organization,
the Confederation of British Industry. Nor was this new commitment purely
organizational: individual firms cooperated heartily in providing the massive
information needed for Labour's National Plan.
In the sixties, as in the forties, however, the success of planning depended
upon the restraint of inflation, a particularly acute problem for an economy
in the exposed international position of the British. Again as in the past, the
new group politics caused difficulties.16 Governments showed great reluctance to restrict consumption, private and public. Against this background of excessive demand, it was even harder to achieve success in the
effort to hold down the forces making for inflation on the side of costs, especially wages. The attempt to set up an effective incomes policy was the
core of the problem, and the prolonged and intricate bargaining of the Labour Government with producers' groups, especially trade unions, makes a
fascinating chapter in the development of functional representation. Parliament played a residual role, and while the threat to use legal powers did
gradually materialize, events again made it clear that the real foundation of
a successful policy would have to be voluntary cooperation.
As of this writing, it can only be said that the incomes-policy attempt was
a failure. The reason was in part a matter of choice and will: the massive
transport-workers' union as of old, supported by such unions as the engi15 S. E. Finer, Anonymous Empire (London, 1966), p. ix.
16 I have discussed the relationship in "The British Legislature and the Problem of
Mobilizing Consent," in Elke Frank, ed. Lawmakers in a Changing World (Englewood
Cliffs, 1966), esp. pp. 37-39.
Samuel H. Beer
33
neers' under newly radical leadership, simply refused to cooperate. Yet there
were also important structural weaknesses, on the side of both employers'
and employees' organizations, which throw interesting light on the stage of
political concentration reached by the British polity. As compared with
similar groups in such countries as Sweden, British producers' groups have
long been criticized for their lack of cohesion. Yet modern economic management, which entails the making of bargains that will be kept, requires
coherent and authoritative leadership on both sides of the private sector.
Concentration among unions has gone forward, and today 70 percent of
trade-union membership is included in some eighteen huge organizations.
The dynamics of union growth seem inexorably to be eliminating the many
small organizations, while the separatism of different crafts is in part overcome by the further growth of general unions.
At the same time, however, full employment has led to a shift of much
significant collective bargaining from the national to the plant level. Even
when national organizations did accommodate their agreements on wage
rates to the criteria of the incomes policy, "earnings drift" at the workplace
level continued to swell the forces of cost inflation. As compared with the
time when nationally agreed wage rates were virtually identical with earnings, this new development has meant a real and major loss of authority on
the part of the national unions. Whether their central power should be
strengthened or these decentralized practices should be recognized and
regularized is being ardently debated. Whatever structure is adopted, it can
be said that if this new stage of rationalized control of the economy is to
succeed, some corresponding means must be found to mobilize consent
among the affected groups.
This failure of planning has also meant a certain setback for that professionalization of policy-making which is a growing characteristic of British
as of other Western governments. If we look generally at the role of the
scientist in British government, we can see that it has grown slowly and
steadily in Britain during the past two or three decades, although by no
means as greatly as in the United States. As has often happened to other
groups and classes in the past, the new needs of public policy have elevated
the effective power and influence of the scientifically and professionally
trained strata. Britain gave scientists new and important functions during
the war and since then, relative to GNP, has invested about as much in
civilian research and development as has the United States. The network of
advisory committees that cluster around government departments includes
a high proportion of scientifically trained people. The creation of the Ministry of Technology has improved their position within the administration
and given science policy a new importance.
Indeed, when Harold Wilson took office in 1964 it was with great promises of bringing the scientific revolution to fruition in Britain. One immediate instance was a flocking of dons, particularly economists, to Whitehall, a
migration reminiscent of American practice and indeed consciously imitating it. If the original hopes for economic planning had been fulfilled, the
role of the professional would have been even greater than it is today. The
pressure of economic crisis, however, with its usual features of inflation
and an international deficit, forced authority away from the new organs
and back toward the Treasury, which although by no means as innocent of
34
Comparative Politics
October 1968
expertise as it once was, remains especially the home of the generalist and
nonprofessional administrator.
XI
In this brief sketch of recent developments, there appear no great departures
from the model of Collectivist politics. Britain's politics, like Britain's problems, bears a remarkable resemblance to what it was ten and even twenty
years ago. Yet there are incremental changes in economy and polity which
could bring about a qualitative change. What are some of the shapes that
this political future may take?
The further development of corporatism is surely to be expected. Planning
is inevitable in an economy that seeks both stability and expansion. In the
absence of a totalitarian bureaucracy, such planning means that the enterprises and people that carry out the plans must be brought in on their formulation. To this extent, as planning develops, functional representation will
likewise grow, becoming an even more important part of the representative
system of the polity. The structure may become more centralized, as has
been the tendency in the past. Or it may functionally and territorially decentralize tasks that are not excessively burdening the center. The extension of control through some form of bureaucratic structure, however,
seems hardly to be avoided.
But corporatism cannot constitute a complete polity and must be supplemented by some other source of will and direction such as has come in the
past from the party system. One of the more apocalyptic possibilities has
recently been characterized by a friend of mine speaking generally of
the dangers facing Western countries. This possibility he described as
"Caesarism based on technocracy because of the difficulties experienced
by democracy in dealing with complexity." The demand for planning is inexorable, but the regime of parties is incapable of generating among the
populace the understanding and acceptance that will produce the decisions
necessary for planning. A Caesarism, perhaps less authoritarian and more
manipulative thanks to the new techniques of communication, performs
this essential function of forming the public will, no doubt in conjunction
with a controlled system of corporatism.
With this very familiar specter one may contrast a tendency of more recent vintage, which insofar as it is realized would disrupt the imposing
monism described in the previous paragraph with a radically new kind of
dualism. The pattern of policy we suggested above carries the impersonality
and centralization of bureaucracy to a new height, legitimizing them with
the authority of science and modern rationality. Yet, as we have recently
learned again, precisely this set of factors can produce a powerful reaction.
There are precedents in the past. Upon the foundation laid by voluntarism,
modernity has from time to time produced a romantic reaction that rejects
not only the discipline of an objective ethics, but also the discipline of an
industrial environment. In Britain, from the Luddites to D. H. Lawrence,
different classes and times have shared this impulse, of which student
anarchism is only a recent flowering.
But if rebellious students are the most vivid exhibit, the possibilities of a
regional or local politics are more serious and no less romantic. In recent
Samuel H. Beer
35
years, localism has become a major principle of opposition, especially in
by-elections. More to the point is the powerful upsurge of Celtic nationalism. As English civil servants continually point out, the demands of Scots
nationalists make no economic sense. Yet enthusiasm for the Scottish Nationalist party grows and confronts not only Liberals but also Labourites
and Conservatives with the prospect of being wiped out north of the Tweed.
Welsh nationalists like the Scots have one MP at present. But close observers forecast growing success for them in the not too distant future.
If we subtract the extremism from these two possibilities, they suggest a
party dualism based not on class but on a central-local axis, such as characterized many nations during the early years of their development.
Whether such tendencies would be powerful enough to sustain a two-party
system, as did the principles of Hamilton and Jefferson in the United States,
seems dubious, but they might well loosen and disorganize the present
orderly play of parties.
That orderly play itself tends to transform the system. If the parties continue to converge, conceivably they could produce a condition of "party
duopoly without product differentiation." Further professionalization of
leadership would reduce the power of militants and open the way to a
highly flexible policy. Through two "catchall" parties, competing teams of
leaders would seek power on the basis of shifting coalitions of voters.
Conceivably an "era of good feeling" could supervene in which the old
dualism would be dissolved by the overwhelming dominance of one party.
In view of Labour's gloomy prospects at the moment, it is not idle to speculate on this possibility of democratic one-party government. Broadly agreed
on the basic outlines of the welfare state and managed economy, a set of
lively factions within this great catchall party would contest for party and
so governmental control. One is reminded of the CDU, or the Christian
Democrats of Italy, or indeed not a little of the Tories during their recent
long tenure of power.
The discussion of the catchall party and of factions suggests a more
radical alternative that should not be dismissed. This is the withering away
of party altogether. Ostrogorski, it will be remembered, regarded party as
the dead hand of traditionalism extended in a new form into the era of
liberty. Instead of parties he preferred combinations of citizens shifting with issues and problems. Without trying to follow his proposals exactly, we should at least consider the possibility that parties may become
fairly dysfunctional and as a result decline and disappear. Ostrogorski did
indeed have a point when he observed their traditionalizing influence. By
freezing voters in their adherence to a symbol, they prevent a flexible response to new problems. The continuance of class lines and class interests
gave some justification to the stereotyping of political response. If we can
suppose the decline of class, more flexible means of mobilizing opinion and
changing the configurations of loyalty and support would be appropriate.
In this sense we might think of party as characterizing a transitional stage
between traditional society and a fully modern society.
As in any discussion of British politics, we return at the end to the basic
question of class. In Britain, class trails with it ancient habits of thought and
feeling that hark back to Old Toryism. Even those who rebelled and still
rebel against class as the product of industrial capitalism acquired their
36
Comparative Politics
October 1968
sense of identity and solidarity not only from those objective conditions,
but also from a much older heritage. In this sense class diminishes as modernization proceeds.
Strong as this heritage may be, however, it still requires some current
and objective focus for its survival. If such foci cannot be eliminated,
neither can the sense of class. One focus consists of differences in material
well-being and style of life. Quite conceivably affluence could spread to the
point where this basis of class and class politics had virtually vanished.
Another focus consists of the relationship of individuals to the ownership
of the means of production. The spread of bureaucratization continually
erodes this difference by making employees of more and more members of
the economy. But class also, and I am inclined to think this is the most important meaning of the term, rests on differences of power. The prospect of
eliminating differences of power in society and so of eliminating the different attitudes that men take toward the distribution of power seems highly
unlikely.
Conceivably, the two parties could become irrelevant to British politics
if they were contesting nothing but the distribution of material goods and
services. Similarly, if that myth of universal nationalization produced by the
political imagination of Labour's founders were the party's only reason for
being, the party might well see the time when there was no future for it.
But Tories and Socialists also confront one another as advocates of distinctive attitudes toward the distribution of power. In the Tory acceptance of
the social goal of security, Conservatives have much in common with Socialists. But the Tory belief in inequality, not merely with regard to distributive justice but also with regard to power in the state and in society,
puts a fundamental principle at issue between Tories and Labour. However
evanescent Labour's commitment to the goal of fellowship may have become, British socialism is still "about equality." Even in Britain's postindustrial society, there is likely to be a vigorous future for her present party
dualism.