Southern Political Science Association
A Critique of Recent Writings on Political Parties
Author(s): Frederick C. Engelmann
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Aug., 1957), pp. 423-440
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science Association
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A CRITIQUE OF RECENT WRITINGS
ON POLITICAL PARTIES*
FREDERICKC. ENGELMANN
Alfred University
has advanced
PARTIES,1
OF POLITICAL
STASIOLOGY,THE SCIENCE
greatly during the present decade. Before 1951, writings in this
field had been confined largely to histories of parties, accounts of
their electoral fortunes, and discussions of their programs and ideologies. Only two works by Western scholars, both written early in this
century, stood out as significant works in analytical stasiology:
M. I. Ostrogorski's Democracy and the Organization of Political
Parties2 and Robert Michels' Political Parties: A Sociological Study
of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy.3
The development of analytical stasiology was propelled by the
appearance, in 1951, of Maurice Duverger's Les partis politiques.4
This work with its categorization of party organizations and party
systems, the critiques elicited by the book, and monographs that
developed alongside, most of them independently of Duverger's effort, caused Sigmund Neumann to write, in 1954: "Only of late,
and at last, has the role of the political party entered the center
of our professional concern."5 Neumann himself took the latest
*Researchfor this study was aided by a grant from the Alfred University
ResearchFoundation.
1The term "stasiology,"derived from the Greek "stasis,"meaning faction,
was suggestedby MauriceDuvergerin Political Parties, translatedby Barbara
and Robert North (New York, 1954), p. 422.
22 vols., translatedby F. Clarke (New York, 1902).
3Translatedby Eden and Cedar Paul (Glencoe,Ill., 1949).
'(Paris, 1951). Further referenceswill be to the English translation (see
n. 1).
5"Towarda Theory of Political Parties," World Politics, VI (July, 1954),
549-563. The developmentwas particularlyrapid in Great Britain. There had
been no treatise on the British partiessince Ostrogorski.Within three years,the
following works appeared:Sydney Bailey (ed.), Political Parties and the Party
System in Britain (New York, 1952); Ivor Bulmer-Thomas,The Party System
in Great Britain (London, 1953); and R. T. McKenzie,British Political Parties
(New York, 1955).
'[ 423 ]
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[Vol. 19
THE JOURNALOF POLITICS
-424
step toward a systematic stasiology with his Modern Political Parties.6
Although this progress has been remarkable, it has been made
the subject of much criticism and self-criticism by political scientists. Duverger presents his book with much diffidence:
The reader is . . . asked never to forget the highly conjectural nature
of most of the conclusions formulated in this book. . .. In fifty years'
time perhaps it will be possible to describethe real working of political parties.7
The development of the science of political parties
. . .
will no doubt
lead to the revision of many of the patterns we have traced.8
Neumann calls his theoretical chapter in Modern Political Parties
"a tentative sketch of some persistent themes for a comparative
analysis.... nothing but preliminarypropositions for further study,
particularly in its attempt at a definition of modern political parties."9 As recently as 1954, Alfred Diamant, who had earlier called
for a basic theoretical framework for the study of political parties,10 was justified (as, indeed, he would be justified today) in
asking "whether, or to what extent, there can be comparative study
of political parties if the literature about parties in the various
countries, and by the scholars most competent to do these basic
studies, does not provide comparable data and concepts."11
The recent achievements in the field of stasiology will be assessed in the ensuing pages. No effort will be made to answer
what is without doubt the most challenging question: Is a science
of political parties possible? This question, left unresolved in the
monumental controversy between Duverger and G. E. Lavau,2
6(Chicago, 1956). While the work is a collection of monographson individual party systems, edited by Neumann, the editor wrote a significantconcluding chapter, "Toward a Comparative Study of Political Parties," pp.
395-421.
'Op. cit., p. xiv.
8lbid., p. 422.
9P.
6.
"0Reviewof A. Joseph Berlau, The GermanSocial DemocraticParty, 19141921 (New York, 1949), in The Western Political Quarterly,V (December,
1950), 639.
"1Reviewof Ludwig Bergstraesser,Geschichteder politischen Parteien in
Deutschland, 7th rev. ed. (Munich, 1952), in The Journal of Politics, XVI
(May, 1954), 377.
12G.E. Lavau, Partis politiques et r6alit6ssociales (Paris, 1953), pp. 5-46,
163-165. See also S. E. Finer, review of Duverger,op. cit., in Political Studies,
II (October, 1954), 273; and C. A. Micaud, review of Lavau, op. cit., in The
Journal of Politics, XVI (November,1954), 729.
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can be answered, if at all, only in conjunction with the major question: Is a science of politics possible? The present study will attempt to answer the following, more modest, questions: (1) What
has been studied by stasiologists? (2) What approaches taken in
these studies have actually furthered our systematic and analytical
knowledge of political parties? (3) What, if any, are some obvious lacunae in stasiological studies? These questions will be
answered from recent (and in some cases not so recent) writings
on political parties.
In this study, the consideration of writings on political parties
will be limited in three ways. First, only writings on parties with
democratic objectives will be considered. The present writer agrees
with F. A. Hermens (and, by implication, disagrees with Duverger)
that political parties, as we know them, are "instruments of democratic government," and cannot, therefore, be studied along with
dictatorial parties in a meaningful, comparative way.13 Second,
American writings on political parties will be omitted from consideration if they are textbooks of primarily descriptive character, or if
they are normative studies on the subject of party government.14
"3Reviewof Duverger, op. cit., in The Review of Politics, XIV (October,
1952), 559. See also Austin Ranney and WillmooreKendall,Democracyand the
American Party System (New York, 1956), pp. 84-87. Neumann seems, at
times, to agree; see Modern Political Parties, pp. 395-396.
"4Duringthe first half of this century, Americanpolitical scientistsfar outstrippedEuropeansin the productionof stasiologicalwritings. Some of them
continued Ostrogorski'swork of probing into the nature of Americanbossism.
Among their writings, we find Harold Zink, City Bosses in the United States
(Durham, N. C., 1930); H. F. Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago Model
(Chicago, 1937); J. T. Salter, Boss Ruk (New York, 1935); and CharlesE.
Merriam,Chicago:A More Intimate View of UrbanPolitics (New York, 1929).
Most Americanwriters,however,devotedtheir stasiologicaleffortsto the compilation of textbookson United States parties,elections,and pressuregroups.The
numberof these books is legion.Among them, we find CharlesE. Merriamand
H. F. Gosnell, The AmericanParty System, 4th ed. (New York, 1949); R. C.
Brooks, Political Parties and Electoral Proberms,3rd ed. (New York, 1933);
Howard R. Penniman, Sait's AmericanParties and Elections, 5th ed. (New
York, 1952); P. 0. Ray, Introductionto Political Parties and PracticalPolitics,
3rd ed. (New York, 1924); H. R. Bruce, AmericanParties and Politics, 3rd ed.
(New York, 1936); V. 0. Key, Jr., Politics, Parties and PressureGroups,3rd
ed. (New York, 1952); Peter H. Odegardand E. A. Helms, AmericanPolitics,
2nd ed. (New York, 1947); Dayton D. McKean, Party and PressurePolitics
(New York, 1949); and Hugh A. Bone, AmericanPolitics and the Party System,
2nd ed. (New York, 1955). These textbooks contain valuable information on
party organization,but the formal aspects of such organizationare often overstressed. Significantworks dealingwith the role of partiesin Americansociety
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426
THE JOURNALOF POLITICS
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Third, since parties are agencies concerned with the capture of
power in political society, the emphasis in this study will be on
writings that deal with the distribution of power within parties,
and with the influence of parties on societal power; other writings
in the field will only be dealt with incidentally.15
The pre-Duverger era in stasiology has been called the "political-biography-cum-political-ideology"phase.16 This classification
takes care of four questions which were asked by the pre-1951
writers on political parties: (1) What is the life story of a particular
political movement? (2) Who are the personalities who give (or,
more often, gave) impetus to particular political movements? (3)
What are the basic views regarding the proper nature of political
society which are held by these movements, and in the name of
which these movements operate? (4) What are the specific proare A. N. Holcombe, The Political Parties of Today (New York, 1924), and
The New Party Politics (New York, 1933); and E. P. Herring,The Politics of
Democracy (New York, 1940). E. E. Schattschneider,more than anyone else,
set out to bare the true power picture within Americanparties; the emphasis
in his provocativeParty Government(New York, 1942), in the subsequentThe
Struggle for Party Government (College Park, Md., 1948), and in his article
in Neumann,op. cit., is, however, on the desirabilityof introducingresponsible
party governmentto the United States. This latter emphasisinspiredthe report
"Toward a More ResponsibleTwo-Party System," in The AmericanPolitical
Science Review, XLIV (Part 2, September,1950), by the AmericanPolitical
Science Association'sCommitteeon Political Parties, of which Schattschneider
was chairman.There are three recent remarkablestasiologicalworks, each sui
generis,by Americanwriters.They are, V. 0. Key's SouthernPolitics in State
and Nation (New York, 1949), which contains not only interesting political
history and biography, but also analytical chapters; Ranney and Kendall's
Democracy and the AmericanParty System (see n. 13), which combines the
textbook approach with general stasiologicalanalysis and a critique of the
party-governmentthesis; and V. 0. Key's AmericanState Politics (New York,
1956), the first thorough work on this subject.
"5Thewriter does not assume the responsibilityof presentinga complete
bibliographyof political parties. There is no functionallyintegratedparty bibliography.The two extant bibliographiesuse the country-by-countryapproach,
and are only loosely coordinated.The first, now quite out of date, is part of
the article "PoliticalParties"in Encyclopediaof the SocialSciences (New York,
1933), Vol. XI, pp. 636-639. The second is found in Neumann, op. cit., pp.
425-446. This bibliographyis remarkablyextensive, though its considerable
value would have been enhancedhad the various authors followed the same
pattern of organization. They also give no indication of a common notion
regardingthe limits of the field of stasiology.
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grams espoused by particular political movements in particular
fields at particular times? More or less closely allied questions to
which many of these writers addressed themselves were: (5) How
do (or again, more often, did) parties interact in particular countries? (6) How are electoral battles fought by parties in particular
countries, and what was the outcome of these battles?
Those who attempted to answer some of these questions-whether in writing on one party or on the parties of one country-usually
published their findings in articles or in sections of general works.17
By and large, more attention was paid to the dictatorial parties,
both communist and fascist, in part, no doubt, because these parties
seemed to influence the course of history more directly than did
their democratic cousins. The writers did not seem to feel that
stasiology was anything more than an aspect, albeit an important
one, of political history. Their recounting of the political fortunes
of leaders and of the electoral fortunes of parties was history; so
were their descriptions of doctrines held by parties and of party
programs and policies. Their work was important; many of the
facts they reported might not have become part of our body of
knowledge, had it not been for their efforts. Yet these writers
could only supply the empirical elements for a general and
systematic study; such a systematic study itself was beyond their
scope, and presumably beyond their interest, whether or not they
would have considered it feasible. But two early writers, who chose
democratic parties for their investigations, submitted those parties to an analysis which, in addition to being without parallel until recent years, enabled the authors to undertake at least some
degree of generalization and systematization. These writers were
Ostrogorski and Michels.
Both of these early greats analyzed political parties with an
identical purpose. This purpose was to study the compatibility of
the organization of political parties with democracy. Both, incidentally, found the parties they studied defective as instruments of
democratic control of government. Ostrogorski, who examined the
"By Diamant, in The Journal of Politics (see n. 11).
27Among the notable exceptionsare Andre Siegfried,Tableau des partis en
France (Paris, 1930); WarnerMoss, Political Parties in the Irish Free State
(New York, 1933); and Dean E. McHenry,His Majesty'sOpposition(Berkeley
and Los Angeles, 1940). Significantsections on political parties can be found
in James Bryce, Modern Democracies,2 vols. (New York, 1921), and in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences,Vol. XI, pp. 589-639.
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OPPOLITICS
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extra-parliamentary organization of British and American parties
at the end of the nineteenth century, made this discovery largely
because of his particular atomistic notion of democracy.18 Michels
based his negative findings on the avowed democratic purposes of
the continental social democratic parties which he studied.19 But
the chief stasiological significance of the work of these two writers
lies not so much in their discussion of the democratic adequacy of
political parties, but in their analysis of these parties. For the
first time, there was a clear cognizance of the fact that here were
organizations which were worth studying in their-role as organizations, that there was intrinsic importance in the internal structure
of these organizations, especially in the relations between leaders
and followers, and that knowledge of the situs of power and of
power relations within these organizations was relevant to an understanding of politics in general. Both writers asked the basic
questions, (1) How does the actual structure of political parties
differ from their formal structure? and (2) Who runs political
parties, and by what means is their leadership exercised?
But their work differs from that of traditional stasiologists not
only because the two writers asked questions about party organization and about the distribution of power within political parties.
Their approach was novel also in that it constituted a conscious
effort to move from the particular to the general.
Ostrogorski does not claim to present us with any law that
governs political parties. It is evident, however, that he considers
his findings about British and American parties to be relevant for
other situations where broad masses of the population are (or will
be) drawn into the political process. He does not intend to present us
with historical uniqueness; rather, he is interested in showing the
consequences of rapid democratization, and the nature of the party
as a vehicle of such rapid democratization-phenomena for which he
claims great similarity in two quite different political societies with
divergent systems of government. In Ostrogorski'swork there is investigation into new and different fields, and the recounting of this
investigation is important; but even more important is the fact
"8Seethe brilliant analysis of Ostrogorski,op. cit., in Austin Ranney, The
Doctrine of ResponsibleParty Government(Urbana, III., 1954), esp. pp. 113119, 128-133.
"'Op.cit., passim.
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that here is information which brings at least the possibility of an
understanding of political parties everywhere.
With Michels, the desire to generalize'was more pronounced.
While his investigation was restricted to social democratic parties,
he imposed no geographic limits on his study. Michels observes the
mass organizations of these social democratic parties, and he is
struck by the differentiation within them between leaders and followers, differentiation caused by such phenomena as the need for
organization for electoral battles, the absence of any mass desire to
run the parties, and the leaders' enjoyment of their own positions,
which makes them desirous of perpetuating their positions. These
phenomena, and corroboratingdata, which have been collected with
zeal and then selected with care, convince Michels that there is an
"iron law of oligarchy," a law with application to all democratic
political parties: Parties everywhere are run by a small group in
their own interests. Therefore, Michels argues, they are doomed as
instruments of democratic government.
Not many of the stasiologists who followed Michels shared his
judgment that political parties ought to be directed by their mass
membership; most of them preserved an objective neutrality on the
subject of intra-party democracy. But the iron law continued to be
potent even when it was stripped of its value base. Its validity was
often assumed for no better reason than that no democratic party
is run either by one absolute leader or by each individual adherent,
and that all are, therefore, presumably oligarchies.20 While this
assumption makes the iron law universal, it also robs it of most of
its meaning. Clearly, a systematic, comparative stasiology needed
to develop beyond Michels' iron law.
It seems strange that modem political scientists, occupied as
they are with studies of political institutions and processes, should
have let decades go by without challenging Ostrogorski and Michels
or, obversely, without showing much interest in developing further
these writers' analyses of parties. There was, to be sure, recognition of the special quality of the work of the two men; many
stasiologists gave expression to the notion that the two were responsible for all, or most, of the then-existing insights into the study
20Thisargumentis made cogentlyby W. J. M. Mackenziein "Mr. McKenzie
on the British Parties,"Political Studies, III (June, 1955), pp. 157-159.
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of parties.2' Meanwhile, stasiology was developed mainly by authors
of general texts in political science: Herman Finer subjected political parties, especially democratic ones, to fairly close and stimulating analysis;22 and Ernest Barker showed, in broad outline, the
role of political parties in the policy-making structure of parliamentary government.23 Only a handful of writers paid close attention
to the internal organizationof political parties in specifically stasiological works. Among them were Eugene Varga, the Soviet social
scientist, who analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of social democratic parties in a work that was designed to be a report to the
Third International;24 and Sigmund Neumann, who analyzed German political parties in 1932.25
By 1950, it was apparent that there was no systematically developed study of political parties to match corresponding achievement in such fields as public administration and international relations. One year later, the publication of Duverger's Les partis
politiques brought political parties among the systematically studied
fields of political science.
II
When Maurice Duverger took up the task of writing the first
work on parties to combine analysis and systematic treatment, he
found himself faced with this vicious circle:
a general theory of parties will eventually be constructed only
upon the preliminary work of many profound studies; but these studies
cannot be truly profound so long as there exists no general theory of
parties . . . how can one refer to general questions when for the most
part they are still undefined?26
His purpose was "to break out of the circle and to sketch a preliminary general theory of parties, vague, conjectural, and of neces"1Thisis not to say that some credit was not given to such scholars as
Lord Bryce and A. Lawrence Lowell. However, the specifically stasiological
nature of the work of Ostrogorskiand Michels caused them to be mentioned
more frequently.
"The Theory and Practice of Modern Government,rev. ed. (New York,
1949), Part 3, passim.
"Reflections on Government(London, 1942), pp. 38-41, 81-94.
"Die sozialdemokratischen
Parteien (Hamburg,1926).
"Die deutschen Parteien (Berlin, 1932).
'8Duverger,op. cit., p. Wii.
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sity approximate, which may yet serve as a basis and guide for
detailed studies."27 He set out to do this in three ways: by defining practical methods of investigation, some original and some
adapted from earlier ones; by attempting "to draw up a general
plan of the field of study by compiling a balance sheet of all the
essential questions and by coordinating them one with another so
as to bring out their interdependence and their individual importance," and by formulating "on the basis of preliminary evidence
as complete, varied, and extensive as possible, but still of necessity fragmentary and inadequate, . . . hypotheses capable of guiding the future research which will one day permit the formulation
of authentic sociological laws." He promised a constant endeavor
to classify and systematize, in an effort "to transpose into political
science the technique of the 'working model"' and thereby "to restore to favour . . . the methodical use of hypothesis in science." The
value of these models or "coherent aggregates, more or less proximate in character," Duverger tells us, is "to inspire and to guide
further detailed studies aimed at verifying them or, more probably, at destroying them."28
Duverger's search for "sociologicallaws" in the field of stasiology
was not new; Michels had set out to do the same thing. The innovation in Duverger's approach was his use of the working
model. He attempts to use the working model not so much in
studying the social composition or the ideologies of parties, though
he considers both important; rather, he promises to construct
hypothetical "proximate aggregates" in order to study "party institutions and their place in the State."29 The last two areas form,
indeed, the subject matter of Duverger's book: party structure and
party systems. His study of party systems encompasses not only
one-, two-, and multi-party systems, but also such items as party
strength, party alliances, the nomination of public officials, and the
relation of parties and forms of government. The essence of Duverger's theory of party systems is their relation to electoral systems.30 It is expressed in the following formulae: "The simplemajority single-ballot system favors the two-party system'"31 and
27Idem.
28Ibid., pp. xm-nv.
29lbid.,p. xv.
'0lbid., pp. 216-228, 239-255.
sl1bid., p. 217.
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"the simple-majority system with second ballot and proportional
representation favor multi-partism."32
This attempt by Duverger to theorize about party systems was
soon subjected to G. E. Lavau's criticism. Lavau feels that human
affairs must be studied at the level of the individual phenomenon,
which is unique in history.33 This assertion makes him, of course,
doubt the validity not only of theoretical stasiology, but of all social
science. But even if one assumes the possibility of a general theory of political parties, Duverger's effort to develop a theory of
party systems is particularly vulnerable. In his attack, Lavau
points to the "reversibility of fundamental theses" and claims that
Duverger could have done as good a job proving "that multipartism causes proportional representation and bipartism the plurality system," or "that political instability results from war and
invasion and stability from opposite situations."34 Lavau would,
it seems, expect Duverger to abandon the attempt to classify party
systems in general comparative political terms. Whether or not
the attempt is in fact hopeless, it must be admitted that it has not
as yet been made to general satisfaction.35
Duverger's other major effort is the classification of party structures. His treatment of party organization differs from that of
Ostrogorski and Michels. Unlike these two predecessors, Duverger is not trying to prove a point. His purpose is systematic classification, and he goes at this with scientific neutrality. He studies
both democratic and dictatorial parties, and he imposes no geographic limits on his data, though his information on parties in
the United States is inadequate. The product of his organizational
analysis consists of such useful categories as direct and indirect
parties; caucas-, branch-, cell-, and militia type basic organizational elements; cadre and mass parties; and electors, supporters,
and militants. Michels' differentiae regarding leaders are enriched
by the addition of new ones regarding the relation between party
leaders and parliamentary representatives. Furthermore,the useful
concept of the membership ratio36 is introduced.
'8Ibid., p. 239.
'8See n. 12.
'Op. cit., p. 11 (author'stranslation).
8"Aninteresting addition to the study of party systems is the concept of
the quasi-partysystem. Cf. C. B. Macpherson,Democracyin Alborta (Toronto,
1953), ch. 8, esp. pp. 237-239.
"'The relation of the numberof membersto the numberof electors."Duverger, op. cit., p. 94.
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Duverger's method is highly useful for analytical and comparative purposes. Samuel Beer has judged its significance in these
words: "No small part of the promise of his method is that it is
truly comparative and raises the modest hope that we may be able
to make some progress' toward systematic generalizations widely
applicable to party behavior in different countries."37 But it may
well be, as Lavau insists, that this promise is hampered by too facile
a reliance on structural factors.38 It also remains true that Duverger does not keep"his initial methodological promise;39 instead
of a continuous testing of a hypothetical working model, we get
sound and methodical classification. Comparison and theory are
not the same; but, in attempting to give us a theory, Duverger does
give us excellent tools for comparison. His systematic treatment
of party systems and especially of party structures establishes Les
partis politiques as the pilot work for further stasiological studies.
Since 1951, there has been an acceleration in these studies. However, this increased pace is not solely due to Duverger, since a
number of studies had been begun prior to the publication of Les
partis politiques. It may be that post-war "normalcy" allowed
political scientists to interest themselves in the relatively placid subject of democratic political parties. For whatever reason, we have
recent studies of the party systems (involving, incidentally, careful
studies of party organization) of the United Kingdom,40 France,41
Germany,42 Sweden,43 Australia,44 and the Canadian province of
Alberta.45 Of these studies, R. T. McKenzie's British Political
""Les Partis Politiques,"The WesternPolitical Quarterly,VI (September,
1953), 514.
880p. cit., pp. 8-9.
'See Hermens,loc. cit., p. 558, and Diamant, review of Duverger,op. cit.,
in The Journal of Politics, XIV (November, 1952), 732.
"Bailey, op. cit.; Bulmer-Thomas,op. cit.; McKenzie,op. cit.
"Philip Williams,Politics in Post-War France (New York, 1954).
"Rudolph Wildenmann,Partei und Fraktion (Meisenheimam Glan, 1954);
Friedrich August Freiherrvon der Heydte and Karl Sacherl, Soziologie der
deutschenParteien (Munich,1955).
"Dankwart A. Rustow, The Politics of Compromise(Princeton, 1955).
"Louise Overacker,The AustralianParty System (New Haven, 1952).
"'Macpherson,op. cit. Along with these books should be mentionedVol. X
of Occidente (March-April,1954), containing the following articles: Greeme
Moodie, "PoliticalPartiesin America,"106-136; D. E. Butler, "Some Notes on
the Nature of British Political Parties,"137-157; Philip Williams,"The French
Party System," 158-183; and GiulianoPischel, "I partiti politici italiani, oggi,"
184-212.Ranney and Kendall'sDemocracyand the AmericanParty System (n.
13) contains a valuable discussionof comparativestasiology (chs. 5 and 6).
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Parties, with its close analysis of the internal organizationand power
structure of the Conservative and Labour parties, and its criticism
of Ostrogorski and Michels in terms of the British parliamentary
system, constitutes the most significant stasiological advance.
By 1956, the stage was set for a coordinated effort in general
comparative stasiology. This effort was made with the publication,
under Sigmund Neumann's editorship, of Modern Political Parties.40 The major stasiological advances of the work are made in
Neumann's concluding article, "Toward a Comparative Study of
Political Parties."47 Here we find, for the first time in a stasiological work, a tentative, generally applicable definition of political
parties.48 Neumann also categorizes the functions of both democratic and dictatorial parties,49 and he suggests a fairly complex
classification of parties based on ideological, sociological, and partysystem considerations.50 The sociology of parties, in turn, is subjected to further analysis with stasiological significance. The only
claim Neumann makes for his effort is that he ventures "a tentative
sketch of some persistent themes for a comparative analysis,2251
and comparison is the keynote of the book. The coverage is not
only inclusive, but it is also systematic. Facts are included not, as
sometimes in Duverger and always in Michels, because they fit
an hypothesis, but because they inform us about a particular party
or party system; they are presented for their own sake.
Much of the material, both in the contributions and in Neumann's synthesis, deals with matters which, while essential to
"The contributors,in addition to Neumann are: FrederickC. Barghoorn,
Samuel H. Beer, GwendolenM. Carter, Andrew Gyorgy, CharlesA. Micaud,
Felix Oppenheim, Dankwart A. Rustow, Robert A. Scalapino, and E. E.
Schattschneider.
47Neumann,op. cit., pp. 395-421.
"". . . the articulate organizationof society's active political agents, those
who are concernedwith the control of governmentalpower and who compete
for popularsupportwith anothergroup or groupsholding divergentviews....
the great intermediarywhich links social forces and ideologiesto official governmental institutions and relates them to political action within the larger
political community."Ibid., p. 396. Ranney and Kendall'sdefinition,written in
the same year and intended to apply to all democraticpolitical parties, is,
"Political parties are autonomousorganizedgroups that make nominationsand
contest elections in the hope of eventually gaining and exercisingcontrol of
the personneland policies of government." Op. cit., p. 85.
49Neumann, op. cit., pp. 396-400.
50Ibid.,pp. 400-405.
`1Ibid.,p. 6.
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history and social science, are peripheral to stasiology proper. Included here are observations about the nexus of politics and other
institutions, agencies, and groups, and Neumann's interesting addition, the suggested study of internationals of parties. Neumann's
approach to party sociology, broader than Duverger's, differs from
Michels' in that it is objective and neutral; it is therefore more
useful than Michels' approach.
Neumann's attempt to classify political parties is less rigorous
than Duverger's. Some of the rigor is lost through Neumann's introduction of sociological and ideological criteria, which are added to
the structural and party-system criteria of Duverger. While the
classification is thus broader, it is also beset with imprecisions and
overlaps. There is, however, one set of categories which is of
sufficient precision for use by the systematic student of parties:
the categories of parties of individual representation and of social
integration.
Neumann, who has sympathy with both the historical approach
of Lavau and the social-science approach of Duverger, does not
make, and thus cannot be held to keep, a theoretical promise as
bold as Duverger's. But even though Neumann makes no effort to
give us a complete stasiological system, his feat of coordinatingwhat
is known about various parties and party systems is remarkable.He
has succeeded in getting a group of noteworthy, though necessarily
dissimilar, contributors to compile a most significant and useful
catalogue of parties and party systems. The prominenceof these contributors indicates that stasiology is at last coming of age. The time
is now ripe for stasiologists to apply Duverger's definite categories,
and possibly even his theoretical promise, to the spadework of
Neumann and his contributors.
This work could be undertaken now because stasiologists have,
in recent years, succeeded in putting the study of party structures
on a solid basis. This is the area where, thanks primarily to Duverger but also to others,52 there have been the most successful recent
developments in stasiology. But so far, the emphasis has been
almost solely on the anatomy of political parties. Processes that
determine organizational policies within parties have been studied,
but investigations into the intra-party procedures that lead to the
"3Including,in addition to Neumann and some of his contributors,R. T.
McKenzie,Philip Williams,Wildenmann,and von der Heydte.
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THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS
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19
making of public policy have been few and far between. The next
section of this study, while giving an account of these physiological
writings, will point to the need for a greater concern with policymaking processes within democratic political parties.
III
There is an apparent neglect by stasiologists of intra-party processes that lead to the making of public policy. Ostrogorskihad, to
be sure, paid some, though scant, attention to the formation of
policy issues within both the Liberal and the Conservative caucuses.53 Duverger, however, pays no attention at all to such policy
formation, and neither do most of Neumann's contributors.54 The
making of public policy within political parties has remained a
stasiological lacuna. There are at least three reasons for this
occurrence: (1) Some have felt that the role of parties in the making of public policy is unimportant. (2) The nature of public
policy-making within parties varies with both party and governmental systems and tends to be complex and confusing. (3) Since
the electoral functions of parties have been quite properly emphasized more than the others, discussions of public policy-making within parties have tended to turn into value-based discussions of intraparty democracy (i. e., usually, discussions of the right of electoral
aides to help determine the policies of elected public officials).
The first reason is of limited importance, since relatively few
students of democratic policy-making processes maintain that the
making of policy is nothing but an interaction of interest groups
with governmental institutions, with political parties performing
only brokerage services in the nominating process.55 But clearly
the second, the complexity of the nature of public policy-making
within parties, continues. The formation of such policy not only
varies with the number of parties and the nature of legislativeexecutive relations, but it may also be indistinguishable from the
formation of public policy which takes place without definite involvement of political parties.
630p. cit., Vol. I, pp. 509-514, 523-529.
54Beer is a notable exception. See Neumann, op. cit., pp. 30-32, 51-53.
"5This notion was, and to some extent still is, wide-spread in the United
States, possibly because of a de facto absence of responsible party government.
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Under a bona fide multi-party system, where no party is likely to
attain a legislative majority, the formation of public policy within
political parties lacks finality, since policies, in order to be enacted,
must be formed by negotiations among parties, and usually among
their representativesin the legislature or in the executive. Only under
a two-party system, where one party can attain a majority and
therefore the sole responsibility of government, can definitive public policy be made within a political party. Here again, only a
cabinet system seems capable of giving the governing party the
complete unity of responsibility necessary for the enactment of
policy in the form in which it has been planned within the party.
Under separation of powers, there is no such unity of responsibility,
and parties may never be able to plan consistent policies with any
hope of enacting them according to plan.
Historically, the unity of the governing party in a parliamentary
system derives from the system itself, and not from the nature of
the parties. In a parliamentary country like the United Kingdom,
particularly, it is frequently emphasized that policy-making is the
function of Her Majesty's Government, while the role of the party
is to nominate parliamentary candidates and to organize the electorate in order to elect the candidates. This assertion suggests the
third reason why studies of public policy formation within the political parties are not held to be of central importance. It is assumed
that policy is and ought to be made by the cabinet. Under this
assumption, any participation of the extra-parliamentaryparty in
the making of public policy is nothing but a meddling with the
Queen's Governmentby irresponsibleand largely uninformedgroups.
The present writer sees no need to establish a dichotomy between
parties and government under the parliamentary system. Such a
dichotomy can be avoided when it is realized that, in the twentieth
century, the cabinet and the parliamentary party, as well as the
electoral organization, make up the political party.56 While the
cabinet derives its central position in the British system from the
Crown power with which it is vested, it acts primarily as a party
agency, which interacts with other party agencies,57 despite its
"McKenzie realizes this fully, but the emphasis of his book seems to introduce the dichotomy in places (e.g., op. cit., pp. 587-588).
"'The present writer, while emphasizing intra-party policy-making in this
discussion, is of course mindful of the equally crucial importance of the interaction between the two parties in the making of public policy.
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438
THE JoURNALOr POLITICS
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paramount constitutional and traditional position. Policy formation
in the United Kingdom is therefore greatly illuminated when it is
studied with the focus on party, as has been done by R. T. McKenzie.
The crucial importance of the formation of public policy within political parties will be established once the term "party" is used in its
full dimension. The classic statement of this full dimension is by
Ernest Barker, who sees parties not only as formulatorsof issues to
be presented to the electorate, but who shows clearly also their continuing role in governmental policy-making.58 Democratic government cannot be understood fully before the processes through which
parties participate in the making of public policy are subjected to
thorough analysis.
The past few years have seen at least some progress toward such
an analysis. McKenzie's painstaking effort to give a full picture
of the distribution of power within the two major British parties
involves much more than an analysis of their anatomy. In fact, his
lively discussion of the interaction of leader, parliamentary party,
mass organization, and central office,59 gives his work the makings
of a pilot study in party policy-making.
So far, McKenzie's work is unique in scope. However, other recent books are at least partly devoted to a discussion of the internal
policy-making processes, both organizational and public, of parties. Both Wildenmann6O and von der Heydte-Sacherl63 contribute to our understanding of the physiology of contemporary
German parties. Goetz Roth devotes an entire monograph to a
very important aspect of party physiology, the role of parties in the
formation of governments.62 Macpherson's work on the peculiarities of Alberta politics contains a thorough discussion of the interaction of cabinet, legislative caucus, provincial party convention,
and constituency organization in the formation of policy of the
United Farmers of Alberta.63 A thorough and detailed discussion
of policy-making is part of Raymond Fusilier's Le parti socialiste
80p. cit., pp. 37-43, 47-48, 53-54, 57-58.
cit., passim.
690p.
"'Op. cit., pp. 160-163.
""Op.cit., pp. 212-217, 220. This work contains also very valuable basic
stasiologicalmaterial.
"Fraktion und Regkrungsbildung(Meisenheimam Glan, 1953).
""Op.cit., pp. 62-92. Party policy-makingis also discussedincidentallyin S.
M. Lipset's AgrarianSocialism (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1950), which is an
excellentsociologicalstudy of the C.C.F. in Saskatchewan.
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1957]
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suedois: son organisation.64 Policy formation within political
parties has also been considered in a few recent articles.65 Thus,
we are just beginning to have the kind of empirical investigations
which will eventually permit generalizationsabout the role of political parties in the making of public policy.
Such generalizationswill be useful only when they are based on
some clear and distinct classification. For all party systems and all
forms of democratic governmental organization, the internal public
policy-making processes of parties will have to be distinguished from
processes of inter-party policy-making, and both will have to be
categorized. Discrete categories will have to be set up for twoparty systems and multi-party systems, and for parliamentary and
presidential forms of government. Public as well as organizational
policy-making within political parties will have to be analyzed and
synthesized with sufficient precision to have it ready for use by
stasiologists when they tackle the job of constructing a definitive
general theory of political parties.
Political parties are not only essential mobilizers of the electorate and selectors of candidates for public office; they also form
an integral link in the chain of democratic policy-making. For a
comprehensiveunderstandingof democraticpolicy-making processes,
we need to be adequately informed about the part played in these
processes by political parties. Our understanding of the anatomy
of parties has been immeasurably enriched in recent years. We
now need process studies, similar to the recent successful ones in
64(Paris,1954), pp. 158-161,175, 181-182,186-191.
"6SamuelBeer, "The ConservativeParty of Great Britain,"The Journal of
Politics, XIV (February,1952), 65-71; Anthony T. Bouscaren,"The M.R.P. in
French Governments, 1948-1951,"The Journal of Politics, XIV (February,
1952), 104-105; Ivor Bulmer-Thomas,"How ConservativePolicy is Formed,"
The Political Quarterly,XLIV (April, 1953), 190-203; James M. Burns, "The
ParliamentaryLabor Party in Great Britain," The AmericanPolitical Science
Review, XLIV (December,1950), 856-858,869-871; D. E. Butler, "SomeNotes
on the Nature of British Political Parties,"Occidente,X (March-April,1954),
148-152, and "AmericanMyths about British Parties,"VirginiaQuarterlyReview, XXXI (Winter, 1955), 52-56; Frederick C. Engelmann,"Membership
Participationin Policy-Makingin the C.C.F.,"The CanadianJournal of Economics and Political Science,XXII (May, 1956), 161-173; R. N. Kelson, "The
New ZealandNational Party,"Political Science,VI (Wellington,N. Z., September, 1954), 23, 30-32; Louise Overacker,"The AustralianLabor Party," The
AmericanPolitical Science Review, XLIII (August, 1949), 696-702, and "The
New Zealand Labor Party," The American Political Science Review, XLIX
September,1955), 724-731; and Philip M. Williams,"The French Party System," Occidente,X (March-April,1954), 166-169.
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the fields of public administration and legislation, in order to develop and refine our understanding of stasiological physiology.
IV
The significance of the recent developments in stasiology is
qualitative as well as quantitative. Not only have we witnessed in
recent years, the appearance of Les partis politiques and Modern
Political Parties, and of an increasing number of monographs and
articles on parties; there has also been a noteworthy change in
emphasis and approach. The recent writings are clear evidence that
stasiology is no longer restricted to political-biography-cum-politicalideology, with an occasional sprinkling of Ostrogorski and Michels.
Contemporarystasiology, based on the study of party structure and
party systems, is power-centered and power-directed. It emphasizes the aspects of party which matter in the making of decisions
within political societies. Such an emphasis has brought about the
collection of empirical elements that are capable of assuring for
theoretical stasiology a validity which equals that of other aspects
of a theory of public policy-making.
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