Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

170 W. J. M. Mackenzie
is to be found, and that it is to be found everywhere, at all levels, in all socie-
ties, organizations and social groups.
There are at least four reasons for this challenge:
I. First, there is the task of understanding new States. At least half the mem-
bers of the United Nations represent societies where the forms of a Western
State have not grown from within, by mutations of a continuous tradition, but
have been imposed or chosen by a political act of will. The match between
political and social institutions is imperfect, and the newly-created State is not
intelligible except in relation to the politics of a pre-existing social structure;
the structure (for instance) of languages and castes in India, of tribes in Africa,
of Islam in all Muslim countries.
2. Secondly, there is the transformation of the relations between State and
society in the West. One need not discuss here the vexed question of the conver-
gence of socialist and capitalist States.5 It is sutlicient to note that it is now hard
to draw a practical (or even a juristic) line between State organs and other public
organizations, or between large public organizations and the growing number
of large private organizations which are ‘affected with a public interest’ because
of their size and their strategic positions in economy and society. The study of
public administration, of the public bureaucracy, is an essential part of the
study of the State: but boundaries have become blurred, and (for instance) it is
no longer possible, anywhere in the world, to distinguish ‘the politics of State
industry’ from ‘the politics of all industry’, ‘the politics of State education’
from ‘the politics of all education’, and so forth.
The politics of States cannot now avoid concern with the administrative
study of large organizations, and with the economics of large and small enter-
prises.
3. Thirdly, there is the challenge posed by the changing environment of the
social sciences. On the whole, the central point of the study of Statecraft in the
nineteenth century was juristic. This was not so before the development of
Roman law and the Roman Empire: Plato and Aristotle had no experience of
a specialized and sophisticated legal system, and their concerns were philo-
sophical and empirical, not juristic. The juristic element in political study has
waxed and waned in various periods, and its strength varies in different coun-
tries. But even in the United Kingdom and the United States of America, coun-
tries relatively free from the tradition of Roman law and of Napoleonic codi-
fication, much nineteenth century discussion of politics was conducted in terms
of legal sovereignty and of constitutional forms. Marx and Engels were not
perhaps the first to indicate that State forms are given substance only by their
economic and social infra-structure: but the argument was set on its feet only
by their theoretical power and massive historical documentation. There were
also nineteenth century beginnings of modern sociology, social psychology,
social anthropology, more or less independent of Marxism. By 1914, though
the juristic tradition was still powerful and fruitful (one might mention Gierke,
Maitland, Duguit, Pound), the Juristenmonopol was (in an intellectual sense)
broken, and the facts of the case broadened the discipline and involved virtually
all the social sciences in the study of States.