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Political science 203
‘guided democracy’ (something similar happened to the word ‘socialism’, but
the latter is a ‘two-party’ word, in that some people call what they approve
‘socialist’, others call what they disapprove ‘socialist’). This political word-play
has drawn the attention of serious political theorists, and important work has
been done in the last twenty years to elucidate and extend the work of political
philosophers of the great traditions, a phrase which certainly includes Marx and
Lenin. The necessary inclusion of Marx points to a fundamental question. One
tradition (of which Marx is now the symbol) requires that political philosophy
be related to political action: if this is to be done, philosophy must gain some
purchase or leverage in the material world, its terms must (in contemporary
jargon) be, to some extent, at least, ‘cashed‘ or ‘operationalized‘. There is
therefore, at this general level, a close relationship between political philosophy
and empirical political science; the latter is not only concerned with questions
of cause and correlation but also with the questions which arise when one asks
‘Have these words of approval any operational sense’?
2. Its specification
There are perhaps three lines of approach to the problem of the ‘approved
political system’.
Institutional. One of these is instit~tional.5~ It specifies the institutions of
electoral democracy, central and local, and notes that these institutions can be
reduced to merely formal status by various devices. It adds therefore that these
institutions are incomplete except in so far as they conduce to the purposes for
which they were first created. These purposes in turn are disputable, but two
main possibilities emerge:
a. Participation: electoral democracy is real in so far as it is accompanied by a
sense of participation. Participation would be contrasted with depoliticization,
with apathy, and with alienation : words which also need operational definition.
b. Pluralism: electoral democracy is real in so far as it is accompanied by a
diffusion of power throughout the community. We have already seen (p. 200)
that sophisticated analysis is necessary before one can operationalize the concept
of ‘power’. But presumably if one contrives to measure ‘relative power’
one can then also measure ‘diffusion of power’.
Economic and social. A second line of attack seeks to by-pass the political
problem by expressing it in economic and social terms. This is a fundamental
tenet of Marxist doctrine, which finds both explanation and purpose in the
techniques of production and the material basis of life. Unless one understands
these one cannot understand politics; and the objective to be sought in politics
is the predominance of the most effective forms of productive organization. At
the next level come the institutions and ideologies of class and party; and then
as super-structure, and also as policeman, the State, its forms, its juridical action.
On this basis, the measure of excellence is that political forms should be well
adapted to the relations of production, and that they should contribute to an
advance in productive technique and capacity. American research eschews
Marxist language; indeed (in spite of the influence of Parsons, Easton, and