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208 W. J. M. Mackenzie
given to each of them. It is impossible to use a three-dimensional matrix as a
basis for exposition in continuous prose, and ‘constitutionalism’ has been chosen
here as ‘master’ dimension.
This reveals a ‘Western’ bias, in that this plan is chosen partly because it
brings to notice the philosophical and juristic aspects of the discipline, partly
because it seems to be the most convenient framework for the exposition of
present priorities in research. But research is at present dominated by Western
political scientists; priorities will not appear the same to scholars working in
other environments.
(Note: The following sections have been kept short and general; they may
seem jejune, but if one begins to mention individual studies one must in fairness
try to be complete. This is quite impossible here, for reasons of space and time.)
3. Regime and government
There is some variation in terminology, but the distinction between regime and
government is universally accepted in some form. ‘The Government’ is the
American President, the British Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of the
USSR and the First Secretary of the Party, together with those of their associates
who hold public office. ‘A stable regime’ is one in which there are rules of
succession to office which are on the whole obeyed without violent resistance;
when kings governed, there were rules of succession to the throne, now there
are general rules of election or nomination. Governments come and go, the
regime remains.
The regime is not a matter of formal office-holding, and is therefore more
difficult to handle. Abstractly it can be considered as the combination of rules,
habits and beliefs most important to political life; concretely, it consists of the
political group or groups most influential in government - the political elite.
Regimes may be transformed slowly, as in the United States of America and
the United Kingdom; or abruptly by revolution, as in Russia and China. But
not all violent actions in politics deserve the name of revolution, even if they claim
it. There may be ‘unstable regimes’ in which rules of peaceful succession are not
obeyed, and violence accompanies succession crises. These would be, in the
language of Max Gluckman,57 ‘rebellions’, not ‘revolutions’; factions within
the regime fight for the succession, but the body of norms and persons constitut-
ing ‘the regime’ continues unchanged.
Regimesandelites. Reference has already been made (pp. 200-201) to the con-
troversyover the definition of ‘power’ and the attempt to use local communities
as laboratories for the study of power.
There is nothing new about the notion, variously named, of ‘aristocracy’,
‘oligarchy’ or ‘elite’. Clearly it bears some relation to the facts of life in all
political communities, in every age and in all parts of the world. Clearly also
the notion is used ideologically as well as descriptively: and the ideology varies
according to the speaker’s point of view, in relation to those ‘at the top’. These
undefined, partly philosophical ideas constituted a challenge to empirical
political scientists, and the recent round of inquiry and controversy was by no