The Politics and Political Ideas of Moisei Ostrogorski
| Date | 01 December 1975 |
| Author | Rodney Barker,Xenia Howard-Johnston |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1975.tb00080.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1975 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE
POLITICS AND POLITICAL IDEAS
OF
MOISEI
OSTROGORSKI
RODNEY BARKER AND XENIA HOWARD-JOHNSTON
London School
of
Economics and Political Science
EVERYBODY knows about Ostrogorski. He has been compared with Michels as
one
of
the two pioneers of modern political science in the study of political
parties. David Butler considers him important ‘not only as the first serious student
of British parties, but also as an illustration of the possibility of separating des-
cription and analysis’, and as
a
pioneer of generalizations in comparative govern-
ment. Duverger is equally complimentary, praising him as ‘the first to clear the
way’ to the comparative analysis of the structure of political parties. For
S.
M.
Lipset, he was ‘one of the most important originators of the sociology of organiza-
tions and of political sociology’ and ‘the first to argue for the need to go beyond
the analysis of formal political institutions, to study the actual political behaviour
of men and institutions outside the governmental sphere’.’
But though everybody knows about Ostrogorski, nobody reads him. There are
uncut pages in the seventy-two-year-old first and only edition of his major work
in university libraries, and there is remarkably little scholarly writing on him. He
is frequently cited, sometimes even quoted, but studies which are exclusively or
even primarily about him amount to encyclopaedia entries, one introduction to a
heavily abridged version of his major work,
Democracy and the Organization
of
Political Parties,
and one article in a Japanese learned journal.2 A clue to the
nature of this neglect may perhaps be found in some of the small amount of atten-
tion given directly
to
him. In
1968
S.
M. Lipset abridged
Democracy and the
Organization
of
Political Parties
for the use of contemporary readers. The argu-
ment for Ostrogorski’s importance in the introduction and the selective character
of the substantial omissions from the text, suggested that two things were
of
in-
terest to the editor. The first was those aspects of his work, or understandings of it
which have influenced subsequent work in political science and can in some sense
be said to be a first step in a tradition of such work. If the chief interest of a writer
is his selective survival, then he is worth studying only insofar as he supports con-
temporary beliefs or says something which can be applied to contemporary in-
terests. He is not interesting in himself but only as someone whose work, whatever
its original purpose, can be employed in the pursuit of current research. Thus a
large part
of
Lipset’s introduction is not about Ostrogorski but about recent work
on a subject with which Ostrogorski dealt: parties in Britain and America. Asecond
W. G. Runciman,
SocialScience andPolitical Theory
(Cambridge,
1963),
p.
23;
D.
E.
Butler,
The Study
of
Political Behaviour
(London,
1958),
p.
44;
M.
Duverger,
Political Parties
(London,
1964),
p.
xvi;
S.
M.
Lipset, Introduction to
M.
Ostrogorski,
Democracy andthe Organizationof
Political Parties
(Chicago,
1964),
Vol.
I,
pp.
xi, xiv.
Encyclopaedia
of
Social Science
(New York,
1933);
International Encyclopaedia of
Social Science
(New York,
1968);
Encyclopaedia Judaica
(Jerusalem,
1971);
Yevreiskaya
Entsiklopedia,
SPB,
1912-14,
Vol.
12;
Entsiklopedicheskii
Slovar’,
SPB,
1893-1
904,
Vol.
XXII;
T.
Yoshimura, ‘Ostrogorski no SeitG-Kan’ Waseda Seiji Keizai-Gaku Zasshi
130,
Dec.
1954.
Political
Studies.
Vol.
XXIII.
No.
4
(415-429)
To continue reading
Request your trial