The Variability of Party Government: A Theoretical and Empirical Critique
| Author | Richard Rose |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1969.tb00743.x |
| Published date | 01 December 1969 |
| Date | 01 December 1969 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
THE VARIABILITY
OF
PARTY
GOVERNMENT: A THEORETICAL AND
EMPIRICAL CRITIQUE”
RICHARD
ROSE
University
of
Strathclyde
‘PARTIES
live in a house of power’, Weber wrote in one
of
his most gnomic
sentences. While emphasizing the proximity of political parties to power,
the quotation leaves unclear whether parties reside in a house of power as
masters, prisoners, courtesans or eunuchs.1 The purpose of this article
is
to consider under what circumstances and to what extent a party
may
translate possession
of
the highest formal offices of
a
regime into operational
control of government. The conditional verb is important. Discussions
of
parties often assume rather than demonstrate that occupancy of office is
proof of partisan control.
From the time of Ostrogorski and Michels up to the contemporary work
of
McKenzie and Eldersveld, political scientists have devoted much atten-
tion to the question
:
Who-if anyone-controls political parties? Such
research is always interesting, because parties seem to violate
so
many
criteria of organizations.2 Yet such findings are only significant to political
scientists if parties,
in
turn, control government. Since political parties
claim to control the civil, police and military personnel of many different
types of regimes, party government is potentially central in many different
types
of
political systems: a single-party state in Eastern Europe or Africa,
a decentralized federal government in North America, or
a
parliamentary
democracy.
*
Earlier drafts of this paper, then entitled ‘Party Government vs. Administrative Govern-
ment’, were presented to conferences of the Committee on Political Sociology
of
the I.S.A., at
the Free University of Berlin, January 1968, and of the Political Studies Association,
York,
April 1969. In making revisions,
I
have benefited specially from criticisms by Raymond Aron,
David Coombes, Juan Linz and Peter Self.
The author is also indebted to various British and American daily and weekly papers for
providing financial assistance for the participant-observation research upon which the article
is based.
1
H.
H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.),
From Max Weber
(London: Routledge, 1948).
p. 194.
2
cf.
S.
J. Eldersveld,
Political Parties: a Behavioral Analysis
(Chicago: Rand, McNally,
1964) Chap.
1
:
and Richard
Ro$e,
Influencirr,y
Voters: A Study
of
Campaign Rationality
(London:
Faber,
1967)
Chap.
10.
Political
Studies, Val.
XVII,
No.
4
(1969,
413445)
27
414
THE VARIABILITY
OF
PARTY GOVERNMENT
Making explicit all that is involved in taking control
of
government is
no easy task. Parties are only one among a number of political institutions
seeking to influence government. The more-or-less permanent adminis-
trators and the institutions
of
a regime have very considerable inertia.
Sometimes it
is
momentum for change along pre-determined routes and
sometimes, resistance to change. Extra-governmental influences, whether
organized as specific pressure groups or as diffuse as the market behaviour
of consumers, affect actions of government too. Only in a totalitarian
society would one expect party government to reign absolutely. Therefore,
one should conceive
of
the importance of party in government as a con-
tinuous variable, rather than as an all-pervasive force; one can have more
or one can have less of party government. When party government is
diminished, other institutions may replace parties as policy-makers. But
it is also possible that when this occurs, no other institution can adequately
perform the functions attributed to parties
in
the government of modern
states.
The governing party is unique in its claim to have the right to choose what
solutions shall be binding upon the whole
of
a society. This legitimacy
usually carries with it the corollary expectation that it will wish to affect
the content of government decisions, by adding something to that which is
already present
in
the policy process. Otherwise,
a
change of party is
of
little more significance than the change of a king in a constitutional
monarchy. The importance of parties and elections in one-party as well
as in competitive party systems suggests that they constitute part of the
legitimate or dignified aspect of government.’ It is less certain what their
efficient contribution is to policy-making. The waning of totalitarian and
ideological parties in the Western world since
1945
gives some grounds for
believing that parties are no longer ‘decisive’, i.e., concerned with making
governmental decisions that advance toward or achieve partisan goals. The
rise of programmatic ideological parties and party-sponsored regimes in
the non-Western world points in the opposite direction.’
The purpose of this article is to examine rigorously the extent to which
and the conditions under which party government is likely to be realized.
The first part sets out a general paradigm of conditions implied by the
doctrine of party government. The second tests the importance of party
by analysing in terms of the paradigm the actions of British government
since Labour
took
office in October,
1964.
To
consider whether these
findings are peculiar to Britain or widespread, the paradigm is applied in
cf. Richard Rose and Harve Mossawir, ‘Voting and Elections: a Functional Analysis’,
*
See e.g., the importance attributed
to
parties
by
Samuel
P.
Huntington in
Political Order in
Political Studies,
Vol.
XV,
No.
2
(1967),
pp.
175
ff.
Changing
Societies
(New Haven: Yale,
1968),
especially Chap.
7.
RICHARD
ROSE
41
5
part three to government in the Soviet Union and the United States. The
concluding section considers the implications of these findings for the
operation of government in societies where parties contribute little to
directing the activities of a regime.
I
Whatever expectations one has of the role that party ought to play in
government, there can be little doubt that making decisions about the
allocation of material goods and symbolic values is an important activity
of government.’ In theory, the ideal way to study the importance
of
parties
in government would be to examine the things that governments do and the
processes by which they reach their decisions to find where, if at all, parties
fit into a very complex process. Generically, one can identify at least six
different steps in the process of making government policy-publicizing
a problem, initiating a search for
a
solution, evaluating alternative solu-
tions, choosing a solution
or
a combination of solutions, implementing
the measures decided upon, and finally, evaluating the consequences of
a
measure. The burden
of
studying all that
is
involved here is great, since
there are good grounds to assume that the process varies from issue-area
to issue-area. The workings of government and, potentially, the contribution
of parties, may not
be
a constant, as one moves from a consideration of
nationalization legislation to foreign policy or from race relations to
economic policy or regional devolution.2 Since parties would appear only
intermittently in such a grand decision-making scheme, the approach
would be very uneconomical in terms of the use of resources, as well as
impossibly lavish in the amounts of data required.
Pending the solution of some very complex conceptual and methodo-
logical problems involved in decision-making studies of government,3 there
is
much to be said for concentrating attention upon parties in relation to
the structure of government.
As
Michels and Ostrogorski long ago demon-
strated, even if this type of analysis cannot lead
us
to a single source
of
sovereignty, at least it can make clear who does
not
govern. It may also
give pointers about the nature of the groups, if any, that can fill the vacuum
resulting from an absence
of
party direction.
1
The chief difficulty with the placeman’s theory
of
the function of parties-that they exist
to hold office and nothing else-is that
it
proposes to settle by
apriori
stipulation what ought to
be decided
by
empirical investigation.
2
See the discussion in Richard Rose,
Politics in England
(London: Faber, 1965), pp. 207
ff.;
and
in Richard Rose, (ed.),
Policy-Making
in
Brirain
(London: Macmillan, 1969), especially
‘Introduction’.
3
For
a discussion of the problems of generalizing from a few cases which have no claim
to representativeness, see Richard Rose,
People
in
Politics
(London: Faber, 1970), Chaps. 6-7.
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