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Social Mobilization and Political Development*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Karl W. Deutsch
Karl W. Deutsch*
Affiliation:
Yale University
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Extract

Social mobilization is a name given to an overall process of change, which happens to substantial parts of the population in countries which are moving from traditional to modern ways of life. It denotes a concept which brackets together a number of more specific processes of change, such as changes of residence, of occupation, of social setting, of face-to-face associates, of institutions, roles, and ways of acting, of experiences and expectations, and finally of personal memories, habits and needs, including the need for new patterns of group affiliation and new images of personal identity. Singly, and even more in their cumulative impact, these changes tend to influence and sometimes to transform political behavior.

The concept of social mobilization is not merely a short way of referring to the collection of changes just listed, including any extensions of this list. It implies that these processes tend to go together in certain historical situations and stages of economic development; that these situations are identifiable and recurrent, in their essentials, from one country to another; and that they are relevant for politics. Each of these points will be taken up in the course of this paper.

Social mobilization, let us repeat, is something that happens to large numbers of people in areas which undergo modernization, i.e., where advanced, non-traditional practices in culture, technology and economic life are introduced and accepted on a considerable scale. It is not identical, therefore, with this process of modernization as a whole, but it deals with one of its major aspects, or better, with a recurrent cluster among its consequences.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1961 , pp. 493 - 514
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1961

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Footnotes

1

Further work on this paper was supported in part by the Carnegie Corporation, and I am indebted for assistance in statistical applications to Charles L. Taylor and Alex Weilenmann.

*

A draft version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Committee on Comparative Politics, of the Social Science Research Council, Gould House, Dobbs Ferry, June 10, 1959. An earlier version of this text is appearing in Zeitschrift für Politik (Köln, Germany).

References

2 For broader discussions of the modernization process, see Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1960)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lasswell, Harold D., The World Revolution of Our Time (Stanford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; and Almond, Gabriel A. and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Cf. also Lerner, Daniel, The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, 1958)Google Scholar, and Lerner, , “Communication Systems and Social Systems: A Statistical Exploration in History and Policy,” Behavioral Science, Vol. 2 (10 1957), pp. 266–275 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riggs, Fred, “Bureaucracy in Transitional Societies: Politics, Economic Development and Administratration,” American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, 09 1959, multigraphedGoogle Scholar; Rustow, Dankwart, Politics and Westernization in the Near East (Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1956)Google Scholar; and Shannon, Lyle, “Is Level of Development Related to Capacity for Self-Government?” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 17 (07 1958), pp. 367–381 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Shannon, , “Socio-Economic Development and Political Status,” Social Problems, Vol. 7 (Fall 1959), pp. 157–169 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Mannheim, Karl, Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (New York, 1940)Google Scholar.

4 Edward Shils, at the Social Science Research Council Conference on Comparative Politics, above, asterisked note.

5 For a broader discussion of quantitative indicators, bearing on problems of this kind, see Deutsch, Karl W., “Toward an Inventory of Basic Trends and Patterns in Comparative and International Politics,” this Review, Vol. 54 (03 1960), p. 34 Google Scholar.

6 Cf. the pamphlets issued by the Statistical Office of the United Nations, Statistical Papers, Series K, No. 1, “Survey of Social Statistics,” (Sales No.: 1954. XVII. 8), New York, 1954, and Statistical Papers, Series M, No. 11, Rev. 1, “List of Statistical Series collected by International Organizations,” (Sales No.: 1955. XVII. 6), New York, 1955. For somewhat earlier data, see also Woytinsky, W. S. and Woytinsky, E. S., World Commerce and Governments: Trends and Outlook (New York, The Twentieth Century Fund, 1955)Google Scholar, and World Population and Production: Trends and Outlook (New York, The Twentieth Century Fund, 1953)Google Scholar.

7 See Horwitz, Hortense and Smith, Elias, “The Interchangeability of Socio-Economic Indices,” in Lazarsfeld, Paul F. and Rosenberg, Morris, The Language of Social Research (Glencoe, 1955), pp. 73–77 Google Scholar.

8 Tibbetts, Frederick E. 3d, “The Cycles of Canadian Nationalism,” Yale University, typescript, 1959, pp. 24, 26–31 Google Scholar. For details of the Finnish and Indian cases referred to above, see Deutsch, K. W., Nationalism and Social Communication (New York, 1953), pp. 102–11, 170–82, 197–204 Google Scholar.

8a Note, however, the comment on Burmese literacy, in the Appendix to this article, below.

8b Klineberg, Rosemary, “Correlation of Literacy Rates with 1956 Birth Rates,” Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1959 Google Scholar, unpublished.

9 See Lindgren, Raymond, Norway-Sweden: Union, Disunion, Reunion (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Deutsch, K. W., et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

10 Merritt's, Richard monograph, “Symbols of American Nationalism, 1735–1775,” which is to cover eventually one or more newspapers from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia Google Scholar, respectively, will be published in due course.

11 For examples of pioneering contributions of this kind, see the series of Hoover Institute Studies by Lasswell, Harold, Pool, Ithiel, Lerner, Daniel, and others, and particularly Pool, , The Prestige Papers (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar.

12 See charts 1, 3, and 4 in Deutsch, Karl W., “Shifts in the Balance of Communication Flows: A Problem of Measurement in International Relations,” Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 20 (Spring> 1956), pp. 152–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, based on data of the Universal Postal Union.

13 See Deutsch, Karl W. and Eckstein, Alexander, “National Industrialization and the Declining Share of the International Economic Sector, 1890–1957,” World Politics, Vol. 13 (01, 1961) pp. 267–299 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kuznets, Simon, Six Lectures on Economic Growth (Glencoe, 1959)Google Scholar, esp. the section on “The Problem of Size” and “Trends in Foreign Trade Ratios,” pp. 89–107.

14 For more detailed arguments, see Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, and Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area; see also the discussions in Haas, Ernst B., “Regionalism, Functionalism and Universal Organization,” World Politics, Vol. 8, (01 1956)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “The Challenge of Regionalism,” International Organization, Vol. 12 (1958), pp. 440–458 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and in Hoffmann, Stanley, Contemporary Theory in International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1960), pp. 223–40Google Scholar.

15 Cf. Deutsch, Karl W., “The Propensity to International Transactions,” Political Studies, Vol. 8 (06 1960), pp. 147–155 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Cf. Studenski, Paul, The Income of Nations (New York, New York University Press, 1958), p. 249 Google Scholar; cf. also pp. 244–250.

17 Cf. United Nations, Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Population Studies No. 28, “The Future Growth of World Population” (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, and United Nations, Bureau of Social Affairs, Report of the World Social Situation (Sales No.: 1957. IV. 3) (New York, 1957), p. 5 Google Scholar.

18 For other highly relevant approaches to these problems, see Almond, and Coleman, , eds., The Politics of the Developing Areas, esp. the discussion by Almond, on pp. 58–64 Google Scholar. The problem of rates of change and their acceleration is discussed explicitly by Coleman, ibid., pp. 536–558. While this work presented extensive data on levels of development, it did not take the further step of using explicit quantitative rates of change, which would be needed for the type of dynamic and probabilistic models that seem implicit in the long-range predictions of the authors, as set forth on pp. 58–64, 535–544.

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