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Legitimacy and Mass Compliance: Reflections on Max Weber and Soviet-Type Societies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
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It is worthwhile debating the meaning of concepts only when they start to hinder the process of inquiry. This seems to be the case with Max Weber's concepts of legitimacy and legitimate authority. They are becoming increasingly popular among students of Soviet-type societies despite the numerous problems posed by their application in a socio-political context that is so different from the one Weber had in mind. This increased popularity results in a ‘conceptual stretch’. More importantly, it increases the danger of a serious misinterpretation of socio-political processes in Soviet-type societies because, as will be argued in this article, the concept of legitimacy is not appropriate for the analysis of mass compliance in such societies. Instead, the persistence of (relatively) stable social and political order in these societies, as well as the occurrences of mass dissent, may be better accounted for in terms of ‘conditional tolerance’. In order to demonstrate the utility of this concept, and to show the problematic nature of accounts in terms of legitimacy and legitimate authority, it is necessary to start with a brief reprise of Weber's conceptual scheme.
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References
1 Four recently published books provide a good illustration of the numerous problems arising from the application of the concept of legitimacy to the analysis of Soviet-type societies: Lane, C., The Rites of Rulers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Rigby, T. H. and Feher, F., eds, Political Legitimation in Communist Stales (London: Macmillan. 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rigby, T. H., Brown, A. and Reddaway, P., eds, Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR: Essays dedicated to Leonard Schapiro (London: Macmillan, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zaslavsky, V., The Neo-Stalinist State: Class, Ethnicity and Consensus in Soviet Society (London: M. E. Sharpe/Harvester, 1982).Google Scholar
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25 In her analysis of Soviet ritualism, Christel Lane suggested that frequent appeals to national traditions and state-sponsored, organized ritualism reflect the weakness of authentic ‘revolutionary’ traditions and traditional legitimacy based on them. See also comments on ‘communist nationalism’ as a ‘centrifugal impulse’ in Miller, R. F., ‘The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe: An Introduction’, World Review, XXII (1983), 6–23, pp. 16–17.Google Scholar
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38 This was most clearly the case in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia, where mass protests erupted after the changes in the leadership and partial reforms. The June 1956 demonstrations in Poland followed the election (in March) of a reformist Ochab; the October 1956 demonstrations in Hungary happened after the deposition of Rakosi; the ‘Prague Spring’ gained momentum five months after the removal of Novotny from the position of the First Secretary. The pattern of escalation of mass protests also seems to confirm our interpretation. Inability of the authorities to quash the initial dissent leads to even wider protests.
39 The character and the composition of ‘strategic groups’ seems to vary. Although they are extra-elite groups, they reflect to a certain extent elites' policies, especially the tendency to broaden co-optation and rely on persuasion. The inclusive policies in stage three led to the increasing importance of opinion-shaping categories and ‘ethos groups’. The latter, distinguished by well-articulated and consistent value systems (such as the Catholic intelligentsia and ‘democratic opposition’ in Poland, or the ‘liberal reformists’ in Czechoslovakia), became bases of political mobilization; see Szawiel, T., ‘Grupy etosu w strukturze spolecznej’, Sutdia Socjologiczne, XXXI (1981), 157–78.Google Scholar
40 Jowitt, K., ‘Inclusion and Mobilization in European Leninist Regimes’, World Politics, XXVIII (1975). 69–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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42 See Lindblom, C., Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar
43 The label ‘planned’ requires inverted commas because of the mobilizing, rather than predictive, role of the ‘plans’. The fact that ‘plans’ can be ‘fulfilled’ 20 or 200 per cent indicates that they belong to a very specific category of ‘plans’ and ‘planning’.
44 See, for example, Feher, , ‘Paternalism as a Mode of Legitimation’Google Scholar, and Arato, , ‘Critical Sociology and Authoritarian State Socialism’.Google Scholar
45 Habermas, , Legitimation Crisis; pp. 71–2.Google Scholar Although Habermas referred to ‘advanced capitalist’ societies, the fact that he sees increased state intervention as the distinctive feature of advanced capitalism makes his remarks very relevant to the analyses of Soviet-type societies.
According to Arato (‘Critical Sociology…’; p. 204Google Scholar) ‘the problem of state socialist societies is not completely absent from Habermas's critical theory’ and his views can easily be reconstructed, especially from his essay ‘Between Philosophy and Science’. ‘Late capitalism’ on the one hand, and ‘post-capitalism’ or ‘bureaucratic socialism’ (both labels used by Habermas for Soviet-type societies), are the two parallel ‘transitory’ forms of class society whose crisis tendencies (which – according to Habermas – must lead to their ultimate demise) should be jointly investigated (Habermas, J., ‘A Reply to my Critics’Google Scholar in Thompson, and Held, , eds, Habermas: Criticai Debates, 219–83.)Google Scholar
46 See, for example, Jasinska-Kania, A., ‘Rationalization and legitimation crisis’.Google Scholar
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