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Control and Contestation in some One‐Party States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ghiţa Ionescu
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Extract

The object of these notes is to assess how relevant are the main terms of reference of the discussion outlined in Professor Sartori's introductory paper to the group of one-party states known as People's Democracies or Socialist Republics, and in particular to Yugoslavia, Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and to a lesser degree, Albania. But many of the findings on these states, and I would say those most worthy of our attention, in order to be valid at all, must be valid for all one-party states. Valid for all one-party states is for instance the conclusion that the non-institutional and non-constitutional opposition which is being carried on naturally, inevitably and incessantly against any government in any polity, and by any sui generis means, should be described by other names. I believe that the terms control and contestation can be particularly useful to describe the political process of the People's Democracies, and can be equally applicable to the entire category of one-party states if they are understood in accordance with the definitions I suggest below.

Type
Original Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , 01 January 1966 , pp. 240 - 250
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1965

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References

1 With the exception of Albania, all East European countries are by now, for all intents and purposes, economically developed societies. Almost all have established the bases of their national industries ‐ and while they are expected to progress towards further industrial evolution, they are over the threshold of national industrial revolution. It is therefore intriguing to note, sometimes, that some East European political theories are still based on the description of the specific conditions of the political process during industrialization. For, on the one hand, the beginning of industrialization in under‐developed and under‐capitalized countries need not be accompanied by permanent forms of political dictatorship, vide the example of India. And on the other hand one should be careful not to use ‘industrialization’ which represents an initial operation, for the more lasting and self‐perpetuating ‘industrial growth’.

2 Warsaw, 1965.

3 Tavistock, London, 1965.

4 Futirribles 1965: ‘The future of the Monolithic Party’.

5 See a series of articles in Arriba, 25–7 March 1965.

6 See an article by him in Le Monde, 26 July 1964.