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Soviet Politics and the Group Approach: A Conceptual Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

David E. Langsam  and
David W. Paul
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Extract

One of the “Great Debates” among Soviet specialists in the social sciences today concerns the applicability of interest group theory to the study of Soviet politics. Though a large number of specialists have accepted the notion that interest groups do indeed play a certain kind of role in the Soviet system, there are still those who hold to the opinion, once taken for granted but in recent years challenged, that interest group theory simply does not apply to the Soviet Union. The strength of the latter argument lies in the fact that in the USSR interest groups do not operate publicly and openly, as they do in the United States; therefore, interest group theory as developed to fit the American context cannot describe or explain the dynamic processes of policymaking in Russia.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1972 , pp. 136 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1972

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References

1. Bentley, Arthur F., The Process of Government (Chicago, 1908), p. 216.Google Scholar

2. Langsam, David E., “Pressure Group Politics in NEP Russia: The Case of the Trade Unions,” Ph.D. diss. (Princeton, 1971).Google Scholar

3. See H. Gordon Skilling, “Interest Groups and Communist Politics: An Introduction,” chap. 1 in Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton, 1971), pp. 4–5.Google Scholar

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15. For an exception to this generalization about Americanists see David B. Truman’s introduction to the paperback edition of The Governmental Process (forthcoming), pp. 10 and 13.