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The Study of Compliance Maintenance as a Strategy for Comparative Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Deane E. Neubauer  and
Lawrence D. Kastner
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Extract

The focus of this article is upon the compliance-inducing mechanisms present in any political system. The notion of compliance relationships is central to all conceptualizations of the political system and its functions, as it is related to all political ‘primitives” such as power, influence, authority, etc. Political systems exist above all for the purpose of establishing compliance with some set of norms or values. The primary institutional form reflecting the performance of this function is government. Members of governmental institutions attempt to maintain the compliance system (a) because of the security of habits, and (b) because they share the same set of norms or values. For a number of reasons the efforts of these actors to maintain the compliance system may not be coordinated: they may or may not act ‘rationally” according to the criteria of rationality applied, but the end product of their activity is a stream of demands for compliance that is oriented toward the enhancement of a desired normative system.

Type
Research Notes
Information
World Politics , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , July 1969 , pp. 629 - 640
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1969

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References

1 See especially Lasswell, Harold and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (New Haven 1950)Google Scholar.

2 Weiner, Myron, “Political Integration and Political Development,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, CCCLVIII (March 1965), 52–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Many have written about the problem of legitimacy, but perhaps none so well as Seymour Martin Lipset. For example, see his “Some Social Requisites of Democracy,” American Political Science Review, Liii (March 1959) 69–105Google Scholar.

4 This problem is amply illustrated in an article studying the problem of system vs. subsystem dominance in international relations. The author worries about the comprehensiveness of the New York Times index for reporting “incidents,” yet a greater concern is that “normal” interactions within the subsystem are not reported at all, so that no test can be made of whether these common, everyday contacts were interrupted during a crisis. McClelland, Charles, “Access to Berlin: The Quantity and Variety of Events 1948-1963,” appearing in Singer, J. D., ed., Quantitative International Politics (New York 1968), 159-86Google Scholar.

5 The term and the examples are Arnold's, Thurmond, The Symbols of Government (New York 1935)Google Scholar.