Totalitarianism, Model Mania and Learning from Error
Abstract
This article is conceived as a learning from error exercise under the assumption that unless we take stock of our past mistakes we are bound to repeat them. The notion of totalitarianism appears to serve this purpose well. It is shown, (i) that totalitarianism was dismissed prematurely for wrong reasons, (ii) that its successor concepts have been wrongly conceived as `models', and (iii) that model mania had developed to a point of harming our understanding. The exercise is retrospective in order to be prospective. Thus, totalitarianism is revisited to illustrate the analytic handling of typological constructs and to buttress the general point that political science has backed itself into a number of blind alleys.
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1. It should be understood at the outset that my generalizations allow for exceptions, and that `we' indicates a prevailing drift. It should also be understood that my referent is American `normal' political science. Model mania, e.g., has not overtaken European or British studies. The final caveat is that my criticism is directed at the theoretical part or underpinning of Sovietology, not at the research as such.
2. The assertion is historically incorrect, for the notion originated with fascism. But Almond addresses, I believe, its centrality for the understanding of communism.
3. To be sure, this is a short list that admits overlaps and is far from being exhaustive.
4. Actually Deutsch had already allowed for `possibilities and patterns of disintegration in totalitarian systems' in the 1954 Friedrich symposium.
5. For May Brodbeck (1959: 374, 376 and passim), the first requirement is `structural isomorphism': the model and what it stands for must have the `same form' (structure). A lesser requirement is for `model' to be linked to `covering law' (e.g. Moe, 1979). For a general appraisal see Bruschi (1971).
6. Later, at pp. 72-3, Almond distinguishes between (i) `modeling metaphor', (ii) mapping or heuristic devices (e.g. system theory, structural-functionalism, decision theory and political culture) which facilitate description and comparison but are not `in themselves explanatory', (iii) `conceptual frameworks' which are the same as the former, but now `enable us to do the job of explanation systematically and rigorously', and (iv) patron-client model, interest group model and bureaucratic politics model, `which are of a different order'. I cannot make sense of this even greater haze.
7. The distinction admits a middle ground between the two, but is clear-cut in principle: theoretical terms have no denotation, and it is only their theoretical function (for the theory to which they belong) that establishes their meaning.
8. This entails, inter alia, that models do not grow `old'. They can be discarded on a number of grounds and indeed replaced by different and better ones. But to say that a model is obsolete, that it has been outdated by the events, quite simply indicates that we are not dealing with a model (proper).
9. In particular, if what is intended by model is only an ideal type, then this understanding should be explicitly stated and (as I will indicate shortly) the latter notion must be qualified.
10. This is doubtlessly the central `successor'. The major pluralist-like interpreter of the Soviet Union is Hough (1969 and 1977). For an overview see Susan G. Solomon, `Pluralism in Political Science: The Odyssey of a Concept' in Solomon ed. (1983), ch. 2. See also the very apt criticism of Archie Brown (1984), pp. 57-66 and 87.
11. See Gordon Skilling (1966) and Skilling and Griffiths (1971). In response to his critics Skilling has replied that `interest groups were not asserted to be the most significant feature of the Soviet polity' (1983: 5). If so, there was no model.
12. The case for a modified `Corporatist model' is made, e.g., by V. Bunce and J. M. Echols (1980). In their argument `corporatism' is a better focus than `pluralism' - and I would certainly agree with that.
13. Almond adds to the above the `patron-client' model (1990: 92-7); and Ronald Amann (1986) variously hints at models such as `state capitalism' and `developmentalism'. In a recent account model-inflation receives further fuel. Zwick (1991: 461, 464) mentions among the `out-moded models' (see supra n. 8) neotraditionalism and `atheoretical Kremlinology' (an atheoretical model!), and proposes, to be sure, a new model: `The Gaullist model'.
14. Let it be stressed that this is a wholesale misunderstanding of the comparative method. To compare is both and equally to assimilate and to differentiate (see Sartori, 1991).
15. This is particularly the case with pluralism and interest groups, which are Western-derived notions whose projection upon the Soviet Union results in a strongly Western-centered assimilation.
16. On conceptual stretching see Sartori (1970). Note that this dilution can result from either projections (note above) or from the enlargement of some mid-point. E.g., in the literature in question, the focus on bureaucracy and organization brings about an East-West convergence around a generic middle ground.
17. This is not an intrinsic drawback, for genuine models are often dynamic and process models. But pseudo-models have no such virtue.
18. This was the tripartition suggested by Neumann (1957). On the distinction between totalitarianism and authoritarianism, the standard reference is Linz (1975). Richard Kimber suggests that `authoritarianism' is a better general category than `dictatorship'. One might thus distinguish between (i) totalitarian; (ii) authoritarian; and (iii) simple authoritarian regimes - and the argument would be very much the same.
19. For instance, China and Vietnam would have to be reclassified as authoritarian. Longitudinally this would bring together China and, e.g., Franco's Spain. Quite a mis-match.
20. I concede that totalitarianism `can' be conceived as an opposite of democracy for the simplicity of the argument. For better oppositions, see Sartori (1987, ch. 7), where I also discuss more extensively the ideal and polar type treatments of totalitarianism.
21. In Social Science Concepts (Sartori ed., 1984) the suggestion adopted throughout the volume is to collect an adequate number of definitions from which one subsequently derives the characteristics of the concept under scrutiny. The items of my Tables 1 and 2 abide by this rule of thumb.
22. I am indebted to David Collier and J. E. Mahon (1992) for having revisited the ladder of abstraction notion. Their examination of `the implications for Sartori's work of two types of non-classical categories: family resemblances and radial categories' surely represents an important fine tuning of the technique in question.
23. Note that pluralism as a belief value has very little, if anything, to do with pluralism-as-structure, that is, with the structural differentiation of a society. I assume that Linz's reference to a `semi-pluralism' applies to the structural, not to the belief notion.
24. In Friedrich (1954) and subsequently in Friedrich-Brzezinski (1956: 10) the wording was `a system of terroristic police control', leading to `the terror of the police sys
25. It should be borne in mind that my tables are implicitly referred to the Soviet Union. As we proceed toward the single-country fit, it is clearly the case that with reference, e.g., to China, at least some items would require a different formulation. But the technique as such remains the same. Sinologists are still in time to improve their performance.
26. To be sure, the control of the economy (central planning) also affects the performance of the economy. I do not embark in this implication because my scheme is confined to political characteristics. But the economist would be well advised to pick up the analysis from where I leave it and to work out a somewhat similar analytic scheme of economic characteristics.
27. My underlying assumption is, here, that market versus non-market does not admit a middle of the way solution (see Sartori, 1987: 399-425).
28. For instance Brzezinski writes (private communication) that `if I were ever to revert to writing on [totalitarianism], I would argue that the two decisive - indeed defining - dimensions of totalitarianism are coercion + ideology. It is the intense combination of the two that generates the various other characteristics of the system. With institutionalized coercion derived from, legitimated by, and used for social engineering based on ideology, the dynamic is set in motion for the generation of total claims for social allegiance and for complete individual subordination. Together, coercion + ideology = social engineering, to a degree and with a Manichean intensity not matched by traditional dictatorships'.
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