Suchergebnisse

The International Political Science Review had originally planned to include an article in each issue on some aspects of the state of political science generally and also in specific countries. Severe space constraints and the sloth of the general editor have conspired to leave this intention unfulfilled, although an excellent review by Pierre Favre on the discipline in France did appear in 1981. The idea still strikes me as a good one and we shall try to include discipline reviews from time to time at least.

Même si, au cours de la dernière décade, de très nombreux travaux empiriques ont porté sur les problèmes relatifs au soutient politique, les approches théoriques susceptibles d'engendrer par la suite des théories partielles du soutient ont été relativement rares, et cela en dépit du fait que cette notion ait depuis toujours perméabilisé la recherche en politique. L'auteur examine ici les idées de Parsons concernant le support politique dans l'espoir qu'une meilleure compréhension des problèmes non encore résolus permettra de procéder plus rapidement et plus sûrement à l'élaboration d'une théorie valable à ce sujet.

Formulation of a possible partial theory of support is addressed. The writings of T. Parsons provide a coherent set of theoretical statements about support, & examination of his ideas can identify certain problems on the way to a possible theory. But Parsons confines political support to the relationship between the leadership of a political system & its constituency or public; the conceptualization is linked essentially to electoral support for a leadership & its policies, & the analysis is hereby limited to democratic systems. Such a treatment of political support is wholly within the prevailing focus of most political inquiry into the "allocative" area of politics, or that dealing with conflict over particular policies & their implementation. The distinction here is in contrast with research into "systemic" politics, or inquiry into the general properties of a political system that identify & distinguish it as such. By focusing on allocative politics alone, a narrowing of the scope of political support is likely to occur. There needs to be a theoretical awareness not only of the leadership of the authorities, but also of the regime & the political community as objects of political support. The failure of Parsons to separate these objects of support underscores a major consequence of his & like perspectives; political support as a concept is defined through very few dimensions, such as electoral participation or legitimacy. Legitimacy is but one dimension of political support; among others are trust, loyalty, & confidence. Support may be multidimensional in character, positive or negative, overt or covert, specific or diffuse. A partial theory of political support would further define & assess these properties of support & their appropriate indicators. Four alternative theoretical models need to be considered: the summative, saliency, sequential, & combinatorial models. The context in which political support has heretofore been considered has been preservationist, directed at how objects of the political system manage to maintain a certain level of support. A substantially different & more comprehensive perspective on support is revealed when we reverse the question & ask "How does change occur?" Modified AA.

It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering 'a crisis of regime'. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: 'all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.'1These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.