Suchergebnisse

Over the last 5 yrs the number of US students participating in protest activities has increased steadily. The anti-war protests have reached into relatively moderate pol'al sectors among students. But while the students have moved to the Left in their pol, most of them have not become alienated from society, nor do they support radical activism. But though the majority of the student body remains unalienated, it is becoming increasingly reform-minded & often critical of existing policies & att's. Surveys also show that students overestimate the % using drugs & the MM do the same. IPSA.

A high level of econ development, attained gradually, & legitimate pol'al institutions (accepted by all major segments of the society) are 2 important conditions of a stable democratic order. A comparison of 15 indices of econ development available from UN data (on diff aspects of wealth, degree of industrialization & urbanization, level of educ) for European, English-speaking & Latin-American democracies & dictatorships shows that the (mean - average)'s of each more democratic group are higher on each index than the less democratic countries. The level & tempo of econ development largely determine the form which the 'class struggle' takes in a country, & therefore the degree to which the lower strata develop gradualistic pol'al perspectives consonant with democracy. The dislocations of the soc situation of affected groups in periods of rapid development, rather than poverty as such, produce instability & extremism. If institutions are accepted & valued (legitimate), econ instability does not necessarily endanger democracy. Crises of legitimacy occur during soc change if all major groups do not have access to the pol'al system, if major conservative institutions are threatened, or if other historical issues, such as the place of the church, have not been settled. The major pol'al problem of the 19th cent-integration of the Wc into the system-has largely been solved in most Western democracies, but in some of Latin & Eastern Europe, & parts of Asia, the Communists have gained the support of workers' movements, preventing their full integration, & endangering democracy. The prognosis for democracy is poor in the poverty-stricken, poorly educated, highly stratified countries. A methodological appendix discusses the problems of treating such complex attributes of total societies. AA-IPSA.

From the origins of modern society, the Reformation & the Industrial Revolution, was born pol'al sociol (PS). The study of class conflict & that of consensus according to Marx & de Tocqueville, & that of bur'cy & democracy according to Weber 4z Michels, makes one feel that the conditions which encouraged democracy resulted from these 2 sources of cleavage & consensus. US PS has emphasized the aspect of cleavage & has tended to ignore consensus. Electoral studies, pol'al movements, bur'cy, internal gov, voluntary associations, etc, must be considered to be concrete phenomena. The concept of power is at the basis of the study of consensus, & PS must try to discover the soc circumstances & the consequences of democracy. Comparative analyses, such as that already attempted by de Tocqueville, seem to be esp useful in PS. Tr by J. A. Broussard from IPSA.

A study undertaken during the height of the controversy surrounding the loyalty oath requirement at the U of Calif, to determine the reactions of the student body to the crisis situation. It was assumed that a person's stand on the loyalty oath did not change his general political predispositions, signif group affiliations, newspaper reading habits or participation in the U community. From the Registrar's files every 40th S was selected systematically and interviewed concerning opinions about the loyalty and the non-Communist hiring policy. The study indicates anew that opinion formation tends in large part to be a product of the activation of previous experience and attitudes. S's reacted to the crisis situation largely according to their group affiliations and other background characteristics. The deviant cases suggest that deviation in behavior is a result of being exposed to cross pressures. Liberal S's who read pro-oath newspapers were more likely to support the oath requirements than those reading a paper consistent with their basic political attitudes and vice versa. Another effect of S's exposed to conflicting norms was a relatively high level of ignorance regarding the issues and their background, which may have served the function of reducing clarity, and therefore the intensity of the conflict. This may have accounted for greater lack of knowledge among the pro's than among the antiRegents S's. In every category, S's who were against the Regents, but who had characteristics or were exposed to pressures which made for pro-Regents attitudes, were less likely to sign an anti-oath petition than those with homogeneous anti-Regents characteristics. R. Halpern.

Various observers of the North American scene have called attention to the problem of mass passivity and political apathy in our culture. Myrdal has pointed out that the masses in America "are accustomed to being static and receptive. They are not daring but long for security. They do not know how to cooperate and how to pool risks and sacrifices for a common goal. They do not meet much. They do not organize. They do not speak for themselves: they are the listeners in America. They seldom elect representatives from their own midst to Congress, to state legislatures or to city councils. They rather support friendly leaders from the upper strata, particularly lawyers."Myrdal's description of American mass passivity is an accurate one for most parts of the United States and Canada. There are, however, certain areas on this continent where the political behaviour of the people contradicts the assertion that the American lower economic classes, the workers and farmers, are politically apathetic. The Wheat Belt regions of the United States and Canada have repeatedly given rise to large-scale "class-conscious" political organizations which were genuine mass movements. The Greenback, Populist, and Non-Partisan League organizations in the United States, and the Progressive party and the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) in western Canada involved large numbers of people in agrarian political action. The recent success of the C.C.F. in attaining power in the Wheat Belt province of Saskatchewan is the latest instance of a mass North American "people's party."

The Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (C.C.F.) movement in Saskatchewan is the first avowedly socialist group to win an electoral majority in any province or state of Canada or the United States. Many have expressed surprise that a socialist party should have won office in the most rural province in Canada. This paper is an attempt to throw some light on this question through a study of the leadership of the C.C.F. as compared with that of other community groups and political parties in that province.The significance of the growth of the C.C.F. party can best be expressed in economic class terms. The movement has two important aspects. Essentially, it represents the latest historical phase of the almost continuous conflict of the western grain farmers of the United States and Canada with eastern business interests. Secondly, within the province, success of the movement has resulted in a political transformation in which the representatives of the rural majority supported by the working class of the cities and towns rejected the political control of the urban middle-class business and professional groups which dominated the Liberal and Conservative parties and the government of the province.Since 1901, the farmers of the West and of Saskatchewan in particular, have been attempting to reduce the hazards of a one-crop wheat economy which is perennially subject to extreme fluctuations in income, as a result of the variability in grain prices and climatic conditions. At the turn of the century, Saskatchewan farmers organized the Territorial Grain Growers' Association (later the Saskatchewan Grain Growers' Association) to force the Canadian Pacific Railroad to provide loading platforms and freight cars for their wheat.