Kriesi, Hanspeter

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Book Reviews: COMPARATIVE POLITICS June 1999Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Volun-tary Associations and Political Involvement in Represen-tative Democracies. Edited by Jan W. van Deth. Londonand New York: Routledge, 1997. 244p. $85.00.Hanspeter Kriesi, University of GenevaThis collection is based on a workshop, "Social Involvement,Voluntary Associations and Democratic Politics," held dur-ing the 1996 Joint Sessions of Workshops of the EuropeanConsortium for Political Research (ECPR) in Oslo. Thecentral theme of the volume is the relationship betweenprivate groups and public life at a time when the organiza-tional basis of public life is undergoing a profound transfor-mation in Western democracies. As is often the case withconference volumes, this one is quite heterogeneous incontent and uneven in quality. The contributions have onething in common: They all present empirical data fromvarious European countries on different aspects of the com-mon theme. They differ in terms of theoretical approach,terminology, and the types of data used.The variety of theoretical approaches is not unusual; itclosely reproduces the state of the art in research on politicalparticipation. The differences among the various approachesmostly involve the way they view the organizational linkbetween the private and the public sphere, or between civilsociety and the state. In order to designate the relevantorganizational structures, some authors speak of "voluntaryassociations," others of "interest groups" (or "public interestgroups"), yet others of "social movement organizations." Toillustrate the conceptual disarray of the field, consider theexample of trade unions. The contributors refer to themvariously as "occupationally based voluntary associations"(Moyser and Parry), "social organizations" (Billiet), "interestorganizations" (Oldersma), "intermediary organizations"(Lelieveldt), "goal-oriented associations" (Joye and Lau-rent), or "traditional political organizations" (Wessel). Withrespect to the types of data used, the various contributionsalso take widely different approaches: individual survey data,organizational data, or macrostructural data. In one instance,the excellent last chapter by Dekker, Koopmans, and van denBroek, data from different levels are combined to resolve aninteresting macro-micro puzzle.Taken together, the twelve chapters allow one to discernsome important trends with respect to political participationin Western Europe. First, several contributions confirm theexistence of a close link between social participation andpolitical participation. Some allow one to differentiate thereceived wisdom. On the basis of Danish survey data forexample, Gundelach and Torpe, confirm the mobilizingfunction of social participation but not its socializing func-tion. That is, contrary to Tocquevillian expectations, socialparticipation does not seem to contribute to political toler-ance and to more encompassing commitments to the publicgood in general.Second, several contributors hint at a profound transfor-mation in the organizational linkage between the social andthe political spheres. Gundelach and Torpe notice thatDanish voluntary associations are becoming more detachedfrom their social base; they are becoming "catch-all" associ-ations. Similarly, Billiet notices a decline in the traditionallink between membership in unions and health insurancesocieties, on the one hand, and voting behavior, on the otherhand, in the case of Belgium. This decline turns out to bemost pronounced in the younger generation, while the polit-ical preferences of older people still are heavily structured bysocial participation. Selle, who analyzes Norwegian women'sassociations, to mention yet another example, finds a declinein the historically powerful mass movements in which womenplayed an important role. With their emancipation from theirtraditional roles, Norwegian women are losing the organiza-tional society which was their own, that is, the trend has beentoward a less gender-segregated organizational society inNorway.Third, a new link between organizations and their mem-bers is taking shape. This is most clearly described in the veryinteresting chapter by Maloney and Jordan on what they call"protest businesses," that is, organizations such as AmnestyInternational, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace. Theauthors argue that in these cases the relationship between theindividual and the organization is essentially financial. Mem-bership is large, participation is minimal, and individuals areessentially "contracting out the participation task to organi-zations." It is argued that large-scale "new politics" groupshave done very little to enhance participatory democracy.Most of the chapters do not try to explain the trends theyfind but, rather, attempt to interpret them in terms of theliterature on social capital. The ghost of Putnam hovers overseveral contributions, although his sensitivity to causal reci-procity or "virtuous circles" between social and politicalparticipation is not always shared by the various authors.Whiteley and Seyd, for example, present a straightforwardlinear model to explain the political capital (i.e., trust inpolitical institutions) of British Conservative Party membersby the level of their social and political activities. The authorsdo not take into account that (as suggested by Dekker et al.)associational life may only flourish in a political culture thatstimulates and perpetuates such trust, and that, by extension,the individual's associational participation may be enhancedby his or her trust in the political institutions.The last two chapters, by Wessels and by Dekker andothers, are more ambitious with respect to explanation.Wessel presents a modernization theoretical account of thedifferences in the organizational capacities of Western Euro-pean societies. His conclusion is quite straightforward: Theorganizational capacity of Western democracies is higher themore modern these societies are (measured by such macro-structural indicators as GNP per capita or percentage ofemployment in the service sector). His account is not at allsensitive to cultural and/or institutional differences amongthese societies. Actually, it is striking to see that his countriescluster along the linear trend in quite significant ways: Thereare the least modern southern European societies and themost modern Scandinavian countries, with the Anglo-Saxonand the consociational democracies forming two groups inbetween.Dekker and colleagues find similar clusters in their chap-ter, and in fact they juxtapose two patterns of politicalparticipation (p. 209). The first, with the Netherlands as theexample, is characterized by high levels of conventionalorganizational participation, low levels of protest participa-tion, relatively moderate protest forms, and a predominanceof new social movements. The second, exemplified by Spain,combines low organizational participation with high protestlevels, radical protest forms, and a predominance of mobili-zation around traditional cleavages. The authors interpretthe differences between these patterns by the variable open-ness of the institutional structures of the respective politicalsystems. The only other contribution that makes use of suchinstitutional differences to account for the patterns of partic-ipation is the one by Joye and Laurent, who interpret localparticipation patterns in Swiss cities in terms of the variablelocal political opportunity structures.As these examples illustrate, the field of political partici-pation could benefit enormously from a more systematic474Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 15:02:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/2585450American Political Science Review Vol. 93, No. 2integration of institutional and cultural factors into theoret-ical accounts. If, in addition, practitioners could agree on acommon conceptualization of the organizational structuresinvolved, then the field could, indeed, make some importantprogress.The Prague Spring and Its Aftermath: Czechoslovak Politics,1968-1970. By Kieran Williams. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997. 270p. $59.95 cloth, $19.95 paper.Karen Dawisha, University of Maryland College ParkTaking advantage of the release of thousands of new docu-ments on Soviet and Czechoslovak actions during the ill-fatedPrague Spring in 1968, Kieran Williams has written animportant book that reexamines the underlying motives andactions of leaders on both sides. While the book can be readas a history of the entire period 1968-70, its greatest contri-bution is in the definitive account it provides of Soviet-Czechoslovak elite interactions leading up to the 1968 inva-sion. As such, it will be of interest not only to historians of theCold War but also to political scientists who specialize incrisis behavior and bureaucratic politics.First, a note about sources. Williams has conducted anabsolutely exhaustive study of the available archives inPrague, Bratislava, and Moscow, although anyone familiarwith the stellar work done by the nongovernmental NationalSecurity Archives and the Cold War International HistoryProject, both based in Washington, D.C., will know that themost important Moscow archives were never really open,with documents trickled out on a highly selective basis by thechief archivists. What we "know" about Soviet behavior,therefore, is still what they want us to know. Nevertheless, theanalysis presented in Williams is rich and multifaceted,particularly when supplemented by a close reading of thedocuments, including an excellent annotated set translatedinto English and recently published (The Prague Spring '68,Preface by Vaclav Havel, edited by Jaromir Navratil, 1998).Viewing the Prague Spring from the perspective of thepostcommunist world, Williams not only benefits from awealth of archival sources but also can see the events for whatthey really were—an effort to reform a system that ultimatelywas unreformable. Williams does not say so, but surely thebrunt of his analysis pushes us to the conclusion that thePrague Spring could not have succeeded in creating "social-ism with a human face" because the socialist system at thattime was unreformable, based as it was on terror, dictator-ship, and economic nonsense.Knowledge of this fact is widely appreciated in contempo-rary Prague, where the thirtieth anniversary of the PragueSpring went uncelebrated, in stark contrast to the streams ofbooks, films, and rallies that commemorated the fortiethanniversary of the 1956 uprising in neighboring Hungary. TheCzechs have chosen not to make the Prague Spring part ofwhat Harvey Kaye (The Powers of the Past: Reflections on theCrisis and the Promise of History, 1991) has called their "grandgoverning narrative." The question is why.Williams provides us with some clues. Archival documentsin the hands of a neutral historian can be a powerful leveler,and while the image of Soviet decision makers as essentiallyruthless, cynical, and determined can be resupported by thenew documents, the previous image of Czechoslovak reform-ers as essentially courageous, visionary, and brilliant does notperhaps bear up so well. Consider some of the details broughtout by Williams. Czechoslovak reformers "suffered from adelusion of sovereignty" (p. 5) based on the fact that they hadno Soviet troops stationed on their borders. As Dubceksubsequently recalled, "I thought that we were much freerthan we were." But Dubcek himself had grown up in theUSSR, had been imprisoned in Bratislava during the Stalinistpurges, and had participated in meetings in which the Czech-oslovaks had been pressured to accept Soviet troops. So thisstatement seems fanciful, if not pathetic, in hindsight.Another example is the Soviet perception of the strengthand objectives of the Czechoslovak opposition, led by VaclavHavel and other nonparty activists during 1968. The Party'sAction Program, published in April 1968, called for thereform of socialism and the lifting of censorship, but it didnot call for anything approaching a multiparty system. Whenactivists like Havel and the philosopher Ivan Svitak arguedfor the creation of a true opposition, and when the Club ofNon-party Engagees (KAN) and K-231 (a pressure group torehabilitate victims of Stalinism) were established, the Dub-cek leadership then and subsequently did little to clampdown on this activity. The Soviet embassy is much deridedby Williams and by previous authors, including myself (TheKremlin and the Prague Spring, 1984) and Jiri Valenta (SovietIntervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision,1991), as having a paranoid and distorted view of the eventstaking place in Prague. Yet, again in hindsight, perhapsit is not unreasonable to conclude that in fact the embassyhad a clearer picture of Soviet interests and how to pro-mote them than the Czechoslovak leaders had of theirown.When Brezhnev, in a May 1968 Politburo meeting, de-nounced the Action Program as "a bad programme, openingup possibilities for the restoration of capitalism in Czecho-slovakia" (p. 73), was he not right? Is it not reasonable toassume that, had the Dubcek team stayed in power, commu-nism might have collapsed sooner than it did? As Havelstated, given that Dubcek did not resist the Soviet invasion(and psychologically could not resist it), it was a blessing forthe opposition that the Czechoslovak Politburo was removedto Moscow for forced and phoney negotiations, since this"lifted a restraining hand on the public" (p. 132). Indeed,Czechoslovak communist leaders themselves echoed Mos-cow's concern about collapse. While in Moscow, an extraor-dinary congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party wascalled, and Zdenek Mlynar, then among the detainees inMoscow, argued that unless they were allowed to returnimmediately, a new politburo would be chosen who wouldnot be willing to do Moscow's bidding, and "Czechoslovakiawill quickly become bourgeois" (p. 134).While we might disagree (even profoundly) with Moscow'sdefinition of its interests, and the actions taken to promotethem, can we really conclude, based on the information soably presented by Williams, that the invasion was irrational,that leaders were ill-informed, or that the decision was in anyway the result of bureaucratic infighting (frankly a ridiculousand insupportable claim further refuted by Williams)? Eventhe fact that dispute continues about whether there weresome disagreements in the Soviet Politburo over when orwhether to invade seems more the stuff of historical footnotesthan real substance. It is clearly the case that no one on thePolitburo would have allowed Czechoslovakia to leave thesocialist camp, whether by stealth, mistake, or open counter-revolution. The only real question was whether Dubcekhimself was able and/or willing to keep the country within thebloc.Of all the documents discussed by Williams, it is those thatreveal Dubcek's own gullibility and weakness that, for thisreviewer, are most revealing. After all, Dubcek has been thealmost sacrosanct hero of so many standard accounts (start-ing with William Shawcross, Dubcek, 1970, and Gordon475Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. University of Basel Library, on 10 Jul 2017 at 15:02:43, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.2307/2585450

Book Review: Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involvement in Representative Democracies: Private Groups and Public Life: Social Participation, Voluntary Associations and Political Involvement in Representative Democracies. Edited by van Deth Jan W. . London and New York: Routledge, 1997. 244p. $85.00

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