Political Order in Changing Societies 0300011717

Table of contents :
1. Political order and political decay
2. Political modernization: America vs Europe
3. Political change in traditional polities
4. Praetorianism and political decay
5. Revolution and political order
6. Reform and political change
7. Parties and political stability

Citation preview

Political Order in Changing Societies

by Samuel P. Huntington

New Haven and London, Yale University Press

Written under the auspices of the Center for International Affairs Harvard University

Delivered in part as the Henry L. Stimson Lectures Yale University

Copyright © 1968 by Yale University. Fifth printing, 1971. Designed by John 0. C. McCrillis, set in Baskerville type, and printed in the United States of America by The Carl Purington Rollins Printing-Office of the Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-27756 ISBN: 0-300-00584---g (cloth), 0-300-01171-7 ( paper) Distributed in Great Britain, Europe, and Africa by Yale University Press, Ltd., London; in Canada by McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal; in Mexico by Centro Interamericano de Libros Academicos, Mexico City; in Central and South America by Kaiman & Polon, Inc., New York City; in Australasia by Australia and New Zealand Book Co., Pty., Ltd., Artarmon, New South Wales; in India by UBS Publishers' Distributors Pvt., Ltd., Delhi; in Japan by John Weatherhill, Inc., Tokyo.

For Nancy) Timothy) and Nicholas

Preface The "political order" referred to in the title of this book is a goal not a reality. The pages following are, consequently, filled with descriptions of violence, instability, and disorder. In this respect this book resembles those volumes which purport to deal with "economic development" but whose actual subjects are eco­ nomic backwardness and stagnation. Economists who write about economic development presumably favor it, and this book origi­ nates in a parallel concern which I have for political stability. My effort here is to P!,?.£,e the:conditfo'ns {inder wh.ich societies under­ going rapid and disruptive social and economic change may in some measure r��! g':_)al. The indices of economic develop­ ment, such as per capita gross national product, are reasonably familiar and accepted. The indices of political order or its absence in terms of violence, coups, insurrections, and other forms of instability are also reasonably clear and even quantifiable. Just as it is possible for economists to analyze and to debate, as econo­ mists, the conditions and policies which promote economic de­ velopment, it should also be possible for political scientists to analyze and to debate in scholarly fashion the ways and means of promoting political order, whatever their differences concerning the legitimacy and desirability of that goal. Just as economic de­ velopment depends, in some measure, on the relation between investment and consumption, political order depends in part on the relation between the development of political institutions and the mobilization of new social forces into politics. At least that is the framework in which I have approached the problem in this book. My research and writing were done at the Center for Interna­ tional Affairs at Harvard University. This work was supported in part by the Center from its own resources, in part by a Ford Foundation grant to the University for work in international affairs, and in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation to the Center for a research program in Political Institutionalization vii

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PREFACE

and Social Change. The impetus for the overall elaboration of the argument of the book came from the invitation of Professor Robert Dahl and the Council on International Relations of Yale University to deliver the Henry L. Stimson Lectures in 1966. Por­ tions of chapters 1, 2, and 3 appeared in World Politics and Daed­ alus and are incorporated into this manuscript with the permission of the publishers of these two journals. Christopher Mitchell, Joan Nelson, Eric Nordlinger, and Steven R. Rivkin read the manus