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Overview
By exploring this subject over a long period—in some cases reaching as far back as the seventeenth century—this book shows how changing definitions of administrators' roles reflect their position in society and permit the exploration of changing socialization processes. The long time span also shows how factors such as administrative intervention can change from being marginally important to crucial in affecting economic growth.
From the diverse European experience the author distills five factors which he hypothesizes have exerted a constant positive influence on administrative intervention in economic development, and suggests how these factors might be applied in analysis of other societies. He also provides a wealth of statistical data and an extensive bibliography.
Originally published in 1973.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780691646008 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
| Publication date: | 04/19/2016 |
| Series: | Princeton Legacy Library , #1249 |
| Pages: | 420 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d) |
Read an Excerpt
The European Administrative Elite
By John A. Armstrong
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1973 Princeton University PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-07551-8
CHAPTER 1
The Problem and the Analysis
Our times are fickle in their treatment of the high administrator. Today, and the day before yesterday, he is a "bureaucrat," plodding and pettifogging, reproducing his kind faster than the population explosion. Yesterday, and perhaps tomorrow, he is the counterweight to private indulgence, the prime mover of "freedom under planning." Common to both sets of popular images is the focus on the institution, the vast, grey labyrinth of Kafka's castle. What matters in both these interpretations are laws, rules, organizational charts. Executors and client-victims alike are faceless, locked in a pattern that grew, somehow, of itself. Only occasionally does an individual portrait emerge as an anecdote of benevolence or bumbling.
This book is primarily concerned with the men who direct administrations, rather than with administrative institutions. It is a study of how high administrators themselves, and other elites closely associated with them, have perceived the administrator's role. The study seeks to do more than identify role perceptions, however; it explores the processes by which role definitions are acquired. As far as feasible, we shall try to relate changes in these processes to broader changes in the four European societies examined.
Because we are interested in the evolution of the administrative elite role, the study deals with a long period — for some purposes eighteenth-century and occasionally even seventeenth-century histories of administration are pertinent. On the other hand, the focus is narrow: it is not the administrative role in all its richness and ambiguity, but the special relation of the administrative role to economic development. We wish to learn how the administrator and those most closely related to him ("principal reference groups") have perceived his participation in economic development, i.e., the increase of material production.
We do not intend to identify the factors which caused European economic development. In recent years numerous impressive studies, notably Robert T. Holt and John E. Turner, The Political Base of Economic Development, have attempted this identification. These studies are examinations of total societies, for determination of necessary factors in a general societal process like economic development entails scrutiny of all potentially relevant elements in the social system. Our aim is deliberately more restricted. We do not contend that the nature of high administrators' role definitions was a necessary condition for economic development in the four European societies studied. On the contrary, since it is generally recognized that all have attained roughly similar levels of economic development, variance in role definitions cannot have been decisive. In fact, an underlying assumption of this study is that other factors could adequately substitute (at least in earlier stages) for administrative participation in development. While we cannot fully explore the implications of this substitutability within the scope of this study, we shall discuss some of its aspects at various points, notably in Chapter Fourteen.
What is the use of exploring the elite administrative role in economic development if, in the long run, administrators have not decisively affected economic development? One answer, surely, is that the subject is historically interesting because of the way changing role definitions reflect the general position of the high administrator in his society and permit one to explore the impact of changing socialization processes. We think there is a more fundamental, or, if one prefers, a more practical response as well. For many reasons — changes in the international environment, technological progress, and the like — the mix of factors affecting economic growth changes over time. Factors like administrative intervention, which once were marginally important or even counterproductive, may become crucial, as Andrew Shonfield argues:
The turn-round in British and American thinking about France and its economic methods is dramatic. It is worth asking how and why it occurred. ... A conservative bureaucracy in a period of revolutionary technological change like the nineteenth century would clearly slow down the rate of progress. ... But once the apparatus of government is directed to the exploitation of technological change and the men in charge are attuned to the expectation that this change will proceed at a high tempo, the balance of advantage could shift in favour of those who try to organize for change well ahead, and away from those who merely suffer it to happen.
Our data will not permit us to settle the question of whether administrators have ever decisively affected the course of economic development. But our main concern is sufficiently close to this topic that we feel justified in pointing out suggestive evidence on the accomplishments as well as the attitudes of high administrators. In dealing with experiences spanning several centuries and involving four large societies, the purposes of analysis are best served, we believe, by a sharply defined, relatively narrow focus. Thus we shall concentrate on the major dependent variable of role definition and the intermediate variables of recruitment and socialization. We shall seek to identify a set of factors which have persistently produced positive definitions of the administrative role in relation to economic development. If such factors can be identified for the major European systems, we can hypothesize that they have a general significance for administrators in societies which are developing economically. Consequently, this is essentially an exploratory study. Our aim is not to test hypotheses (although we shall advance and examine numerous working hypotheses as guides to our exploration) but to distill hypotheses of potential nomothetic significance. In contrast to an investigation primarily concerned with verifying hypotheses, we must use a wide range of indicators (particularly in relation to the socialization process) not directly related to our major conclusions.
Focus and Serendipity
Setting a focus should be a device for concentrating light, not shutting it out by methodological blinders. The serendipitous potential of an exploratory study covering a wide span of time and space is considerable. Surprisingly, there is no really comprehensive history of even one of the four major national administrations. A real comparative history of European administration is hardly possible; and we certainly have no intention of contributing to what J. P. Nettl has called "a growing service industry — the writing of 'special' history predigested for sociologists, a sort of academic baby-food." But this study ought to make some contribution toward an eventual comparative history. While most of the evidence we shall consider has already appeared in print, much has never been related to problems of administration even at the national level. Consequently, we present some of this evidence at greater length than is strictly necessary for our immediate purposes. The extensive notes and bibliography may also be useful. For certain major topics, sociological as well as historical, implications of the evidence outside our primary focus can at least be suggested.
As discussed above, we shall devote some attention to the actual impact of high administrators on economic growth, although we cannot treat the topic systematically. Another question which has preoccupied political scientists is administrative responsiveness. All philosophies of government must grapple with the dilemma arising from actual exercise by career administrators of extensive authority which the legitimizing principles of the social system nominally confer on others, such as hereditary monarchs or elected officials. The dilemma is not directly pertinent to this study, but our investigation of ideological arguments for administrative elite recruitment and socialization will involve some consideration of the legitimacy of administrative authority.
A whole series of questions relates to the concepts of "administration" as compared to "bureaucracy" and "organization." Surely administrative elite roles are significant only within organizational contexts; but as we are not mainly interested in organizations as such, most of the impressive body of organization theory will not apply to this study. The distinction between "administration" and "bureaucracy" deserves slightly more elaboration. To some extent, use of these terms has been a matter of disciplinary bias. Political scientists prefer to use administration to designate the formally nonpolitical activities of governments, while sociologists since Max Weber have preferred bureaucracy. But the distinction is surely more profound. It is not only that bureaucracy appears in many contexts other than governmental, and that even many strictly nonpolitical governmental activities (e.g., the judiciary in common-law countries) are hardly bureaucratic. More significant was Max Weber's model of bureaucracy, which posited a special type of rationalized organization. We have explored in previous works some empirical situations in which Weber's model can be evaluated; we do not intend to pursue this evaluation in the present study. But the path laid out by Weber and broadened by more recent students of bureaucracy like Peter Blau and Michel Crozier is an enticing one. Our concentration on roles and the socialization which shapes them will inevitably lead to some attention to specific features of the bureaucratic model.
Roles, Values, and Ideology
In order to meet the minimal requirements of a far-ranging exploratory study, we must deal, at the beginning, with basic concepts of theory and method. The approach we use intrudes on many disciplines and, we hope, will attract readers of very different backgrounds. Some may consider the sociological language an unnecessary complication. Perhaps a moment's reflection on the central concept of "role" will explain why we consider technical terminology to be indispensable. The term is often used in a metaphorical sense, but if it is to be useful as more than a passing stimulus to the imagination, "role" must be defined with reasonable precision. To undertake this definition without reference to the conceptual frameworks of social psychology in which the implications of "role" have been elaborated would be inexcusably wasteful. An ad hoc definition might seem to enable us to get on with the substance of the inquiry; ultimately, both the analysis and the reader's comprehension of it would suffer. Such is the case with other key concepts employed in this work. It is neither feasible nor desirable to define them all at once in a kind of primer of the social sciences. Many concepts, and a few assumptions, will appear in later chapters as they are required. There is, however, a basic conceptual framework which must be explicated at the start.
Before entering upon the more theoretical aspects of "role," let us begin by stating the assumption that the way high administrators perceive their roles represents learned responses to social stimuli. Certainly this assumption does not preclude a considerable element of rational choice by individuals. As will be discussed in Chapter Eleven, assimilation of values by adults, especially after they have entered the administrative organizations, is heavily influenced by rational calculation of the individual's chances for advancement. Social psychological theories of socialization to roles, however, do assume that basic values are learned in childhood and adolescence without conscious awareness of their significance, and that even much of the recombination of these values for role adaptation in later life is not consciously undertaken by the individuals involved.
An essential element of our approach is the search for genetic explanations of contemporary differences in role perceptions. Instead of treating variance in perceptions or attitudes as culturally determined, i.e., residual factors after other aspects of the contemporary social situation have been explained, the genetic approach seeks the origins of these differences in specific past behavior. At some moment in the past a formal institution was established, a behavior pattern adopted, a value acknowledged. Not infrequently each of these social phenomena was initiated by an identifiable individual or group of individuals. Identifying these origins as unique events is the work of historiography in the narrower sense. What is more important to the sociological perspective is determining how and why a pattern of social behavior became institutionalized, i.e., widely repeated and accepted in a segment of society. Even more important for the present study is the question of why some institutionalized patterns of behavior (which we may simply call "institutions" without implying that they necessarily have any formal legitimization) persist while numerous others disappear over a period of time. The question is similar to one which anthropologists have considered for many years: why are traits diffused to many cultures selectively adopted in some cultures but rejected by others? At certain points this study, too, will discuss crosscultural diffusion in the proper sense of the term, but the main concern is with diffusion over time, i.e., selective persistence.
One solution is to try to find the societal function which the persistent institutions perform. Without attempting to assess impressive recent efforts to develop functional explanations of societal change, one may safely say that the functionalist approach is less readily adaptable to investigation of long historical periods involving drastic alterations in social systems than it is to instantaneous equilibrium situations. The structural functionalist concept posits system maintenance as the ultimate test of function performance, yet no generally accepted definition of system dissolution has been advanced. More specifically, the scope of our investigation embraces at least two catastrophic events (the French and the Russian revolutions) which might be considered terminal for the social systems involved. Unless one could determine whether or not the old-regime social systems were actually terminated — a matter far beyond the compass of this work — a functional approach would involve grave ambiguities.
Conflict models, on the other hand, were generally developed precisely to explain societal dynamics over a period of several generations or more. Utilizing these conceptual approaches, one does not seek to explain the adoption or persistence of a structure by reference to its (essential) functional position in the total society, but by its utility to a specific societal segment.
The classic conflict model is Karl Marx's theory of social classes. Anyone who attempts to utilize a conflict model is indebted to his insights, whatever one may think of his general interpretation of history. Two closely related concepts are particularly pertinent to this study. "False consciousness" was the first distinct formulation of the concept that the expressed reasons for social actions frequently mask (even for those giving the reasons) real motives related to group interests. "Ideology" for Marx was the form of false consciousness peculiar to a dominant social group. Even for the group itself, ideology legitimizes, by ostensibly universalist arguments, behavior actually directed toward preserving the group's particular interests. In employing "ideology" we shall retain the basic sense in which Marx used the term, i.e., an argument (more frequently an elaborate system of arguments) advanced to explain why an institution or value was introduced or maintained. Ideology will be distinguished from other types of arguments, theories, or doctrines by the considerable element of false consciousness which the ideological position contains, though an ideology, too, may contain many objectively true propositions. Conversely, other types of arguments, while possibly largely false or even deliberately deceptive, do not, on the whole, act as covers for group interests. Obviously an argument may be advanced on a nonideological basis and then become adopted as an ideology; more rarely the reverse process occurs.
It is apparent that the validity of this type of explanation depends on the assumption that social groups (or, as Amitai Etzioni calls them, "collectivities") possess emergent qualities. That is, the decisions these units make are more than the sum of the decisions of the individuals composing them. While Etzioni and many others have presented cogent reasons why this is so, for our purposes the proposition can be taken simply as an assumption. It is equally apparent, however, that relating this proposition to the concept of ideology does not in itself advance one's analysis. As Karl Mannheim pointed out, Marx and his followers were prevented from elaborating a theory of the general relationship of ideology to group interests by their insistence on restricting this relationship to the thought of their opponents.8 Mannheim, in his impressive effort to elaborate such a theory of knowledge, is also restrictive. It is possible to accept his definition of ideology as applying only to conservative thought if one assumes that "conservative" applies to the defense of any group interest which has already been, at least to a considerable extent, established.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The European Administrative Elite by John A. Armstrong. Copyright © 1973 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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Table of Contents
- Frontmatter, pg. i
- Acknowledgments, pg. vii
- Contents, pg. ix
- List of Figures and Tables, pg. xi
- ONE. The Problem and the Analysis, pg. 1
- Two. The Comparative Method, pg. 27
- THREE. Diffusion of Development Doctrines, pg. 47
- FOUR. Recruitment and Class Role Models, pg. 73
- FIVE. The Family and Socialization, pg. 93
- Six. The Structured Adolescent Peer Group, pg. 105
- SEVEN. The Classics Barrier, pg. 127
- EIGHT. Higher Education as Ideology, pg. 149
- NINE. Alternatives in Higher Education, pg. 175
- TEN. Induction to Higher Administration, pg. 201
- ELEVEN. Career Patterns and Prospects, pg. 229
- TWELVE. Territorial Direction and Development Initiative, pg. 253
- THIRTEEN. Response to Challenge, pg. 275
- FOURTEEN. Implications of Development Interventionist Role Definition, pg. 299
- APPENDIX. On Quantitative Data, pg. 319
- Bibliography, pg. 347
- Index, pg. 393