Melberg, Hans O. (1996), Social science as correlation between vague macro-concepts (Review of Holmes, L. (1993): The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis

 

 

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[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1996), Social science as correlation between vague macro-concepts (Review of Holmes, L. (1993): The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis, Cambridge: Polity Press), http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/960321.htm]

 

Social science as correlation between vague macro-concepts
Review of Holmes, L. (1993): The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis, Cambridge: Polity Press

by Hans O. Melberg

This book, The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis, is an example of confused modern social science. There is no doubt that the author, Leslie Holmes, is both hard-working and intelligent, yet the results are disappointing. He spends much time on grand (but vague) concepts, taxonomies and methodology. Further, as with much social science, he is constantly searching for the complicated fuzziness on the edges, thereby ignoring the sometimes obvious and simpler truths about the core.

Holmes' main argument is "that the reporting of official corruption in so many communist states has been (...) symptomatic of a general tendency to place less emphasis not only on old traditional, charismatic and goal-rational modes of legitimation, but also on new traditional, official nationalist and eudaemonic - and to place an increasing emphasis on the legal-rational mode; this mode , it is argued, proved ultimately to be incompatible with Marxism-Leninism." (p. 274). In order to prove this argument he needs, first, to demonstrate the factual point about the increasing concern about corruption. Next, he needs to establish a connection between corruption and legitimation. Finally, he must show how legitimacy relates to the collapse of communism.

As for the factual point, Holmes' research does indicate a significant increase, although only weakly. In the case of the USSR he has found 272 cases of corruption reported in the media from 1966 to 1986. In the 1970s the average number of reports were 12.1, while in the 1980's it was 15.1 - an increase of three cases per year. I was surprised not to find more detailed statistical tests of how statistically significant this increase was. Holmes himself admits that "it may initially appear that I am making a great deal about out of relatively little..." (p. 158).

Against these claims Holmes has two arguments. First, there was an increase in the number of borderline cases, i.e. cases not categorized as pure corruption by him. Second, there was an increase in the level of officials involved, which also points to the increased significance of concerns about corruption. Against these arguments one might point out that it was he himself who chose the definition of corruption (in fact he spends a whole chapter on it) that excluded the grey cases. Having excluded them by his own definition he should not be permitted to bring them back when he needs more examples to prove a point. As for the second argument, he is right, but we are not told how statistically significant the increase was.

Assume we agree that there was an increase in the concern about corruption in the 1980s. The question is then how this relates to the issue of legitimacy. In Holmes' world the Communist states go through a sequence of different legitimation modes. First there might be a combination of charismatic and goal-rational legitimation ('We should rule because we are building Communism'). As the intensity of the belief in Communism decreases, a new form of legitimation raises - the eudaemonic form ('We should rule because we provide stability and economic growth'). This form is problematic for two reasons. First, the actions required to create economic growth may alienate your staff. Second, it makes the system vulnerable to economic slumps. Hence, according the Holmes, the leaders try to achieve the legal-rational mode of legitimation in which their right to rule does not depend on random economic ups and downs. As the leaders are moving away from the eudaemonic and towards the legal-rational mode, the leaders mobilize the masses against their staff by using anti-corruption campaigns. The second link between anti-corruption campaigns and the legal-rational mode of legitimation is simply that the legal-rational mode, being more impersonal and rule oriented than the other modes, includes rules which prohibits corruption.

There are at least two major problems with the above argument. First, there could be many reasons for the increasing concern about corruption except for an attempt to move towards a legal-rational mode of legitimation. Second, there are also many other factors determining whether there was a trend towards legal-rational legitimation.

First, the increase in the concern about corruption could simply reflect the fact that corruption was an increasing problem and hence they needed to take it more seriously. The explanation for the increase in corruption could simply be that the new generation lacked the intensity of the belief in the Communist idea that was required to prevent corruption. They had not experienced the revolution itself, only the failed attempts to build Communism in their own country. No longer believing in the great ideal, people decided to take get whatever they could out of the system on a personal level. Hence, there was a rise in corruption and consequently a rise in the concern about corruption. I do not think we need to bring in more complicated concepts, such as an underlying attempt to move towards the legal-rational mode of legitimation, to explain the increasing concern. The reason behind the anti-corruption campaigns was to discipline the staff in which corruption was an increasing problem, not to try to move towards some mass-oriented mode of legitimation. The mobilization of the masses was only the mean, not the aim.

Second, as he discusses in the concluding chapter, there is a host of factors except for the concern about corruption, which signal the legitimation mode of a system. Holmes gives a number of reasons, in addition to he main one of increasing concern about corruption, why the USSR was moving towards a legal-rational mode in the 80s. These reasons include: "codification of the legal system; greater control over the state's coercive agencies; greater control over leading officials; regularization of meetings of political bodies; increasing separation of party and state; changes in official attitudes towards mass participation; the moves from directive towards indicative planning and a system of contracts; boosting of the private sector; and increased overt interaction with the international market." (p. 274).

Regardless of the truth of these arguments (and they are highly controversial), they may still fail to prove Holmes' point. The changes mentioned may be inspired by other concerns - such as economic efficiency - than the aim to create a legal-rational mode of legitimation. One might argue that the motive behind the measures are not important. One might say that the important point was that consequence of these measures was a move towards legal-rationality. This might be true, but it does not save Holmes' since he explicitly argues that the moves represented a conscious "attempt" (p. 44) to move toward legal-rational by the leaders.

Holmes' argument about the third issue, the connection between legitimacy and stability, is that the legal-rational mode is the most stable because it does not depend too heavily on economic performance. If the economy is bad in a Western country, the system itself is usually not threatened since the justification of the government's right to rule is not simply based on its economic performance, but on it being elected. The second argument about legitimacy and stability is that the legal-rational mode of legitimation is incompatible with Marxism-Leninism and hence the attempt to have both is unstable. I believe Holmes is right on both accounts. The USSR leadership's belief in their own right to rule depended on their system being economically superior to the capitalist system, indeed this was the whole point of the experiment. Hence, the eudaemonic mode of legitimacy is not very stable. As for Marxism-Leninism's incapability with rational mode of legitimation, this is caused by Marxism-Leninism's incompatibility with the "rule of law". The rule of law implies that there are limits to the power of the state, that the state itself is bound by the law. Marxism-Leninism is totalitarian, trying to make the state all powerful and claiming the right of the party to be above the law if it serves the cause of building Communism.

Although Holmes is right on these points, he does not specify exactly how the incompatibility is supposed to resolve itself in a crisis in which Marxism-Leninism will disappear. Further, he nowhere proves that this incompatibility was the real cause of the actual crisis. Even if there was an incompatibility, it need not be the case that it was this incompatibility which caused the collapse in this specific instance.

So far I have concentrated on a critique of the main argument of the book, however there are also a number of other weaknesses.

First, he spend too much space on discussing concepts and taxonomies. Three chapters, about 150 pages, are devoted to defining concepts and discussing the methodological problems he encountered in finding and classifying corruption. There is also a long concluding chapter which repeats much of the conceptual problems previously discussed in addition to a discussion of the vague concepts of modernity and post-modernity. True, one needs to define the terms and create frameworks, but social scientists should not focus too much on the classification of marginal cases as long as we agree about the core meaning of a concept - such as corruption.

One might argue that the concepts he is dealing with - corruption, legitimation, stability, crisis, modernity, post-modernity - are so vague that the long methodological discussions are justified. That could be true, but only if his discussion ends up with a less vague and better definition than previous studies. I would argue that Holmes does not do so - and this is a second weakness of the book. For instance, in his discussion of legitimacy he ends up in the counterintuitive position that a system is legitimate in a practical sense, as opposed to an ethical sense, even when the beliefs and preferences of the ruled are manipulated by the leaders (p. 20). He also somewhat contradictory rejects Heller's concept of "permanent legitimation crisis" at the same time as he endorses the concept of "permanent legitimation deficit" (p. 23). Maybe I did not understand his finer distinctions here, but the concepts do seem to convey the same idea.

A third problem is the sometimes implausible causal connections suggested by Holmes. He suggests that the cause of the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 was the loss of the leadership's belief in their own legitimacy when they lost USSR as their role model (p. 24). Maybe this was a factor, but I would place my bets on the more obvious explanation: That the immediate cause of the revolution was the end of the Soviet threat to use coercion to save the Communist regimes. Another weak argument is the suggestion that a serious cause of corruption could be that people desire to take risks, that they seek attention through being caught for wrongdoings or simply that they are bored (p. 164). Once again there might be examples of this, but I doubt they are sufficient to merit inclusion as serious causes. It seems that the obvious cause is also the right one: That people are selfish and greedy and hence exploit their positions to their own personal advantage.

Lastly, Holmes is very explicit in saying that he only argues that there was a trend, not that the USSR ever entered into the legal-rational mode as the dominant mode. But this is a bit disappointing, since the really interesting question would be how far the move towards the legal-rational mode had gone. Holmes should reveal his opinions on this issue. There might be a tendency, but if that tendency is very small and insignificant in terms of levels, then the whole argument is not very interesting.

Overall this was a disappointing book. I expected to learn more about the collapse of Communism. I also expected a study in which the structure of the arguments were less concealed than the arguments of many historians. Instead I found a book trying to come to terms with vague and general concepts. Maybe this is inherent to the macro-approach to social science: We can never agree on terms such as modernity and post-modernity. If this is the case we should concentrate our energies on the micro-level - to explain events using an individualistic perspective. We should avoid discussing macro-correlations - such as between corruption and legitimation - unless the terms are specific and the correlations have a justification at the level of the individual.


[Note for bibliographic reference: Melberg, Hans O. (1996), Social science as correlation between vague macro-concepts (Review of Holmes, L. (1993): The End of Communist Power: Anti-Corruption Campaigns and Legitimation Crisis, Cambridge: Polity Press), http://www.oocities.org/hmelberg/papers/960321.htm]