[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]