Book Reviews: COMPARATIVE POLITICS March 1992

society. The party-state's legitimizing ideology, Marx- barring people from doing what it deems undesirable is
ism-Leninism, suffers a complete collapse; but the party clear, its power is limited when it comes to making
structure remains in place. people do what it deems desirable.
The final stagewhich occurred in Eastern Europe Under the social and psychological dimensions, the
after Haraszti had predicted it in early 1988is postcom- case allows the author to venture into two fascinating
munism, under which political democracy is installed. areas: caste politics and personal politics. Erdman con-
"What is significant," Haraszti observes, "is that with- cludes that the domestic political environment is impor-
out the evolution of civil society in the preceding two tant but that at the same time the "individual matters."
phases, the transition cannot be successful" (p. 86). While Erdman raises these issues in several places, he
Haraszti's scheme could, one suspects, also be of help in fails to explore them systematically. Caste identities play
predicting future developments in non-East European an important role in the selection of the chairman. But
communist societies. do they also play a role in the management of a com-
The emergence of independent peace movements in pany? To what extent are these positions used as tools to
the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was preceded by muster support for the ruling party? Is the politicization
"islands of autonomy" created by rock musicians and of management a cause or a consequence of the compa-
their fans (the "Lennonists," after John Lennon), envi- ny's failed performance?
ronmentalists, and those seeking the preservation of The historical account of Mysore Chemicals and Fer-
historical and cultural monuments. The formation of tilizers from 1960 to 1987 is a powerful case study in
independent peace movements was, however, espe- itself. However, considering its richness, the framework
cially significant, since these entities served to challenge in which the case is placed is disappointing. Rather than
the ruling communist regimes on closely guarded turf; developing a theoretical framework by reviewing one
the campaign for "peace" (i.e., the inducement of West- primary body of literature, Erdman plays "touch and
ern unilateral disarmament) had been a key element in go" with the names of hosts of scholars. The resulting
the foreign policies of those regimes. The at-times-brutal format is less like a scholarly work and more like a
contest between the independent peace movements and graduate seminar. This format is also prevalent in the
the regimes makes a fascinating story, as do the fractious concluding section, where the only conclusions drawn
ties that developed between the movements and various are that every model and every phenomenon identified
peace organizations in the West. in the introductory chapter is present in this case. Little
To sum up, In Search of Civil Society is a collection of attempt has been made to assess their comparative
stimulating essays serving to broaden our comprehen- significance, to link the case with other similar cases in
sion of the processes that led to the sudden collapse of India, or to relate them to other studies in the field.
communism in Eastern Europe and that could presage Although the author claims that the book is useful for
its imminent breakdown in the Soviet Union. comparative purposes, the burden of finding its compar-
ative worth is left on the reader.
Hoover Institution JOHN B. DUNLOP While the case study is undoubtedly interesting, it is
not an analytically rigorous work. The absence of any
specifically stated propositions, operationalization of
Politics, Economic Development, and Industrial Man- concepts, or presentation of proofs mars the study's
agement in India. By Howard L. Erdman. Hanover: value for wider audience. Much is left to the reader's
University Press of New England, 1989. 246p. $35.00. speculation. The lack of any hard data on a subject
where data abounds is also disturbing.
Howard Erdman's book is a well-developed case The readability of the book is greatly hampered by the
study of a typical industry in India from its conceptual- author's preference to abbreviate almost everything,
ization stage to the present. Erdman justifies the selec- including the names of people. Often, four or five
tion of Mysore Chemicals and Fertilizers as a valid case abbreviated names appear in one sentence.
on the ground that its checkered performance is repre- Overall, the chief strength of the book is the case
sentative of the overall industrial performance in the study itself, which is not only interesting but insightful
nation. The objective of this painstaking exercise (as the as well. Even though it does not break new ground, it is
author himself claims) is to reach those who are either meaningful to those interested in Indian politics.
interested in the field of policy analysis or keen to move
away from macro studies to the micro case studies that University of South Florida RENU KHATOR
offer a narrowalbeit focusedview of political phe-
nomena. The political phenomenon that Erdman ex-
plores is the effect of the political environment on the The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. By Gosta
process of industrial decisionmaking. Esping-Andersen. Princeton: Princeton University
The case study of Mysore Chemical and Fertilizers is Press, 1990. 248p. $37.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.
comprehensive and provocative. Several dimensions of Modern Welfare States: Politics and Policies in Social
the "political environment" are carefully explored by the Democratic Scandinavia. By Eric S. Einhorn and John
author. Under the institutional dimension, Erdman an- Logue. New York: Praeger, 1989. 340p. $55.00 cloth,
alyzes India's complex federal system and the interrela- $17.95 paper.
tionship between the center and the state of Karnataka. Age, Class, Politics, and the Welfare State. By Fred C.
The policies of the central government canand do Pampel and John B. Williamson. Cambridge: Cam-
cripple industrial initiatives. The author also makes a bridge University Press, 1989. 199p. $34.50.
genuine effort to highlight the drawbacks of the Indian
style of "mixed economy" by bringing in issues of the As their titles suggest, the three books reviewed here
joint and semipublic sectors. Erdman interestingly concern the social welfare state. Of the three, The Three
points out that although the government's power in Worlds of Welfare Capitalism constitutes the most vigorous

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attempt to move beyond conceptual categories that now spelled out in greater detail. After all, the universal
dominate the field. The author, Gosta Esping-Andersen, welfare system itself places limits in the amount of time
replaces notions of the welfare state that emphasize total people will be supported without working. What de-
amounts of expenditures on social programs or the fends these limits placed on support if independence
degree of redistribution that the system realizes with a from the labor market is a vital criterion? Also, the
classification of programs according to whether the financial viability of a universal welfare system may well
programs are universalistic and enable persons to main- depend upon a work ethic operating in these countries
tain livelihoods without reliance on the labor market. that infuses people with the belief that it is not acceptable
The purpose of social rights, Esping-Andersen says, is to to be independent of the labor market except in special
"permit people to make their living standards inde- situations. Quite a few anomalies exist, unfortunately,
pendent of pure market forces" (p. 3). She argues that that Esping-Andersen, in this otherwise excellent work,
with respect to living standards, social rights are sup- leaves not only unanswered but mostly unaddressed.
posed to enable citizens to be more than mere commod- A companion to Esping-Andersen's book is Eric S.
ities. They should lead to the "decommodification" of Einhorn and John Logue's Modern Welfare States. The
citizens. book describes in detail the welfare systems of the
With this idea of the purpose of social rights in mind, universalistic type as they operate today and as devel-
she draws distinctions between three types of welfare oped historically in the Scandinavian nations. Although
state. First, the liberal welfare state mixes nonuniversal the book's explanations are impressionistic in nature
means-tested programs for the poor with programs for rather than backed by systemic evidence, they are none-
all who contribute to them based on a social insurance theless imaginative and worth consideration. According
foundation. Second, the corporatist-statist welfare state to Einhorn and Logue, the universalistic welfare state
emphasizes social insurance programs that benefit those arose in Scandinavia due to causes reaching well beyond
who pay ina larger number than in the liberal state but economic developmentwhich is generally in accord
still excluding some sections of the population (e.g., with Esping-Andersen's conclusions. A key factor be-
homemakers). Third, the social democratic welfare state hind its emergence, in Einhorn and Logue's view, was
emphasizes programs that are universalistic (i.e., inde- the popular belief systemin particular, the belief in
pendent of whether people do or do not pay in) and also solidarity, that is, a sense of belonging to, and identify-
grant benefits that are tied to a middle-class style of ing with, others and a willingness to tie one's fate to that
living. This third type of welfare state thus enables an of others. This variable, imbedded in the political culture
able-bodied person of working age who so wishes to live of the nations, loomed of greater importance than eco-
independently of the labor market for long stretches of nomic variables.
time (e.g., when unemployed, sick, or disabled or to Einhorn and Logue's analysis reaches even further. It
pursue education or raise children). also focuses on the decline of the consensus favoring the
Esping-Andersen's book is intriguing in its suggestion extensive welfare state. The decline of consensus devel-
of fresh hypotheses about the welfare state. First, she oped in Scandinavia following the mid-1960s. Here
uncovers little correlation between the gross national economic variables do move more center-stage. The
product of a nation and the type of welfare state a nation authors suggest that the affluence of the age "under-
has; her comparison of 18 Western countries shows that mined the appeal of the social welfare system. Economic
the politics of a nation is a far more potent explanatory insecurity seemed increasingly remote" (p. 20). Political
variable. Second, tax revolts against the welfare state variables also played a role, in that in the late 1960s and
tend to be strongest not in nations for which the welfare early 1970s there emerged value issues (environmental
state poses the greatest tax burden (the universalistic conditions, nuclear power, entry into the European
systems) but in those that spend the least on welfare. Community that cut across traditional class lines in a
Also important is the connection she draws between the manner as to reduce the cohesion of the vote for the
commitment of a system to universalism and the depen- Left. Most importantly, however, Einhorn and Logue
dency of such systems upon full employment in order to observe that a universalist welfare system (as Marx said
garner the necessary financial resources to fund the of a capitalistic system) may contain the seeds of its own
system. The result is that though they may seem on the demise. A universalistic system builds upon a feeling of
surface to be indifferent whether people work, universal solidarity that gives rise to the system and is needed to
welfare systems are instead geared toward attempting to sustain it, the authors argue. Yet by its very nature, the
increase employment with the consequence that these operation of a universalistic welfare system works to
systems are associated with higher levels of employment undercut solidarity values. The very purpose of the
than the other two types of welfare systems and often system is to enable individual citizens to be economically
achieve full employment. These comprise a few of the independent of one another, whereas in prior times ties
ways in which Esping-Andersen's approach invites re- to families and friends were required to attain material
thinking a wide range of conclusions that presently have security. "The welfare state," say Einhorn and Logue,
wide currency in the field. "diminishes the reciprocal responsibility of each individ-
Yet drawbacks also exist. The author mentions at the ual for his or her family, neighbors, and workmates.
start that her need to compress a lot of information into . . . It is ironic that the collectivist means that conserva-
a small space for the purposes of developing measures tives always feared would destroy individualism have,
for comparison might lead some to feel that her descrip- in fact, encouraged it" (pp. 267-268). An important and
tions of the various welfare states are superficial and intriguing hypothesis, it unfortunately remains little
perhaps misrepresentative. I had this feeling on some more than that, since beyond their logic, the evidence
occasions with respect, for example, to the West German the authors summon comprises little more than a quote
and U.S. welfare systems. Also, her emphasis on inde- from a Swedish actor.
pendence from the labor market as a key element of the The third book, Fred C. Pampel and John B. William-
definition of the universal welfare system needs to be son's Age, Class, and the Welfare State, is also of consid-

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Book Reviews: COMPARATIVE POLITICS March 1992

erable interest, although its denser prose makes it more and interests. Farhi's specific concern is to understand
difficult to read than the other two books. If the book by the interaction of class and state structures within the
Esping-Andersen reveals the impact that conceptual global political and economic system. Her findings can
understandings can have on conclusions about the wel- be summarized under three headings.
fare state, Pampel and Williamson do the same with First, the impact of sociostructural and world histori-
methodological issues. Their study of the welfare state cal forces on the economic sytems of Iran and Nicaragua
differs from the conventional comparative methodology produced a coalescence of urban groupings able to play
in that it focuses on longitudinal rather than cross- an oppositional role against two economically interven-
sectional data for the nations under study and simulta- tionist regimes that favored development policies based
neously examines the several constituent parts of the on the export of primary products. The disoriented urban-
welfare state separately over time, rather than only the ization process created a readily mobilizable population.
whole or a single program within the whole. From this Second, the coalescence of the urban groupings was
different methodology emerges a series of conclusions actualized because of the disjunction between the ruling
that conflict with those derived from the conventional elite and the intermediate classes. Political parties were
methodologies. First, political variables once more come prohibited and the rising professional classes were an-
to the fore in explaining change in expenditures. Al- tagonized. The coalescence of opposition groups was
though economic growth remains a critical variable for also related to the effective use of the existing religiocul-
change in expenditures on the largest programs (social tural networks and ideologies based on religion, which
insurance and health care), the political context is found offered the revolutionaries a medium of nationalist
to be an important mediating variable. Particularly pow- expression.
erful are changes in the percentage of the population Third, the breakdown of the state machinery and its
that votes and the degree of electoral competition that inability to respond to popular mobilization was a con-
exists. Moreover, for the smaller programs (e.g., public sequence of the peculiar structure of the two regimes, a
assistance, family allowances, and unemployment ben- world milieu of superpower rivalry, and confusion
efits), Pampel and Williamson find that economic among U.S. policymakers.
growth is unimportant. More influential in the develop- In a concluding section, Farhi identifies certain simi-
ment of these programs are changes in the scope of larities between the state-centered crises that launched
union power in the nation and also, in the case of family the Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions and those that
allowances, the percentage of the population that votes. triggered the upheavals in Mexico (1910-20), Cuba
(1956-59), and the Philipines (1986). In the end, she
University of Arizona JOHN E. SCHWARZ returns to pay homage to Skocpol, her original source of
inspiration, while underlining the difficulties inherent in
applying her hypotheses to Iran and Nicaragua. One
States and Urban-based Revolutions: Iran and Nicara- finds Farhi's sense of loyalty somewhat exaggerated, in
gua. By Farideh Farhi. Champagne: University of view of her major departures from Skocpol that render
Illinois Press, 1990. 147p. $29.95. the latter's theories almost unrecognizable. Farhi's focus
on urban mobilization, ideology, urban oppositional
Of all the conceptual challenges facing the comparat- groupings, and the vulnerability of peripheral states to
ivist, the study of revolutions is perhaps the most internal and global pressures make her work significant
difficult. In the quest for comparability and equivalence, in its own right.
the student of comparative revolutions needs to con- Yet Farhi's commitment to her particular approach
sider the total millieu of the revolutionary situation tends to deemphasize or hide such salient factors as the
politics, culture, economics, sociology, and social psy- role of revolutionary leadership and the explosive inter-
chology. All too often, this has been an impossible task. actions of culture and class. There is little in this study
To complicate matters, most scholars tend to focus on about the epicentric role of Ayatollah Khomeini and the
successful revolutions, rather than failures. Social scien- Sandinista leadership in contributing to the success and
tists might do well to accept Thomas H. Greene's painful shape of the revolutionary outcomes. In the Iranian case
but audacious assertion that it may be easier to carry out it would have been helpful to note the peculiar conver-
a revolution than to understand it. gence of class and cultural cleavages that produced a
The author of the book at hand is well aware of the revolutionary environment in which the urban lumpen-
immensity of these conceptual and analytic difficulties. proletariat was readily mobilized, since it suffered relative
Yet Farideh Farhi is courageous enough to attempt a deprivation both in cultural and economic terms. On the
comparative macroanalysis of two urban-based revolu- crucial revolutionary role of the intermediate classes, the
tionsthe overthrow of the Iranian monarchy and the author might have consulted Leonard Binder's seminal
Samoza regime in Nicaragua. work on Egypt (In a Moment of Enthusiasm: Political Power
Using a case study approach, Farhi takes Theda and the Second Stratum in Egypt. Chicago: University of
Skocpol's theory of revolution as a starting point and Chicago Press) that goes beyond Gramsci to Marx and
proceeds to develop her own explicit framework for Mosca to demonstrate how a section of civil society can
application to the Iranian and Nicaraguan situations. arouse in itself and in the masses a moment of enthusi-
She presents a cogent critique of Skocpol's approach, asm and acts as the general representative of the whole
which she finds wanting in understanding societies that society to achieve a partial revolution.
lack agrarian bureaucracies and peasant insurrections. Nonetheless, Farhi's work is a fine example of how a
In Farhi's view, Skocpol's theory can become more doctoral dissertation can be transformed into a good
pertinent to recent revolutions if focused on the chang- booka welcome addition to the literature on compar-
ing balance of class forces occasioned by the uneven ative revolutions.
development of world capitalism and by a broader view
of ideology stressing the importance of ideas, actions, University of Southern California R. HRAIR DEKMEJIAN

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