bergesen. 1977. political witch hunts (rituals)

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POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS:THE SACRED AND THE SUBVERSIVE IN

CROSS-NATIONAL PERSPECTIVE*

ALBERT JAMES BERGESEN

University of A rizona

American Sociological Review 1977, Vol. 42 (April):220-233

This paper proposes a general theory of political witch hunts, viewing them as ritual mecha-nisms for the periodic rejuvenation of collective sentiments in national societies. Ultimatenational purposes require not only their worshipers, but also their enemies. When these sacredforces penetrate daily reality, then their opposites-subversives-will also appear in daily institu-tional life. The corporateness of societies, as expressed in their political system, is theoretically

linked to the penetration of transcendent reality into daily life, and a witch-hunting dispersionindex is proposed to measure the extent to which subversion is ritually discovered throughout asociety's social institutions. The overall rate of witch hunting is also measured. Data on ratesof political it-itch hunting between 1950 and 1970 for 39 countries is presented to evaluatethe general theoretical argument. The data suggest that as societies politically express moreof their corporate national interest they ritually cleanse more institutional areas, as mea-sured by the dispersion index. A long wit/ the representation of the corporate national inter-est, the overall rate of witch hunting is significantly affected by country size, lev el of eco-nomic development and the relative power of the state. The dispersion of uw'itch unting, onthe other hand, is unaffected by these control variables and seems to be a more purelyDurkheimian phenomenon.

Modem national societies, like primi-tive societies, must periodically renew themeaning of corporate existence. Whererites were once performed to symboliza-tions of the tribe, they are now performedto symbolizations of the nation-state.Durkheim (1965) observed that sacred-ness required profanity, and sacred na-tional purposes seem to require those whowould undermine and subvert them. Simi-larly, as Durkheim argued that crime is anormal aspect of social life, so are politi-cal witch hunts. The nation-state's crea-tion of political subversives, no less thanthe community's manufacture of de-viance, is a mechanism for renewingcommon moral sentiments and redefiningthe contours of social reality.

lIhis theoretical perspective on politicalwitch hunting derives rom and links Durk-

heim's observations on religious ritualand myth and the social functions ofcrime. His work in religion and crime hasa common concern with the function ofritual activity in creating and maintainingcollective reality, whether symbolic rep-resentations in the analysis of primitivereligion or moral boundaries n the analy-sis of crime. However, there has been lit-tle intellectual contact between later stu-dents of the sociology of religion (forexample, Swanson, 1964; 1967; Douglas,1966; 1970; Goffman, 1956; Berger, 1969;Luckmann, 1967) and the sociology of de-viance (Erikson, 1966). Moveover, thistheoretical formulation s congruous withtwo empirical findings which recur instudies of political trials (Cohen, 1971;Kirchheimer, 1961), purges (Brzezinski,1956; Conquest, 1968; Dallin and Bres-lauer, 1970), rectification campaigns

(MacFarquhar, 1960; Goldman, 1965;Solomon, 1971; Baum and Teiwes, 1968)and loyalty controversies (Bell, 1964; Lip-set, 1955; Parsons, 1955). Efforts at ex-posing, unmasking and discovering sub-versives seem oriented as much towarddramatizing heir presence as toward ac-

* This is a revised version of a paper read at theAmerican Sociological Association meetings,Montreal, 1974. Janine Blair assisted with the com-puter work and comments rom Morris Zelditch, Jr.,John W. Meyer and Ronald Schoenberg have beenmost helpful. I especially want to thank BeverlyDuncan and Otis Dudley Duncan for their sugges-tions and assistance on an earlier draft of this paper.

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POLITICAL WITCH HUNTS 221

tually apprehending them; and, accord-ingly, the arrests, trials, confessions andother acts which comprise a modern polit-ical witch hunt seem largely ritualistic n

character.The ritual mobilization of a communitysearching for imaginary enemies tra-ditionally has been viewed as largelyepiphenomenal-the real causes of witchhunting are thought to lie elsewhere. Thetrials, purges and political terror of Com-munist regimes, for instance, have beenseen as an outcome of the fear andparanoia generated by totalitarian statesand as an instrument of the state used

by elites to thwart potential oppositionand maintain political power (Brzezinski,1956). Similarly, the hysteria of theMcCarthy period has been dismissed asthe paranoid projections of social groupsexperiencing status stress (Bell, 1964). Incontrast, I want to propose a theory ofpolitical witch hunts explicitly based ontheir distinctly mythical and ritualisticcharacter.

THEORY

The Sacred and the Subversive

For Durkheim, the moral reaffirmationof collective life involved two causally in-terrelated notions-one, that society pre-sents itself through a variety of symboliza-tions or collective representations angingfrom material objects to systems of ideas;

the other, that society mobilizes itselfthrough rites performed o these symboli-zations as a means of periodically renew-ing their presence and simultaneously re-newing the larger social order they sym-bolically represent. Like primitivesocieties, modem national societies pre-sent themselves through numerous sym-bolizations. Some are material objects likeflags, emblems and political leaders.Others are symbolic representations of

the national collectivity itself - images ofthe Nation of the People as organic en-tities, or political ideologies such asCommunism, Socialism, Fascism or De-mocracy. As in primitive societies, ritesare performed to these modern collectiverepresentations of the corporate nationalcommunity. Some of these rites are what

Durkheim (1965) called positive riteswhere the Nation and the People are wor-shipped: coronations, inaugurations, na-tional holidays and memorial days. Others

are negative rites, like witch hunts.Through such activities as the purge, trial,investigation, accusation, arrest and im-prisonment, society creates its own inter-nal enemies to ritually reaffirm the verysacred national purposes which subver-sives are supposedly undermining. Thecorporate nation needs not only its wor-shipers, but also its enemies. This processof moral revitalization s complex, center-ing on the interrelationship of corporatesociety, its collective representations andthe ritual which rejuvenates and redefinesthem.

The Penetration of Ordinary Life bySacred Forces

Social reality is a matter of definition. Itis neither naturally mundane, with ordi-nary people and propane motives, nor sa-cred, with transcendent political purposesanimating individuals and social events.Depending upon how closely a nation'scollective myths are merged with the pro-fane and ordinary, more or less ultimatepolitical significance can be infused intodaily existence. The penetration of dailylife by sacred forces is, in effect, a vari-able, and not the singular property ofprimitive religious systems as we havetraditionally believed.'

In pluralistic Western societies, by andI Bellah (1970:27), writing on religious evolution,

argues that one of the distinguishing characteristicsof primitive religion is the very high degree towhich the mythical world is related to the detailedfeatures of the actual world. Not only is every clanand local group defined in terms of the ancestralprogenitors and the mythical events of settlement,but virtually every mountain, rock, and tree is ex-plained in terms of the actions of mythical beings.The same could be said for the so-called modern

religious situation. In certain highly ideologicalsocieties, for example, virtually every individual ac-tion is linked to the transcendent world of History orNature and every event is seen as an instance of themythical forces of imperialism, socialism or

capitalism. Because our religious representationsare at the same time the theory of our own universe,we have had a very difficult time assigning somebeliefs to the category myths and others to whatwe take as constituting our real reality.




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222 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

large, life is understood as the interactionof groups and personages governed bysecular and profane motivations of thehere and now. Life is not filled with the

rumbling and movement of Marx's histor-ically preordained truggle between socialforces in constant opposition to oneanother, carrying on an uninterrupted,now hidden, now open fight. Con-versely, the two most pronounced exam-ples of sacred political forces minglingwith people in daily life are Fascist andCommunist ocieties where there is a veryclose connection between religious repre-sentations and daily existence.

Underlying he Nazis' belief in race laws asthe expression of the law of nature n man, isDarwin's idea of man as the product of anatural development which does not neces-sarily stop with the present species of humanbeings, just as under the Bolsheviks' beliefin class-struggle as the expression of the lawof history ies Marx's notion of society as theproduct of a gigantic historical movementwhich races according o its own law of mo-tion to the end of historical ime when it will

abolish itself. (Arendt, 1973:463)These ideologies can be considered Durk-heimian representations of the corporatesocial order. Individuals come and go butgroups persist: the idea of an unendinguniverse of evolving Nature or History isthe perfect symbolization for the corpo-rate continuity of society over the tempo-rary lives of mundane individuals. Fromthe point of view of highly corporate

societies, those countries in which groupsand classes do not realize their participa-tion in the transcendent reality of histori-cal development are said to have falseconsciousness. From the other side,these corporate societies are described ashighly ideological and their people as

brainwashed. Each side claims its ex-perience of reality to be correct and theother's false. What is experienced,though, is mediated by each society's def-inition of reality, and there is no absolutereality independent of society and its im-posed system of classifications and defini-tions.

Political ideologies, like the sacredforces of History and Nature, or the ideasof the People or the Nation can penetrateand merge with ordinary reality so that

daily activity becomes the realization ofthese transcendent realities. The ritualis-tic creation of enemies, as a means ofrenewing the presence of these sacred

forces, centers on discovering enemiesof the people, the nation, and evenenemies of Nature and History itself.

Terror .. its chief aim is to make it possiblefor the force of nature or of history to racefreely through man . . . [it] singles out thefoes of mankind against whom terror is letloose, and no free action of either oppositionor sympathy can be permitted to interferewith the elimination of the objectiveenemy of History or Nature, of the class or

the race. Guilt and innocence become sense-less notions; guilty is he who stands n theway of the natural or historical processwhich has passed judgement over inferiorraces, over individuals unfit to live,over dying classes and decadent peoples.Terror executes these judgements, and be-fore its court, all concerned are subjectivelyinnocent: the murdered because they didnothing against the system, and the murder-ers because they do not really murder butexecute a death sentence pronounced by

some higher tribunal. The rulers themselvesdo not claim to be just or wise, but only toexecute historical or natural laws; they donot apply laws, but execute a movement inaccordance with its inherent law. Terror islawfulness, if law is the law of the move-ment of some suprahuman orce, Nature orHistory. (Arendt, 1973:465)

Ritual Transformations: Trial, Purge,Accusation, Investigation

There is no clear line separating ordi-nary mundane reality and the larger pur-poses and personages of a transcendentreality such as History or Nature. One cansee himself, his work and others as theembodiment of the laws of history work-ing themselves out here on earth, as whenfactory work is experienced as buildingsocialism and realizing the historical roleof the proletariat. One can also find one-self engaged in mortal combat with thesecosmic forces and being charged withbeing an enemy of socialism and conspir-ing against the laws of social develop-ment. In the first situation, one is march-ing with the sacred forces that have pene-trated one's existence and, in the other,one is marching against them. In both




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situations, one will probably be doingidentical activities-only the definitionswill have changed.

Political witch hunts are the ritual

mechanisms that transform individuals,groups, organizations or cultural artifactsfrom things of this world into actorswithin a mythical universe. These ritualsare the social hooks that keep sacredtranscendent orces present in the lives ofordinary people and relevant or everydayinstitutional transactions. In effect,Berger's (1969) Sacred Canopy ex-tends to different lengths, more or lesspenetrating everyday reality, with ritual

being the lock which keeps sacred real-ity tied to daily reality. The discovery ofwreckers in factories, hostile ele-

ments in the Party bureaucracy,bourgeois thoughts in literature, andanti-state activity in government s the

ritual activity which functions to reaffirmthe presence of the sacred struggle be-tween Capitalism and Socialism within thefabric of everyday life.

The crimes one is charged with and themotives imputed are not of this world.Through some ritual transformationallogic, they become part of the mythicalreality of political ideology where, forexample, proletarian virtue is battling

bourgeois selfishness and thesocialist and capitalist lines are strug-

gling for supremacy. Trivial activity s ritu-ally transformed nto actions of large his-torical forces. Using one kind of fertilizeror another on a communal farm is trans-formed into the mythical world of takingthe capitalist road or following thesocialist road. Reading a book or seeinga play is transformed into being

poisoned by bourgeois thoughts orbeing a communist sympathizer. Cor-respondence with friends abroad can betransformed into acts restoringcapitalism, making one an imperialistagent and counterrevolutionary.

When these ritual convulsions occur,ordinary reality loses its usual meaningand human beings mingle with mythicalbeings, playing roles in a cosmic drama,As Hannah Arendt observed, questions ofguilt and innocence are irrelevant; theyare causal relations rooted in the structureof meaning of mundane reality and make

no sense when the cletinition of reality hasbeen ritually shifted to the mythical worldof political ideology. What one reallydid or did not do is irrelevant, for the

doing has meaning in a world that hasbeen supplanted by a mythical universewith its own characters, motives andcrimes. Being an ultra-leftist, ultra-rightist, or left in appearance but rightin essence makes no sense within themeaning structures of this world; they areacts, motives and types of people from theworld of political ideology.

One does not enter this mythical worldthrough any act one performs. The sacred

and profane are two different worlds,there is nothing one can do in one worldto enter into the other. Hence, guiltand innocence have never mattered dur-ing political witch hunts. The most trivialinfraction, or no action at all, has the sameweight as the most serious crime. It is theactivity of the trial, the purge, the accusa-tion or the self-confession which trans-forms individuals from one reality to theother.

It is no wonder then that witch huntsappear irrational, terrifying and unreal. Insome sense, they are truly unreal and irra-tional, for their logic derives from thesymbolic significance of the ritual encoun-ters between mythical beings and forcesand not from the actualities of humanconduct. There is no intrinsic quality tothat which is treated as sacred and there isno intrinsic quality to individuals consid-ered subversive and dangerous. Durkheimwondered how such insignificant things aslizards, frogs, turkeys, ants and caterpil-lars could, in and of themselves, engenderthe sense of the sacred; and we have alsowondered how the wording of a Girl ScoutHandbook, a play exploring the thoughtsof a conscientious objector, or interest inthe United Nations, race relations andcivil liberties could be considered danger-ous, subversive and un-American. Any-

thing can serve as a vehicle for the desig-nation sacred or subversive, andanyone can become an enemy of thepeople and think dangerous thoughts.As Arendt (1973:462) observed:

Totalitarian awfulness, defying legality andpretending to establish the direct reign ofjustice on earth, executes the law of History




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or of Nature without translating it intostandards of right and wrong for individualbehavior. It applies the law, directly to man-kind without bothering with the behavior ofmen.

Societal Differences in Witch-HuntingActivity

Collective representations mirror thesocial order, and Durkheim's observationthat the attitude of respect toward ourgods is similar to the attitude of respecttoward social authority provides the nowwell-known (Swanson, 1964; 1967) theo-

retical linkage between corporate socialgroups and religious experiences with sa-cred forces and spirits.

As mentioned earlier, tMe extent towhich transcendent reality merges withdaily reality appears to be a variable and,as these sacred forces are symbolic repre-sentations of the corporate social order,variation in the extent to which that cor-porateness is expressed should be re-flected in variations n the extent to whichthe sacred cosmos penetrates mundanereality.2 The more the corporate interestof the nation as a whole is politically ex-pressed, the more sacred forces shouldintervene in daily life, and the morewitch hunting there should be to reaffirmthese collective representations and se-cure their presence in daily affairs. In ef-fect, as the corporate nterest of the soci-ety is weakened, so is the strength of the

gods. They become less powerful, moreelusive and more tenuously tied to thespecifics of daily life.

For example, representations of thecorporateness of the United States are notas well developed as those of Communistcountries. The idea of the AmericanPeople, or Public Opinion, as a force orspirit in our lives does not penetrate ourexistence to the extent to which repre-sentations ike the thoughts of Chairman

Mao do in China (Schwartz, 1968). Nor

are they embodied in specific political in-stitutions to the extent to which theCommunist Party is considered the literalembodiment of the proletarian will. Fi-

nally, the American People or PublicOpinion do not have a mythical ink to thespecifics of historical evolution as doesthe Communist's Proletariat. The Man-ifesto stated, The history of all hithertosociety is the history of class struggles.Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian,lord and serf, guildmaster and jour-neyman . . . and now, in our times, thebourgeoise and proletariat. In compari-son, the When in the course of humanevents . . . beginning to the Declarationof Independence is a much more casualand almost offhand reference to theprimordial origins of the American nationcompared with the lockstep progressionof History in the Manifesto that hasbrought forth present-day Socialist coun-tries. There is also no single body of litera-ture for the liberal democratic West com-parable to that of Marxism defining, say,America's Historical Role. There areno sacred texts and no common set ofintellectual heroes like Marx, Lenin andMao. Marxism provides one version ofultimate reality, which is modified to eachparticular ocial system, but is still linkedto the transcendent process of social de-velopment and the laws of History.

Expressing corporateness: politicalparty systems. Swanson (1967; 1971) ar-gues that social collectivities have a cor-

porate existence; they can make collec-tive decisions and take collective action.For national societies, the structuralmechanism hrough which collective deci-sions are formulated and collective actiontaken is the institution of government.Collectivities vary in the degree to whichthey allow the expression of the corporateinterest of the collectivity as a whole, asopposed to the interests of the constituentgroups within the society. Political partysystems are the most common structuralmechanism or expressing group nterests,whether corporate or constituent 3This theoretical discussion leans heavily on the

work of Swanson (1964; 1967) on corporate groupsand experiences with the sacred in daily life. Hisideas on immanence and constitutional systems arethe backbone of my thinking about these matters,and those familiar with his work will see the strongeffect he has had on my thinking.

I The expression of corporate versus constituentinterests need not always be mutually exclusive, al-though it most often appears that way. One excep-tion would be a country like France which has a




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Multi-party systems, such as the Euro-pean parliamentary tates, allow the mostpenetration of constituent group interestsinto the structure of government. Specific

groups-agricultural, religious, workingclass-each have their own party and,with the proportional epresentation elec-toral arrangements multi-party systemsusually have, these parties are virtuallyguaranteed some seats in the legislature.Two-party arrangements, ike the Anglo-American countries, collapse manyspecific group interests into two broadlybased parties. The emphasis is upon whatthe different groups have in common,

rather than what separates them, andmore of the common corporate nterest ofthe society is manifested. Finally, thereare one-party states, whether Communist,Fascist or one-party nationalist. Here,only the interest of the collectivity as awhole is represented by the single party.Partial nterests are not provided a formalrole through parties n the political organi-zation of these nations as corporate en-tities.

Some Hypotheses

The penetration of sacred forces intoordinary reality is not the sole property ofprimitive belief systems, and the ritualis-tic search for enemies as a means of reaf-firming these transcendent orces is not aproperty of any one kind of society; bothvary according o the extent to which cor-

porate, as opposed to constituent, groupinterests are politically expressed. Wehave been referring to daily affairs andeveryday reality in quite general terms.We can refer to them more precisely interms of the different nstitutional pheresof which daily reality is composed. Wecan speak of the extent to which religious,political, economic or educational nstitu-tions are found infested and polluted withsubversion.

From the preceding theoretical discus-sion, the following hypotheses can be

made: (1) Other things being equal, thereshould be a positive relationship betweenthe expression of corporate interests andthe distribution of witch hunting across a

society's social institutions, reflecting themore extensive penetration of daily in-stitutional reality by sacred forces. (2) Weshould also expect the expression of so-ciety's corporate interest to be positivelyrelated to increased frequency of witchhunting in general. One-party statesshould experience subversion in more in-stitutional areas and have a higher overallrate of witch hunting than two-partystates, and they, in turn, should experi-

ence subversion in more institutionalareas and have a higher overall rate thanmulti-party states.

DATA AND METHOD

Independent Variables

Countries were chosen for analysis ifthey had a stable party system from 1950through 1970. A stable system is definedas one in which the party system did notchange and the country was not involvedin major political conflicts. The attemptwas to isolate, as much as possible, theeffect of party system upon a country'spropensity tor witch hunting. The coun-tries are listed in Appendix 1. A country'sparty system was coded from Blondel's(1973) classification of national legisla-tures. Countries were coded one, two and

three, representingone-, two- and multi-

party systems. The 39 countries differ inpopulation size, level of economic de-velopment and the degree to which politi-cal power is concentrated within the state,as well as with respect to political partysystem. The former factors may be seenas rivals to party system in accounting forcross-national differences in witch huntingand, as I am arguing that other thingsbeing equal, corporateness should be re-

lated to the dispersion and rate of witchhunting, I have compiled measures ofeach country's 1960 population (IBRD,1973), 1960 per capita GNP (IBRD, 1973)and per capita internal security forces(Taylor and Hudson, 1971) to control forthese factors.

multi-party ystem allowing for the expression ofconstituent group interests and a strong and cen-tralized national bureaucracy which expresses thecorporate nterests.




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the witch hunting across institutions. Thisindex was computed across thecategories: government, military, educa-tion, economy, intellectuals, religion,

foreigners and agents of foreign govern-ments. At least ten government activitieswere arbitrarily hosen as a minimum ocompute an index score. No index wascomputed for the following countries, asthey had less than ten acts within theirinstitutional areas: Chad, Guinea, IvoryCoast, Senegal, Tanzania, Australia, NewZealand, Colombia, Belgium, Iceland andIreland.

FINDINGS

The Dispersion of Subversion through In-stitutional Space and the Overall Rate ofWitch Hunting

We can measure the extent to whichdifferent institutional areas are pollutedwith subversion using the dispersionindex mentioned earlier. The higher thescore the more dispersion; the lower thescore the more witch hunting is concen-trated within a few institutional areas.Appendix 1 presents the total number ofwitch-hunting activities by institutionalarea for each country. Control variables

for country size (population), level ofeconomic development (GNP) and therelative power of the state (internal secu-rity forces) are entered into the following

regression analysis along with the variablepolitical party system. It was logged tohelp correct for the skewed distribution ofthe witch-hunting per year variable. Thecorrelation matrix for the regression anal-ysis is presented in Appendices 2 and 3.

The regression analysis in Table 1strongly supports our first hypothesisthat, other things being equal, there is apositive relationship between party sys-tem and the dispersion of witch huntingthroughout a society's institutional space.The political party variable has a strongeffect, with a beta of .575. It is also theonly unstandardized coefficient twice itsstandard error. The effect of populationand GNP are negligible with betas of .047and .042, respectively, and the indicatorof state power, internal security forces,has a small negative effect with a betaof -.242.

The second hypothesis stated that,other things being equal, there is a posi-tive relationship between party systemand the overall rate of witch hunting.Political party system was significantly e-

Table 1. Regression Coefficients of Witch-Hunting Disperson Index and Log Witch Hunting per Yearon Political Party System, Internal Security Forces, Population and per Capita Gross Na-tional Product

Independent Variables

Political Internal PerDependent Party Security Popu- CapitaVariables System Forces lation GNP Constant R2

Unstandardized CoefficientsWitch-Hunting 46.162 -.762 .0027 .00473 774.20 .271DispersionIndex (22.917) (.688) (.0118) (.0298) (69.89)Log Witch-Hunting .698* .193* .000538* .0009* 2.675 .446Activities per Year (.307) (.0088) (.000174) (.00041) (.950)

Standardized CoefficientsWitch-HuntingDispersion Index .575 -.242 .047 .042Log Witch-HuntingActivities per Year .455 .313 .438 .429

Sources: Political Party System-One-, Two- and Multi-Party. Internal Security Forces-InternalSecurity Forces per thousand working age population (Taylor and Hudson, 1971). Pop-ulation-1960 population in millions (I.B.R.D., 1973). GNP=1960 Gross National Prod-uct, per capita (I.B.R.D., 1973).

Standard errors in parentheses.* p


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Table 2. Percent Distribution of Witch-Hunting Activities by Institutional Area and Political PartySystem

One-Party Two-Party Multi-PartyInstitutional

Area Percent N Percent N Percent NGovernment 26.4 549 33.1 212 15.0 54Military 4.5 93 19.3 124 15.0 54Education 11.2 233 12.2 78 9.2 33Economy 5.7 119 6.6 42 3.6 13Intellectuals 10.8 225 6.4 41 12.8 46Religion 21.9 455 1.9 12 1.9 7Foreigners 19.4 402 20.6 132 42.5 153

Total 100.0 2076 100.0 641 100.0 360

the low degree to which their institutionalstructures are imbued with larger politicalsignificance. These countries, as nation-states, have a corporate existence, al-though they do not formally express asmuch of their distinctly corporate inter-ests as two- and one-party states. Accord-ingly, sacred national purposes are not asextensively infused into their institutionalstructures and, consequently, they con-duct much of their witch hunting outsidetheir institutional infrastructure, e.g.,among foreigners.

The percentages among the generalinstitutional categories, Education,Economy and Intellectuals, are all quitesimilar. There is, though, a large discrep-ancy between the proportion of witchhunting centering on persons from thegeneral category of religious groups andinstitutions for one-party countries (22

percent) and two- and multi-party coun-tries (2 percent). This high percentage forone-party states could reflect the church-state struggles involved in the nation-building process of those new stateswhich emerged following the SecondWorld War. Partial evidence for this isfound in comparing the amount of witchhunting which occurred during the early1950-1955 period for new and older one-party states, with the latter having already

passed through many of the pangs ofnation-building. The new states (China,East Germany, Albania, Bulgaria,Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland,Rumania and Yugoslavia) averaged 73percent of their within-religious-institutions witch hunting during the1950-1955 period. One-party states estab-

wished before 1945 (the USSR, Spain andPortugal) averaged only seven percent oftheir within-religious-institutions activityduring this early period. The new statesalso accounted for some 86.6 percent ofall one-party witch hunting around reli-gious institutions which further suggeststhat most of this activity was tied to theproblems of newly emerging states.

Subversion within GovernmentWe also can examine the proportion of

witch hunting within the four sub-categories composing the general area ofgovernment. Table 3 shows that the vastproportion of witch hunting in governmentis concentrated within national bureau-cracies (one-party, 63.4 percent; two-party, 78.8 percent; multi-party, 71.1 per-cent). There are, though, some interesting

differences. As the political representa-tion of the corporate national interest iscompromised with the increasing repre-sentation of constituent group interests-that is, moving from one- to multi-party-the proportion of subversion dis-covered around the national executive of-ficer, who represents the interests of thecollectivity as a whole, gradually de-creases (one-party, 20 percent; two-party,10.4 percent; multi-party, 1.9 percent).

The inverse relationship holds for theproportion of subversion discoveredwithin national legislatures. As the repre-sentation of constituent interests in-creases, the proportion in legislatures in-creases (one-party, 4.3 percent; two-party, 6.1 percent; multi-party, 11.3 per-cent). It seems that where the expression




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Table 3. Percent Distribution of Witch-Hunting Activities within Government by Political PartySystem

One-Party Two-Party Multi-Party

Government Percent N Percent N PercentN

National ExecutiveOfficer 20.0 70 10.4 22 1.9 1

National Bureaucracy 63.4 222 78.8 167 71.7 38National Legislature 4.3 15 6.1 13 11.3 6Local Government 12.3 43 4.7 10 15.1 8

Total 100.0 350 100.0 212 100.0 53

of the nation's corporate interest isparamount (one-party) the office whichstands for the collectivity as a whole, thenational executive officer, is the source ofmore subversive activity (20 percent) thanthe legislature (4.3 percent), which is thestructure representing constituent groupinterests. Conversely, where the collectiv-ity is structured so that constituent inter-ests are expressed at the expense of thecorporate national interest (multi-party),then legislatures have a higher proportion(11.3 percent) than the national executiveofficer (1.9 percent), who represents thenow-compromised corporate interest. Fi-nally, two-party countries express lesscorporate interests than one-party butmore than multi-party. Consequently, heyhave more witch hunting around theirexecutive officer than multi-party, butless than one-party countries, and more intheir legislatures than one-party, but lessthan multi-party countries.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Although the most extreme instances ofpolitical terror and witch hunting are as-sociated with totalitarian regimes, theritualistic search for imaginary enemiesshould be conceptualized as a variable,not the singular property of totalitarianstates. The substance of the charges and

accusations and the kinds of ritual mayvary from country to country, but the

sociological process is identical. Nations,as corporate entities, are all searching forthe same thing: the mythical enemy whichstands in symbolic opposition to the col-lectivity as a corporate whole.

The perpetuation of social realitythrough the complex interaction of ritualand a mythical universe populated with allsorts of extraordinary spirits and forces issimilarly not the sole characteristic ofprimitive religious systems. The penetra-tion of the sacred into daily reality is alsoa variable. Modern men also mingle andwalk among their gods and find them-selves in mortal combat with the mythicalforces of Nature and History or ThePeople and The Nation. These are Durk-heimian representations of the corporatereality of modern societies. The morecorporate reality that is present, thestronger, more clearly defined and more

closely merged with everyday reality arethose symbolic representations whichmirror that corporate reality. Daily lifebecomes filled with transcendent politicalsignificance and, simultaneously, theenemies of the sacred purposes. The ritualcreation of oppositions to representationsof corporate social reality is one of thefundamental forms of the modern reli-gious life.




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Appendix 1. Total Number of Witch-Hunting Activities by Institutional Area

Activities by Institutional Area

Party System Total Govern- Mili- Edu- Econ- Intel- Reli- For-and Country Activities Totale ment tary cation omy lectuals gion eigners'One-Party

Total 3347 2076 549 93 233 119 225 455 402China 532 318 88 20 23 18 19 107 43Czechoslovakia 475 300 95 7 16 22 27 57 76Poland 406 307 57 9 43 6 49 95 48U.S.S.R. 405 288 65 15 15 27 21 39 106East Germany 324 169 55 3 42 13 3 45 8Hungary 316 195 43 13 13 8 23 49 46Yugoslavia 242 159 52 5 16 3 36 27 20Spain 197 108 3 1 34 14 31 19 6Bulgaria 109 66 27 4 9 2 3 6 15Rumania 94 51 27 1 1 0 2 8 12Ghanab 90 45 15 8 4 4 6 1 7Portugal 62 27 0 5 14 2 5 1 0Albania 52 20 11 1 1 0 0 1 6Senegal 15 5 3 0 0 0 0 0 2Guinea b 10 6 1 0 0 0 0 0 5Tanzania' 9 8 3 1 2 0 0 1 1Chadc 6 4 3 0 0 0 0 0 1Ivory Coast c 3 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

Two-PartyTotal 1267 641 212 124 78 42 41 12 132

United States 1040 507 166 99 70 38 35 11 88Great Britain 123 87 37 21 3 2 2 0 22Philippines 34 20 6 2 3 2 0 1 6Australia 29 6 0 0 1 0 1 0 4Austriaa 25 15 1 0 1 0 3 0 10Colombiab 14 5 2 2 0 0 0 0 1NewZealand 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1

Multi-PartyTotal 826 360 54 54 33 13 46 7 153

France 275 112 23 20 8 3 27 2 29West Germanya 157 53 13 1 9 5 6 1 18Italy 103 43 4 6 4 1 6 0 22Sweden 64 29 1 7 1 4 0 0 16Canada 51 12 2 0 3 0 2 0 5Switzerland 49 30 1 1 2 0 0 0 26Netherlands 25 24 2 3 3 0 1 0 15Finland 24 18 2 2 1 0 0 4 9Norway 22 12 0 6 0 0 0 0 6Denmark 20 15 1 7 2 0 2 0 3Belgium 20 7 1 1 0 0 1 0 4Ireland 15 5 4 0 0 0 1 0 0Iceland 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Luxembourg 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

a 1956 and later.b 1958 and laterc 1950 and later.

1964 and later.Not all activities were described completely enough to permit assignment to an institutional area.

f Because of foreign occupation, not coded during 1968.g Because of foreign occupation, not coded during 1956.h Combined with category agents of foreign governments.




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Appendix 2. Correlation Coefficients among the Variables Party System, Internal Security Forces,Population, per Capital GNP and Log Witch-Hunting Activities per Year (N=34)

Variables

Variables PARTY SECFOR POP GNP Mean S.D.

Political Party System PARTY 1.00 2.21 .91Internal Security Forces SECFOR .202 1.00 21.62 22.74Population POP .149 .446 1.00 44.69 114.16Per Capita GNP GNP -.701 .055 -.056 1.00 829.27 672.16Log Witch-Hunting LWHA .283 .314 .446 .055 5.81 1.40

Activities per Year

Appendix 3. Correlation Coefficients among the Variables Party System, Internal Security Forces,Population, per Capital GNP and Witch-Hunting Dispersion Index (N=25)

Variables

Variables PARTY SECFOR POP GNP Mean S.D.

Political Party System PARTY 1.00 2.16 .94Internal Security Forces SECFOR .393 1.00 36.44 24.10Population POP .195 .212 1.00 58.88 130.85Per Capita GNP GNP -.694 -.283 -.119 1.00 907.16 673.58Log Witch-Hunting WHDI .460 -.038 .205 .294 .852 .075

Dispersion Index

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REFORM ORGANIZATIONS AND CAREERS 233

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Consortium or Political Research.

SOCIAL REFORM ORGANIZATIONS AND SUBSEQUENT CAREERSOF PARTICIPANTS: A FOLLOW-UP STUDY OF EARLY

PARTICIPANTS IN THE OEO LEGAL SERVICES PROGRAM*

HOWARD S. ERLANGERUniversity of Wisconsin, Madison

American Sociological Review 1977, Vol. 42 (April):233-248This paper considers the extent to which participation as a salaried professional in a reform-oriented organization affects the participant's subsequent career. This issue is studied in thecontext of one such organization, the OEO sponsored Legal Services Program, which wasprobably the largest and best known organization oriented to the redistribution of professionalservices in the late 1960s. Because of the paucity of literature on the consequences of participa-tion in reform organizations, a related literature, that of the consequences of participation inthe-student movement of the sixties, is drawn upon for insight, yet also critically examined.

Comparison of the subsequent careers of 228 lawyers in Legal Services in 1967 to those of 981other lawyers who were practicing law in 1967 indicates that participation in the program hasan important effect on both the distribution of professional services and the rendering ofreform-oriented pro bono (free or reduced fee) work. In contrast to previous studies, theexplanation offered here differentiates between various components of socialization. In ad-dition, the importance of job market factors is stressed. A further di/Jerence from previouswi'ork s the consideration, albeit brief, of the effects of variation in experience in the organ-ization.

In the study of social reformmovements and organizations, a gooddeal of attention has been paid to the

characteristics of participants at the timeof entry, but relatively little to the effectsof participation on the subsequent careersof participants. There are many reasonsfor this; most obviously, current partici-pants are relatively easy to locate, whileformer participants are not. In addition,much of the literature on participation re-lates to the social reform activities of the1960s, for which it is only now practical ocollect follow-up data.

The activism of the 1960s was most evi-dent among college youth; hence, there is

* This paper is part of a broader study of legalrights activities in which I am collaborating with JoelF. Handler and Ellen Jane Hollingsworth. I amgrateful o them and to our earlier collaborator, JackLadinsky, for their extensive work on all phases of

the project; to James Fendrich, Thomas McDonald,Gerald Marwell and, especially, Felice Levine fortheir comments on an earlier draft; to HalWinsborough, Arthur Goldberger and RobertHauser or methodological dvice; and to Irene Rod-gers, Pramod Suratkar, Anna Wells and NancyWilliamson for research and programming assis-tance. This work was supported by funds granted othe Institute or Research on Poverty at the Univer-sity of Wisconsin by the Office of Economic Oppor-

tunity pursuant o the Economic Opportunity Act of1964. Responsibility or what follows remains withthe author.

bergesen. 1977. political witch hunts (rituals)

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