world history communication in propaganda and

PROPAGANDA ANDCOMMUNICATION INWORLD HISTORY

VOLUME II

Emergence of Public Opinionin the West

edited by

Harold D. LasswellDaniel LernerHans Speier

AN EAST WEST CENTER BOOK .€,Published for the East-West Center byThe University Press of HawaiiHonolulu

Copyright © 1980 by the East-West CenterAll rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

"The Enlightenment as a Communication Universe" is adapted and expand-ed by Peter Gay from The Enlightenment. An Interpretation, Vol, 1, by PeterGay. Copyright © 1966 by Peter Gay. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A.Knopf, Inc.

"Millenarianism as a Revolutionary Force" by Guenter Lewy is reprinted bypermission of Oxford University Press from Guenter Lewy's Religion andRevolution. Copyright ® 1974 by Oxford University Press.

"Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom" byAndrei D. Sakharov, and "Appendix: People Mentioned," appeared in TheNew York Times, 22 July 1968. Copyright © 1968 by The New York TimesCompany. Reprinted by permission.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataMain entry under title:

Emergence of public opinion in the West.

(Propaganda and communication in world history ; v. 2)'' An East-West Center hook."Includes index.1. Public opinion—History. 2. Propaganda—History.

3. Communication in politics—History. 4. Socialmovements—History. 1. 1.asswell, Harold Dwight,1902- IL. Lerner, Daniel. III. Speier, Hans,1905- IV. series.HM258.P74 vol. 2 [HM261) 301.14s [301.15'4'09]ISBN 0-8248-0504-6 79-18790

viii Contents

SYMBOL MANAGEMENT IN THE CONTINUING SPREADOF CRISIS POLITICS

9. The Communication of Hidden Meaning 261Hans Speier

10. The Truth in Hell: Mauricejoly on ModernDespotism 301

Hans Speier11. Selections from Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli

and Montesquieu 317Maurice Joly

12. Deception—Its Decline and Revival inInternational Conflict 339

Barton Whaley

MOBILIZATION FOR GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT ANDSECURITY

13. The Revolutionary Elites and World Symbolism 371Daniel Lerner

14. Changing Arenas and Identities in World Affairs 395Harold R. Isaacs

15. Communication, Development, and Power 424Lucian 1V Pye

16. Rhetoric and Law in International Political Organs 446Oscar Schachter

NUCLEAR POWER: A COLLOQUY

17. War Department Release on New Mexico Test,16 July 1945 463

18. Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence andIntellectual Freedom 471

Andrei D. Sakharov19. The Chances for Peace 507

Hans Speier

Contributors 528Index 531

MOBILIZATION FOR GLOBALDEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY

13

THE REVOLUTIONARY ELITESAND WORLD SYMBOLISM

DAME, LERNER

This volume on the emergence of public opinion has stressedthe "enlarging symbolic'' of the modern West. The symbolicexpansion of "reality" is the tie that binds the Renaissance, theReformation, and the Enlightenment into the historical se-quence of rising identifications, expectations, and demands.This enlargement of Western man's psychic domain in turnnurtured the revolutionary processes that, stimulated by theFrench and American Revolutions, continued through the rnine-teenth century into our own times. Until the end of World War1, which was justified in terms of making the world safe for de-mocracy, the movement of history seemed to be unidirectional:moving constantly toward the goals of liberte, eg^rlite, fraterniteby enhancing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Great War shattered this Western dream of social pro-gress and human perfectibility. High expectations produceddeep frustrations; optimism curdled into cynicism. A transfor-mation of morals and mores accompanied the evaporation of in-stitutions and ideologies on which the European tradition hadbeen built.' Gone in a twinkling were the great dynasties of theOld Continent: Hapsburg and Hohenzollern. Ottoman andRomanov, followed shortly by the House of Savoy. In theirwake came the foundering of the great empires based on thesedynasties. 2 The New World was not far behind. 3 Indeed, in

372 Revolutionary Elites and World 5ymholism

terms of stateways and folkways; it was far ahead as witnessed bythe rapid interwar "Americanization of Europc. '

4 The rest of

the earth's surface—what we nowada ys cal] the ''third world"—was, in historical perspective, set afloat.'

The aftermath of World War I was a quarter century of un-precedented turbulence the "crisis politics'' designated in thetitle of the previous part of this volume. As the traditionalstructures of European political life crumbled, new forces tookshape in contending for the seats of power. The epochal eventwas the Bolshevik Revolution of 1918, which seemed for a timeto be the sole claimant to world dominion under a new dispen-sation. Its claim was soon disputed throughout Europe by rival"totalitarians," coercive ideologues who adapted its techniquesof coercion but restyled its ideology of world communism intovariant forms of national socialism. Fascism in Italy, Nazism inGermany, Falangism in Spain—these were the counterblows toBolshevik claims upon world attention and obeisance. Every-where in the West, and beyond, the crisis politics of the inter-bellum decades framed itself as a struggle for supremacy be-tween "communism and fascism.' '6

The ''collision course" set by these new claimants to powerand the challenges they posed to the more stable democratic

regimes of the West, by both internal subversion and externalthreat—eventuated in World War 1I. More global and more"total" than War I, War 11 completed several processes acti-vated in 1914-1918 and initiated several new processes thathave shaped crisis politics since 1945. Chief among these havebeen: (1) the displacement of Europe as the world power cen-ter; 7 (2) the bipolarization of the world arena between two "su-perpowcrs''; B (3) the nuclear instrumentation of bipolar con-flict; 9 (4) the efforts to delineate a "third world''; 10 and (5) thequest for a viable world order. Li

These processes are dealt with more fully in the three chaptersand the colloquy that follow. Our task here is to trace the histor-ical sequence from World War I through World War lI in waysthat will clarify the ''continuing spread of crisis politics" withspecial reference to its impact upon "symbol management."Our purpose is to discern the symbolic components of contem-porary world history, to construe political processes as commu-nication processes. In this sense, the fall of the great European

Daniel Lerner 373

dynasties was a historic transformation of political institutionsexpressed in the symbols of majesty. The '`crowned heads ofEurope" who symbolized political authority have all but van-ished from the world scene; the few crowns that remain, fromBritain to Japan. are tokens of tradition rather than symbols ofpower. The crumbled empires over which they once reignedhave emerge(] in the world arena as new nations." The sym-bolism of Nation, for good and ill, has taken primacy in thelanguage of power. 12

SYMBOL TRANSFORMATIONSThis transformation of vocabulary—from crown to nation—hastransformed political action as well as political discourse. Thetwo nations that possess nuclear arsenals become ''super-powers'' and the other nations of the world are "bipolarized''between their respective camps. Even those nations that wish tochallenge or evade bipolarity feel obliged to speak and act interms of a "third" world—whether it be as a troureme force indeveloped Europe or as a "nonaligned" presence in underde-veloped Afro-Asia. The very organization created to lead thequest for a transnarional world order is named United Nations.

The symbolism of nation has been liberating to those formercolonies of the European dynasties for whom it represented po-litical independence in a world of "equals." But de jute equi-valence of title does not guarantee de facto equality of power.Witness the efforts to find a working title for those poor new na-tions, comprising most of the world's area and population, thatwould be descriptive without seeming pejorative—that wouldrepresent their actual condition without belittling their aspira-tion. In rapid succession their appellation changed from "un-derdeveloped" to "less developed'' to "developing." Al-though some economists still refer to them as "LDCs," in thevain hope that the initials obviate the words for which theystand (Less Developed Countries), others more sensitive to sym-bolism have floated such trial balloons as ''the reviving civi-lizations.'' Many have abandoned the semantic struggle andnowadays refer to them simply as "new nations" or "poorcountries.''

Along with the symbolism of Nation, primacy in world com-rnunication has been given to the symbolism of Class. But the

374 Revolutionary Elites and World Symbolism

sense of this key symbol has been transmuted from its usage inthe Marxist lexicon, which dominated political discourse amongintellectuals (that is, symbol managers) over the past century.No longer does it mean ''class conflict" that pits Class againstNation (and against the State conceived as "the agency of theruling class''). Rather, through the melding of Nation andClass---de facto under Stalin as world communism became "so-cialism in one state'' (and the USSR became the "workers' fa-therland''), in ''theory" as Mussolini's Fascism and Hitler'sNazism diffused the idea of "national socialism"—there hasemerged a version of socialism that incorporates nationalismand builds upon it.

This tendency has been evident in post--World War II Eu-rope, where one socialist party after another has disavowedMarxism in Britain, France, Germany. The ''Socialist Interna-tionals'' (all four of them) arc defunct. European socialists nowspeak in terms of a ''mixed economy''—in which the old idealof public ownership is replaced by a productivity-oriented mix-ture of private and public sectors--that operates on a strictly na-tional basis. The resonant slogan of The Communist Manifesto,''Workers of the world, unite!'' has been stilled. The non-Marxist "scientific socialism'' of the Western world today con-siders it more important that the input to output componentsof the mixed economy should sustain rising coefficients ofGNP.

A parallel tendency has marked the evolving symbolism ofthe "communist'' world in the post–World War lI period.There, where consumers still have a much longer road to equitythan in the capitalist West, concern for productivity (output perhead) is much more intense than concern for distribution (in-come per head). This has led to the theory of ''convergence,"which alleges that highly industrialized nations tend to face thesame problems and converge on the same solutions. Withoutentering into the highly ambiguous and often polemical termsof the convergence controversy, we note here that ''demystifica-tion'' of economic life (which often means reformulating policyissues in technical terms) has deprived political discourse ofsome key symbols and—in communist as well as capitalist coun-tries—has given a historic new turn to the problems and prac-tices of symbol. management.

Daniel Lerner 375

The merging of Nation and Class into an ideology of nationalsocialism, buttressed by an ethic of Growth or Development( GNP-oriented social change), has produced some conspicuouseffects in the symbolic life of the new nations. In the past Marx-ist century, when the poor took over the assets of the rich(whether of their own or other nations), the cry rang out: ` `Ex-propriate the expropriators!'' At the present time, when theBritish and French are relieved of their assets in the Suez Canal,the process is called ' `Egyptianization.'' This version of nationalsocialism appears to be beyond dispute, even beyond question—at least to the symbol managers of the new nations. Thisrighteous sense of recovering what is only one's due is strength-ened when the expropriated cannot even fight back as the Brit-ish and French vainly did at Suez. Examples of such expropria-tion—from the Portuguese at Goa to the Indians in East Africa—have multiplied over the past decade.

The version of national socialism now diffused by symbolmanagers in the new nations is a variant of historical populism.This has deep roots in the major religions of the world and astrong base in the value goals (liberte, egalit^, fraternize et seq.)evolved during the modernization of the West. It is a traditionthat bespeaks the shaping and sharing of all values—power,wealth, enlightenment, and so on—among all mankind by rea-son only of their humanity. Occasionally, the universality ofthese value goals has been proclaimed to the world at large, asin the Declaration of the Rights of Man and in the NurembergTrials' conception of ' `crimes against humanity.'' More often,the populist spirit has been parochialized—as in the moderniz-ing nations of Western history and the emergent new nationstoday—to focus upon that segment of humanity living withinthe boundaries of a single political jurisdiction, that is, a na-tion.

The spread of populism in the historical West as in the con-temporary new nations coincided with the rise of public opinionand the growth of communication networks. In the interbellumyears of crisis politics that are our primary concern here, popu-lism construed as national socialism took a dramatic turn in thedirection of ethnocentrism and even xenophobia. The most stri-dent voice was Hitler's and the most unabashed ideology wasNazism (itself a German acronym for national socialism). Under

376 Revolutionary Elites and World Sy mbolism

the key slogan of "Ein Reich, ein Volk" (one state, one people)Nazism unified disparate regions and religions under a regimecentralized beyond Bismarck's ambitions.

The word Volk (the people) was central to Nazi propaganda,which declared Germans to be a Herrenvolk ( master race). TheThird Reich conferred this honored status upon selected neigh-bors by Gleichschaltung (assimilation). Those who were an-nexed, like the Austrians, became Reichsdeutsch, Those whowere merely overrun, from Sudetenland to the Volga, receivedthe less exalted but still honorific title of Volksdeutsch-allegedly clamoring to come "home' Heinz ins Reich). Thepopulist label became the emblem of shared values: the newmass-produced automobile was named Volkswagen; the copson the beat were Volk.,rpiolizei; the last-ditch resistance to Alliedvictory was baptized Volks.rturm, This transformation of sym-bols has aptly been labeled ''Nazideutsc.h.

'"3 Echoes resound

today in such slogans as ''Egyptianizarion."But the diffusion of populism required more than a new set

of key symbols. Our paradigm of any communication processrequires attention to a set of variables that includes source, con-tent, audience, channel, effect: "Who says what to whom,through what channel, with what effects?" The foregoing re-view of transformed key symbols has sketched the changingcontents of communication in the contemporary context ofcrisis politics. Let us turn next to the channels, with special at-tention to the technology that transformed Western communi-cation so dramatically and continues to operate throughout thiworld today.

CHANNEL TRANSFORMATION

The modern world has witnessed five major ''communicationrevolutions'' based on technology, all of which were initiated orincorporated primarily in the West. Each of these revolutionsgrew out of a technological invention and stimulated a pro-found transformation of sociopolitical behavior and institu-tions. We shall deal later with the sociopolitical consequences.Here we briefly review the technological components and conse-quences of the five revolutions: print, film, radio, television,and satellites.

The print ''revolution'' in the West was a long, slow process.

Daniel Lerner 377

It dates conventionally from Gutenberg's invention of movabletype in the mid-fifteenth century. It is useful to recall that printantedated by a half-century another important process inmodern Western history—the development of maritime explo-ration, which initiated European colonization of the globe, con-ventionally dated from Columbus's landing in the New Worldin 1492. Maritime technology produced more rapid and spec-tacular results, largely because of its beneficent effects uponroyal coffers and national treasuries, but the question meritsempirical inquiry whether the technology of print has not pro-duced deeper and more lasting consequences for world society.The spread of print via national languages undermined the Ho-ly Roman Empire and the Universal Church on which it wasbased, broke the monopoly of enlightenment by the tiny elitewho communicated exclusively in medieval Latin, and instru-mented the reshaping of Western history by the Reformationand its aftermath.

Though the effects of print were genuinely revolutionary inthis sense, it is important to note that its emergence as a socialinstitution did not occur until four hundred years after the tech-nology was invented. The ''penny press''—the first of the"mass media '--became a social force only in the nineteenthcentury. The impact of print in Britain, which led the way, wasnoted by Samuel Johnson: "Every Englishman, nowadays, ex-pects to be promptly and accurately informed upon the condi-tion of public affairs." The continental nations of Europe didnot lag far behind the British in creating a press and a publicopinion. The work of Tocqueville bears eloquent witness to thediffusion of information and opinion under the ancien regimeand in the New World. The French and American revolutions,as the eighteenth century moved toward its turbulent end, pro-vide the testimony of events to its revolutionary consequences.

But the question arises why the Western nations took aboutfour hundred years to incorporate the relatively simple technol-ogy of print into their social institutions. The post–World WarII nations-in-a-hurry may well ask: What were the Europeansdoing all this time It is with no lack of respect to the complexinterplay of events (what LasswelI's conclusion to these volumescalls the ''zig-zag course" of historical experience) that we offera simple answer to this hard question. Our own forays into the

378 Revolutionary Elites and LVorld Symbolism

works of more learned historians indicate that it took the Euro-peans four centuries to build a penny press because the viabilityof this institution required a sufficiently Large class of peoplewho: (1) knew how to read their national language; (2) had anextra penny to spend; (3) were motivated to spend this pennyon news and views rather than cakes and ale. The creation ofthis literate class with disposable income and a sense of partici-pation in public affairs was a momentous achievement—per-haps the most distinctive achievement of modern Western soci-ety. Small wonder that it took four hundred years!

Once the print revolution was achieved, however, the acceler-ation of history that beguiled European scholars of the nine-teenth century was under way. Once the technology of printproduction became operative it functioned as a "breeder reac-tor" for subsequent invention of new communication technolo-gies. Once the sociology of print consumption was established itprovided the base for innovation and transformation of com-munication institutions. The next four communication revolu-tions occurred at a rapid, indeed accelerating, tempo. It was inthe course of these transformations that the West, educated viaprint technology and expanded via maritime technology, estab-lished its primacy over the rest of the world.

The second communication revolution, for example, was vi-sual. Based on the new technology of the camera and film, itenabled Western men to reproduce the sights of their world me-chanically and massively. For the first time in human history,people could build visual archives of their past, representationsof their present, and projections of their possible futures. Thesevisual records of human experience became ''available" to mostpeople, including those who could not read print. It brought alarge new segment of the illiterate periphery of public affairs in-to a participant relationship with la chose publique. Yet thisgreat historical transformation is only a century old. MostAmericans date it from Matthew Brady's celebrated photo-graphs of the Civil War, which first enabled them to "see"what was happening on distant battlefields and "share'' the ex-perience of strange persons in remote places. Visual com-munication became, in this sense, the great historical teacher ofempathy and the multiplier of mobility—especially of what wehave called ''psychic mobility.'' 14

Daniel Lerner 379

The third communication revolution is only a half-centuryold, that is, it occurred within the lifetime of most of the con-tributors of this book. This was the audial transformation ofcommunication, based on the technology of sound transmissionand the vacuum tube, which was accelerated during World WarI. It was institutionalized in. Western lifeways as "the radio''only during the 1920s. This brought the sound as well as thesight of human experience, however strange and remote, withinthe sensory range of living men. This was followed rapidly bythe integration of sound and sight in cincma--first "themovies," then "the talkies.'' It seemed as if these new wondersof communication would never cease, as Aldous Huxley inBrave New World projected "the feelies.'' Indeed, the impactof cinema upon the human psyche (for the first time exposed tothe ''naturalistic'' representation of human beings in actionand interaction) was so great as to merit separate status in thesuccession of communication revolutions.

Let us reserve this fourth place, however, for television. Uti-lizing the new technology of the picture tube, with a strong re-cent assist from transistors, television brought cinema's ''natu-ralistic'' representation of reality into the homes of people andthereby into their daily lives. No communication medium ofthe past has operated so continuously, and so profoundly, in thetransformation of lifeways among so many hundreds of millionsof contemporaneous people. Not had any of the earlier massmedia worked its transformation of human lifeways so rapidly.Television as we know it today is less than a quarter century old—which means that its entire history has been incorporated inthe biography of most people now living. So recent is televisionthat, despite valiant efforts by communication researchers inmany countries, we have only rudimentary knowledge of its ef-fects upon those it reaches.

This is true a fortiori of the fifth communication revolution—that of communication satellites—which is less than a decadeold. What satellites have done, by adapting the extant technol-ogy of the mass media to the new technology of space, is tocreate the first operational '' world communication network" inhuman history. This phrase has been used for years and in factthe earlier media of print, sight, and sound did operate, insome respects, on a transnational basis. But not until the IN-

380 Revolutionary Elites and W orld Symbolism

TELSAT system positioned satellites over the Atlantic, Pacific,and Indian Oceans 22,300 miles above the equator did thereever exist a technological capability for instantaneous, simulta-neous, and continuous transmissions of messages to every partof planet Earth.

We have briefly reviewed the communication revolutionsthat, with increasing celerity, brought the world communica-tion network to its current condition. It may make the accelera-tion of history more vivid if we represent the transformation ofcommunication channels schematically as follows:

CommunicationchannelPrintFilmRadioTelevisionSatellite

Approximateage in 1975

500 years100 years50 years20 years10 years

Clearly, technology has not yet run its course and wondersdid not cease in 1975. Such spin-offs from extant technology in-formation processing continue to multiply communicationchannels at an exponential rate. Even if there should be a decel-eration of "revolutionary'' innovation in communication tech-nology over the decades ahead, it is reasonable to expect thatchannels will continue to increase at a high rate.

It is therefore reasonable to foresee that mankind will have todeal seriously with communication effects that contemporaryCassandras now merely decry as "media saturation" and ' `in-formation overload," It may be useful, as we face the great ef-forts of inquiry that will be needed, to review some communica-tion effects upon human Iifeways in the past and present.

AUDIENCE TRANSFORMATIONSTo speak of audience transformations is to focus attention uponthose changes in human lifeways effected by communication,changes worked in people by reason of their exposure to "medi-ated' ideas and information, news and views. The role of au-dience in the "mass media" drama is neither passive spectatornot active player, but an integration of both in the mode ofparticipant-observers sharing a vicarious experience with others

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who enact the drama. This is the passive-active mode we havecalled "psychic mobility'' and its mechanism is empathy: theability to see oneself in the other fellow's shoes, to imagine one-self in new and strange situations other than one's "real-life"situation. It is the creative world of poetry characterized by Ma-rianne Moore as "imaginary gardens with teal toads in them";it is what media analysts, in the apt phrase of Herta Hertzog,have called "the world of the daytime serial."

Empathy is activated by the dimension of personality labeledidentity, the sense of oneself in relation to others who may be"incorporated" (or rejected). Identification is thus a highlypersonal process, which every individual operates by himselfand for himself. As such, identification is as old as human expe-rience of the external world. What modern communication hasdone is to present individuals with a population of relevant"others" much larger than any person could experience directlyin his real life—a plenitude (often, as the king of Siam told An-na, a "puzzlement'') of roles with which he can identify andincorporate. The ''mass media" distinctively, as their namesuggests, have made this great gallery of alternative "roles"available to masses of individuals at the same time. What oc-curred in the transformation of Western personality and con-ceptions of personality has been delineated in Lancelot Whyte'sstudy of the unconscious before Freud:

The general conception of unconscious mental processes, in a differ-ent context, is implicit in many ancient traditions. The develop-ment of the idea in Europe--prior to the relatively precise theoriesof our time—occupied some two centuries, say 1680-1880, and wasthe work of many countries and schools of thought. The idea wasforced on them as a response to facts; it was necessary to correct anoveremphasis, c. 1600-1700, on the consciousness of the individ-ua1.15

The central point is that these new perspectives on humanpersonality were working through ''many countries and schoolsof thought" upon many millions of people. This is what makesit necessary, in dealing historically with audience transforma-tions, to deal "aggregatively" with so individual a process asempathy. The changes of personal life-style induced by themass media have, historically and sociologically, been effected


in many individuals living in the same place at the same time. Itis the vicarious sharing of private experiences via mediated com-munication that provides the data base of modern social psy-chology and cultural anthropology. It is this data base in turnthat enables modern scholars, without necessarily endorsing oldlegends or creating new stereotypes, to deal with typologiessuch as national character, culture traits, or even the systematicdifferentiation between "traditional' and "modern'' life-styles that transcend particular time-place constraints.

Moreover, psychosocial processes lead to sociopolitical conse-quences. Changing identifications lead to changing expecta-tions and demands. And, as Lasswell taught us long ago, expec-tations and demands are the stuff of which political tapestriesare woven and unraveled. In this process the identities im-planted by communication media in their audiences bear thefruit of demands upon the polity by their citizens. It is what Ga-briel Almond admonished political scientists to study under theheadings of "interest-articulation" and "interest-aggrega-tion." In the homelier vocabulary of David Riesman, it is thehistorical sequence whereby the newspaper reader became thecash customer and the opinion giver and the sovereign voter.

In the transition of Riesman's "modal personality'' fromtradition-direction to other-direction---and we here extend hissynopsis of the American historical experience to include themodern Western world—audience transformation in our sensewas a prime mover. The identifications, expectations, and de-mands of Western men were vastly enlarged over the past fivecenturies by print; the process thus initiated was accelerated,over the past century, by film and radio. Enlargement of thepsychic world was accompanied (or followed upon effective de-mand) by real-life expansion of: (1) mobility—physical, social,psychic; (2) participation—economic, cultural, political; (3) de-cision making—information, opinion, choice. Vicarious privateexperience increasingly influenced the domain of public policy.

Where the public domain yielded too little too late—wherepopular expectations were frustrated or popular demands wereignored—"revolutionary conditions'' in the Leninist sense werecreated and crisis politics was instigated. These were the well-springs of Bolshevik revolution in czarist Russia, of Fascist insur-rection in royalist Italy, even of Nazi takeover in republican

Daniel Lerner 383

Germany—with the global resonance that perpetuated politicsas a mode of public attitude and action. This was the sort ofpopulism that Mobilized much of social change, often violentand disruptive, in the modernizing West. It has since spread in-to the new nations of the developing world.

For the new nations, in the brief quarter century of their in-dependent national life, have faced drastically altered condi-tions of tempo and balance. The Western quest for dynamicequilibrium in its own modernization stretched, in what nowseems a leisurely fashion, over five hundred years. Even so, pop-ular Western demands for dynamism often subverted the needfor equilibrium, as testified by the record of recurrent riots,rebellions, revolutions—to say nothing of its massively orga-nized internal and external wars. The post–World War IInations-in-a-hurry have been involved in modernization for on-ly twenty-five years or so. Small wonder, then, that their prob-lems of tempo and balance have been extreme, that dynamicequilibrium has not been achieved, that disruptive disequilibriahave been recurrent or chronic. The new nations have not beenable to "catch up" with the modernized West. More importantstill, they have not been able to ' `keep up" with the rising tideof identification, expectation, and demand among their ownpeoples.

Development efforts in the ''third world'' started out, aquarter century ago, with great expectations of the future, Thecatchphrase was the ''revolution of rising expectations," andthis was generally thought to be a Good Thing. Observersmindful of the benefits that rising expectations had brought tothe Western nations over the centuries—better health, longerlife, greater prosperity, broader enlightenment, shared free-doms—assumed that this beneficent sequence would recur inthe Third World, possibly even (profiting from the Western ex-perience) at lower cost. in human suffering. Their optimism wasshared by the peoples of the new nations. Riding the crest of thewartime wave of independence movements, they formed the ex-pectation that nationhood would obliterate their dark past andensure their bright future. As independent and sovereign na-tions, they would expropriate the expropriators and enjoy thefruits of their own soil and toil.

Leaders of the independence movements encouraged these

384 Revolutionary Elites and l-VVoild Symbolism

great expectations. As they took over the reins of power in theirnew nations, charismatic leaders like Nasser, Nkrumah, Sukar-no called in the mass media t:o help them spread the good news.They were restricted plainly to radio as the extension of theirvoices, for print was "unavailable'' to their illiterate peoplesand film (such as it was) was mainly produced on a commercialbasis in the private sector of foreign countries. But they made avirtue of necessity and invested heavily in developing radio net-works under government management. Nasser's Egypt, for ex-ample, allocated a huge fraction of its scarce resources to the ex-pansion of Egyptian State Broadcasting, the diffusion of Voiceof the Arabs" among its neighbors, and the distribution ofcheap or free community receivers among the fellaheen athome. This policy seemed to contain within itself a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Nasser put it:

It is true that most of our people are still illiterate. But politicallythat counts far less than it did twenty years ago. . . . Radio haschanged everything.... Today people in the most remote villageshear of what is happening everywhere and form their opinions.Leaders cannot govern as they once did. We live in a new world.'

The great expectations that pervaded the new world by radiowaves turned out, however, to he abortive. Within a decade oftheir independence, the new nations learned about what LucianPye has called " the uncertain magic of charisma" and about thedysphoria that often follows the euphoria of revolution.''" ifthe new optimism did not die a-borning, its growth was certain-ly stunted as soon as the new nations faced the problems laidupon them by independence.'I

From the abortive revolution of rising expectations has grownthe ominous "revolution of rising frustrations," which hasspread crisis politics throughout the Third World and contains alatent threat to the stability of world public order as we haveknown it. The psychosocial sources and sociopolitical conse-quences of rising frustrations have been described elsewhere insubstantial dctail_' 9 It derives from the postulate established bypsychologists that great expectations long unfulfilled lead togreat frustrations_ Frustration has only two issues: regression oraggression. Regression occurs, for example, when a new literate

Daniel Lerner 385

finds no use for his acquired skill and ''forgets'' how to read(that is, regresses to his former state of ill.itetacy). Aggression oc-curs when a person who fails to attain his desires displaces hisfrustration onto an alternate object or objective (that is, seeks asubstitute gratification for his expectations). In the developingworld, aggression usually is expressed by the displacement ofeconomic desires into political demands, usually with dire con-sequences for the developing polity.

Neither regression nor aggression typically produces construc-tive outcomes for development. Frustration is, in this sense,counterproductive in the development process. Rising frustra-tions arc, a fortiori, an increasing threat to the dynamic equilib-rium that is the optimal condition for rapid development. Ittherefore poses a grave set of problems for the Third World inthe remaining decades of this century, and possibly for decadesbeyond. As the spread of frustration was largely the doing ofmass communication, which diffused rising expectations anddemands more rapidly and widely than the real world of thenew nations could satisfy, so the reduction of frustration andthe attainment of dynamic equilibrium in the future is, in largemeasure, a responsibility of symbol management. To this wenow turn.

MANAGEMENT TRANSFORMATIONSSymbol management is a function of political management.We do not blandly swallow the bromide that the pen is might-ier than the sword. What is certain is that the pen can be amighty ally of the sword, a bit of philosophic wisdom that datesat least from Plato's anointment of philosopher-kings in TheRepublic, What is desirable, in the pluralist context of demo-cratic values, is that the pen should be used so effectively as toreduce or obviate the need for the sword. Where the Word isthe Way, over a long run of historical time, the cause of humandignity usually is enhanced.

This is not invariably the case. Indeed, it is rarely the casewhere long-term projections of human values seek short-runbenefits for those who speak the words and bear the swords. Thepreceding chapters on millenarianism by Guenter Lewy and oncommunist propaganda by William Griffith show this plainly.So does the abortive history of Hitler's tausendj hrige Reich,


which came to its desperate end in a dozen years. Crisis politicsdoes not lend itself readily to the long-run evolution of pluralistvalues and political symbols via a propaganda Strategy of Truth,upon which the stable consensus needed for a democratic politymust rely.

For words and the ways they bespeak are not easily sundered—or, in any case, not for long. There is abiding democratic wis-dom in Abraham Lincoln's homely aphorism: You can't foolall of the people all of the time." What is said, and believed,becomes integral to what is done. This is more than a matter ofpersonal honesty. Truth, in the life of any social order, is a mat-ter of strategy as well. If its counsel is to tell no lies that can befound out, the corollary is that in the long run every He can befound out. The Strategy of Truth relies not only on the slenderreed of individual virtue but also on the tougher stuff of collec-tive living, of which communication is the warp and woof.20

This perspective has been articulated and elaborated since theenlarging symbolic of the modern West taught men of thesword to watch their words in public. It made the interactionbetween men of power and men of knowledge more continuousand intimate. Indeed, it made feasible the emergence of symbolmanagers as a distinctive subset of the intelligentsia concernedwith political management. The Renaissance prince was nottypically a philosopher-king, but he was well advised in theminimum requirements of a Strategy of Truth b y Nicola Machi-avelli. In The Prince and in The Discourses, and perhaps mostvividly in The History ofFlorence, Machiavelli never tired of de-fining and illustrating the limits of mendacity for men of greatpower.

The lessons of Machiavelli were incorporated in the politicaland propaganda styles of later centuries. Thanks to the percep-tive historical eye of Hans Speier, we are able to trace the lin-eage of Machiavelli directly to the crisis politics of our own timevia the person of Maurice Joly, author of the extraordinaryDialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu. 2 ' Jolynot only foresaw the potential for media management under amodern totalitarian regime, but became the unwitting source ofthe greatest hoax in the history of modern political propaganda—the alleged Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This hoax becamethe "basis" of Nazi anti-Semitism and, by extension to alllesser breeds, of Nazi racist policy and propaganda practice.

Daniel Lerner 387

Thanks again to Speier, we have been shown the operation ofthe Strategy of Truth at a particularly poignant moment inWestern modernization. When Jacques Necker was called in asfinance minister by the ancien regime to bolster the royal trea-sury, he proposed to do so by publishing the national budget,thus sharing with French taxpayers information about theamounts of money needed and the purposes it would serve. Theperspicacious Count Vergennes, in a confidential mernoran-dum, advised the king against Necker's propaganda strategy onthe ground that it would lead those who now obey to commandand those who now command to obey. 22 To share royal infor-mation, in Vergennes's view, was a first step to sharing royalpower. Although Vergennes may himself have derived a faultyinference from it, his basic insight was historically sound.

It was the insight that shaped the Strategy of Truth in alliedpropaganda against Nazi Germany in World War II. A basictenet was that the strategic objectives of allied policy be truth-fully told even at the possible cost of failing to score "propagan-da points" in various tactical situations. Thus, the war aim ofunconditional surrender was publicized plainly among the Ger-man public, despite protests from some psychological warriors.As the touchstone of credibility became axiomatic in allied pro-paganda technique, some true stories were not told becausethey would not be believed, For example, photographs of Ger-man prisoners eating oranges in allied POW camps were elimi-nated from propaganda leaflets on the ground that disbeliefamong German soldiers (who had not seen an orange in years)would compromise the credibility of the leaflets as a whole. In-deed, in his postwar evaluation of the allied propaganda effort,one propaganda policy advisor concluded that even the dis-agreements and divergencies in allied communications receivedby the Germans contributed to the Strategy of Truth: "Ourpsychological warfare was credible because it was not uniform."Credibility, in the long run, was more valuable than the "dirtytricks' conjured up by "infantile Machiavellianism. ''23

By the end of World War II, Western symbol managers hadlearned many valuable lessons of crisis politics from the war andrevolutions of their history. Indeed, it was the propagandafocus, as much as any other single clement of that history, thatshaped crisis politics in the contemporary world. Our studies ofcoercive ideological movements have demonstrated that world


revolutionary elites have comprised symbol managers in theirfront ranks, at least in their initial eruptive phase. The propa-gandists of Communism, Fascism, Nazism—that segment oftheir elites specializing in the persuasive management of syrn-bol transformations—prepared the way for their seizure of pow-er and codification of ideology. "It was just this factor of ideol-ogy as a mode of social control, and specifically its coordinationwith systematic coercion, that produced the distinctive politicalmethodology of the European totalitarians of the interwarperiod.'24

The interwar lessons taught by the Western totalitarians werelearned rapidly in the postwar Third World. The Chinese Com-munists surged to power by coordinating persuasion with coer-cion, and began to purge their symbol managers soon afterpower was thcirs. 25 Elsewhete, in the new nations of Africa andAsia, a distinctive sequence evolved within a decade or so oftheir independence. These nations-in-a-hurry hitched theirwagon to the charismatic stars—symbol-managers who swiftlyadopted the available communication technology of the Westin their propaganda campaign to create a "revolution of risingexpectations." We have seen the high hopes, exemplified byNasser's Egypt, that motivated and justified the heavy invest-ment (psychopolitical as well as socioeconomic) in radio as thechosen instrument for symbolic transformation of traditionallifeways in the "new world.''

We have seen as well that the charismatic conception of sym-bol management was faulty from the start. The sounds oflaughter do not guarantee joy, nor do the sights of plenty pro-vide better food, clothing, shelter. As rising expectations wereincreasingly transformed into rising frustrations, charismatic af-fect was alienated and the quest for dynamic equilibrium wasdisrupted. The symbol managers who, as in the revolutionaryWest of an earlier generation, were also the political managersbecame alarmed by their failures, They perceived that their''communication revolution' was not an adequate surrogatefor popular hopes of social and economic transformation. Oftenthey displaced frustration by projecting it onto the insidious in-fluence of Western media in their own countries. An examplewas the heavy charge laid upon Hollywood by Sukarno, himselfa charismatic symbol manager of great agility, that its movie-

Daniel Lerner 389

makers were unwitting revolutionaries because they taught histransformed audience in Indonesia to demand Good Thingsthey could not have. Said Sukarno: A refrigerator is a revolu-tionary symbol in a hot country like mine.'

Sukarno's charge against Hollywood can be extended to allWestern media that have infiltrated the Third World withsights and sounds they never knew, with expectations that couldnot be fulfilled. To indict Western media, however, is not toexonerate indigenous symbol managers. The revolution of ris-ing frustrations now under way in the new nations is largelyhome-grown, the product of charismatic leadership seeking po-litical benefits without regard to human costs. They haveinjected transformed symbols via transformed channels andthereby transformed effects that must be expected when such"revolutionary conditions" are created. The charismatic leadershave harvested the bitter fruits of the wild seeds they planted.

In one new nation after another, the charismatic symbolmanagers have been displaced from the seats of power. FromNkrumah's Ghana in West Africa to Sukarno's Indonesia inSoutheast Asia, the charismatics are out.

Throughout the Third World, the phenomenon of militarytakeover has recurred as shock treatment for the disequilibr.iumand disruption occasioned by the revolution of rising frustra-tions. Much of Africa, most of the Middle East, and virtually allof Asia are today under some form of military regime or martial.law. Let us, in conclusion, consider the problems and prospectsthis raises for the world community.

PROBLEMS AND PROSPECTSCrisis politics is still the way of the world today. Ours has beencalled ' `the age of anxiety." Such hyperbole, even by a reputa-ble historian, may be justified by the elements of danger thatdaily confront the world's population. The technology of de-struction has, for the first time in history, put in human handsthe capability of damaging the planet beyond repair by nuclearholocaust. That this awesome military potential has thus far ledto a nuclear stalemate between the superpowers is not reassuringto humanity, least of all to that portion of it which lives oneither scale of the so-called balance of terror. The recurrentthreats of "nuclear blackmail,'' at least since Suez, often have


brought crisis to fever pitch over the past two decades. Duringthe Cuban missile crisis of 1963, when the Kremlin and theWhite House appeared to balance the fate of the planet for sev-eral days, the world seemed to stand still,

Less agonizing, but certainly anxiety producing, is the impactof space exploration. Communication analysts who recall thepanic created by Orson Welles's radio broadcast of a fictitious''invasion from Mars'' in 1937, when the earth's "space bar-riers" had not yet been breached, will not be surprised at thefears engendered by human penetraton of heaven's eternal mys-teries, 27 Such fears, whether fanciful or reasoned, are very real tothose who suffer them. Like all fears, in every time and place,they provide a fertile field for political propagandists. 21,

The bipolar structure itself, in addition to the cataclysmicfears associated with nuclear and space technology, has been asource of chronic anxiety in the cold war—which has been a sus-tained exercise in symbol management to achieve conflictingpolitical purposes. Berlin was for many years a key symbol, fromthe western Airlift to the communist Wall. The Middle East hasbecome the current key symbol. The point is that any spot onearth, however remote, can be made into a key symbol by therival symbol managers if policy makers choose to associate itwith the bipolar conflict.

It is for these reasons that the post-World War I arena, whichproduced the great interbellum crises of "personal insecurity"associated with the ideological totalitarians, has been exacer-bated into an age of anxiety in the post-World War II bipolararena_ 29 The historical threat of war is increased by several ordersof magnitude when it involves a nuclear "balance of terror."The fear of economic and political upheaval on a global scale,already foreshadowed by the European aftermath of America'sGreat Depression of 1929, is magnified by the world communi-cation network that exists today and will grow tomorrow.3°

The propagandists of threat and fear have taken full advan-tage of world anxiety (while the communicators of enlighten-ment, as we shall see in a moment, have languished andlagged), For the afflictions of our contemporary world, the his-torian Barbara Tuchman tells us, we may go back to the FourHorsemen of the Apocalypse—famine, plague, war, anddeath—that terrified the fourteenth century. She continues:"The more important parallel lies in the decay of our governing

Daniel Lerner 391

institutions as the fourteenth-century public lost confidence inthe Church.'" A more recent historical illustration is the''Great Fear of 1789" in which it was demonstrated, as a cardi-nal point of communication and propaganda theory, that "intimes of crisis what people believe is true is more crucial thanwhat is true, "32

In our anxiety-laden time all the elements of apocalyptic fear—war and death, even famine and pestilence—are still present.There is a deep heritage from the air warfare of World War 11exemplified by the German I/underwaffen ( V-1 and V-2) overBritain; the Allied "strategic bombing" of German cities(which they called Terrorangn7ffe or terror attacks); the atomicdestruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 33 The antipersonneland defoliation weaponry used in Vietnam, as well as the ran-dom violence used by Palestinian guerrillas in the MunichOympics and Lod Airport and skyjacking murders, have kept''fear and trembling" current in our world. Not, as militarytakeovers around the world and the Watergate drama inAmerica have shown, do we lack those crises of confidence inour governing institutions of which Tuchman speaks.

While the propagandists of fear have distressed the worldover these decades, the communicators of enlightenment havelanguished and lagged. Only in recent years has the develop-ment of communication theory and research begun to conveysystematic insight into possible antidotes for Great Fears. Agreat step forward was taken by the research team gatheredaround Carl Hovland at Yale, when Irving Janis concluded fromhis experiments on fear-arousing appeals that the optimaldosage appears to be far below the level of the strongest fear ap-peals that a communicator could use if he chose to do so. }4

These studies have been extended to show, in language dear tobehavioral scientists, ''that there is a non-monotonic relation-ship between the intensity of the fear aroused in a message andits persuasive effectiveness''; on the contrary, an ''inverted U-shaped relationship'' may occur. 35 What this means is thatthreat propaganda seeking to arouse fears may go too far and indoing so may produce a boomerang effect upon its audience—one important version of a ''credibility gap.''

Applied researchers, seeking to put these basic findings touse for individual and societal behavior, have begun to createfear-reducing institutions. There is a network of Peace Research


Institutes throughout the nations of the Western world today.In the United States there is a journal of Conflict Resolution. InBritain there is an Institute for the Study of Conflict, whichpublishes an Annual of Power and Conflict. A recent issuestates: "Revolutionary violence continues to spread throughoutthe world. Its exponents operate under a bewildering variety ofnames. A reliable guide to their identity [is] badly necdcd.3"

Such fear-reducing institutions must grow and, as the bipolarbalance of terror is transformed into a more creative mode ofdynamic equilibrium, they must become global. They must be-come sociopolitical and psychocultural as well as economic-military. Thus far, efforts in this direction have produced onlyfeeble results. Polycentrism—whether identified as troisieme

force or tiers monde, whether activated as Maoism or Gaullism—has provided only tenuous alternatives to bipolarity. So, too,has the projection of a new universal symbolism embodied inthe United Nations,

The failure to diffuse a persuasive universal symbolism in apolitical arena that has become technologically global containsominous problems for the future of humanity, The gap be-tween rich and poor nations is wide and, as a choir of econo-mists with Gunnar Myrdal as lead tenor and Barbara Ward ascoloratura soprano have intoned, is growing wider. As this dis-parity in distribution of the world's wealth (and associatedvalues) increases, such futurists as Bertrand de Jouvenel haveprojected global "housing wars" as poor and populous coun-tries determine that it is cheaper for them to take over others'housing than it is to build their own. Similar fears and anxietiescan be projected about virtually every aspect of the world's pres-ent economic and ecological disequilibrium.

To avert these catastrophic dangers, there is a clear and pres-ent need for a positive politics of preventive therapy. This re-quires a flow of information that is relevant and reliable—infor-mation of the sort that can be produced by the policy sciences inthe service of democratic development. Such information,while it is most urgently needed by policy advisers and decisionmakers, cannot be confined to these elites. Indeed, such infor-mation can support political therapy of appropriate scope onlyif it is diffused on an adequate scale to shape a new global con-sensus on the desirable way of the world.

Daniel Lerner 393

The technology needed is already in place. We already havethe first world communication network in operation and thechannels opened via INTELSAT are sure to be broadened anddeepened by the technologies still to come. The world audienceis being formed by the global sharing of such vicarious experi-ences as the Olympic Games and man's first landing on themoon—a sharing of experience that will also be widened anddeepened as the common interests of humanity are articulatedand aggregated. Needed are a resonant transformation of worldsymbolism and a transformed cadre of symbol managers tomake them resonate among all men. We now have the techno-logical capacity to develop a world communication network thatwill operate with "a decent respect for the opinions of man-kind" and help build a world commonwealth of human dig-nity.

NOTES

1. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963).2. Edmond Taylor, The Fall of the Dynasties ( Garden City, N.Y.: Double-

day, 1963).3. Fredrick Allen, Only Yesterday (New York: Harper, 1931), and The B:g>

Change (New York: Harper, 1952).4. Daniel Lerner, "Berufung zur Fuhrungsmacht," in Amerika deutetstch

selhst ( Hamburg: Hoffmann and Campe., 1965). See also the French petspec-tives of Andre Siegfried on ''America's Coating of Age."

5. Rupert Emerson, Fmm Empire to Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964).6. Harold D. Lasswell and Daniel Lerner, World Revolutionary Elites

(Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966).7. Daniel Lerner and Morton Gorden, Euratlantica (Cambridge, Mass.:

M.T.T. Press, 1969).8, i larold D. Lasswcll, World Politics Faces Economics ( New York:

McGraw-Hill, 1945); William T. R. Fox, The Superpowers ( New York: Har-court, Brace & Co., 1944).

9. See chapters 17 through 19 of this volume.10. See Lucian Pye, chapter 15, this volume.11. See Oscar Schachter, chapter 16.12. Harold D. Lasswell, The Language of Power (Cambridge, Mass.:

M.I.T. Press, 1970); Ithiel de Sola Pool, The Prestige Pres.r (Cambridge,Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1970).

13. Heinz (also listed as I-lenry M.) Paechter, Nazideutsch (no publicationdata given).

394 Revolutionary Elites and Ir orld Symbolism

14. Daniel Lerner, The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing theMiddle East (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press, 1958).

15. Lancelot I.. Whyte, The Unconscious before Freud (New York: Dou-bleday, Anchor Books, 1962), p. 11.

16. Gamal Abdul Nasser, quoted in Daniel Lerner, Passing of TraditionalSociety, p. 214.

17. Lucian W. Pye, 'Communication, Institution Building, and the Reachof Authority," in Daniel Lerner and W. Schramm, cds., Communication andChange in the Developing Countries ( Honolulu: The University Press ofHawaii, paperback, 1972) pp. 51-53.

lli. Ibid., p. 54.19. Daniel Lerner, ' `Toward a Communication Theory of Modernization,"

in Lucian W. Pye, ed., Comnzarnicattons and Political Development(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 327 -350.

20. For a more extended discussion of the Strategy of Truth, in the contextof World War 11, see Daniel Lerner, Psychological Warfare Against Nazi Get-many (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1971), pp. 26-32.

21. Sec excerpts from M. Joly. chapter 11.22. See Hans Spcier, chapter 10.23. Richard 11. S. Grossman, in Lerner, Psychological Warfare, p. 337.24. Lasswell and Lerner, WorldRevolutionary Elites, p. 467.25. Ibid., chap. 6.26. Sukarno, quoted in Marshall Md.uhan, The Medium Is the Message

(New York: Random House, 1967).27. Hadley A. Cantril, The Invarion from Mars (Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press, 1947).28. Daniel Lerner, Propaganda in War and Cnsir (New York: G. W.

Stewart, 1951).29. For the interbcllum world situation, see Harold D. Lasswell, World

Politics and Personal Insecurity (New York: Free Press, 1965).30. For the technological basis of this forecast, see the chapters by Herbert

Goldhamer and Wilbur Schramm in volume 111 of this work.31. Harvard-Radcliffe Phi Beta Kappa Oration, 1973.32. George Lefebvre, The Great Fear oft 789: Rural Panic in Revolutionary

France ( New York: Pantheon, 1973).33. For an evaluation of World War 11 air warfare, see the United States

Strategic Bombing Surveys; and Irving L. Janis, Air War and. Emotional Stress( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951).

34. Carl I. Hovland et al., Communication and Persuasion ( New Haven:Yale University Press, 1953), p. 83.

35. Gardner Lindzey and Elliot Aronson, The Handbook of Social Psychol -

ogy (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1969), vol. 3, p. 204.36. Annual of Power and Conflict, 1972-1973 (London).

14CHANGING ARENAS AND IDENTITIESIN WORLD AFFAIRS

HAROLD R. ISAACS

Recurring intertribal tensions in the new politics of Kenya bringon episodes of new oath taking by members of the dominantKikuyu tribe during which each oath taker swears: "I will neverleave Che House of Muumbi. " Muumbi is the mother of all Ki-kuyu, wife of Gikuyu, legendary progenitor of the tribe. By thisoath, the Kikuyu rebinds himself into the circle of the tribe, re-commits himself to his tribal loyalties, and helps maintain theKikuyu position against that of all the other tribes in the gov-ernment and politics of their recently regained land. Not onlyin Kenya but everywhere now in the many houses of Muumbi,people who dwell in them are huddling together more closelythan ever before, people who had left are looking for the wayback in, and others who still seek more open and more spaciousliving places arc halted and confused, not sure where they aregoing, or where there is to go. On all sides, houses of Muumbithat had begun to fall apart are being shored up or being rebuiltin new settings, and people are swarming to them, driven bytheir fears and by the new political pressures that need, encour-age, or exploit their tribal separatenesses. We are experiencingon a massively universal scale a convulsive ingathering of men intheir numberless groupings of kind—tribal, racial, ethnic,religious, national. It is a great clustering into separatenesses

396 Changing Arenas and Identities

that will, people think, improve, assure, or extend the group'spower or place, or keep it safe or safer from the power, threat,and hostility of all other groups similarly engaged.

Obviously this is no new condition, only the latest and by farthe most inclusive chapter of the oft-told human story in which,after failing again to find how they can live in sight of eachother without tearing each other limb from limb, Isaac and Ish-mael clash and part in panic and retreat once more into theircaves. This fragmentation of human society is a pervasive fact ofcontemporary human affairs and forms part of one of our manypervasive great paradoxes: the more global our science and tech-nology, the more tribal our politics; the more we sec of theother planets, the less we see of each other. The more it be-comes apparent that man cannot decently survive with his sepa-ratenesses, the more separate he becomes. Most of the televisionlight that showed nearly a billion people the live picture of menfrom earth reaching the moon flickered on the walls of thehouses of Muumbi. Today's tribal caves are wired for sight andsound. Everything that goes on in or around them takes placewith maximum possible electronic amplification and diffusion.The world presses hard into every retreat with the message thatthere is neither isolation nor escape, that no group can livealone. And for their part, all groups, asserting or reassertingthemselves or---especially—when they collide with each other,must try to catch the world's eye and ear by using every avail-able resource of global communication and propaganda.

One result is that this process of fragmentation and rcfrag-mention can be examined in every day's news, indefinitely mul-tiplied now any day, any week, anywhere in the world, whetherin East Bengal or East St. Louis, South Africa or South Bronx,northern Luzon or northern New Jersey, Alaska or Ceylon, Bel-gium or Biafra, Scotland or Israel, Wales or the Sudan, Ugandaor Cyprus, Malaysia or Guyana, in Kiev or in Cleveland, inBombay or in Belfast. Most of this news is about conflict, forbloody as this kind of history has always been, the present chap-ter has been bloodier still. The mutual massacring has takenplace on a grand scale, given the unprecendented spread andscope of these collisions and the greater death-dealing capacityprovided by progress. It is a somber catalogue: tribal civil warsin Nigeria, the Congo; Muslim-pagan or ''black-and-tan" warsin Chad and the Sudan; irredentist killings across the new bar-

Harold K. Isaacs 397

ders of Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya; Indians killing Nagas innortheastern Assam, Malays killing Chinese in Malaysia, Indo-nesians killing Chinese in Indonesia., Chinese killing Tibetansin Tibet, Catholics and Protestants killing each other in Ulster,Turks and Greeks in Cyprus, Kurds and Iraqis; Papuansfighting Indonesians in New Guinea, Israelis and Arabs in per-manent conflict, Telenganas and Andhras killing each other insoutheastern India, dozens of other such groups doing likewiseintermittently elsewhere in that country; Filipino Christiansand Filipino Muslims, and so on and on and on. One attemptto count the "ethnic-cultural fatalities" in such clashes between1945 and 1967 listed thirty-four ''major" bloodlettings andhundreds of lesser collisions and came up with an estimatedtotal of 7,480,000 deaths.

Hardly any of the situations that produced this total havebeen resolved or relaxed since this count was made. To almostevery total, five more annual totals would have to be added bynow—somewhere between fifty thousand and one hundredthousand freshly massacred, for example, in Burundi in 1972—and some wholly new entries have to be made: between one andtwo million dead in Biafra, more than half a million dark-skinned Bengalis killed by light-skinned Punjabis and Pathansin Bangladesh, and scatters of other thousands, like the Viet-namese killed by Cambodians at the time of the U.S.-Vietnam-ese invasion of Cambodia in June 1970, and the Cambodianskilled by South Vietnamese thereafter. If we take the matterdown in scale from open warfare or large-scale killing to ethnic-cultural conflicts marked by sporadic riots, bombings, andother collisions and clashes, the list swells from scores into hun-dreds. If we add those situations around the world where ten-sion and strain exists between and among groups producing actsof violence in new political settings, the number could hardlybe guessed, for here we would have to include every country inwhich a changing political order has to strike new balancesamong contending tribal, racial, ethnic, religious, and (or) na-tional groups. And this now means virtually every country onevery continent.

This enormous shaking out of all power and group relations isglobal in extent. It has come about as a result of the collapse orweakening of power systems—the larger coherences—that for

398 C17anging Arenas and Identities

periods of time managed to hold clusters of separate groupsunder the control of a single dominant group or coalition ofgroups. These systems created a certain coherence in which dif-ferences and divisions were not so much submerged as held intheir orbits by the gravity of the center. The force of this gravitywas physical, economic, cultural, and---most heavily—psycho-logical. The rules of the game were incorporated into mystiquesand mythologies of belief and behavior—all the assumptions ofcultural and racial superiority-inferiority—which were internal-ized and accepted by all, rulers and ruled, victimizers and vic-tims, and built into the system's institutions to keep it working.Such systems could work for given periods, producing not onlyselectively profitable economic well-being for the rulers andtheir chosen instruments among the lower orders, but occasion-all y even significant art and literature, But they could keep onworking only so long as both the realities and mystiques ofpower were maintained, both externally and internally. Theycould work only so long as they could overcome or stay in bal-ance with challenging rivals outside and only so long as eachdominated group inside not only knew its place but accepted it.The record shows that there could be all kinds of lags, that de-clincs could take a long time and falls run long overdue, butthat these conditions could never be indefinitely maintained.From external or internal impetus—usually both—authorityeroded, legitimacy was challenged, and in wars, collapse, andrevolution, the system of power redrawn. Such, with all theirdifferences, were the Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Romanov em-pires that ruled most of eastern and central Europe, westernAsia, and most of North Africa for upwards of five hundredyears, and such too were the European empires in Asia andAfrica, controlling most of the world for periods lasting fromnot quite one to nearly three centuries.

Ottoman rule, which lasted from 1.453, when the 'Turks tookConstantinople, to 1918, when the ''sick man of Europe" final-ly died, extended at its peak from the Adriatic to the PersianGulf, from the western Mediterranean to the Red Sea. Its centerwas in what used to be loosely called "Asia Minor" and it in-cluded all of what is now loosely called the "Middle East." Itgoverned at one time or another all the multitudes of distincttribes, nations, peoples, races, and kinds who lived between Al-

Harold R. Isaacs 399

geria and the borders of Iran. It extended into southeasternEurope from the Bosphorus and the shores of the Black Seaacross Greece, the Balkans, Hungary, and nearly to Vienna,

Much of the European realm of the Ottoman Empire passedin time to the Hapsburg, later known as the Austro-HungarianEmpire, which, at its peak in the half century before 1918,ruled a domain that included Germans, Hungarians, Czechs,Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenians, Ukrainians, Serbs, Croats, Slo-venes, Bosnians, Macedonians, Rumanians, Italians, and scores,if not hundreds, of smaller but no less distinct groups and sub-groups.

To the cast of the Hapsburg and north of the Ottoman, theRussian Empire had grown over some four hundred of theseyears, expanding westward and southwestward into Europe andgradually eastward into Asia. It became, by that same fatal year1918, a system that included at least twenty linguistic groups ofover a million each, and a much larger number of smallergroups. Its successor, the Soviet Union, liked to call itself aunion of 'a hundred nationalities," one source citing a countof 189 made in the 1920s.

Moving down other, swifter historical currents meanwhile,western Europeans were carrying trade and power into Asia andlater into Africa. As Grover Clark graphically summed it up inhis charts (in A Place in the Sun. New York, 1936), Europeanswho ruled 9 percent of the earth in 1492 had come to rule athird of it by 1801, another third by 1880, nearly another fifthby 1913 on the eve of the First World War, 85 percent in all by1935, on the eve of the Second. By that time, just under 70 per-cent of the world's population lived under the control of West-ern governments. The British alone held a quarter of theworld's land and ruled a. quarter of its people, and more peoplethan lived in China, or in Russia, the United States, France, andJapan all put together. There had been Spain in the southernAmericas until the 1820s and latecoming Germany with thepieces of Asia and Africa it had been able to seize at that cen-tury's end and hold but briefly until 1918; there was still, untilWorld War II, in addition to the British Empire, Holland in theEast Indies, the United States in the Philippines, Belgium inthe Congo, France in Southeast Asia and heavily, along withBritain and Portugal, in Africa. This remarkable European take-

400 Changing Arenas , nd Identities

over of the world was smaller in extent than only the conquestsof the Mongols but infinitely greater in effect.

Like the Roman and Hellenic and some other great power sys-terns of the remoter past, the longer lasting of these various em-pires laid much more than a political imprint on the peoplesthey ruled. The mystiques by which they governed for so longincluded whole cultural systems that survived in many shapesand measures of their real or assumed superiorities, or by thesheer transforming power of what they brought with them.Their legacies included styles of life as well as of governance,often of language, art, religion, and philosophy, of the spiritand much of the practice of bureaucratic and legal systems. Inmany cases, a great deal of this influence affected only the elitesof the governed peoples. Much of ii. survived only fleetingly;the old imperial aristocracies of Europe are gone for good. Butsome of it survives ineradicably, like the Spanish and Catholicmark on Latin America. No one can predict its future with cer-tainty, but English remains the lingua franca of multilingualIndia. Without English and French, the African emergencecould not take place. In Israel, the political and bureaucraticstyle and much else was brought along intact from eastern Eu-rope by the Zionist pioneers, while the position of the religiousauthorities in the country, with power over most matters of etascivil—anomalous in a regime dominated by European socialistnorms—is an explicit legacy from the Ottoman system, left in-tact by the British during their brief post-Ottoman interreg-num, while many more Ottoman legacies came with the greatmasses of so-called Oriental Jews to confront those broughtfrom Europe. It will take more time than has yet passed to knowwhat the transmutations of these many cultures will bring. Butno more time is needed to verify that all the major wars, all thegreat convulsive revolutions of this century, whether socialist ordemocratic, all the European, Asian, and African nationalistmovements that have transformed the power picture across theentire globe in the last century or so are rooted in the politicaland philosophic evolution of Europe during the last two cen-turies. Indeed, all this development, in all its scenes and vari-eties, comes out of the transforming ideas and technologies ofindustrialization, modernization, and communication thatwere carried, more blindly and more fatefully than anything

Harold R, Isaacs 401

else, by these moving, spreading, contending power systemsacross the continents. The impacts changed all these nationsand societies beyond all chance of returning to the shapes oftheir past.

The collapse and disappearance of these power systems, after1918 and after 1945, threw the peoples of most of the world in-to the political centrifuge in which they still spin. Since the em-pires fell, no new, larger coherences have effectively taken theirplace—only new power blocs that have failed so far to establishand sustain a decently long-lived balance between themselves,much less a balancing control over all the peoples who havefallen restlessly into their orbits. None of the proffered new co-herences have worked. Neither the feeble European capitalist-victor coalition represented by the Versailles settlement and theLeague of Nations, nor its broader-based successor, the UnitedNations, could create a political system in which the powerstruggle of the major powers—in effect reduced to two-- -couldbe contained, much less the conflicts of the enormously in-creased number of smaller nations, with all their external andinternal abrasions and collisions over national, ethnic, racial,tribal, and religious differences. Indeed the Soviet and Ameri-can power blocs that emerged after 1945 remained fragile anduneasy combinations precisely because of the revived strength ofold nationalisms and the vitality of new drives to self-assertionand self-esteem. Despite bulging nuclear muscle, neither bloccould firmly count on keeping its client states in anything re-sembling the older forms of proper subservience.

The superpowers have found, on the contrary, that they havebeen unable either at home or in the world arena to go very farin pursuit of their national-strategic interests without beingpressed, decently or otherwise, to respect the opinions of this orthat hitherto ignorable segment of mankind. The American sys-tem has had to give up white supremacy. The Soviet system hashad to pull back from the bloodier extremes of Stalinist massterror. in the world arena, where they had to seek a global solu-tion, they both found the globe disconcertingly unmanageable.They could compete in space and try to avoid mutual disaster bysearching for ways to limit their escalating weaponry, which inany case they dared not use. They have had to play their


twentieth-century power game by nineteenth-century rules, butthey have had to do it without achieving nineteenth-century re-sults. Their fleets bump and buzz each other in all the oceans,enough for a hundred Agadirs, while electronic eyes and earsnervously guard against more fateful collisions. Both suffer thepolitical ineffectualness of puppet-clients in the style of Nasserand Thieu, while their own resorts to marginal force, whetherbrief and "successful'' in the Russian manner (as in Czechoslo-vakia and Hungary) or prolonged and disastrous, in the Ameri-can style, fail to justify their cost. No stable spheres take shape,no docile dependents, no securely pliant tools, no permanentlypassive victims, not in Eastern Europe, not in Cuba, not in In-dia, and not, spectacularly, in China; and not in WesternEurope, not in Japan, and not, spectacularly, in Vietnam.Clearly, the new crises in human society are churning too hardto let anything settle again for long—even for any moderatelyextended period of time—into the old patterns of power andconquest, submission and passivity.

It took only a few years for the bipolar power system thatemerged in 1945 to be pulled into new shapes, misshapen trian-gles and twisted quadrangles, as Western Europe recoveredfrom the loss of its empires, Germany and Japan rose from theirashes faster than anyone dreamed possible, and China came tolife like a long-extinct volcano—or, should one say, like thunderacross the bay. The durability of alliances, such as it ever was inthose good old days of the last century, has gone. The process ofrearrangement of power in the world is the stuff itself of the in-herent instability that has already filled most of the years of thiscentury and surely will fill all of the reasonably foreseeable fu-ture. Successful establishment of new world power systems,even in semi-hemispheres, may be one of the ways in which newlarger coherences may be created. Given all the circumstances,it is not easy to be hopeful about the possibilities.

If new structures based on naked force are unpromising, nei-ther has any of the major ideas or belief systems offered muchevidence of working any better. In the so-called Middle East(that is, western and southwestern Asia and northern Africa)over these decades, the cement of Islam proved to be much toothin to hold together any viable political structure or alliance inwhich the various Arab and related Muslim peoples could share


an effective allegiance. Not even the reentry of the Jews to re-claim their piece of the land in the region has provided the uni-fying spur that the common religion failed to provide. Asevents in Bangladesh showed again, Islam, like Christianity,may make men brothers sometime somewhere else, but notnow, and not on earth. In the present context, the Roman Cath-olic church, the nearest thing to a universal institution theChristian religion has produced, offers one of the most strikingof all contemporary examples of the breakup of another kind oflarger coherence no longer able to hold its parts together orkeep its belief system intact. Neither has realization come inthis half century out of the secular dream of a new revolutionarysocialist internationalism, foregone by the European social de-mocracy in the war crisis of 1914, raised anew by the Octoberrevolution in Russia, and betrayed again when the rubbing ofthe Bolshevik lamp produced the old-new genie of Russiannational-communism. Nor, finally, did the American model ofa larger coherence prove in this time that it might still work.Profoundly different from all the others and still far from a fail-ure, it was only after after 1945 that it entered its testing time,still in progress.

The task of sorting out and describing—not to say prescribingfor--all the new situations is obviously going to be a full-timeoccupation for scholars and practitioners of politics for someti me to come. Many are already hard at it. If only because it mayhelp summarize and illustrate the truly global dimensions ofthe matter, here is one way of beginning to distinguish some ofthe larger features of this vast and varied landscape:

PostcolonialThe ex-empires in. Asia and Africa have been carved into aboutseventy-five new states since 1945, from huge India to tinyOman to tiniest Nauru. These new states came into being partlybecause the foreign rulers could no longer sustain their rule,partly because the ruled would no longer submit. In a fewplaces, independence crowned decades of sustained nationaliststruggle, as in Congress-led India or Communist-lcd NorthVietnam. In many more places, as in most of Africa, it came as aresult of the precipitous departure of the imperialists, as in the


Congo, or even—as in the case of most of French Africa—thecynical recognition by the foreign ruler that the name, if not thegame, had to be changed at last. In British Africa, as in Ghana,Kenya, and a few other places, there was some history of nation-alist politics, but most of the parties and institutions that fig-ured in the new states created after 1957 had only been broughtinto being after 1948. In any case, the victory of nationalismcame in Asia and Africa long after the nation-state had largelyexhausted whatever utility it had in the past in Europe as an in-strurnent for economic development and social progress. Thiswas one of the many costly paradoxes of what used to be calledthe law of uneven development. Throwing off the foreign yoke—or having it drop away—could and did, however, meet a realemotional-psychological need, the need for some minimumself-respecting self-esteem. At this minimum, the new nation-alists could at least replace the foreign scoundrels with localscoundrels and do away with the most egregious symbols of for-eign cultural and racial superiority that had been at the core ofthe mystique of imperial power.

The removal of the overarching mantle of foreign rule didnot, unfortunately, uncover oppressed colonial masses pantingfor fraternity as well as liberty. Rather the contrary. Only a fewof these new nation-states had ever existed as nation-states be-fore. All but a very few insular places were formed in bounda-ries inherited not from their own remoter past but from the co-lonial era, when boundaries were usually drawn without regardfor what people lived where. The result was colonies set up aspolitical-administrative units governing dozens to scores tohundreds of distinct and—as a rule—mutually antagonistic peo-ples divided along many lines, regional, racial, religious, lin-guistic, tribal. With only one or two exceptions, these unitswere carried over intact in the transfer from colonial to sover-eign status. This fact has dominated most of the politics andgenerated most of the conflict that has taken place in thesecountries during recent decades. What had been the holy grailof self-determination in anticolonial politics became the poisonpotion of group conflict, secession, rebellion, and repression inthe postcolonial era.

There are few real exemptions from this condition, evenamong those countries that experienced the period of Western


dominance in a different way. Japan, no ex-colony, is nearly ho-mogeneous, though not without its minorities. ReemergentChina, on the other hand, has a lively "national question" ofits own, with no less than half its territory—all the wide borderregions along the southern mountains, through Tibet (whichthe Communists took and hold by armed force), Sinkiang,Mongolia—occupied by some sixty non-Chinese minorities thatmake up no less than 10 percent of China's population. ForCommunist China, no less than for Kuomintang China or im-perial China before it, these minorities present important inter-nal political problems. China's minorities have the Greater Hanoutlook of their Chinese rulers to deal with; in the present stateof China's relations with Russia, the northern and western bor-der peoples become a particularly pressing and even critical fac-tor in external affairs as well.

In the ex-colonial countries, however, the populations aremost generally mixed in more kinds and in larger proportions,indeed in almost every possible arrangement of majorities andminorities and mutually offsetting or unevenly grouped plural-isms, every variety producing its own kind and degree of con-flict.

Thus India-Pakistan, to take a highly visible major example.It divided initially along the line of its largest division, India'sHindu majority and its Muslim minority, breaking apart amidmassive slaughter and flights of populations in 1947-1948, andclashing in three wars since. India was left with a Muslim minor-ity of 45 million, smaller numbers of Sikhs, Jams, Christians,but with other even greater and deeper sources of internal ten-sion, division, and conflict: its dozen or so strong regionalisms,its fifteen major and some fifty minor language groups, itsscores of major castes and thousands of subcastcs, its 70 millionUntouchables outside the caste system altogether. And then,West Pakistan: itself made up of mutually tense or hostile Pun-jabis, Pathans, Sindis, and others; brutally imposing itself on itsown Bengali East; ending in wanton massacres, rebellion, thethird war with India. It had taken rivers of blood to mark newboundaries separating the Muslim brothers from the Hindus; ithas taken new rivers of blood to separate the Muslim brothersfrom each other. The process is obviously nowhere near its end.

These conditions, varying elsewhere almost infinitely in their


mixes and their kinds, have in the first twenty-five years afterthe end of World War II brought on civil wars (for example, inBurma, Nigeria, Congo, Sudan, Chad, Bangladesh); uprisingsand repressions (for example, Indonesia, Pakistan, Uganda,Zanzibar); intercommunal killings (for example, India, Pakis-tan, Cyprus, Philippines, Morocco, Ceylon, Syria, Iraq); lan-guage riots (for example, in India, Pakistan, Ceylon); triballytooted coups and countercoups (for example, Nigeria, Congo,Uganda, and at least a dozen other African countries). Bound-aries laid across the living spaces of some peoples have led to ir-redentist struggles (as in Somalia-Ethiopia-Kenya or Ghana-Togo), or to continuing pressure for separation (for example,the Nagas in northeast India, the Kurds in Iraq and Iran).

Most of these divisions survive from the precolonial past, pat-terns of conflict and oppression with a long history. Others,however, were fabricated in the colonial period by migrations—voluntary, manipulated, forced—including the massive trans-port of Africans into slavery; the movement of indentured orcontract labor, especially from India; and the migrations, bothold and new, of Chinese and Indians and Levantines to South-east Asia, Africa, and island countries in both the Atlantic andPacific. From these movements came a whole group of newpopulation mixes, for example, Sinhalese-Tamil in Ceylon;Amerindian-African-European in Latin America; Malay-Chinese-Indian in Malaysia; East Indian and sometimes Chinesecombinations with Africans, as in Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica,or with Melanesians or Polynesians, as in Fiji; and the presenceof Chinese minorities, large and small, in Southeast Asia andthe Caribbean.

In some cases, this has produced so-called pariah communi-ties of traders and laborers who—like the Chinese in Indonesiaand the Philippines and Indians in Burma and East Africa—have often become the helpless scapegoat victims of other inter-group tensions. In others, however, they have produced whollynew ethnographic situations, as in Malaysia, where Chinesecomprise nearly 40 percent of the population and challenge thepolitically dominant Malays for equality of status, or in Guyanawhere Indians, a numerical majority, are in a similar position inrelation to the Afro-Guyanese. In both Malaysia and Guyanathis has led to mob violence and bloodshed and remains thesubstance of unresolved political tensions.


All of these new states, large and small, confront the formi-dable problems of economic development and improved well-being. They all have to accommodate themselves in one way oranother to the larger world power struggle that impinges onthem all. And they have to do all this while internally facing theissues of power and pluralism created by their insistent and per-sistent separatenesses.

PostimperialIn western Europe, which used to be the center of the world, theplace from which the East was Near, Middle, and Far, andwhere, at Greenwich, time and longitude began, the postimpe-rial era did not bring on the collapse and revolution the Marxistshad always predicted and the imperialists had always feared. Re-duced again to living on a peninsula on the western end of Eur-asia, the ex-imperialists with American help recovered their lo-cal balance of power and pelf, less so in Britain than in France,Holland, and Belgium. They found they could still play withprofit in part of the world game—as in oil and in the ex-colonies---while being relieved of the burdens of directly wield-ing power in the old, no longer tenable manner. They were ableto go back to worrying primarily, like good Europeans, aboutbeing swallowed up by Russia or dominated by Germany or,now, by America. They could leave the issues of power in therest of the world—with some postimperial lag of France in lndo-china, Algeria, and West Africa, and for Britain, trailing a fewthreads east of Suez—for the new big powers to worry about.The wax figure of de Gaulle made up to look like French gran-deur did not change the scene, although it did manage to slowdown the slow progress toward the possible emergence of a new"Europe'' a new larger coherence—to contain that continent'sstrongly surviving national separatenesses.

But a somewhat more insensible consequence of the end ofempire and world power is the way in which it has weakened thefabric of consent, assent, or submission which had kept somesubgroups In western European societies in a condition of moreor less passive subordination, or less visible discontent, for cen-turies. The result has been the resurfacing of hoary old separat-ism, new ''national'' movements or drives for regaining long-lost measures of regional, linguistic, or political autonomy, orsimply in militant new movements for cultural reassertion,


none of these major, but none insignificant either. Thus, invarying scopes and degrees of intensity and reappearance, inGreat Britain the Welsh, the Scots, the Manx, and the reopen-ing of Catholic-Protestant hostilities in Ulster; the Flemish-Walloon conflict in Belgium; the stirrings of the Basques inSpain, the Bretons in France, even the Jurassians in Switzerland;and, by extension in North America, the militant emergence ofthe separatist Quebeckers in Canada.

Another fallout of the postimperial experience has been themigration to the former mother countries of sizable numbers oftheir ex-children—Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, and West In-dian.s to Great Britain, Algerians to France, and ousted Indone-sian Eurasians and Ambonese to Holland. These are riot, as inthe past, small numbers of selected individuals come for school-ing in the process of being co-opted by the colonial system, butlarge numbers of poor working people come to make their waydown those gold-paved streets to some better condition of life.The collapse of the old authority relationship in which the lesserbreeds knew their place, the class of the newcomers and theirstatus as permanent immigrants instead of tolerated visitors,and their larger numbers have led to new internal tensions, con-flicts, riots in the streets. Old pretensions of the ex-metropolitan upper classes (usually aimed with polite sneers inthe direction of American racial boorishness) have popped likepricked balloons as the blunter racialism at all levels in these so-cieties is activated, more and more often to the point of vio-lence. Blotchier European faces have appeared as the smoothold self-images have been washed—hogwashed?—off by thestreams of change, and much has been devalued—such as thevalue of British passports so proudly held by so many unfortu-nate non-British British subjects or Commonwealth citizens,like West Indians or East African Asians, or the belief of someNorth Africans that the transplant had taken and they were in-deed Frenchmen. These experiences have raised new questionsand new problems for these ex-spreaders of the higher civiliza-tion and higher culture about the character of their own socie-ties and the shapes of their pluralisms.

PostrevolutionaryMarxist socialist doctrine promised a new international socialistworld order to replace capitalist anarchy, imperialist oppression,


and nationalist rivalries leading to wars. In Russia the Bolshe-viks promised a model of this kind of society, a political struc-ture in which some of the hundred-odd nationalities in thecountry would enjoy territorial separateness and all would enjoycultural and linguistic autonomy while sharing in some ade-quate fashion in the central power. These promises were bro-ken, precisely on the rock of the "national question" that neverceased to be a central issue in Communist theory and Commu-nist politics.

Almost involuntarily from the beginning and then deliber-ately under Stalin, Russia became a national-Communistpower. It subverted revolutionary movements elsewhere to itsown national-strategic goals and policies. This took place withespecially crushing consequences in Germany, China, andSpain, aborting events that might have radically altered thecourse of world history in the critical decades between 1920 and1940 had they been able to run their course independent ofRussian intervention. This is a history whose threads lead direct-ly to the subsequent cleavage between national-CommunistRussia and national-Communist China, each with the device ofa new socialist world order still inscribed on its banner, eachreadily reviving racial myths—the "yellow peril'' is more vividin Russia today than it ever was in America or in HohenzollernGermany—and each making ready to annihilate the other inpursuit of its own national power interests.

Inside the Communist countries, the promised new order hasproved equally elusive. After fifty years of more or less mono-lithic Communist power in Russia and twenty-five years of thesame in Eastern Europe, both the internal and intrabloc politicsstill revolve—and constantly erupt or threaten to erupt—aroundunresolved .issues of relations between and among the scores oftribes that make up the populations of these countries. Thestructure of separate republics and other nationality-centeredinstitutions has been set up and a charade of national political-cultural autonomy continues to be played in it. But the doctrin-al line of respect for national-cultural differences keeps gettingtangled with the lines of authoritarian central power. Nowherehave they fallen into a design that meets the needs either of thewielders of power or of the stubborn keepers of all the many pri-mordial bonds. The problem was not resolved in Russia, noteven in the thirty-year era of the totally monolithic rule of


Stalin—a prime theoretician on the "national question''—when whole peoples were uprooted and deported by fiat. and lit-erally millions condemned to die at the hands of the regime.Nor, since 1945, when it gained suzerainty over eastern andsoutheastern Europe, has Russian power been able to keep theadded nationalities of its extended empire under effective con-trol. Neither, for that matter, have the Communist regimes in-side any of these countries. The politics of Czechoslovakia stillrevolve around being Czech and being Slovak—Russia's armedassertion of its power in the country in 1965 made full use ofthis communal division. In Yugoslavia the aging Tito vainlystruggles in his waning years to keep that country from explod-ing again into its Serbian, Croatian, Montencgran, Bosnian,and other assorted parts. Rumania and Hungary still tussle overTransylvania, and every country uses the presence of nationaltninorites in every other one Albanian, Macedonian, 1-lungar-ian, or whatever—as a weapon in external pressures and coun-terpressures. This is the pattern riot only on Russia's westernfrontiers but equally on the eastern, where Mongolian-Chineseantipathies are manipulated, and where, for another example, a"free Turkestan" movement has been set up to make use of theseparatist restiveness of Turkic peoples under Chinese rule inSinkiang.

Neither visionary beliefs, then, nor large-scale industrializa-tion and urbanization, nor the passage of generations, nor con-centrated centralized power, nor massive repression, nor elabor-ate theories, nor structural schemes have apparently been ableto check the survival and the persistence of the distinctive sepa-rateness of the many nationalities or tribes of people who liveunder the Communist system. Socialist internationalism, likeChristian brotherhood, remains an elusive myth mocked by theactualities, Resistance to Great Russian (or Great Serb or GreatCzech, or Great Hungarian or Great Rumanian, and, to besure, Great Han, and so on) still fuels conflicts and patterns ofbehavior scarcely any different from what they were in all thegenerations before the Communist era. There is somethingplaintively ironic in the scolding remonstrances of Tito amonghis lieutenants, or in the report that Pravda, as recently as 18 Ju-ly 1971, "warned local officials against giving jobs to people onthe basis of their ethnic origin,'' a warning, the New YorkTimes report adds, "apparently directed both at Russians who

I-Iarold R. Isaacs 411

discriminate against Soviet minorities and at non-Russian localofficials who favor members of their own nationality." The.Russian effort has been under wa y , after all, only a little over fif-ty years, the American for nearly two hundred.

PostillusionaryIn the United States, the breakdown of the worldwide white su-premacy system after 1945 brought on the collapse of a wholeset of illusions about the nature of American society and hasraised in new ways and on a new scale the question of the char-acter of the "American" identity. It has opened up a time ofwrenching change in all group relations within the society, andwithin every group the beginning of a hardly less wrenching re-examination of itself. This condition has been triggered primar-ily by the fact that black Americans stopped accepting, stoppedsubmitting to the old rules of the game, or the pace at whichthe society appeared ready to change them. They won the fifty-year-old battle to break down the legal barriers that had ex-cluded them from the common civil rights nominally open toall. They then went on, in a veritable explosion of self-reasser-tion, to challenge the consequences of their long subjection, tobeat at the still-standing walls of customary rejection and exclu-sion. Most painfully and confusedly of all, they also went on toseek to rediscover and redefine themselves, a process that hasled some black Americans to go looking for their own houses ofMuumbi while others, the great bulk, seek in the new and un-familiar circumstances to discover what it might still mean to be''American" after all. They have thus raised in the sharpest pos-sible way the issue of whether the American society, finallyopening after 1945 to include groups long kept wholly or parti-ally outside, would open enough to include its blacks on thesame basis as it was at last coming to include everyone else,Catholics, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and so on, in the enjoymentof rights, status, and opportunities common to all.

This crisis of "black'' and '' American" identity would byitself be crisis enough. But its effect has been to shake up allthe other groups in the society located at various stations alongthe road from being "out'' to moving ''in,'' including the"group'' always seen by the others as ''in," the group now socommonly and so loosely labeled "the Wasps.'' In other non-white groups—the Mexican-Americans, the various other

412 Changing Arenas and Idendities

' Spanish-speaking'' groups, the American Indians, and the"Orientals"—the current black syndrome is reproduced, mili-tant radical fringe groups reflecting—and momentarily speak-ing for—the .much more widely felt and deeply laid feelings ofwhole populations that their status must change.

In the groups of the white population, these lines are blur-rier, the response more ambivalent and more ambiguous, andour knowledge of their present states of mind more limited.This great turning of circumstance finds the Irish Catholics thefarthest "in''—they made it to the White House in this period.But with the opening of the church to the winds of change, theturmoil in Catholic education, and the emergence of Catholicpriests and nuns as leaders and symbolic figures at almost everypoint along the spectrum of '' left'' or dissenting politics, wehave much to learn about how the Irish Catholic populationsorts itself out in relation to all these matters affecting their sta-tus and their view of themselves. The Jews—who arc not likelyto make it to the White House any time soon, certainly notsooner than the Poles—have made it through most of the bar-riers that still stood high against them as recently as 1945. Thisdegree of inclusion has made same Jews fear for the preservationof their house of Muumbi, and there is much exhortation,much effort to get Jews to renew their vows never to leave. Onthe other hand, the felt limits—for example, the appearance ofvirulent anti-Semitism among militant blacks and of anti-Zionism in the New Left and the many ambiguities about atti-tudes toward Israel on all sides—allow no one to think that oldghosts have been laid, and leave Jews in general still sufferingfrom what Kurt Lewin called "the uncertainty of belonging-ness." The uncertainty of what it means to be "American''leaves mostJews with the need, more than ever, to keep on be-ingJewish.

In the other much larger sections of the white American pop-ulation—second- and third-generation European Catholic im-migrant stock, the great ''middle" or "blue-collar'' or "whiteethnic" population—the impact of these shock waves is less easyto see. Much is written now about the disaffection of this majorsegment of America, starting with the almost automatic back-lash that the new black agressiveness has ignited across occupa-tional and neighborhood lines in the great industrial centers ofthe Northeast. But no one has yet reported in any adequate way

Harold R. Isarac.r 413

on how salient their ethnicity is in their present states of mind.The tensions have produced ethnic caucuses in some big unionsand brought into being new organizations, as in Pittsburgh, de-signed to bring the ethnic association into the new picture ofabrasive group relations. There is much assertion of newlyproud ethnic identification that goes far beyond the old Hansenthird-generation syndrome. Italo-Arnericans, Polish-Ameri-cans, Czechs and Slays and Slovenians and Armenians are allclearly, however, going through new exposures. There can behardly any doubt, now that the present situation in the societyhas forced on all kinds of people the realization that Americansociety is not as melted as many thought it to be, that the ques-tion of what is "American'' has become painfully unclear, thatthe task of self-redefinition still faces them.

This onset of what for some is a true identity crisis, as in thecase of the blacks, or at least identity confusion for many others,comes upon us as part of a whole series of other climaxing con-tradictions in American life, having to do with persisting pover-ty, rotting central cities, drugs, polluted environments, and, inthe Vietnam morass, the nature and exercise of American powerin the world. In all these rather major compartments of life, oldillusions have died or are dying hard—illusions about the"melting pot," and about freedom and democracy, about thevirtue of ever-advancing technological progress, and the virtueof American behavior in relation to the rest of the world. Thedisaffection that appeared for a time in its more extreme formamong the most radical or most disaffected youth in fact cutsmuch more deepl y and much more widely among people of allages and of every kind who thought they knew but now do notknow what it does mean to be "American," It will be no won-der, as we stumble our way toward the new shapes of some newAmerican pluralism if many people in many groups besides theblacks begin to think their only real security may lie after all inthe closer circle of their own tribal kin, in their own Houses ofMuumbi, American style.

II

These conditions raise new questions and new orders of ques-tions, demand many kinds of fresh inquiry. They call us downpaths either too heedlessly traveled before, or not noticed as wewent down what we thought were the main roads. The force of


this nearly universal self-reassertion is leading to all kinds of sec-ond thoughts—scholarly and otherwise—about the impact ofmodernization—or development—on communally divided so-cieties, about the problems of assimilation, acculturation, andintegration. The discussion, never .marvellously clear, has be-come even murkier in recent years when certain long-held as-sumptions began to be shaken, for example, that moderniza-tion, industrialization, and "progress" were good, desirable,and necessary, and would inevitably iron out the more brutisheffects of backwardness or superannuated traditionalism. Nowit appears that we had better worry more than we used to aboutthe even more brutish effects of growth and modernization.Nehru thought the caste system would have to be abolished be-fore India could become a modern democratic, not to say social-ist, nation. But political scientists now argue whether the rein-forced caste system is good or bad for Indian national politics,whether modernization should—much less can—erase com-munal divisions, in Nigeria, for example, or whether a viablestate can be created out of multiple regional-tribal-linguisticunits separately ruled.

The evidence of current human affairs seems to suggest thatthe House of Muumbi is where man really lives, that his essen-tial tribalism is so deeply rooted in the conditions of his exis-tence that it will keep cropping out of whatever is laid over it,like trees forcing their way through rocks on mountainsides amile high. This may be why the various universal dreams haveeither remained dreams of heaven where all human beingswould finally become one before God—that is, when they areno longer human beings—or have been transmuted into powersystems in which tribal differences are contained under thedominance of some particular tribe that reaches the top—thatis, when human beings are held in thrall.

Those who have aspired to some higher estate for human so-ciety have generally seen man's stubborn tribalism as a functionof his backwardness. Indeed, following Paul McClean's''schizophysiology,'' Arthur Koestler has recently suggestedthat the gap between man's intellectual and emotional behav-ior, between his technological achievements and his social-human failures, is the result of an evolutionary ''mistake,'' thatis, the survival of the phylogenctically older reptilian or lowermammalian parts of the brain after the development of the neo-


cortex, the uniquely human "thinking cap" that in the last halfmillion years or so has brought man to where he is now. Thetwo have never been integrated, hence all our bewildering con-tradictions. This is why man knows he must die but still rejectsthe idea, peopling his universe with demons, ghosts, witches,and other more respectable invisible presences. Coupled withthe uniquely prolonged dependence of the human on his eldersand his kin for safety in a world filled with faster and strongerenemies, this is what has produced the quality and power ofman's tribal solidarity, his overwhelming urge to belong, toidentify himself with tribe or nation and above all with his sys-tem of beliefs."

It could not be, of course, because these matters are lodged inthe old limbic system of the brain rather than in the neocortex—everybody knows there can be nothing reptilian or mamma-lian about scientists and intellectuals—but it is a fact that scien-tists and intellectuals who have uncovered and so precisely de-fined so much about nature have been remarkably vague andi mprecise about this aspect of human experience. Definitions,even at the simplest level, are elusive, loose, varied. From thedictionaries to the encyclopedias to all the works of scholarship,words like tribe, clan, nation, nationality, race, ethnic group, orethnicity remain notably blurred to this day. Each writer hascast his definitions to suit his particular taste, bent, or disci-pline, or, one might venture, in terms of his own life's experi-ence with his own house of Muumbi.

By now, to be sure, a considerable volume of multidiscipli-nary literature has grown up about problems of multiethnic so-cieties. Much of this has to do with the problems of politics, de-velopment, and pluralism in the ''new" ex-colonial countries.The surfacing of the same set of issues and confusions in the''old" states of both Western and Eastern Europe and, evenmore turbulently, in the American society, has widened thefield of awareness and scrutiny. There must be dozens of Ameri-can academic safaris tracking the snowman of ''ethnicity,''everyone sure now that it exists and is important, more impor-tant. than most thought, but no one sure what it looks like, orwhether it is abominable. The effort to get sharper about mat-ters long left vague, to seek for some new terms of order amongthese old confusions, is at least under way.

Almost the first encounter on this shadowy path is with iden-


tity, and here too the shapes are many, the meanings nuiner-ous, the usages innumerable. Among them all, moreover, thelinkage between identity and group identity remains the murk-iest of all, the term group generally serving as a blur or amal-gam for all the many kinds of groups in which people appearand sort themselves. This blurring continues all the way fromCharles Cooley's "primary group'' to Parsons' ''collectivities''or what Ali Mazrui has more recently called "total identities,"In anthropology, the seizing upon the concept of identity andits all-purpose use is well illustrated in some of the currentwriting in that field. In social psychology, what Gordon Allportnearly twenty years ago called "the venerable riddle of thegroup mind'' has been getting more and more venerable de-spite the great increase in the volume of literature on the subjectfrom so many different points of view. 2 In psychoanalysis, Freudnever—except for some fleeting autobiographical allusions—let himself get much closer to the group than the idea of a mobor a hypnotized mass following a leader. Erikson undertook torelate ''society'' or ''history'' to the shaping of the individualego identity and studied leaders to this end, but when it cameto the specifics of group identity, he never let himself get muchpast seeing ethnic groups simply as "pscudospecies" blockingthe way to man's achievement of some ultimate oneness) Thehistorians' thirst "for explanation in terms of group psychologyand group behavior'' remains unsatisfied, as one of them hasunhappily remarked, "the stern and ckmanding challenge ofgroup psychology and its relation to history still confronts us,unsmilingly."'

The need is for a fresh look at the inwardness of basic groupidentity and the process of its interaction with politics. Theseeker is not, however, left entirely dependent on the artists andthe poets, and not entirely without threads to pick up amongthe intellectual disciplines. It was a psychoanalyst (ErichFromm) who noted that these "primary ties, , ' for all their nega-tive effects, persisted because they provided man with almosthis only refuge against aloneness and powerlessness, with "anunquestionable place , . . genuine security and the knowledgeof where he belongs.'' It was a sociologist (Edward Shils) whocalled these ties "primordial affinities" with their "ineffablesignificance" and their peculiarly coercive powers. And it was

Harold R. Isaacs 41

an anthropologist (Clifford Gcertz) who noted that these tiesdiffer from all other group identifications because they are theones that uniquely make a group of people a "candidate for na-tionhood." What we need to do is to look more closely at whatthis basic group identity is made of: name, color and physicalcharacteristics, history and origins, nationality, language, reli-gion, aesthetic and ethical value systems. These are the holdingsa person acquires at birth. They are the features by whichgroups of people have seen themselves as "unique" or 'cho-sen" and it is around these features that the relative power orpowerlessness of groups has been established, maintained, orovercome, producing so much of the blood and pain—and somuch of the great art—of human history. These elements ofgroup identity combine in different ways in different cases andmuch waits to be learned from examining them in their manyvarieties. But in all cases, I suggest, the functioning--and thegreat power—of this basic group identity has to do with two keyingredients in every individual's personality: his sense ofbelongingness and the quality of his self-esteem. These turn upin many degrees of plus-tress and minus-ness and determinethereby the behavior of the group and of its members.

These needs can be—and often have been—satisfied in one ormore of the many other multiple group identities men acquirein the course of their lives in all the different collectivities towhich they come to belong social, educational, occupational,professional, even recreational. but these secondary sources ofbelongingness and self-esteem serve only where the conditionscreated by the basic group identity do not get in the way. Thiscan occur. up to some point, in heterogeneous groupings wherethe community of interest is commanding. The unusual exam-ple given in this connection is that of the small group of combatsoldiers confronting the foe, or the team on the athletic field. Itcan happen in homogeneous groupings where the basic groupidentity is given, shared by all, and relationship and status aredetermined by quite another criteria, for example, in a ghetto,inside a Knights of Columbus group, a jewish Masonic Lodge—or a Protestant one—or any other such tightly homogeneousgroup. But the ''outside" is nearby. Just outside the door, orover the wall, is everyone else. Out there that "uncertainty ofbelongingness" and the challenge to self-esteem have to be met


in dealing with others who are more powerful or less powerful.Here, once more, the basic group identity and the relations be-tween groups govern how far these needs are met or not met insome adequate fashion.

An individual belongs to his basic group in the deepest andmost literal sense that here he is not only not alone—no smallplus for most human beings—but here, as long as he chooses toremain in and of it, he cannot he denied or rejected. It is anidentity he might want to abandon, but it is the identity that noone can take away from him. One thinks of Frost's line abouthome being the place where, when you've got to go there,they've got to take you in—the house of Muumbi. This ob-viously rolls inward and outward in the many layers of belong-irzgness. The house of Muumbi is the womb to which everyoneat one time or another yearns to return. It is where childhoodfixed whatever emotional certainties became the handhold—lifepreserver, towline, shackle, anchor—to which so many peopleof so many different kinds seek to cling for the rest of their lives.It is the place, the physical place, high or low, wet or dry, greenor yellow, where the roots were deeply laid and to which somany people remain attached by the unbreakable bonds ofmemory and association that seem to survive in all the senses.Or in this age of massive migration, for great numbers uprootedand transported great physical and cultural and social distances,it is the ark they carry with them, the temple of whatever rulesof the game one's forebears lived by, the "tradition" or "mo-rality" or whatever form of creed or belief in a given set of an-swers to all the unanswerables. Indeed, it can be said, I think,that one core of the crisis of American identity lies in whether,how, and in what form the American identity can finally be-come as primordial as all the others that have bonded mentogether. This will have to do more than anything else with howfar and how deeply all who are American come to feel that theybelong, beyond any chance of rejection or exclusion, togetherwith all other Americans.

With this belongingness there goes, all but inseparably, thematter of self-esteem, the supporting measure of self-acceptance, or pride in self that every individual has to findfrom somewhere to live a tolerable existence. There are people,of course, who can derive a sufficient self-esteem out of the stuff


of their individual personalities, above, beyond, or often de-spite the character or situation of their group. Others have todepend heavily on their group identities to supply what theirown individualities may too often deny them. Most people, letus say, living intolerable existences, need all they can get fromboth sources.

Again, like health or money, group identity presents noproblem when it is an assured given, when the self-acceptance itgenerates is an unquestioned premise of life and is not a sourceof conflict. This, once more, is the situation that can exist in atightly homogeneous society or group, or in a stable society inwhich all groups, from top to bottom in the pecking order, notonly know their place but accept it. All, including the mastergroups at the top and the Lowest at the bottom—for example,the Untouchables in the Hindu caste system—accept themselvesas they are told they are and fully accept the belief system thatdetermines the conditions of their lives. Such frozen pecking or-ders have persisted for prolonged periods in preindustrial socie-ties, and even modernizing or industrialized societies have ex-perienced it, though more fleetingly and more limitedly, asperhaps in late Victorian England or post-Meiji Japan.

But it is precisely this element of self-esteem, of the need toacquire it and feel it and assert it, that upset all such orders andbecame one of the major drives behind all our volcanic politics.The drive to self-assertion, to group pride, is what fueled all thenationalist movements that eventually broke the rule of the em-pires. It is a principal element in the national and racial chau-vinisEns that have characterized both the Russian and. the Chi-nese revolutions. It is above and beyond all the fuel for thepower that broke the system of white supremacy. The themes ofsomebodinesr as against nobodiness dominated the whole longhistory of the struggle of black men in America to regain a self-respecting status. We have grown familiar with the phenom-enon of identification with the aggressor, with the patterns ofself-rejection and self-hate coming out of negative group identi-ties successfully imposed by stronger on weaker groups. But it isprecisely when members of such groups stop submitting to thiscondition, as we have already remarked, that group identity be-comes a problem, to both victimizers and victims, and, as ourcurrent affairs show, sooner or later a matter of crisis. This is the


point at which group identity and politics meet. It has been thestarting point of many notable lives, much notable history, andhardly any more notable than the history of our own presentti me and of the time that lies just ahead.

The questions persist: how long is the retribalizing spasm—ifit is a spasm—likely to last? As we trihalizc or retribalize, whatare the effects of all the ongoing pressure on human society toglobalize? What is—and what is to be—the relation betweencommunal separateness and modernization? (And what now,indeed, in the light of our new awareness of some of the out-comes of advancing technology, r.S modernization?) What hap-pens meanwhile to all the detribalized of the earth who havenothing to lose but their lostness in a retribalizing world? Thereis an immense reportorial task to be done—we still know muchtoo little about the actualities in all these settings. With whatfresh perceptions must we relate these aspects of current socialchange and politics to all the other large impinging factors: ge-ography and resources, production and development and trade,power blocs outside and classes inside? There are all the heavypressures and problems that weigh upon us all—and not only asinquirers—about where these circumstances might, can, orshould lead us.

As some of the world scene already suggests, for example, inparts of Africa, the politics of fragmentation could ]cad to a.condition that would make the Balkans seem like a marvel ofcoherent order by comparison. As Biafra, Tibet, Hungary,Czechoslovakia, Sudan, Bangladesh and, in many differentways, Vietnam show, the time of forcible imposition of onegroup on others is still very much with us. The larger coherencesof the future—if they do not take the form of a postnuclearquiet—can yet appear as new systems of concentrated power im-posed by bloody force. Our wars have accustomed us to death ofpeople by the millions. Since Hitler, the reality of genocide asan option in human affairs has become very palpable, and theimage of it rises swiftly our of much of the violence around us.On the other hand, there is the demand—the challenge, per-haps even the chance—to shape new pluralisms that somehowwill better meet the needs of these new circumstances, somehowmake human existence more humane. And as this is going torequire above all confronting the more-than-ever universal de-

Harold R. I,raacs 421

mand for mutual respect and self-respect among the multitudesof ethnic, racial, national, tribal, and religious groups ofhuman beings, there is a peculiarly pressing need to take a freshlook at the nature and functioning of these group identities. Aswe can so plainly see, they keep forever sprouting out of theruins of empires, reappearing in the interstices of every kind ofnew culture and new politics, and continuing to frustrate theidealists and rationalists who stubbornly go on thinking thatthere must be some better way than this to carry on the humanstory.

On the one hand, we see all around us the process of frag-mentation, which deepens in its own self-reinforcing way withall its ugly abrasions and its dehumanizing intergroup conflict.From many directions—whether the breakup of old power sys-terns or the atomization of industrial society--comes the onsetof turmoil and instability for all people in all their relation-ships, quickly bringing on conflict and crisis. When even the"order" achieved in an oppressive society is wrenched away,fear and confusion and a veritable identity panic overtake greatmasses of individuals caught out in the storms of change. Thereis either a fierce holding on to vestiges of the more secure past,or a search for what has somewhere somehow been lost. So formany, "liberation'' becomes a lunge back to the tribal caves,back to the houses of Muumbi, a desperate effort to regain thatcondition of life in which certain key needs were met, to buildwalls to enclose them once more, if only in their minds, in aplace where they can feel they belong, and where, grouped withtheir kind, they can regain some measure of both physical andemotional safety. A decade or more ago, James Baldwin bleaklywarned American Negroes that they would have to learn how toget along without the crutch of their blackness.'' He meant,of course, the powerful negative identity that had becomecrusted around the image of blackness. But in this time, thecrutch has been refashioned into a wand, waving blacks intoangry self-reassertion, but also into frightened withdrawal. Inmuch more concrete—and usually much less poignant—ways,the prime elements of group identity become the poles aroundwhich people can rally, or be brought to rally, whether to seek achange in their status or to defend whatever security they thinkthey may already have. This is growing more visible in the "newethnic politics" in America. In the new politics in the postcolo-


nia! world it has produced numberless examples of the dynam-ics of this process, as Selig I Iarrison pointed out about caste inIndia and as Aristide Zolberg and others have remarked on thestrengthening of weakened tribal connections in Africa. It hasled to what All Mazrui has called the ''retribalization of poli-tics,'' not onir in Africa but similarly in all its various Asian,European, and American forms.

On the other hand, the universal spread of this group self-assertion promotes in an unprecedented way the hitherto uto-pian notion that all groups of men—indeed, all men—are enti-tled to an adequate basis for self-esteem, that is, to a respectedand therefore self-respecting status in both the social and politi-cal systems. There will be those who—with good cause—fear forwhat happens in all this to the free-seeking, free-thinking indi-vidual. There will be those who will not count too heavily onmen ceasing to do what comes to there most naturally.

But if the drive to self-assertion and self-esteem is joined byall groups in a given society and if we have in fact moved out ofthe era of winner-takes-all, then it is at least barely possible thatwe can move through the ensuing chaos into the era of all-win-a-little.

Along the way lie formidable riddles: the shapes of worldpower, the course of development and population growth, thefate of the environment—all these, and the question too: whatkind of balance can be struck between all that demands greatercommunity among men and all that keeps them apart? Whatinstitutions and what political system will correspond to theglobal dimensions of technology and development and yet as-sure the pluralism demanded by the separatenesses that men in-sist on preserving? Can we have our separate ethnic joys and atolerable human community roo? This will require holding onto the civilizing and enhancing qualities of our differences,while somehow getting rid of whatever it is about them thatmakes us tear each other limb from limb, literally or psychical-ly, in their name. There are no encouraging precedents.

NOTES

The marerial in this chapter appeared in somewhat different form in the au-thor's Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change (New York:Harper& Row, 1975).

Harold!?. Isaacs 423

1. Some of the items:2,000,000 killed in the Hindu-Muslim holocaust during the partition of In-

dia and the creation of Pakistan;500,000 Sudanese blacks killed in their ongoing war against the ruling Su-

danese Arabs;200,000 Watusi and Bahutu mutually slaughtered during the breakup of

Burundi and Rwanda;150,000 Kurds killed in their wars against the Iraqis;100,000 Nagas, Mizos, and Ahams killed in Assam in their effort to sepa-

rate from India;100,000 Karens, Shans, and Kachins killed in their wars against the ruling

Burmese in Burma;100,000 Chinese killed by Indonesians in communal attacks;35,000 Khambas killed by the Chinese in Tibet:30,000 Somalis killed by Kenyans and Ethiopians;10,000 Arabs eliminated by black Africans in Zanzibar;10,000 Berbers killed by Arabs in Morocco and Algeria;5,000 East Indians, Negroes, and Amerindians killed in communal clashes

in Guyana.See Robert D. Crane, "Post war Ethnic Cultural Conflicts; Some Quantita-

tive and Other Considerations,'' manuscript, Hudson Institute, New York,March 1968.

2. William L. Eilers, "The Uses of Identity," M.S. thesis, MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, 1966; Leonard Broom and Philip Selznick, ''PrimaryGroups," in Sociology. A Text with. Adapted Readings ( New York, 1963),pp. 135-175; Talcotr Parsons and Edward Shils, eds., Towarda Genera/The-ory ofAction (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 192--195; Ward Goodenough, Cooper-ation in Change ( New York, 1963), chaps. 8, 9; Ali A, Mazrui, ''Pluralismand National Integration,'' in Leo Kuper and M. G. Smith, eds., Pluaahsm inAfrica (Berkeley, 1969); Gordon Allport, "The Historical Background ofModern Social Psychology," in Gardner Lindsey, ed., 1-lanclhook of SocialPsychology (Cambridge, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 31--40.

3. Erik Erikson, ''Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers," and "TheProblem of Ego identity," Psychological issuer 1 (1959):18-49, 101-164.

4. Bruce Mazlish, "Group Psychology and the Problems of ContemporaryHistory.'' ,Journal of Contemporary Hrslory 3 (1965): I63.

15COMMUNICATION, DEVELOPMENT,AND POWER

LUCIAN W. PY1

In the exhilarating atmosphere that briefly enlivened the newlyindependent states of Asia and Africa of the 1950s, the com-monly articulated faith was that all would soon fall into a con-structive state of harmony: increased communication wouldinspire and guide social and economic development, and theconsequent modernization would bring national power andbenefits to all. When the end was coming to European empiresthere was much rhetoric about birth pains for the new era of na-tionalism, but few appreciated how acute and contradictory theproblems of the new rulers were going to be.

In subsequent years when development proved to be more in-tractable than expected, it was easy to level the blame at thedoor of the first generation of national heroes who had cham-pioned the cause of nationalism. All could point to the obviousfailings of Nkrumah, Sukarno, and even Nehru in achievingeconomic development and institution building. But despitemore than a decade of problems, the basic assumption re-mained intact: with proper management, it should be reason-ably possible for modern means of communication to providethe necessary stimulus for development, and thus the realiza-tion of respectable national power still lay in the realm of thetechnically feasible. Yet, there are grounds for doubts; so it isappropriate to pay special heed to the factors which, greater

Lucian IV. Pye 425

than just the normal human failings of rulers, constitute obsta-cles to more rapid progress in the Third World.,

THE AMBIGUOUS HERITAGE OF COLONIALISMThe linkage between mass communication and developmentwould seem to have been established during the period of colo-nial rule, for both the technology of the mass media and theconcept of planned economic development and political mod-ernization were products of Western civilization. Indeed, pre-cisely because it was during the colonial era that the diffusion ofmodern communication and the idea of the modern state oc-curred, the view that the two processes were mutually suppor-tive seems plausible.2

But a careful historical view of what took place in the variousAsian and African colonies reveals that from the very outset ofWestern domination there was little connection between the in-troduction of modern mass communication and the processes ofeconomic and political development. The initial establishmentof European rule in traditional societies involves surprisingly lit-tle use of any form of mass communication. The spread of colo-nial authority generally preceded the introduction of more ad-vanced communication facilities.

True, the building of harbors and the remarkably early intro-duction of the railroad did ease the task of governing. 3 Im-provements in communication and transportation did make itpossible for colonial governments to rule effectively, but thiswas not in the main the conscious goal of the European authori-ties. Indeed, it is strange to contemplate how little concern co-lonial rulers initially had over the possible advantages of moreeffective means of communication. Instead of seeking to intro-duce new channels of communication and bypass the old ones,colonial governments generally went to great lengths in strivingto use precolonial institutions of authority and communication.

The first introduction of newspapers and printed journals inthe Asian and African colonies did not awaken the European of-ficials to the possibility that continuous and extensive commu-nication between rulers and subjects might be desirable in facil-itating their rule. The various colonial administrations didestablish official publications or gazettes, but the purpose ofsuch publications was almost exclusively to inform lesser offi-

426 Cornmunacation, Development, and Power

cials of important decisions and to provide them with importantadministrative guidelines--a reflection on the internal growthof government—and not to be a means of reaching the generalpublic,

The first Western-language ncwpapers of a public naturegenerally had the European trading communities as their prin-cipal audience, and they clearly belonged outside of official-dom. As traders and other civilians frequently felt the colonialauthorities were less than satisfactorily responsive to their spe-cial interests, the first English-language papers in Bombay, Cal-cutta, Hong Kong, and Singapore tended to be critical of theirrespective colonial governments. Thus, very interestingly, fromthe outset the European-language papers were adversaries of theEuropean colonial governments. In the French and Dutch colo-nies they were usually both semiofficial and advisory papers,but all strived for the pretense of being indepcndent. 4 The nor-mal reaction of colonial governments to any early forms of presscriticism was to retreat into arrogant isolation and secrecy. Fewgovernments have appreciated more, or more persistently over-estimated, the advantages of privacy in thinking through andcarrying out policies. This may also in part explain why colonialgovernments tended to spin out for themselves some of themost convoluted and elaborately designed rationales for theirpolicies.

As far as the development of the Western-language press wasconcerned, the early tradition of being critical of governmentcontinued right into the period of rising nationalist criticism offoreign rule. In time, some of the Western-language papersfound themselves caught between the rising nationalist cries forindependence and the lingering colonial authorities who hadbeen their traditional targets. In the final stages of colonialismsome of the Western-language papers became stalwart cham-pions of the old order and outright defenders of the colonial au-thorities. Others maintained their criticism of government, butlargely on the basis that government policies were likely tospeed the end of the era of colonial government.

Yet, what is more significant, a far larger proportion of theWestern-language papers were surprisingly successful in navi-gating the narrows that carried them from being the Westerntrader-oriented critic of government to becoming the educated

Lucian W Pye 427

nationalist's critic of government.' Such arc the powers of thecustomer that papers that were once sharp critics of colonialadministrators successfully transformed themselves into, first,anticolonial forums and later into apologists for the newly incle-pendent authorities. Indeed in nearly every ex-colony, the stan-dard process of change has seen the principal foreign-languagepaper, which in colonial days was a demanding critic of authori-ty, become a docile defender of the new government. The ob-vious explanation for this decline in critical instincts is that as avisibly ' `foreign" element in the postindcpendence environ-ment, the survival of Western-language papers, often with ex-patriate staffs, was most tenuous, and therefore they have hadlittle choice but to be nationalizers for the new authorities.

But in speaking of this postcolonial paradox we are gettingahead of our analysis. A more profound paradox generally tookshape as the inevitable mobilization of nationalism, led byWesternized elites who utilized mass communication, began tochallenge colonial authority and force European rulers to replypublicly. As the European authorities created the form andstructure of the modern nation-state in their colonial adminis-trations, the colonial subjects in time inevitably asserted claimsof nationalism and a right to manage their own affairs. Thestage was set for a great debate, a debate that greatly speededthe spread of communication media as more people soughtways to give voice to their sentiments.6

The final issue of colonialism was in essence a crisis of legiti-macy. By what right did foreigners claim jurisdiction over aliencultures? The one rationale of legitimacy available to colonialauthorities which had any sense of respectability was that theypossessed superior knowledge and, hence, could provide a bet-ter, more just, and more progressive form of government for themasses of the people. In other times, other bases of legitimacyhad been advanced by colonial regimes, but in the terminalstages the universal justification was that development andmodernization could be more effectively realized by a continua-tion of European colonial rule rather than a premature shift toself-govern merit. Indeed, as the European empires receded theyvigorously disseminated the idea that the legitimacy of all gov-ernments depended above all on their ability to bring economicdevelopment and social progress. Thus a heritage of colonialism

428 Communication, Development, and Power

was the concept that only governments that could advancedevelopment were, in fact, legitimate.'

Nationalist leaders, while generally arguing that inferior co-lonial rule involved "exploitation" of their peoples, were to ac-cept this understandably hesitant colonial reasoning about theultimate source of legitimacy. Nationalist leaders often assertedthe contrary view that "misrule by our own leaders was betterthan efficient rule by foreigners.'' 'Therefore legitimacy was notlinked in any way with substantive policies, but rather with theidentity, of the policy makers. Out of this final clash betweencolonial authorities and nationalist spokesmen a tragic contra-diction was established that has plagued the continuing moder-nization of several Asian and African societies.

The harder the nationalists pressed for the justice of indepen-dence and self-rule, regardless of economic consequences, themore colonial governments pressed the concept that develop-ment was the only proper goal of legitimate government. A vi-cious circle was established and the debate planted the seeds ofdeep ambivalence as to what should or should not be the properobjectives of independent regimes. The more the issue of devel-opment was identified with the colonial administrations, theharder it was for the subsequent nationalist governments tochampion economic development as an ultimate goal.

Let there be no mistake: the final policies of most colonial ad-ministrations were heavily oriented toward development, what-ever they might have been in prior decades, and many of thepolicies, whether wise or not, were exceedingly costly. In Ceylonit was the British authorities during World War II who in-troduced the plan to provide the quota of two pounds of freerice to all in order to prevent labor unrest, but ever since, allCeylonese governments have had to maintain that unreasonablycostly policy even though it has nearly driven the country intobankruptcy. 8 In Burma, in the late 1930s, the British intro-duced a system of health care and hospitalization that exceededanything in England at the time, and that has left the Burmesegovernment with a commitment in this field that strains theli mited tax resources of the country. 9 In the last days of Britishrule in West Africa, expenditures for education dramaticallyrose and set the base for growing expenditures that could not beeasily met in the years ahead without foreign assistance. Indeed,

Lucian W, Pye 429

i mplicit appreciation of what took place was acknowledged bythe British in their continuing support for education even aftertheir legal responsibilities ended with independence.

When formal colonial policy did not give substance to theconcept that legitimacy was linked to development, the West ina variety of other and more indirect ways still contributed tospreading such a theory, The Keynesian revolution in econom-ics, which was initially designed to achieve economic stabilityand growth in advanced economics, contributed also tostrengthening the earlier socialist vision that economic planningcould raise the lot of all people, including those in the most re-tarded parts of the world. As has so often been mentioned, theLondon School of Economics preached to a generation of Afri-cans and Asians that policies existed which could bring develop-ment and modernization to even the most benighted lands.

Thus Asian and African intellectuals, trained at the same in-stitutions that produced development-minded colonial offi-cials, also came to accept development as the proper goal fortheir societies. However, they assumed that their deeper com-rnitment to economic planning and various versions of socialismshould make it possible for them to achieve what colonial offi-cial.s had not. Returning to their home countries, they oftenfound themselves torn between their intellectual fascinationwith development by way of socialism and their appreciationthat the bulk of their country men were attracted to a national-ism that contained little of Western modernization and hencedevelopment in it.

Thus, one of the important sources of ambivalence amongAfro-Asian intellectuals, which they were pleased to articulate,was that their particular disease was being "rootless,'' of be-longing neither to their traditional nor to the modern world. Insome respects it was a pleasant ambivalence that asserted on theone hand that they were capable of appreciating all that West-ern intellectuals knew, but that they ''knew" something more—the spirit of their own cultures; while on the other hand itsuggested that, contrary to the normal alienation of intellec-tuals, they would have been easily capable of being in touchwith their own cultures, if only the West hadn't contaminatedthem. The sum effect was that the intellectuals of the newstates, much as their compatriot politicians, learned to speak

430 Communication, Development, andPower

the language of development and modernization, but they werealso left profoundly unsure of what it should mean or how com-mitted they should be to achieving it. This latter was so be-cause, given the circumstances of the colonial era, developmentseemed to be the same as becoming Westernized instead oflearning how to participate in a worldwide process based on ex-ploiting scientific knowledge.

Although not as troubled as nationalist politicians or West-ernized intellectuals, the commercial and business elementsthat emerged under colonialism participated in much the sameprocess of communication which constantly informed them thatthe practices of the metropole were the most advanced and,therefore, development meant cooperating either with compa-nies of the colonial country or with other Western companies.Progress in the private sector meant above all staying in closecommunication with developments in the West, and thus in aslightly different manner the emerging entrepreneurs in thenew states sensed a peculiar linkage between communicationand development that in general was based upon reactions tothe Western impact.

The sum effect of the colonial heritage in communicationand development was highly ambiguous. The very phenome-non of colonialism was in part an extraordinary historical com-munication process as Western ideas and practices were diffusedthroughout much of the non-European world. The process didresult in many features of Western culture becoming the idealsof non-Western peoples.

Yet at the same time the introduction of such Western tech-nologies for mass communication as newspapers and journalsraised serious questions as to what should be communicated.Should the mass media perform the same roles, particularly inrelationship to governmental processes, as the media were ac-customed to do in the mother countries? The question was un-answerable because it was submerged under the far larger andmore perplexing question of what should be the goals of inde-pendent governments in the postcolonial era? When colonialauthorities introduced the concepts of economic and social de-velopment, could independent governments merely continuein the same directions, or was there not an obligation to findnew directions? And what should these be? The basic uncertain-

Lucian V. Pye 431

ty and ambivalence over the meaning of development in thepostcolonial context created an ambiguous situation for themass media.

As long as the struggle was for the relatively unambiguousgoal of independence, the media did have a clear-cut function,that of mobilizing sentiment either for or against indepen-dence. Once the political objectives had been realized, all themedia had to come to terms with the new authorities. But thiswas generally not easy, for the authorities themselves often wereunsure of priorities, except for the immediate need to maintainpower. The insecurity of new rulers stemmed in part from thenovelty of holding power and hating the prospect of losing it,but even more it stemmed from the crippling fact that they pos-sessed more the forms than the reality of power. Weak societieshave weak governments.

The historic problem of what should be the goals of develop-ment in non-European societies then became linked in the post-colonial period with the more fundamental problem of build-ing effective power in order actually to rule.

THE DELAYED EMERGENCE OF POWERAS A REALITY OF POLITICS

Although the ending of European colonialism was almost uni-versally accompanied by exhortation of the ''struggles for inde-pendence,'' actual tests of power were more the exception thanthe rule. World War II, which left Europe in a shambles, hadset the stage for the nationalists to champion the inherenthuman right of men to rule themselves. The concept that legiti-macy should be based on the efficiency of government evapor-ated as soon as European governments had to devote moreresources to their domestic rehabilitation than to progress inoverseas lands. The future seemed to belong to the articulatorsof nationalism. Yet, history was not so kind to them, for it leftthem as holders of offices that commanded little power.

There were, of course, many reasons why the leaders of thenew states did not command significant power. Yet what is notso obvious is why it was not generally recognized that the newnationalist leaders were likely to have problems because of in-adequate power in their societies. In part this was the result ofthe fact that Western thought on the matter of political power


has always tended to assume the automatic or ''natural'' exis-tence of power in any society, and that the problem for politicaltheory is how power should be controlled, balanced, checked,and generally regulated. Western thought was so addicted tothe idea that power was a relative phenomenon that it did nottake seriously the question of the absolute levels of power in dif-ferent systems and what can happen when a society has little ca-pacity to generate effective power.

Another reason why the problem of power was overlooked atthe phase of early independence was that the nationalist leaderswere seen as merely stepping into the administrative structurethat the colonial authorities had built, and as these situationshad been adequate for colonial rule it was easily assumed thatthey should be sufficient for the new leaders. What was notasked was what kind of sound basis of power the new leadersmight have outside of the formal structures of government.

Political development in most of the new states was seen asproceeding from state building to nation building in the sensethat those who controlled the state apparatus were expected tobe able to reshape their societies to create a sense of nationhood.This is quite contrary to the historical pattern in Europe inwhich the sense of nationhood often preceded the creation ofbinding state structures. The difference is most dramatic whenwe compare the end of empires after World War I with whathappened after World War II. At Versailles the notion ofnation-state started with the belief that legitimacy rested withphenomena of common culture, language, and ethnic identity,and upon this sense of "nation" should be erected the more le-galistic and adaptable structure of the state. In contrast, legiti-macy in Asia and Africa stemmed from continuity with colonialadministrative structures, and ethnic divisions were expected toaccommodate to the supremacy of legal identities. With theend of the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires, the great concernwas self-determination, which was universally defined as requir-ing the identification of collective power. The boundaries of thenew states were seen as readily adjustable to ensure maximumregard for ethnic or national homogeneity. With the end of theoverseas empires after World War IT, it was the other wayaround, and the boundaries of the colonially administered terri-tories were taken as being rigidly fixed (with the sole exception

Lucian W. Pye 433

of the division of India.), and it was assured that ethnic power,regardless of how sharply divided, would readily conform to theadministrative divisions of territory and hence produce nationalpower.

In a sense, the nation-states that were carved out of collapsingempires on the European continent gave emphasis to the reali-ties of ethnic differences and the assumption that nationsshould be the bases of states. In Asia and Africa the basicassumption was that the state, as defined by colonial adminis-tration, should provide the basis for the nation and ethnic dif-ferences should be down-played as much as possible as mereholdovers from a traditional order that was about to disappearin a rising tide of modernization.

Thus a strange irony underlay the emergence of postindcpcn-dence politics in many Afro-Asian states. The new nationalistleaders soon were claiming their "legitimacy" as stemmingfrom the colonial administrations who were once their declaredadversaries. In their initial assertions of independence, it was es-sential for the founders of the new states to claim all the powersthat had once belonged to the colonial rulers, Continuity withtheir colonial domain and with a continuing sense of the legiti-macy of government was more important than the communica-tion of natural or ethnic identities. The sense of ''nationalism"that was popularized was thus defined more in terms of reac-tions to colonial administrations than to expression of historicalethnic sentiments.

In terms of communication processes, this meant that thenationalism propaganda came closer to projecting a "public"that was homogeneous, which the colonial authorities had as-sumed, than to the expression of ethnic distinctiveness, whichmight only have divided the ethnically heterogeneous popula-tion of the new states. Consequently, in many newly indepen-dent countries there was a brief period during which the nation-alist leadership articulated development programs that seemedentirely consistent with the terminal colonial regimes' efforts inthe accelerated modernization period. The initial outcome ofstruggle between nationalist politicians and colonial-trained ad-ministrators was thus often one in which powers evolved to thepoliticians, but they in turn accepted the administration's defi-nition of development as the appropriate national goal. The re-


suit was that many Western observers, particularly those whowished the new states well, came to believe that there was a"natural" coincidence between nationalist goals and technical-ly oriented economic and political development.

The effect of this brief period was to suggest that the domi-nant theme of the postcolonial era was to be state building andthat the strengthening of administrative capabilities of govern-ment would produce in its wake the consolidation of nation-alism. The universal assumption was that the ethnic andlinguistic differences would soon be ironed out as the new na-tionalisms of those who commanded the state became diffused.

The new leaders were quick to identify themselves as the onlylegitimate articulators of the new national interests. Yet thenew states often seemed unduly fragile precisely because thenew leaders lacked solid bases of power in the natural commu-nities, and the new national identity was often severely compro-mised by the linguistic and ethnic diversity that often made amockery of the very idea of a new common nationalism,

During this period several national leaders were successful ingiving dignity to the concept that nationalism and the strivingfor economic development were identical sentiments through-out the Third World. Proceeding from such a premise it isunderstandable that advocates of foreign aid in the late 1950sand 1960s presumed that this assistance would be seen as consis-tent with the support of nationalism in the Afro-Asian coun-tries.

In time, however, the realities of power in most of the newstates forced leaders to acknowledge that ethnic divisions couldfragment an y sense of national community. Moreover, manyprograms of development contained issues that could intensifysuch divisions, as some community might benefit more thananother, and some might even be disadvantaged by proposedchanges. Communication policies that initially had been severe-ly directed toward mobilizing the entire population indiscrimi-nately had to be adjusted to appeal to, or publicly attack, par-ticular segments of the nation. Communal, which really meantethnic or linguistic, divisions threatened country after country,and increasingly the realities of these ethnic and linguisticgroupings became the basis of political competition. Nationalleaders who presumed to speak for the whole nation often were

Lucian 1V, Pye 435

seen as being the de facto spokesmen of more limited segmentsof the society who were seeking to make their subculture the on-ly legitimate expression of nationalism. In other countries thenoncommunal leaders have remained as nationalist figures be-cause there is no alternative among the ethnically divided popu-lations. The result, however, has not been the building ofgreater national strength, but rather a standoff situation inwhich all can politically benefit from a general state of mutualweakness but the society as a whole is denied forceful leader-ship. Accommodation of differences has a higher priority thanaccomplishing national development.

By the mid-1960s the realities of power had asserted them-selves against the continuing legitimacy of colonially inspiredinstitutions in most of the new states. Increasingly the realitiesof power relationships forced potential conflicts into the open.Leaders were trapped between championing the initial goals ofmodernization and the imperatives of accommodating ethnicand other communal differences. The competing pulls weremade more acute by the generally low level of power in thesepolitical systems, which meant that there was not the necessaryprerequisite for effective and dynamic leadership.

GENERAL SOCIAL CHANGE ANDPARTICULAR THEORIES

While these general historical trends were first building up andthen letting down the potentialities of political leadership inthe new states, other more general social processes were takingplace that affected the role of communication in national devel-opment.Just as colonial governments could not exclude the dis-semination of new and challenging ideas, the new governmentshave not been able to check deep social and economic processesthat over time have affected the bases of government. At thesame time, however, governments as themselves actors in theseprocesses have had some influence on trends.

In the immediate postcolonial period these processes of in-dustrial development, urban growth, the rise in levels of educa-tion, and the spread of communications seemed to fit togetherwith some reasonable degree of coherence so that it was possibleto think of a general process of modernization and develop-ment.


It was under these conditions that possibly the most power-ful, and testable, theory of development was formulated byDaniel Lerner,° Specifically, the theory describes the modern-ization process in terms of four basic variables: urbanization,literacy, mass media exposure, and political participation. Mod-ernization itself involves moving along the continuum from tra-ditional to modern society, which is characterized by a highlevel of social and political participation and by citizens whohave a psychic sense of "empathy." This quality of ''psychicmobility'' of the individual, which makes it possible for him toimagine himself in the place of many others, is developed outof the sense of social and physical mobility that occurs as a resultof greater urbanization, literacy, mass media exposure, and op-portunities for social participation. The theory is thus remark-able in that it deals equally with the individual and the wholesociety, and is thus both psychologically and sociologicallyoriented.

Moreover, the theory does not suggest just a random relation-ship of the basic variables, but rather suggests that there is aninherent sequence that causally relates the variables into an in-tegrated process of modernization. The process in Lerner'swords is that 'every-where ... increasing urbanization hastended to raise literacy; rising literacy has tended to increasemedia exposure; increasing media exposure has 'gone with'wider economic participation (per capita income) and politicalparticipation (voting).''" Lerner also suggests that the rise inm edia exposure works to increase literacy in "a supply and de-mand reciprocal in the communications market." 12 Accordingto Lerner's empirical work, the urbanization variable triggersthe process of modernization when about 10 percent of the pop-ulation is in cities, and then, after 25 percent. is reached,changes in this variable are no longer significant. The effects ofliteracy become highly significant when about 40 percent of thepopulation can read. Lerner's concept of participation is a broadone involving both economic and political activities, but it isalso susceptible to the interpretation of democratic develop-mcnt.

The precision of Lerner's theory has inspired others to test itagainst other bodies of data. Hayward Alker found that it stoodup well when tested by the techniques of causal inference.i3

Lucian W Pye 437

Another highly elaborate analysis based on aggregate indicatorsfor seventy-six nations and causal modeling techniques essenti-ally supported Lerner's theory in the following conclusions:

1. Democratic political development occurs when mass communica-tions permeates society.

Education affects democratic political development by contribut-ing to the growth of mass communications, therefore:2. Mass communication occurs when literacy and educational levelsrise in a society.

Urbanization affects democratic political development primarilyby increasing educational levels, which then increase mass commu-nications, therefore:3. Education and literacy development occur in urbanizingsocieties. 14

The evidence is thus very strong that Lerner's theory does de-scribe a basic historical process. It is significant that the theory isstronger when the data are for the years prior to 1960, and thatfor more recent years the evidence is more confused. In testingthe model Schramm and Ruggels discovered that literacy wasnot always so closely linked to urbanization and exposure tomass media was not as dependent upon literacy as the theorywould suggest. They conclude: The last decade has seen thegreat growth of radio (a medium that does not depend so heavi-ly on an urban concentration), of fast transportation, of primaryschools spread through rural areas. Is it not possible, therefore,that literacy is not so dependent on urbanization in 1961-64 asit was in 1951-54?"' 5

Certain basic processes, sometimes facilitated by governmen-tal policies, have been making more complicated the essentialcoherence of the modernization process. In some situations it isprobably safe to say that the process has indeed "broken down"in that the social order has been weakened by developmentsthat undermine rather than strengthen the effects of govern-mental policy. In short, political power has been further weak-ened by the developmental process.

On the other hand, there is considerable evidence that theless orderly patterns of development may not be entirely detri-mental to the ultimate growth of a society. Accelerated devel-opment in some areas may in time compel the society to ad-


vance in others and thus ultimately arrive at a new level ofcoherence. The fact that it is so difficult to judge the probableoutcomes of different patterns of change among even the mostgross social variables indicates that there must be considerableuncertainty as to the appropriateness of different governmentalpolicies with respect to communications development.

The one thing, however, that is clear is that it is easier to ef-fect communications development than most other aspects ofthe modernization process. With respect to the Third World ingeneral, it is striking how little governmental or state invest-ment there has been in communication facilities and the massmedia. In India and Turkey less than one-half of one percent ofinvestment outlays for the early five-year plan was committed tocommunications media.' 6 In spite of this low investment, it isstriking that the mass media appear to he having an increasinglyi mportant effect on developments in the Third World.

THE GROWTH OF THE MEDIAIn area after area comparisons between the developing and thedeveloped worlds seem to suggest that during the last twodecades the gap between the rich and the poor seems to begrowing. It is therefore extremely significant that the figures onthe number of radio sets per capita reveal that there has beenextraordinary growth in the last few years in the Third Worldand that the gap seems to be narrowing with respect to this par-ticular indicator. At present, radios reach more people than anyother medium and on a worldwide basis there is one radio forevery five persons. The spectacular rise in the number of radioreceivers in Africa and South Asia reflects in part the decliningcost of sets, but also the fact that the radio has become an in-creasingly indispensable and, in some cases, sole source of criti-cal information.

The picture with respect to newspapers, the second most im-portant medium in the world, suggests a much more static situ-ation. In fact, the per capita consumption of newspapers inLatin America has dropped from 1950 to 1970. There has beenno appreciable rise in the figures for South Asia and SoutheastAsia. On a worldwide scale it is interesting that there is possiblya greater difference in the exposure to newspapers than to anyother medium. The countries with low per capita consumptionshow only two or three copies per thousand people, whereas

Lucian V. Pye 439

chose with high levels show over five hundred copies per thou-sand people. The fact that the countries at the top of the scalefor newspaper consumption do not show any change over thelast twenty years suggests that the gap possibly can be reducedin the future. On the other hand, the comparative popularity ofradio over newspapers at the present time indicates how diffi-cult it will be economically to increase the numbers of news-papers in the poorer societies. At present the worldwide averageof newspapers is one for every eight persons.

The third most important medium of communication in theworld is television, and this also is a very dynamically growingmedium in parts of the developing world. Indeed, the spread oftelevision ma y be one of the most sensitive indicators as to thedifferences among developing countries. Whereas with radioswe find that the pattern is pretty uniform among all the de-veloping countries and therefore it is possible to talk in generalterms of trends in the Third World, with respect to televisionthe picture is much more differentiated and we find that inthose countries where television has made rapid advances, a risein general economic and social levels has been closely associatedwith that development. The most dynamically changing soci-eties in the Third World are those that have had the sharpestrise in television consumption; Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea,Iran, and Nigeria. The more static countries such as India, Cey-lon, and the poorer countries of black Africa show very little risein the use of television.

DILEMMAS OF COMMUNICATION POLICIESWith this historical background and a review of the theoriesabout the relationship of communication to modernization, itis appropriate now to turn to the question of public policiestoward the media in the Third World. It should be apparentthat policies of communication for national development usual-ly face some awkward dilemmas. The most basic dilemma iswhether the policies should concentrate on supporting the ad-ministratively oriented plans for economic development whichthe new elites associate with their expression of a new national-ism, or whether communication policy should be sensitive tothe diversity of subnational cultures and to the need to allow allsignificant segments in the new state to give expression to theirhistorical claims of identity. The first alternative would empha-

440 Comm.nication, Development, and Power

size the need to reduce any gap between the more Westernizedelite and the more traditional masses by using technologies ofmodern mass communication to assimilate the traditional into asynthetic national and quasi—middle-class culture. The secondchoice would give priority to offering subnational communitiesthe opportunity to strengthen their historical distinctivenessand give them a sense of genuine participation in the larger taskof nation building even at the risk of encouraging the develop-ment of separatists and new nationalist movements.

Posed in these most general terms the dilemma in the mindsof national leaders has often been seen as a choice between pub-licizing the merits of their own policies and the dangers of al-lowing others to advance their parochial views, It is thereforenot surprising that to the extent that governments in the ThirdWorld have communication policies, the emphasis is generallyone of providing (latent) propaganda in support of governmen-tal policies.

The development of effective communication policies is fur-ther complicated by considerable doubt over the efficiency ofthe mass media in changing attitudes and values. Over the lasttwo decades there has been an extensive debate about the powerof the mass media to change the thinking of people_ The ques-tion of the utility of the mass media in changing traditional at-titudes blends into the larger question of the relationship ofmass communication and personality changes. This is an issue,of course, that has been raised in terms of the effects of televi-sion on children and the efficacy of advertising in the developedworld. Unquestionably the media do have the capacity of influ-encing choices when a previous predisposition exists, as in thecase of advertising, or when there are other social processes atwork that would support the same tendencies. Thus, the massmedia can have a strong effect when there is a two-step flow ofcommunication in which the second step involves face-to-facecommunication that reinforces what the media are disseminat-ing. In terms of political development, it is quite clear that insome of the Communist states, and particularly in China, themass media probably have a high degree of effectiveness be-cause they are constantly being reinforced through the activitiesof party cadres who on a face-to-face basis reinforce the largermessages of the media.

The real question in the developing world is whether the

Lucian W',, Pye 441

media will have much effect when operating on their own. Inthe early 1950s there was some hope that the media might pro-vide a cheap and efficient way of changing attitudes and mobi-lizing support for the policies of the government. The lack ofany reinforcement, however, from the social context of the mes-sages that came through the mass media tended to bring disen-chantment. It is now clear that public information programs de-signed to teach new skills and impart new attitudes need boththe mass media and more direct contacts between officials andcitizens. 17

Communication policies that start on a modest basis and seekonly to support governmental policies have tended generally torun into some very complex cultural issues. The governmentmay start off with the assumption that it will try to communi-cate in the same voice to all its citizens and merely make adjust-ments as to the language in which the common message is dis-seminated. Yet, the requirement to speak in differentlanguages does inevitably bring up cultural issues. Are thosewho speak minority languages also to be treated as members ofa cultural minority? What is to be the culture of the majority?All communication policies tend in the end also to become partof the state's cultural policy. This means that in the new states,which have been formed largely on an administrative basisrather than on the ethnic-cultural basis, some very complexissues emerge. Should the culture of the new state have an his-torical orientation, or should it be focused largely on thefuture? If it is to be on the future, what concept of moderniza-tion will guide it and how is this to be different from the con-cept of Westernization?

Confronted with this dilemma, most states have tried to findsome basis in history that would reach beyond the colonial eraand provide a new sense of national identity and a source of le-gitimacy. Some of the new states have had rather thin historiesand therefore the attempt to look back has not been easy. Inother cases, the societies have had rich histories and the problembecomes one of selecting an appropriate period for the basis ofthe new nationalism. In India, for example, Prime MinisterNehru greatly admired the seventeenth-century emperor Akbarwho sought to create a Hindu-Moslem political and religioussynthesis. Yet appeals to the Akbar tradition would not only of-fend India's Moslems who regard him as a heretic, but also Hin-


dus and Sikhs who recall the Moguls as alien conquerors anddespots. 1s An alternative possibility in finding a neutral tradi-tion to appeal to was that of the Buddhist Asoka, who reignedabout 269-232 B.C. and was the greatest Buddhist leader. At-tempts to identify India with the history of Buddhism were use-ful in India's foreign relations, particularly with the Buddhistcountries of Southeast Asia and with China, but any effort to re-vive memories of Buddhism within India was quite futile.

Another major dilemma that arises in new states attemptingto develop historical traditions to strengthen their communica-tion policies is the necessity to compromise between seeking toreach a broad audience, which requires the search for a presti-gious and remote level of culture, and the need to motivate aparticular audience in terms of meaningful loyalties, which re-quires that the appeal be in terms of local and immediate cul-tures. This classic dilemma was most acute in the case of Pakis-tan, where the general appeal to Islam was not enough stronglyto motivate all segments of the society, and where, if there wasto be an appeal to more parochial cultures, the problems of di-visiveness would arise. Eventually in Pakistan, the realities ofthe more vital subcultures proved to be superior to the abstractappeal to Islam and to the fear of India.

Here we seem to have the heart of the problem: to create realpower and to motivate and affect the behavior of people, it hasbeen necessary to communicate in terms of local cultures andthe living strength of those ethnic groupings that tend to en'-phasize the plural nature of states which were created out of ad-ministrative boundaries rather than cultural ones. To avoid thispitfall, spokesmen have sought to appeal to a nationalism basedeither upon a history that is not vital or upon concepts of mod-ernization that tend to suggest the very weakness of states whichhave come out of a colonial experience. Most people in Burmaknow that the ''Burmese way to socialism" has to bean ineffec-tual approach because in their experiences with all thingsrelated to the modern world, anything imported is superior todomestic products, So it has been in many other parts of theworld.

THE GROPING FOR A NEW SYNTHESISAs the nationalisms that were built out of the anticolonial expe-rience begin to wear thin with the passing of generations, the

Lucian V. Pye 4/4 3

inevitable process in the Third World has been a trend towardmore explicit and open recognition of the ethnic divisions andthe reality of subcultures. The result has been a considerableconfusion over the basis of legitimacy of the state and the ap-propriate direction of social policies. On the other hand, theresult has also been the opening up of politics to the conmpcti-tive clashes of different ethnic or communal groupings. In thecase of Pakistan, the result was the dissolving of the state andthe creation of a new one. Elsewhere the strain has not been assevere but the authority of governments has generally beengreatly weakened.

The new era that seems to he approaching in many of theThird World societies will be characterized by new and more ex-plicit modes of accommodation among the different ethnicgroups. The need to recognize that they live in highly pluralisticsocieties is now increasingly accepted. Pretensions that a homo-geneous sense of nationalism pervades the entire society have robe abandoned. The result will be more complex patterns ofpublic policy as questions of equity and mutual understandingbecome central rather than the claims of an impersonal technol-ogy and the imperatives of efficiency.

It is conceivable that in this new phase communication poli-cies will become far more important than they were in the past.Control of the media and the creative use of the media will be-come central features in the establishment of the appropriatesense of ethnic identity. At the same time the communicationprocesses will be vital also in governing the degree to whichthese ethnic identities are effectively related to the new sense ofnational identity. Although the balance between the separatecommunities and the nation will be important in areas of eco-nomic, social, and educational policies, it is likely that whateveris communicated through the mass media will prove to he amore immediate and more sensitive variable in affecting thebalance between nation and community and any sense of in-justice.

NOTES

1. There is a danger today in overstating the extent to which changing pub-he moods about the prospects of the developing world were reflected in thewritings of scholars. The basic tone of Max F. N illikan and Donald L. M.


Blackmer, cds., The Emerging Nations (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1961) isfar more qualified and restrained than subsequent characterization might sug-gest, and Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 1968) is not as pessimistic as it has been madeout to be.

2. See, for example, Joseph T. Klapper, "What We Know About the Ef-fects of Mass Communications: The Brink of Hope," Public Opinion Quarterly 16 (Winter 1957-1958):453-474; V. B. Damle, '"Communications ofModern Ideas and Knowledge in Indian Villages," Public Opinion Quarterly20 (Spring 1956):257-.270.

3. The lag in time between the invention and application of a new technol-ogy in Europe and its appearance in the colonial world was in some respectsshorter than the contemporary pace of technological diffusion. Within adecade after the first commercially successful railroads were established inEngland and Holland, more extensive operations were planned for India andJava. A comparison of the general rate of diffusion of railroads with, say, thecurrent spread in the use of computers dramatizes the increasing unevennessin the distribution of the most advanced technologies.

.1. The advisory tradition of press and government in some colonies haspossibly affected the writing of history in that where historians have press ac-counts critical of government policies, they have been less inclined to acceptgovernment intentions on face value. Note, for example, how the relianceupon newspaper records provides for sharp criticism in John F. Cady, AHistory ofBurma (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959).

5. Asad Husain, "'].'he future of English Language Newspapers in India,"Jourrtalirm Quarterly 33 (Spring 1956):213-219.

6. A review of the issues in this debate is to be found in Rupert Emerson,From Empire to Nation (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959).

7. David Apter, Ghana in Transition (New York: Atheneum, 1963).8. W. Howard Wiggins, Ceylon: The Dilemmas of a Nation (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1960).9. Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma (London: Oxford University Press,

1957).10. The Passing of Traditional Society (Glencoe, ill.: The Free Press,

1958).11. ]bid., p. 46.12. Ibid., p. 60.13. Hayward R. Alker, Jr., ''Causal Inference and Political Analysis," in

Joseph Bernd, ed.. Mathematical Application,r in Political Science ( Dallas:Southern Methodist. University Press, 1966), pp. 7-43.

14. Donald J. McCrone and Charles F. Cnudde, "Toward a Communica-tions Theory of Democratic Development: A Causal Model," American Po/it

ica! Science Review 61 ( March 1967):78.

Lucian Tom. Pye 445

15. Wilbur Schramm and W. Lee Ruggels, "How Mass Media SystemsGrow," in Daniel Lerner and Wilbur Schramrn, eds, Communication andChange in The Developing Countries ( Honolulu: East-West Center Press,1967), p. 66.

16. Ithiel de Sola Pool, ''The Mass Media and Politics in the Moderniza-tion Process,'' in Lucian W. Pyc, ed., Communications andPolitrcalDevelop-menl (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 231; Frederick W.Frey, The Mass Media and Rural Development in Turkey, Rural DevelopmentResearch Project Report no. 3 (Cambridge: M.I.T. Center for InternationalStudies, 1966), p. 201.

17. ithiel de Sola Pool, pp. 234-253.18. McKim Marriott, "Cultural Policies in the New States,'' in Clifford

Geertz, Old Societies and Neu, States ( New York: The Free Press, 1963),p. 34.

16RHETORIC AND LAWIN INTERNATIONALPOLITICAL ORGANS

OSCAR SCHACHTER

This chapter is an exploratory essay on the role of legal languageand argumentation in international political bodies such as theGeneral Assembly and the Security Council of the United Na-tions, It starts from the premise—which is well supported by ob-servation—that legal categories (concepts, norms, rules) consti-tute a significant part of the common terminology, the code,with which the diverse participants in international politicalbodies communicate with each other and assimilate the flow ofinformation into that organ. A cognitive filter is thereby estab-lished with special characteristics derived from the juridicalfeatures of the code. This chapter explores some of the implica-tions of this and suggests how it affects the demands and expec-tations of the participants, the aspects of an issue that receive at-tention, the perceptions of common interests, and the solutionsproposed for collective action. I hasten to add that this maypromise too much, as I shall do little more than open up a largesubject and make a modest attempt. to throw new light on thelink between language, law, and political decision making. Thishas been done as an armchair exercise based mainly on impres-sions gathered over some thirty years as a ''participant-observer'' in United Nations political organs. I hope it will en-courage others to undertake more systematic empirical research,directed toward better understanding of how normative Ian-

Oscar Schachter 447

guage and structures can contribute to more rational and effec-tive decision processes on the international level.

As in the case of any organization, the political bodies in the in-ternational realm require a set of categories accepted by all theparticipants—with which to organize and assimilate the flow ofinformation into that system. Such information includes de-mands, claims, expectations, descriptions of events, predic-tions, and various other inputs into the decision processes of theorgan. The categories used to organize and assimilate those in-formational inputs constitute (in the parlance of informationtheory) a code that is employed by the participants as a commonlanguage to formulate the issues and their solutions. That codeis used also in the retention or accumulation of information (the"memory" of the organ) and therefore determines what arcregarded as precedents and prevailing practice. The encodingprocess is continuous and ma y go on without explicit recogni-tion by the participants. Those who participate in the organ—delegates and secretariat—learn the code, more or less naturally;if they did not, they would be unable to communicate in a com-mon language and would find it impossible to negotiate andreach agreements on the decisions sought.

It is not difficult to demonstrate that the code used to assimi-late the flow of information into the organ contains a significantnumber of legal categories. To put it in another way, the asser-tions and positions of the governments commonly refer torights, obligations, competence, and authority. This is particu-larly the case for political organs dealing with what are regardedas political matters, in contrast to technical issues. The reasonfor this is that such issues tend to be perceived in terms of theauthority or ' `discretion" of a. state to deal with a matter unilat-erally and of the right of the collective body to take up the mat-ter and to adopt decisions affecting the state in question. In ad-dition to this basic issue of competence or jurisdiction, there arelikely to be references to principles or rules of conduct that areregarded or asserted as binding on individual states. It thereforetends to be a common and characteristic feature of collective po-litical organs to categorize in legal concepts the facts and infor-mation that flow into the organ.

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When a question is raised as to an act of a government, thatact must be characterized (or "qualified') in terms that areaccepted as legal grounds for international competence if thematter is to be discussed at all. And, on the other side, thoseobjecting to such discussion will tend to characterize the gov-ernmental action in question as falling outside of categories rec-ognized as conferring jurisdiction. Clearly it is not enough for astate that brings a matter to the organ to assert its own interest—as, for example, that it has been injured or threatened withinjury or that it will profit from a proposed action. In the pres-ent state system, the international organ would not regard indi-vidual interest as sufficient without support in internationalnorms that permit the organ to take up that matter and takeother action. The boundary between the "reserved domain'' ofdomestic jurisdiction and international competence is largelyand necessarily delineated by reference to rights, duties, and therelated categories of law,

What are the consequences of this in the organ? What are theeffects of "coding" the information inputs into legal catego-ries? One is that the facts and the demands will be anal yzed andcategorized in terms of criteria that have to be justified by theirbasis in legal authority or "sources.'' In effect, this means thatthe criteria are expected to be derived from such sources as inter-national agreements or custom or general principles accepted aslaw. The issues and the debate then require specific support inpast decisions and in spelling out through lexical and semanticanalyses the meaning of formulations in the text. This can re-sult, and undoubtedly has done so in many cases, in shifting theattention of the organ away from the "merits'' of the particularcase into an inevitable consequence. It is also apparent that thepolitical organs can apply the legal categories so as to focus at-tention on the basic goals and values of the participants and onthe procedures for bringing about a reconciliation of conflictingpositions.

We should bear in mind, in this connection, that each politi-cal organ, like other complex systems, must maintain a measureof compatibility between its diverse activities and its multiplegoals and subgoals. Moreover, it is essential to keep the expecta-tions and motivations of its participants compatible with theroles they have to play. Their activities have to be perceived by

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them as fitting together in a meaningful way; there must be anunderstandable relationship between means and ends and asense that there is not an insoluble clash between conflictinggoals. These requirements (which may be characterized as aneed for cognitive consonance) impose on each political organcontinuing tasks of legitimization and integration. Both tasksare characteristically performed by the code references to au-thoritative doctrine—that is, to the charters and constitutionalinstruments and their principles, rules, and procedures thatconfer legitimacy and express accepted common goals. Hencethe appeal to law is not only an indispensable feature of therhetoric of political debate; it is deeply bound up with thefundamental needs (one might say the systemic needs) of politi-cal organs, especially organs composed of highly diverse mem-bers with conflicting interests and diverse outlooks.

IIAn interesting consequence of assimilating the informationalinput of such organs through legal categories is that it gives riseto an expectation among participants that the categories will beapplied on an objective basis or at least that they can be so ap-plied. More precisely, this means that it is understood that thequestion of "obligation" or ''right" can be and properlyshould be determined by reference to criteria that are to be ap-plied independently of the preference of the states concernedand that the participants must look to the generally recognizedtests of legal validity. Is this—one might ask—an actual expecta-tion, or is it only a manifestation of a rhetorical attempt to con-ceal political motives? This broad question needs to be consid-ered on different levels of analysis.

One such level is that of the overt behavior of the participantsin the organs. One cannot, to begin with, dismiss as unirnpor-tant the fact that governments actually devote a good deal ofti me and effort to legal argumentation. If they are themselvesparties to a controversy, they would not go to great lengths todemonstrate the legal validity of their position unless they felt aneed to do so. Moreover, the other governments—those towhom the arguments are addressed (especially those whose posi-tions have not been predetermined by ties of alliance or dcpcn-dencc)—will respond in most cases on the basis of the legal

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issue. It is indeed rare in a political organ—such as the GeneralAssembly or the Security Council that a noncommitted statewould assert that its attitude is determined by its own interest orpolitical preference. It will normally regard itself as obliged tobase its position on its understanding of the charter principle orrule involved. It will be aware that deviations from principle inparticular cases can be used to validate similar deviations in thefuture with the effect of weakening the whole structure. More-over, many governments will he concerned with demonstratingto their own constituencies (as well as to some segments offoreign communities) that they have supported commitmentsand lived up to expectations engendered by their acceptance ofrules of international order. This is not to say, of course, thattheir judgments are reached in the same way as those of theideal judge. In a political context, it is inescapable that nationalsympathies and calculations of advantage will enter into theprocess of decision. But I believe this does not vitiate the con-clusion that most such states when acting within the United Na-tions forum normally will seek to arrive at a judgment that canbe explained and justified as based upon (or at least consistentwith) the obligation of the charter and the rules of internation-al law.

But this brings us to another level of analysis. Assuming thatgovernments seek to arrive at judgments based on legal con-cepts, is it possible for them to do so "objectively''? We mustremember that in many cases the issues in political bodies re-volve around norms with a high degree of generality and ambi-guity, frequently these norms appear to be contradictory, point-ing to opposite conclusions, rarely are the facts agreed upon orthe circumstances regarded as governed by precedent. In suchsituations, is it possible intellectually for a supposedly '' impar-tial" government (or, for that matter, a disinterested observer)to determine its choice on grounds that are legally proper andobjective—that is, in terms of criteria which are based upon thecharter and accepted principles and which therefore transcendindividual preferences and interests?

If we look back at some of the specific controversies debatedin the United Nations—say, those relating to Cuba, Katanga,Goa, and Bangladesh—the difficulties of such decisions becomemore apparent. In all of these cases, the issues were framed and

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argued in terms of conflicting principles of the charter. Even ifthe issues were drastically simplified, they would still presentsharp choices as to the priority or importance of one governingnorm over another (which in many cases may be viewed as varia-tions on the recurrent antimony of ''peace" versus ''justice").In actual fact, the cases could not be reduced to that kind ofchoice alone, for they also involved conflicting assessments offacts--the political, economic, and psychological conditions—as well as varying estimates of the aims of the principal partici-pants. It is evident that. cases of this kind cannot be decidedsolely by looking at the words of the charter or by a logical anal-ysis of the relations of its propositions or, for that matter, byseeking the intentions of the drafters at San Francisco. Thesemay all be relevant and perhaps helpful but rarely will they pro-vide the answers to the complex and novel issues raised in thespecific cases mentioned or in most other political disputes. Tofind the answers within the limits of an impartial ''legal'' in-quiry, it seems essential to broaden considerably the frame ofrelevance and to apply criteria that go beyond the dictionarymeanings and other simple-minded means of interpretation,criteria that are, nonetheless, objective in the sense that theycan be validated in terms of generally accepted principles ratherthan on the basis of individual or group preferences.

What are examples of such objective criteria of interpreta-tion? Before attempting to suggest some, I should make it clearthat I am not proposing any novel task. The function of inter-pretation is essentially to fulfill the intentions and expectationsshared by the parties to the international agreement in ques-tion; this task can be carried out only through inferences fromtheir words and conduct and, as required, by reference to prin-ciples that can be established as authoritative and controllingfor them, To carry out this task in regard to political controver-sies of the kind mentioned above, the problem may become ex-traordinarily complex, involving a large number of variables,including, as a rule, "subjective'' factors (such as intentionsand expectations), estimates of future consequences, and con-flicting versions of past events. Such criteria as may be sug-gested would serve essentially as guides to the variables and tothe priorities that rationally should be taken into account in re-solving the issue.

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Obviously one set of such guiding principles would direct at-tention to those elements of the negotiation or drafting confer-ence (the travauxprcparatoires) that bear upon the intentions ofthe parties at that time. Examples of relevant elements wouldinclude statements of objectives and expectations, anticipatedand rejected solutions of problems foreseen, the relative impor-tance of particular parties (for example, sponsors, major powers)in asserting intentions, and soon. A second set of criteria wouldfocus on the expression and formulation of the terms of theagreement. It would point to such elements as consistency ofterminology, usage of terms, special meanings, logical struc-ture. One might also include in this context evidence of inten-tions of the parties manifested by subsequent conduct that hasbeen generally accepted.

These are all principles of interpretation that are recognizedin international usage. however, they constitute only a part ofthe methods of inquiry that would be necessary to resolve par-ticular controversies. A further set of criteria would be requiredto focus attention on those elements that relate to the fulfill-ment of the fundamental objectives of the agreement. For bothcommon sense and judicial experience demonstrate that inter-pretation requires more than looking backward to certain pre-determined results; it must include as well an assessment of theconsequences of a decision in relation to the major purposessought by the parties. In international law this is sometimes de-scribed as the "principle of effectiveness," and it is regarded asespecially pertinent in the interpretation of constitutional in-struments that are designed and expected to meet changing cir-cumstances for an undefined future. It is perhaps within theambit of this set of principles that one would include considera-tion of the postulates that lie beyond or beneath the words ofconstitutional provisions, for these, too, as many jurists haverecognized, arc implicitly part of the compact itself and mayproperly be given weight in resolving the conflicts between ex-plicit rules.

Some will say, at this point, that we have now left the realmof objective legal interpretation and moved into that of politicalprinciples and social values. The suggestion that one must lookto the "consequences of a decision in the light of its relation tomajor purposes" or to the ''postulates that lie beneath a text"

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will be regarded as another way of introducing political consid-erations and "subjective" preferences. However, it can be thatthe criteria themselves and the process of choice should be vali-dated by reference to principles that are ascertained and appliedobjectively, that is, independently of particular individual pref-erences. In fact, the principles of interpretation we have alreadysuggested are indications of such objective standards. I wouldemphasize that there is an important difference between polit-ical communication which seeks to base choice on agreed princi-ple and that in which there is an assertion of will or fiat, restingon nothing more than a particular interest without sanction inagreement or community policy,

What is perhaps the most difficult point for many is reconcil-ing the procedures of impartial, reasoned analysis with the ulti-mate act of choice that must, in the end, be made. For no mat-ter how many standards may be employed and how many factsestablished, the element of human choice would not be elimi-nated; in that sense the process of interpretation could not be"depersonalized" and mechanized. But an essential point isthat the act of choice by a state of a collective body need not bearbitrary. It is not arbitrary when it has been decided—or can hejustified—on the ground of its conformity to authoritative prin-ciples and rules that are themselves verifiable through objectiveprocedures and empirical evidence. Thus, while it may seemthat the assertion of claims in legal terms emphasizes the self-interest of the individual state, the process of dealing with com-peting legal claims in a multipartisan organ leads away from ex-pressions of individual interests to a search for accepted norms.It is for this reason that the rhetoric of law--the debate andframing of issues in legal phraseology—goes beyond rhetoricand encourages a process of ascertaining authoritative normsand, through that process, of identifying common interests andpreferences. This is so even though the process remains politicalwithout any reference to an objective third party for determina-tion of the legal issues.

IllThis last observation suggests that the appeal to law in politicalorgans does not imply that there will be ''adjudicative" deci-sions—that is, decisions that involve responding in affirmative

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or negative terms to the question of whether the "law' hasbeen complied with. Many of the problems that come beforethe international political bodies are simp]y not susceptible tosuch adjudicative procedures. In these situations, the functionof legal concepts is to facilitate a legislative solution (rather thanan adjudication) by providing a normative basis for ordering re-lations and creating stability of expectations.

The use of legal categories also arises from the need for orga-nizing coalitions in the political organ concerned. Such coali-tions, which arc required to bring about majority decisions,often will depend on the acceptance of a common principle bystates having divergent interests and ideologies. This is not tosay that considerations based on ties of alliance or on politicalbargaining are excluded; clearly they play an important role.However, in the present heterogeneous international communi-ty, the building of majorities necessitates a wide range of sup-port by states with divergent interests and ties. For this reason,it is important for those who seek a majority to build their caseon principles that are widely shared. The juridical expression ofsuch principles, as formulated in the basic instruments and doc-trincs, may serve as an essential clement in the construction ofthe political coalition.

This can be seen in the efforts made in the United Nations aswell as in meetings of the Third World to put forward politicaland economic demands on the basis of such principles and con-cepts as "sovereignty over natural resources'' and the right ofself-determination. A not insignificant aspect of the politicalstrategy is to seek an elaboration of declarations and chartersframed in the language of rights and duties of states that thencan be utilized in specific cases to organize support among thelarge majorities that have subscribed to the declarations andcharters, even though their precise legal effect may be uncer-tain. The repetition of authoritative norms thus serves to createor reaffirm a solidarity of interest.

Somewhat related to this is still another dimension that is af-fected by the use of legal categories in international politicalorgans. It must be remembered that such organs do more thanpass upon claims of states engaged in disputes. They are alsosources of authority for institutional action by or in the name ofthe international organization. That may include peacekeeping

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or international regulatory and operational functions. Whensuch collective actions are instituted or authorized by the inter-national political organs, such as the General Assembly of theUnited Nations, there is a determination of the common inter-est of member states that often finds expression in a legal con-cept or principle. This may range from broad concepts such asres eornmuncs to specific concepts of state responsibility onwhich are based rules of restraint or arrangements for multina-tional regulatory or management operations in the common in-terest. By employing such legal concepts, the governments areable to express in a succinct and understandable way how con-flicting claims may be resolved in an institutional context. Italso enables them to specify by the juridical categorization howresources may be managed (or distributed) through an enter-prise that supersedes the laissez-faire system of a decentralizedlegal order, I do not intend to suggest that conflicts are neces-sarily eliminated in this way. It may well be that a new collectiveinstitution will sharpen the demands of a particular group andpossibly result in an increased benefit to them. The principalpoint for the present discussion Is that an international politicalorgan will have devised a new arrangement for dealing withconflicting claims through a conception that enables (and com-pels) governments to see the problems in a different way. Illus-trations of this can be found in a wide range of international ar-rangements, as, for example, in regard to the common resourcesof the seas or the regulation of international telccommunica-tions.

We should not completely overlook the situations in whichlegal rhetoric does stimulate adjudicative decisions (in contrastto legislative solutions) in political bodies. It must be remem-bered that the assertion of a legal right or grievance is often anessential condition of bringing a matter before an internationalpolitical body. This is notably true in cases affecting interna-tional peace and human rights. In these situations, the issueconcerns the conduct of a specific state (or group of states) thatis challenged or complained of by others. For an internationalorgan to have the right to concern itself with the case, it is essen-tial that the conduct should not be within the exclusively na-tional competence (the "domestic" jurisdiction of the state) orthe recognized sovereign prerogatives of the state. It is for this

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reason that a challenge to the conduct of a state in matters ofpeace or human rights is normally put forward on the basis of an.alleged violation of a rule of law, whether based on treaty orcustom. This reflects the underlying conception that the prerog-atives of national states to act as they please are rooted in basicprinciples of law and that any questioning of the exercise ofthose prerogatives must be predicated similarly on legal pre-scriptions. The consequence is that political bodies perform anadjudicatory function of passing upon compliance with legalrules and determining rights and obligations in concrete situa-tions_ As we have already seen, this gives rise to a demand forobjective determination and to problems of validation and in-terpretation discussed in the preceding section.

We should observe that it also involves a legislative or norm-creating activity in that the application of general rules to con-crete cases implies as a matter of logic the assertion of a rule of amore specific character than the general rule applied. This is soeven though the participants in the political organ disclaim anyintention to legislate and declare they do not intend to create aprecedent. The question whether a particular decision will heregarded in actual practice as asserting a new rule for futurecases does not depend entirely on the intent of the members ofthe organ at the time they adopted that decision. Whether theylike it or not, a decision rendered by an authoritative body (evenif it is political and not judicial) enters into the body of deci-sions that will be looked to in the future as a source of law. Theconsequence is that when similar cases arise in the future, oneside or another will argue that the earlier decision is a precedentand persuasive, if not controlling, for the new case. In this way,the introduction of legal categories in a controversial case maynot only lead to an authoritative decision but also may contrib-ute to the creation and development of new rules of law. Thiswould not be the case if the issues were treated purely as politi-cal questions without reference to the concepts of law and to theexplicit or implied assertions of legal obligation.

In conclusion, it can be said that the use of legal categoriesand legal argumentation in international political organsinvolves more than rhetoric to cover tip the play of power andinterest. In a variety of ways, often subtle, it has profound con-

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sequences for the political process and for institutional develop-ments. A.s I have indicated, the common code through whichthe participants communicate and the categories through whichinformation is assimilated arc, to a marked degree, juridical,and this significantly affects the demands, expectations, and re-sponses of the participants and the collective functioning of theorgan. This chapter has rioted in particular the relation betweenlegal rhetoric and the requirements of cognitive consonance andlegitimization of diverse activities; it has suggested how legalconcepts give rise to expectations of objective appraisal and in-fluence perceptions of common interests; and it has pointed tothe effect of juridical language on the building of political co-alitions, the development of collective action, and the processof norm creation. All of this demonstrates that even in thehighly political context of international bodies, law has a perva-sive influence, an influence that does not flow so much fromformal authority as from the processes of communication andconceptualization in those bodies. It is to he hoped that scholarswill look more closely into these processes and seek to relatethem particularly to the policy goals and effective functioningof the international organs dedicated to world order and justice,

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