Abstract
Force is an element in any political system and its crucial role both in establishing and maintaining the Soviet regime scarcely needs demonstrating. However, in most systems the compliance of the population with the demands of their rulers depends not only on the threat or actuality of coercion, but also on a measure, at least, of belief in the ‘legitimacy’ of such demands, and I would claim that the Soviet Union is no exception to this. In other words we are dealing here with a system of authority, and not just of power.
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Notes
Cf. Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe, trs. David Fernbach (London, 1978 ), pp. 237–9;Archie Brown, ‘Eastern Europe: 1968, 1978, 1998’, Daedalus, winter 1979, pp. 151-74.
See T. H. Rigby, ‘Weber’s Typology of Authority: A Difficulty and Some Suggestions’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 11, no. 1 (1966)2–15.
See especially Alfred G. Meyer, The Soviet Political System: An Interpretation (New York, 1965 ).
See Stephen White, ‘The USSR: Patterns of Autocracy and Industrialism’, in Archie Brown and Jack Gray (eds), Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (London, 1977 ) pp. 25–65.
See T. H. Rigby, Lenin’s Government: Sovnarkom 1917–1922 (Cambridge, 1979) pp. 110–12. The fact that Trotsky had never been part of this community of Lenin’s followers probably contributed significantly to his isolation within the party leadership in the 1920s.
Cf. T. H. Rigby, ‘The Soviet Regional Leadership: The Brezhnev Generation’, Slavic Review, xxxvn, no. I (1978) 2–3.
Alvin W. Gouldner, ‘Organizational Analysis’, in Robert K. Merton, L. Broom and L. S. Cottrell (eds), Sociology Today (New York, 1958 ) p. 250.
See especially Peter Barach and Morton S. Baratz, ‘The Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review, LVI, no. 4 (1962) 947–52.
Notably by Matthew A. Crenson, The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decision-making in the Cities (Baltimore and London, 1971 ).
Ferenc Fehér, ‘The Dictatorship over Needs’, Telos, no. 35 (1978) 31–42.
T. H. Rigby, ‘Crypto-politics’, Survey, no. 50 (1964) 183–94.
See Donald R. Kelley, ‘Environmental Policy-Making in the USSR: The Role of Industrial and Environmental Interest Groups’, Soviet Studies, xxv111, no. 4 (1976) 570–89.
See Joel J. Schwarz and William R. Keech, ‘Group Influence and the Policy Process in the Soviet Union’, American Political Science Review, Lx11, no. 3 (1968) 840–51.
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© 1980 T. H. Rigby
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Rigby, T.H. (1980). A Conceptual Approach to Authority, Power and Policy in the Soviet Union. In: Rigby, T.H., Brown, A., Reddaway, P. (eds) Authority, Power and Policy in the USSR. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06655-1_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-06655-1_2
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