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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
Relating the notion of political community to those of discrimination and legitimacy — and, consequently, setting up a typology which will contrast communities by the criteria they use to distinguish members from non-members and by the location they give to legitimacy, placed either in a ruler or in a process — will be made easier if we consider first of all certain striking similarities which exist between the most private of social groups, the family, and the most public, the state, similarities which probably facilitate the transfer of the ideological constructs formed in infancy and childhood into the political expectancies and assumptions of adulthood. Let us distinguish communities defined through the brothers from communities defined through the father: communities centered around a leader from those centered on themselves. These contrasts will suggest to us a natural/ artificial continuum along which political communities can be ranked, those most resembling the family in their ideas about legitimate authority and legitimate membership being closer to the ‘natural’ end of the continuum. I will explain later the reasons for this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, but I must at the outset make it absolutely clear that the use of these terms does not in any way imply an evaluative preference on my part.
1 Aristotle noted that the state, like the family, was organized in function of three ‘natural’ relationships: the husband-wife, the master-slave and the parent-child. The latter relationship provides Freud with the theory that what begins in relation to the father is completed in relation to the group. See Aristotle, The Politics, Book 1; and Freud, S., Civilization and Its Discontent (London: Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1930).Google Scholar
2 Whether one measures the lengths of childhood in absolute terms or in relation to life expectancy, but especially the former. See Schultz, Adolph H., ‘Some factors influencing the social life of primates in general and of early man in particular’ in Washburn, S. L., ed., Social Life of Early Man (Chicago: Aldine, 1961), 69 ff.Google Scholar A species with as low a rate of reproduction as man would quickly disappear if the long period which precedes the age of reproduction was not also a period of extensive care and protection by adults.
3 On the importance of the parent-child and of the child-child patterns of relationship to the process of socialization see, among many others, Piaget, Jean, ‘Pensée égocentrique et pensée sociocentrique’, Cahiers internationaux de sociologie de I'enfance, X (1951), 34–49Google Scholar; and ‘Problémes de la psycho-sociologie de I'enfance’ in Gurvitch, G., ed., Traité de sociologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960), pp. 229–54.Google Scholar
4 Bergson did not to my knowledge address himself to the problem that interests me here, but his preferred analytical formula, that is his description of evolution as the spiraling interweaving of opposites, or at least conflicting tendencies, offers a model particularly well suited to the explanation of social and psychological phenomena. See in particular his l'Evolution créatrice in Bergson, H. L., Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959).Google Scholar
5 See Easton, D., The Political System (New York: Knopf, 1953), pp. 125 ff.Google Scholar
6 After hesitating on the qualifier ‘legitimate’, I decided against it on the ground that illegitimacy of its government may be as binding on a community as legitimacy. One could however build the concept into the definition by stating that the authority under which the community is gathered is that of an assumed, existing or desired ‘legitimate’ government.
7 Not only is the parent-child relationship necessarily hierarchic during the crucial years of early socialization, but in most cultures, the family has, during that period, a monopoly or near monopoly of access to and influence on the child. See Dawson, Richard E. and Prewitt, Kenneth, Political Socialization (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), p. 106 ff;Google ScholarElkin, Frederick, The Child and Society: the Process of Socialization (New York: Random House, 1960), p. 47.Google Scholar Christian Bay, who builds his ideal polity on the absence of physical coercion, admits reluctantly that a major exception must be made for children and young people. See Bay, C., The Structure of Freedom (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 104.Google Scholar
8 I take father to signify the fatherly type of authority, brother to signify the brotherly type of authority. For this reason it is unimportant to me whether the father is a mother or whether the brothers are sisters or friends. A closer and more refined view of the problem would of course show that it does indeed matter who the father is. For an attempt at classifying societies according to the relative importance given to either the male or the female parent see Taylor, G. R., Sex in History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1959).Google Scholar The father/brother alternative corresponds to the lineal/collateral distinction made by Kluckholn and Strodtbeck, who see the latter as one of the three basic contrasts by which to characterize a culture, the other two being submission to or mastery over the environment and orientation to either past or future. See Kluckholn, F. R. and Strodtbeck, F. L., Variations in Value Orientations (Evanston: Row, Peterson, 1961).Google Scholar See Chap. I in particular.
9 See in particular Deutsch, Karl W., Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality, second edn. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1966);Google ScholarDeutsch, Karl W., et al. , Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957);Google ScholarDeutsch, Karl W., Political Community at the International Level (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1954).Google Scholar See also his contribution to Jacob, Philip E. and Toscano, James V.. eds., The Integration of Political Communities (New York: Lippincott, 1964).Google Scholar
10 Ferrero, Guglielmo, The Principles of Power (New York: Putnam, 1942).Google Scholar
11 A summary and discussion of the findings on stratification is presented in Tumin, Melvin M., Social Stratification: the Forms and Functions of Inequality (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar See also Tiger, Lionel, ‘Dominance in Human Societies’, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics, I (1970), 287–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For examples, albeit weak and unconvincing to me, showing the possibility of egalitarian societies, see Fried, Morton H., The Evolution of Political Society (New York: Random House, 1967).Google Scholar
12 This is demonstrated most clearly by the studies using the semantic differential developed by Osgood and his colleagues. See Osgood, Charles E., Suci, G. J., Tannenbaum, P. H., The Measurement of Meaning (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1957).Google Scholar The importance of up/down for ordering ideas and perceptions and the association of up with good is shown in De Soto, Clinton B., London, Marvin and Handel, Stephen, ‘Social Reasoning and Spatial Paralogic’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, II (1965), 513–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 For example, in specific contexts lying down may be positive and standing up negative; but abstracted from such contexts standing up is positive by contrast to lying down.
14 Eliade, Mircea, Images et symboles (Paris: Gallimard, 1952)Google Scholar; for a study of the tendency of the linguistically weaker term in a polarity to pattern itself on the stronger one see Malkiel, Y., ‘Lexical Polarization in Romance Language’, Language, XXVII (1951), 485–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Among the taboos resulting from the unequal valuing of spatial polarities, note that mentioned by Granet in his study of Chinese customs and rituals; it was for a long time forbidden to do headstands at the court of the Emperor, for this would have symbolized the reversal of position of earth and sky, the head having become associated with the sky and the feet with the earth. See Granet, M., Etudes Sociologiques sur la Chine (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953), p. 267.Google Scholar
15 Lévy-bruhl, L., La Mentalité primitive (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1922).Google Scholar
16 Lévy-bruhl, L., ‘A Letter to E. C. Evans-Pritchard’, British Journal of Sociology, III (1952), 117–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Lévi-strauss, C., La Pensée sauvage (Paris: Plon, 1962).Google Scholar
18 The ability to reverse a perception presupposes the storing in one's memory of symbolic models and structures within which the reversal can be done and undone. These structures are more or less developed according to individuals and cultures. Piaget has studied the appearance and the development of the ability to perform symbolic reversals among children. See Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B., The Child's Conception of Space (London: Routledge and Regan Paul, 1948).Google Scholar
19 In this last case, it would be interesting to find out whether the resistance of the Canton of Appenzel to the introduction of women's suffrage is not, in addition to the preference for male dominance, due also to a desire not to change the looks, that is the very physical looks, of a political community used to see itself as a particular type of assembly, in a particular kind of dress, an assembly from which power is supposed to spring and consequently an assembly which could not be changed without tampering with the very notion of legitimacy. If the spring of a river is altered, is it still the same river?
20 See Coleman, James S. and Rosberg, Carl G., eds., Political Parties and National Integration in Tropical Africa (Berkeley, Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964)Google Scholar; Almond, Gabriel and Coleman, James S., eds., The Politics of Developing Areas (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar, Liddle, R. W., Ethnicity, Party and National Integration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970).Google Scholar
21 See Lorwin, V., ‘Segmented Pluralism: Ideological Cleavages and Political Cohesion in the Smaller European Democracies’, Comparative Politics, III (1971), 141–76.CrossRefGoogle ScholarLijphart, Arend, ‘Cultural Diversity and Theories of Political Integration’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, IV (1971), 1–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Lijphart, A., The Politics of Accommodation: Pluralism and Democracy in the Netherlands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).Google Scholar
22 For this impressionistic analysis I rely on personal observations in Quebec at the time of the imposition of the War Measures Act, and on conversations with colleagues, in particular with Léon Dion and Gérard Bergeron of Laval and Daniel LaTouche of McGill. See also contemporary articles in Devoir, Le, in particular in the issue of 30 12 1970.Google Scholar Among the works written since then see Saywell, John, Quebec 1970 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), especially p. 118 for survey data.Google Scholar
23 One could of course reverse my argument and see in the absence of collective action the proof of an absence of generalized insecurity. Such was not my impression at the time, but I grant that I did not find this feeling of insecurity among students, quite the contrary, though they were the group which at the time could have most quickly mobilized for such collective actions.
24 See Deutsch, K., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).Google Scholar
25 It is important to note that in Quebec the Provincial premier has usually had somewhat higher visibility than the Prime Minister. At the time of P. E. Trudeau's election, however, the reverse occurred. This is my impression at least, which could be verified by content analysis of newspapers.
26 See Hertz, Frederick, Nationality in History and Politics (London: Kegan Paul, 1945)Google Scholar, and Kohn, Hans, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1944)Google Scholar; see also Kohn, Hans, The Age of Nationalism (New York: Harper, 1962).Google Scholar
27 u stands for what remains unexplained (God for example); like any of the other factors it can have an value.
28 I purposely stretch the usual meaning of random to mean here that any biological, cultural or free-will factor will do.
29 According to my notes at a Paris Round Table of the Association francaise de science politique, mai 25–26,1962.Google Scholar See also his analysis of nationalism in Domenach, J. M., Barrispar luimeme (Paris: Seuil, 1954)Google Scholar, in which the author shows his preference for an open nationalism, that of the Barres of earlier years, that which led Barres from egoism toward some form of socialism; and in which he shows by contrast his distaste for the nationalism of Barres’ second manner, a closed, protective, excluding and divisive ideology.
30 See ‘Qu'est-ce que la nation?’ a lecture given at the Sorbonne in 1882 in Renan, E., Discours et conferences (Paris: Caiman LeVy, 1935), pp. 277–310.Google Scholar
31 Trudeau, P. E., Le fédéralisme et la société canadienne française (Montréal: Editions H.M.H., 1967).Google Scholar
32 In the preceding section, when speaking of communities defined through the father, we considered the will of the ruler; we are now considering the will of those who are ruled, of their will to join and share.
33 For a survey on the strength of separatism, see Jenson, Jane and Regenstreif, Peter, ‘Some Dimensions of Partisan Choice in Quebec, 1969’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, III (1970), 308–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Maclean, 's Magazine, 05 1971.Google Scholar In the provincial election of October 1973, the independence party (Parti Québécois) obtained slightly over 30 per cent of the total vote. Since the French ethnic group accounts for about 80 per cent of Quebec's population, one can assume that the number of French Québécois supporting a separatist party was between 35 and 40 per cent.
34 Quoted in Johannet, R., Le Principe des nationalites (Paris: Nouvelle librairie nationale, 1923), p. 211.Google Scholar
33 Among the exceptions is Malaysia. See Groves, H. E., The Constitution of Malaysia (Singapore: Malaysia Publications, 1964), p. 215.Google Scholar
36 For the exceptions to the rule of adoption of the rulers’ religion, see Laponce, J. A., The Protection of Minorities (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1960).Google Scholar For studies of political migrations in twentieth century Europe see Kulischer, Eugene, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948)Google Scholar; Schechtman, J. B., Postwar Population Transfers in Europe 1945–1955 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the world wide pattern of refugee migrations, see Bouscaren, A. T., International Migrations Since 1945 (New York: Praeger, 1963).Google Scholar
37 See Stephens, J. S., Danger Zones in Europe: A Study of National Minorities (London: L. and V. Woolf, 1929).Google Scholar See other examples in Laponce, The Protection of Minorities.
38 For an experimental demonstration of this possibility, see Sherif, M., Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (Norman: Institute of Group Relations, University of Oklahoma, 1961).Google Scholar
39 ‘Considerations on the Government of Poland’ in Rousseau, J. J., Political Writings (New York: Nelson, 1953), p. 163.Google Scholar
40 Small religio-political communities such as the Hutterites are very close to that extreme.
41 See Deutsch's chapters in Jacob and Toscano, The Integration of Political Communities.
42 For a review of the problem of stress and aggression in society, see the collection of essays in Bramson, Leon and Goethals, George W., eds., War: Studies from Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology (New York: Basic Books, 1968);Google Scholar see in particular Hebb, D. O. and Thompson, W. R., ‘Emotion and Society’, pp. 45–64.Google Scholar
