perspective on comparative politics are presented, especially the con-
cepts of function and ‘structural differentiation’ when applied to political
systems, the motivation behind this theoretical position, and the main criti-
cisms that have been levelled against it.
The idea of neo-colonialism explored in Chapter 4 questions the signifi-
cance of formal independence for post-colonial societies. It was assumed
that constitutional independence would mean that indigenous governments,
representing the interests of local people rather than alien groups, would
have sovereign state power at their disposal. However, what the new rulers
of many ex-colonies found was that the major proportion of the resources
available to them were controlled from metropolitan centres that hitherto
had ruled their countries directly. Within political science the politicalman-
ifestations of this domination proved difficult to describe in concrete terms,
except for those for whom politics was merely an epiphenomenon of the
economic. The nature of the economic linkages could easily be described,
but the domestic political effects were left to be inferred from them.
Dependency theory, which had its roots in the crisis of US liberalism in
the late 1960s and a major critique of modernization theory, adds the idea of
peripherality, or satellite status, to the concept of neo-colonialism. It origi-
nated in an analysis of Latin America where circumstances that might
be expected under conditions of colonialism or only recently liberated
ex-colonies were found in states that had been independent since the early
or mid-nineteenth century. The main constituents of dependency theory are
the idea of a hierarchy of states, the concept of ‘underdevelopment’, a view
about the nature of capitalism, propositions concerning ‘disarticulation’,
and the effect of economic dependency on the structure of political power.
The next four chapters turn to specific institutional arrangements and the
attempts by political scientists to produce valid theoretical statements about
the most significant political institutions in Third World societies: the state,
political parties, the bureaucracy and the military. Interest in the post-colonial
state has in part been a reaction against the economic reductionism found in
dependency theory and in part an extension of a resurgence of interest in the
nature of the capitalist state within mainstream Marxist thought. In Chapter 5
a developmentalist view of the state, or political system, is contrasted with
neo-Marxist theorizing about the state in Third World societies. A contro-
versy about the implications of globalization for the state is also examined.
Chapter 6 deals with theories explaining the importance of political parties
in Third World politics. Ideological foundations in class, European political
ideas, religion, ethnicity, and populism with its attendant factionalism and
patronage politics, are considered. The conditions required for the survival
Preface ix