of party systems, such as economic growth and social stratification, are set
out. The survival of parties as institutions is also of concern as the move-
ment for democracy gathers momentum in the Third World.
Bureaucracies are important political organizations in all political sys-
tems. Theories of the post-colonial state have employed the concept of a
bureaucratic oligarchy, clearly implying that government is in the hands of
the paid officials of the state. Chapter 7 distinguishes between different con-
cepts of bureaucracy and shows that all are contained in the analyses that
have been carried out of the role of the bureaucracy in Third World societies
and states. Sources of bureaucratic power are categorized, as well as bureau-
cratic features which have been taken to be signs of the emergence of a new
kind of ruling class. Bureaucracy also implies a certain kind of rationality in
the context of the official allocation of scarce resources. Thus Chapter 7
considers the theory of ‘access’.
Chapter 8 examines military intervention and the coup d’état. Different
types of military intervention in politics are distinguished and explanatory
factors identified as accounting for the coupas the most extreme form of
intervention are considered. The problems associated with statistical causal
analysis as a means of explaining military intervention are outlined, since
this has been a popular method of analysis in the past. Some prescriptions
for ensuring that the military ‘remain in barracks’ after democratization are
examined.
The final chapters deal with challenges to the status quo and therefore the
political instability which is so frequently found in Third World societies.
First, Chapter 9 examines the demand for independence on the part of ethnic
or national minorities: the phenomenon of secession. This is a very wide-
spread feature of Third World politics. Three theories of separatism are
examined: political integration, internal colonialism, and ‘balance of advan-
tage’. It is suggested that explanations of nationalism and secession need a
class dimension because of the social stratification found within cultural
minorities, the petty-bourgeois leadership of ethnic secessionist movements,
and the significance for the outcome of nationalism of the reaction of the
dominant class in the ‘core’ community to nationalist political mobilization.
Chapter 10 examines the theoretical preconditions for political stability
that have been formulated in terms of poverty, the rate of economic growth,
the revolution of rising expectations, foreign influences, ethnicity, the polit-
ical culture, inequality, crises of authority and political institutionalization.
The theoretical or empirical weaknesses of these conclusions are identified,
namely that correlation does not necessarily prove causality, that poor and
underdeveloped countries can be stable especially if authoritarian, that
x Preface