radical. Institutions and practices are given no inherent value, only their
consequences matter. They are only preserved until they cease to be of util-
ity to society. That allows for as much change as a society feels it needs to
achieve its goals. However, the main thrust of functionalism is towards a
conservation of what already is in place. It encourages a search for the
benefits of surviving institutions. New generations have to be socialized
into the existing mores of society. Functionally oriented social scientists
approach structures expecting them to have positive, functional conse-
quences, and so contribute to the persistence of a society. There is no other
way of thinking about functionalism as a method other than one that guides
enquiry towards explanations of how societies maintain themselves and
survive under their present arrangements. Institutions are assumed to con-
tribute to the health of the whole social and political fabric. Approaching
institutions by seeing them as supportive of society implies some normative
consensus which is then endorsed by the investigator who credits those
institutions with positive values by deeming them to be functional.
From a non-consensus viewpoint, which finds it hard to think of political
systems as consisting of mutually supporting elements, functionalism appears
to adopt a very conservative stance, oriented towards preserving the status quo
and leading to suspicion and hostility to change. If it is assumed that society is
a functionally integrated organic entity a bias is introduced against disturbance
to the system. That mode of analysis is hostile to criticism of what is happen-
ing in a particular society and to proposals for change that will disturb a set of
structures that are functional to the continuing existence of that society.
The conservative bias of functionalism became increasingly visible as the
focus of attention moved towards explanations of crisis, instability and dis-
order. Crisis is seen to be a problem for élites. So a crisis is what the current
élite deems to be so. Authoritarianism is then seen as a legitimate way for
élites to manage crisis. Order is made the highest political good. Opponents
of regimes are described as ‘system wreckers’: ‘the interest in order of those
at the top is given logical precedence over the interest in social justice of
those below’ (Sandbrook, 1976, pp. 180–1). Supposedly value-free, scien-
tific models of political development end up leaving an ideological message
(Cammack, 1997).
Unilinearity
The fallacy of placing societies on a continuum between traditional and
modern, along which all societies progress during their histories, led to the
proposition that the new states appearing on the international scene as
66 Understanding Third World Politics