democratic transition. A classic example of the 19th and early 20th centuries
is theDemocratic Party machine in the US city of Chicago, which
continued to be very influential in the city’s politics until the 1960s. A ‘party
machine’ implies a highly efficient group of party activists, some at least full-
time paid party agents, who organize the vote of the party faithful and deliver it
reliably to candidates approved by the party leaders. Clearly there has to be
some incentive for voters loyally to follow the instructions of their party
organizers (typically the party ‘precinct captain’ in the major US cities). The
big US machines thrived on the mass immigration of the Industrial Revolu-
tion. Thousands of European immigrants would arrive in the cities to be met
by the party workers who would help organize their accommodation and jobs
in return for political support. As the machines became established, their
control over patronage, ensuring the control of thousands of civil-service
employees in the city governments, helped further ensure their power.
Ultimately it became impossible to have a political career without the support
of the leading party officials who inevitably demanded favours, either personal,
or in terms of legislative and executive decisions made by those they arranged
to have elected.
Once a city administration was controlled by nominees of the party, there
was little to stop it from increasing its power. Anyone who wanted a licence to
run a bar, sell newspapers, or almost anything else would end up owing the
party loyalty. A very similar process occurred in Italy in the post-1945 period
when internal immigration from the south provided supporters either for the
Communist Party or the Christian Democrats in the northern industrial
centres. In fact the Christian Democrat party machine was equally strong in
the south, sometimes acting extremely crudely. (A notorious example involves
a mayor of Naples who distributed left-foot shoes to poor, potential voters
before an election, with the matching right shoes not to be delivered until after
the election, should he win.) Party machines depend on an ignorant and
economically vulnerable population and on the possibility, through a patron-
age system, of political control of civil-service appointments. All three factors
have largely disappeared from modern political systems.
Political Obligation
Political obligation is the theory of why, and when, a person is morally obliged
to obey a government. There is a series of alternative theories to account for
the requirement to obey governments. Probably the most commonly referred
to is the idea ofconsent, but arguments ranging fromdivine righttoforce
majeurehave also been presented. Political obligation is at the heart ofsocial
contractpolitical philosophies, in which its exact form depends upon the
description of the hypotheticalstate of nature. There is, of course, no general
Political Obligation