968 THE AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
64
gram. Wilbur notes here the heavy emphasis upon
vocational and technical training, in the formation
of "human capital."
The second half of the book is concerned with
the application of the Soviet model to the devel-
opment of Soviet Central Asia—the five republics
of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizia, Tadjikistan,
and Turkmenistan. It is undoubtedly true that
these Asian portions of the Soviet Union had, in
1928, all of the characteristics of an underdeveloped
area. And the statistical evidence cited also sup-
ports the conclusion that the subsequent "develop-
ment of Central Asia by the Soviet regime is an
excellent example of substantial economic devel-
opment produced quickly and under governmental
auspices." But this reviewer has difficulty finding
this experience very relevant to the development
problems found in the underdeveloped countries
of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, for whom it
presumably is being cited as an application of the
Soviet model of development.
The Soviet Central Asian development experi-
ence discussed in detail took place under the di-
rect sponsorship of the national government of the
Soviet Union, and so involved the complex struc-
tures of a powerful, developed state in dealing
with its remaining frontier areas. It may be hardly
more relevant to the vast problems of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America, than would be a study of the
economic development of Alaska, Puerto Rico,
West Virginia, and other underdeveloped portions
of the United States. The story Wilber tells is an
interesting one, but it may tell very little to the
"Underdeveloped Countries" which form the sec-
ond part of his title. After all, central ministries in
Moscow bring to bear quite different forces in de-
velopment than are possible in Jakarta, Lagos or
Brasilia.
With this major reservation, one can understand
Wilber's conclusion that his study has shown that
"the Soviet model provides an alternative (to cap-
italist development) which is not only feasible for
underdeveloped countries, but also possibly attrac-
tive to their leaders." In pointing out questions for
further investigation, he feels the most important
of these is whether it has to be a Communist party
that operates the Soviet model. His tentative con-
clusion is that "A halfway democratic socialist re-
gime could probably supply whatever compulsion
was necessary to implement the model."
More intriguing are his questions in the area of
what this all implies for U.S. foreign policy.
Should the United States accept social revolution
in the underdeveloped world? "Or is the Alliance
for Progress approach of evolutionary reform and
capitalist development more in the long-run inter-
est of the United States and the peoples of the
world?" George Lodge and others have begun to
VOL.
wrestle with these important questions, in recent
articles and books. The Wilber book is strongly
recommended background reading for such in-
quiry.—VERNON L. FERWERDA, Rensselaer Poly-
technic Institute.
Populism: Its Meaning and National Character-
istics. EDITED BY GHITA IONESCU AND ERNEST
GELLNER. (New York: Macmillan. 1969. Pp. 263.
$6.95.)
In early stages of modernization the rise of a
central authority is accomplished at the expense of
inherited intermediary authority, as men transfer
loyalty from the latter to the nation. The new po-
litical center in turn presses for their emancipation
from corporate tutelage. Reflecting this process
the ideology of nationalization glorifies the little
man in his new equality, damning the old feudal
shackles. Since societies undergoing this phase are
still mainly agrarian, the model citizen is the yeo-
man and agrarian reform is usually the battle-cry
and often also a fact.
Early economic development is served by politi-
cal development, but subsequently conflicts with
these early needs. Industrialization makes some lit-
tle men economically autonomous, but many more
become "wage-slaves"; many are threatened and
even wiped out by "modern feudalities," the new
corporate powers of finance and manufacturing.
Since it is simple folk whom such distant abstrac-
tions jeopardize, conspiratorial explanations of
their calamity naturally arise. Nostalgia for a pris-
tine rural (though not feudal) past is aired. Con-
niving "interests" are contrasted with the
"people," good and undifferentiated. Little men
look to their historical ally, the central govern-
ment, for relief and salvation. Not opposed to cap-
italism, so much as to overbearing private power;
oriented toward the central government, but still
addicted to the nativism and parochialism of sim-
ple folk; these men are on a left-right political
see-saw, sliding both ways, though remaining am-
biguous in these conventional terms to the end.
This strain between political and economic de-
velopment was broadly manifested in early nine-
teenth century Western Europe, particularly in
France, taking the historical forms of Radicalism
and even Socialism, under Proudhon, Ledru-Rol-
lin, and other far from obscure spokesmen. In fact,
by mid-century, something of a "Radical interna-
tional" already existed, possessing a common ideo-
logical language and symbolism, even in the New
World. Unfortunately for social science, historiog-
raphy discovered "populism" only in the 1860's
and in Russia—of all places—where intellectuals,
not little people, reacted to economic development
(and ideological reactions to it) abroad, not at
home. Rediscovered once again in an offshoot set-
1970 BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES
ting, though in a more authentic form otherwise,
later in North America, populism came into use in
ever more adumbrated manner in this century, to
denote almost any popular assertion in politics,
from Peronism to Maoism and negritude and be-
yond.
Probing the conceptual meaning of such a term
would be difficult under any circumstances, and es-
pecially so if the historical prototypes are lodged
in somewhat esoteric variants of the real thing.
The contributors to Populism do rather well under
the latter circumstances. The first five contribu-
tions are studies of specific historical variants;
they illuminate such phenomena as the Greenback
and Granger movements (Richard Hofstadter);
"urban populism" in contemporary Latin America
(Alistair Hennessy); Narodnichestvo (Andrzej
Walicki); Eastern Europe's peasantism (Ghifa
Ionescu); and post-independence African politics
(John Saul). If these studies do not much encour-
age broader conceptualization, the remaining five
essays do just that, on various levels of abstrac-
tion and from several theoretical perspectives. As
ideology, populism is conceived as assertions by
predominantly agricultural segments of society,
threatened by modernization, of faith in commu-
nity and Volk against elites (Donald MacRae).
From a basic premise, that "virtue resides in the
simple people, who are the overwhelming majority,
and in their collective traditions," are extrapolated
a number of traits commonly found in many
creeds and movements termed populist (Peter
Wiles). As a political movement, populism ap-
pears as expressive of "a collective awareness of
disadvantage in relation to wealth," the point
about the location of populist movements being
not that they are rural, but that they are periph-
eral to economic power (Kenneth Minogue). The
various forms of populism are similarly seen to
have in common an "encounter between a small-
producer social order and the superior power of
large scale (usually capitalist) industry and com-
merce (Peter Worsley, who keenly suspects that
historians may indeed have made rather arbitrary
terminological choices in this area). An analysis of
the social roots of populism discovers "a unity of
situations" in recurrent patterns of social relation-
ships. "Populism emerges as a response to the
problems posed by modernization and its conse-
quences. These problems are most importantly
those of economic development and of political
authority . . . [It] derives its particular character
from two such tensions . . . the tension between
backward countries and more advanced ones, and
. . . the tension between developed and backward
parts of the same country" (Angus Stewart). With
insights like these, how much longer can arbitrary
historical models of populism obscure the truly
969
classic ones?—GIL CARL ALROT, Hunter College oj
the City University oj New York.
Colour and Citizenship: A Report on British Race
Relations. B Y E. J. B. ROSE AND ASSOCIATES
(London, Oxford University Press, 1969. Pp. 815.
$12.50.)
Readers on this side of the Atlantic have been
made very much aware of the fact that there ex-
ists a color problem in Britain. The strictures of
Enoch Powell, the Conservative Member of Par-
liament, racial disturbances and more recently, the
plight of Asians from East Africa, attempting to
immigrate to England, have all contributed to this
general awareness. What also may have caught the
eyes of the general reader were the specific policies
of the British with respect to non-white citizens of
the Commonwealth: namely the Commonwealth
Immigrants Bills of 1962 and 1968 which virtually
put an end to the entry of non-white citizens of
the Commonwealth.
Now a huge tome, the product of five years of
research has made its appearance, describing and
analyzing the entire racial problem in Britain.
Published under the auspices of the Institute of
Race Relations, London, the Report is written by
E. J. B. Rose, former Director of the International
Press Institute at Zurich, who is "fully acquainted
with the English scene," in association with eight
British scholars. It must be said here and now that
the Report is a landmark in the study of British
race relations, and is for Britain what Gunnar
Myrdal's, An American Dilemma was to the
United States. In fact, the authors have admitted
to finding Myrdal's approach "appropriate" for
their study although the situations in Britain and
the United States were not identical.
Whatever differences may prevail historically
and otherwise between the racial situation in the
United States and Britain, a striking similar-
ity can be noted in both countries, namely, the
gap between theory and practice which constitutes
the dilemma. In the case of the United States, the
contradictions of the American Creed, espousing
the liberty and equality of men enshrined in the
Declaration of Independence, and the unequal
treatment meted out to black people; in the Brit-
ish case, "the tension between the ethic of fairness
embedded in our culture and system of law and the
failure to live up to those standards in practice"
(p. 11)—of course, again involving non-whites at
the receiving end.
Although possessing thirty-three chapters di-
vided into nine parts with four sections—(a) a de-
book falls basically into four sections—(a) a de-
scription of the host society into which the im-
migrants are about to enter (b) the description of
the sending societies, the history of the migrations