Book Review: System and Succession: The Social Bases of Political Elite Recruitment

• Author: Bernard C. Borning
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/106591297903200227
• Published date: 01 June 1979
• Date: 01 June 1979
• Subject Matter: Book Review

Book

Rcviervs and Notes

239

System and Succession: The Social Bases

of

Political Elite Recruitment.

By

JOHN

D.

NAGLE.

(Austin

&

London: University of Texas Press, 1977.

Pp.

xi,

273.

$17.50.)

Nagle studies the political elites of four nations: Germany, htexico, the Soviet

Union, and the United States. After initially examining several methodological

problems, he makes “four-nation comparisons” covering three periods: “revolu-

tion” (approximately 1910-1921) -with the

U.S.

system here serving

as

a

control

case; “stress” (intenvar 1920-1940)

;

and “normalcy” (post-1945).

Applying his “longitudinal seminal-case method,” NagIe finds that elite re-

cruitment in time

of

“revolution” largely supports his hypothesis that “basic social

revolutions (or counterrevolutions) do not occur without

significant

and

qua%

tatiuely decisive

changes in the social composition of the relevant political elites.”

Thus, for example, whereas the Mexican revolution was merely

a

“successful

political but largely unfulfilled social revolution,” in the postwar Russian case elite

displacement

was

both generational and social. Not surprisingly, the author’s data

indicate little intenvar elite displacement in the U.S. and Weimar systems; the

military was subdued in intenvar Mexico; post-1920 Russia e?rperienced

a

“gen-

erational and skills revolirtion.” Post-1945 “normalcy” shows

a

“modal age cohort

distribution for political elites” in the

US.

and West Germany, a gradual approach

to this situation in htexico, but its complete ab:ence in the Soviet Union.

Nagle’s next

six

chapters expound

a

series of “single-nation studies.” An

example is his “longitudinal analysis” of tenure in the

US.

House of Representa-

tives. Interestingly, as regards Germaqy, Nagle believes that both the liberal-

democratic and htarxist models have “significant relevance” to elite recruitment.

In post-Cardenas Mexico, the “middle class, not the agrarian or working class,

vision

of

the Revolution has triumphed” and hence, he claims, his findings “give

support to

a

hlarxist class analysis

of

Mexican political development.” Nagle’s

‘rgenerational interpretation of the Soviet elite” includes background data on Cen-

tral Committee members which Soviet specialists should find interesting. Perhaps

slightly ironically given his general subject, Nagle criticizes two Manjst approaches

as

resting too heavily on an elite interpretation (“from the top down”) and seem-

ing to neglect the role of more impersonal factors.

Some of his more arresting

-

as well

as

dubious -propositions appear in

Nagle’s first and last chapters. Granted his description

of

elites

as

“the most power-

ful or influential members of Fociety in terms of government,” readers may wonder,

especially in view of power shifts to the executive, whether all

of

his elites are

equally efficacious

-

the

U.S.

Senate, Russia’s Third Duma, West Germany’s

Bundestag? Students of Fricdrich and Brzezinski’s concept

of

official ideology

-

as enforced by modern totalitarian autocracy- may be skeptical of the author‘s

flat assertion that the “American political system is quite as ideological as the

Soviet.” Early on, Nagle considers the debate among scholars concerning the

“sociology of political eliter

.

.

.

as

part of the general struggle over the class order

in the society at large.”

Is

the ideal of objective scholarship then mere academic

wheel spinning? In his final chapter, though implying that scholars

can

impartially

establish some points (as in his

o~vn

study), the author neverthelen indicates his

firm

belief that scholarship is ideologically based. htust it be? Although he thinks

the prospects slim for reconciling differences among competing schools (pluralists,

radicals, hfarxists)

,

the h4arxist position seems preferable to Nagle who

SCCS

a

close relationship between the

‘‘class

composition of political (state) elites and class

representation of interests.”

In spite of and partly because

of

his “ideological” contentions, Nagle’s volume

is useful, readable, and surely provocative. The dimensions of his research

are

well

defined, and his study is buttressed with masses of data including dozens of tables.

IVhether the author is ultimately more intercsted in pressing

his

“Marxist” inter-

pretation or in pursuing

a

supposedly objective (if elusive) scholarship as such, he

nevertheless provides

us

with much well dociunented information on elite recruit-