Review

Author(s): E. Ramon Arango

Review by: E. Ramon Arango
Source: The Journal of Politics, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May, 1980), pp. 633-635
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Southern Political Science
Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2130503
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BOOK REVIEWS 633

stitutions on the individual level relationships. The principal in-

stitutions discussed are parties and organizations. The
characteristics of party and organizational systems which are rele-
vant are their population bases, strength in relation to participation,
and degree of reflection by the system of social cleavages. Chapters
discussing the impacts of institutions across five nations are followed
by a chapter on Yugoslavia, a special case. (Nigeria is excluded
because of lack of data.) The final chapters deal with the impact of
sex and community context on the SERL/participation relationship
and suggest the probable consequences of the empirical results
discussed.
This is an important but difficult book. Its difficulty arises partly
from its use of multivariate methods which may not be easily
grasped by all who would read it. But a more significant difficulty
arises from its focus on a macro-level relationship, rather than on
the individual-level data used to measure that relationship, and
from the necessity of summarizing patterns emerging from a very
complicated set of analyses. Readers will likely find themselves
wishing for a few simple contingency tables which would give them
a feel for the political realities in the seven nations, even though such
tables would be useless for the authors' purposes. In any case, this
book cannot be ignored by any scholar interested in cross-national
political behavior research or empirical democratic theory.

C. NEAL TATE, North Texas State University

Corporatism and Development: The Portuguese Experience. By

HOWARD J. WIARDA. (Amherst, MA: The University of Massa-
chusetts Press, 1977. Pp. xiii, 447. $20.00.)

Professor Wiarda's monograph contains two interwoven themes.

The first is a careful, perceptive, almost affectionate, analysis of
natural corporativism-a way of organizing man and society that is
aristocratic, layered, hierarchical, protective of traditional estates,
and governed by a natural elite. This natural corporativism finds
its philosophical expression in the writings of Seneca, Cicero,
Augustine, Aquinas, Vitoria, and Sua'rez. It finds its political
manifestations sometimes in law but more often in customs and
traditions and in the subtle understandings by all the members of a

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634 THE JOURNAL OF POLITICS, VOL. 42, 1980

community of the intricacies of human inequality ameliorated by

the obligations and duties owed by and to each societal stratum, this
interdependency contributing, if operating optimally, to some in-
visible but nonetheless real organic whole out of which emerges har-
mony and peace.
Wiarda believes that natural corporativism existed and continues
to exist primarily in the Iberic-Latin societies (both in Europe and in
the Americas) and that corporative theory offers a clearer explana-
tion than any other of the way these societies have operated and still
operate. Moreover, Wiarda believes that these politics have func-
tioned more satisfactorily than the Anglo-American scholars who
dominate so much of Western democratic political analysis are will-
ing to admit. He also feels that natural corporativism has existed
and continues to exist in societies other than the Iberic-Latin (Beer's
analysis of British representational theories would bear Wiarda out)
and perhaps could offer the modern non-Iberic-Latin world-the
developed as well as the developing-a possible way of solving prob-
lems that both liberalism and socialism are finding increasingly in-
tractable.
The second, and dominant, theme presents Portugal under
Salazar and analyzes his failure and that of his successor, Marcello
Caetano, to create a viable institutionalized sociopolitical system.
Salazar's corporative experiment aborted shortly after a somewhat
auspicious beginning in the late 1920s because Salazar betrayed
natural corporativist concepts in order to secure for himself total
political power. In the 1930s, he turned to court and cosset the
possessing classes while abandoning and repressing the laboring
masses, thereby violating the basic corporativist tenet of interclass
mutuality, respect, harmony, and dependence. Thus what
originally had been conceived as a corporativism of self-regulating
associations governing every aspect of Portuguese life under the
gentle guidance of the state degenerated into a dictatorial state cor-
porativism little different from any other non-democratic system in
interwar Europe. Wiarda denies that the Salazar-Caetano regime,
even in its most oppressive years, was ever fascist in the Italian or
German model. But he demonstrates how oppressive, cruel, and
inefficient the regime became, and in his presentation of the
evidence he makes quite understandable the reasons why the revolu-
tion took place in 1974. The revolution destroyed every trace of
institutionalized corporativism, but Wiarda is convinced that Por-
tugal is still suffused with the natural corporativism which has fur-

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BOOK REVIEWS 635

nished the psychosocial infrastructure of Portugal since she became

a nation-state in the 1400s. Thus, Wiarda's chapter, "Does Cor-
porativism Matter," becomes the most provocative in the book.
Wiarda's valuable and meticulously researched work fills a lacuna
in Western European studies. At last the Iberian peninsula is begin-
ning to receive the scholarly attention it deserves.

E. RAMON ARANGO, Louisiana State University

China's Role in World Affairs. By MICHAEL B. YAHUDA. (New

York: St. Martin's Press, 1978. Pp. 298. $18.50.)

Michael Yahuda sets out to answer two questions. What have the
Chinese leaders seen as China's role in world affairs? And what has
caused them to change their minds? His time frame is from 1949 to
the present. He has used secondary literature as well as primary
source material. His point of view is cautiously sympathetic.
Generally, the book is well argued. However, Mr. Yahuda has
some ideas about national security which need further elaboration.
Since the Chinese have spoken little about their nuclear capabilities,
Mr. Yahuda argues, they enjoy an advantage. "No one can be quite
certain as to what kind of second strike capability the Chinese might
have by now." (12) The recent SALT debate in the United States
Senate has made it evident that the American and Russian in-
telligence services can well monitor each other's nuclear activities.
Most of the monitoring techniques can be applied against China. On
the other hand, the Chinese are probably less able to monitor the
Russian or American nuclear capabilities. Calculating an oppo-
nent's first-strike capabilities is an indispensible step in determining
one's own second-strike capabilities. In sum, the Russians and the
Americans may know better than the Chinese whether or not the
Chinese are able to launch a second strike.
Mr. Yahuda also posits that backwardness is, if not beautiful,
beneficial for security. At least, "Backwardness is a major factor in
China's capacity to fight a people's war . . . . The cellular economy
with decentralized management and the largely self-sufficient com-
munes, the dispersed grain stores, a militia force, a people's army
and so on all suggest a situation in which popular resistance and
warfare could be carried on . . . . The relatively unmodernized

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